The monster impulse
When the Sun was struggling to establish itself in the mid-60s, The Moors murderers must have seemed like the biggest, juiciest gift from the gods. Journalistic convention at the time used the language of circumspection in criminal cases, but, offered this banquet of depravity, the newspaper took off its gloves and hurled epithets at the headlines. Suddenly the person in the dock was no longer "the accused", he or she was an ANIMAL!!, a BEAST!!, a MONSTER!! Such headlines seduce because they flatten complexity's folds into an easy-to-swallow slogan. The slogans of the mob that gather like locusts outside courts when an accused paedophile appears.… Seguir leyendo »