That's why he's a monster
The Chimera, a strange beast even by the standards of the Greek bestiary, was a fire-breathing female monster dispatched by Bellerophon. He thrust his lead-tipped lance down its overheated gullet, thus choking the beast on molten metal.
The Chimera served no purpose other than to ravage the countryside. Only later was it granted metaphor status, being said to represent the local volcano.
An apt title, then, for this particular episode of the X Files, though the beast that is Ellen Adderly’s alter-ego looks nothing like the Greek Chimera. Nevertheless, Ellen’s is a beast that serves no real purpose. It makes little sense that she be so outraged as to become a monstrous destroyer of her husband’s extra-marital interests. He did try to leave her previously, only for her to get pregnant as an incentive for him to stay. Having adopted a perfectly natural way of keeping her man it seems a little extreme that she should then become so deranged as to take on a whole different aspect in order to wreak destruction on his coping mechanisms. It seems more likely that she would have tolerated his dalliances, hiding behind the perfect façade that she and Martha Crittendon had erected.
Kevin Dutton, in ‘The Wisdom of Psychopaths’, relates the story of Helen Morrison, after assisting in the autopsy of John Wayne Gacy, took possession of his brain, wanting to see if there was any physical difference between it and the brains of non-psychopaths. Unsurprisingly, she found nothing to distinguish Gacy’s brain from anyone else’s. But, as she pointed out, a dead brain is not to be compared to a living one, as she describes it, the lights have gone out.
The reasons for Gacy, or any other monster, are so various and minute they are likely never to be bullet-pointed or fully understood. We human beings are so complex – and so simple that, while we understand the generalities quite well, we’ll probably never know the infinite minutiae of the individual. Preventing future Gacy’s will always remain beyond our ken and this shouldn’t be a cause for feelings of futility so much as a celebration of our uniqueness.
Monsters beyond our understanding are part and parcel of our diversity and individuality. To prevent Gacy or Ellen’s Chimera would require a dystopic curtailment of all that makes human life worth living.
The simple fact of the matter is, human beings will always find a way to kill other human beings. Make it extremely difficult for them to fly airplanes into tall buildings and they will drive cars into crowded streets. This is not to say that having gun laws that prevent mass shootings are not possible. There is only one country in the world that suffers from a prevalence of these atrocities and it is, strangely enough, the country with the most liberal gun laws in the world, laws inscribed into their constitution, no less.
It may never be possible to prevent the birth of monsters. Those who perpetrate Las Vegas or Sandy Hook are not monsters. John Wayne Gacy was a monster, as was Ted Bundy and the whole gallery serial killers that have reaped their deadly harvests of human life. Though the most prolific serial killers are not American, their prevalence is greater in the States. And if that fact doesn’t make you wonder, nothing will.
The reason Adam Lanza and Stephen Paddock are not monsters is because their crimes could have been prevented. Stricter, more sensible, gun laws would have made these mass shootings impossible. The proof is in the stark reality that such crimes rarely happen in other countries. It’s the old joke about why a dog licks its own bollocks. Because it can. In America, mass shootings happen because they can.
We may never know what makes a Gacy and we’ll never be able to prevent the next one from doing what they feel must be done. That’s why he’s a monster.
The Chimera served no purpose other than to ravage the countryside. Only later was it granted metaphor status, being said to represent the local volcano.
An apt title, then, for this particular episode of the X Files, though the beast that is Ellen Adderly’s alter-ego looks nothing like the Greek Chimera. Nevertheless, Ellen’s is a beast that serves no real purpose. It makes little sense that she be so outraged as to become a monstrous destroyer of her husband’s extra-marital interests. He did try to leave her previously, only for her to get pregnant as an incentive for him to stay. Having adopted a perfectly natural way of keeping her man it seems a little extreme that she should then become so deranged as to take on a whole different aspect in order to wreak destruction on his coping mechanisms. It seems more likely that she would have tolerated his dalliances, hiding behind the perfect façade that she and Martha Crittendon had erected.
Kevin Dutton, in ‘The Wisdom of Psychopaths’, relates the story of Helen Morrison, after assisting in the autopsy of John Wayne Gacy, took possession of his brain, wanting to see if there was any physical difference between it and the brains of non-psychopaths. Unsurprisingly, she found nothing to distinguish Gacy’s brain from anyone else’s. But, as she pointed out, a dead brain is not to be compared to a living one, as she describes it, the lights have gone out.
The reasons for Gacy, or any other monster, are so various and minute they are likely never to be bullet-pointed or fully understood. We human beings are so complex – and so simple that, while we understand the generalities quite well, we’ll probably never know the infinite minutiae of the individual. Preventing future Gacy’s will always remain beyond our ken and this shouldn’t be a cause for feelings of futility so much as a celebration of our uniqueness.
Monsters beyond our understanding are part and parcel of our diversity and individuality. To prevent Gacy or Ellen’s Chimera would require a dystopic curtailment of all that makes human life worth living.
The simple fact of the matter is, human beings will always find a way to kill other human beings. Make it extremely difficult for them to fly airplanes into tall buildings and they will drive cars into crowded streets. This is not to say that having gun laws that prevent mass shootings are not possible. There is only one country in the world that suffers from a prevalence of these atrocities and it is, strangely enough, the country with the most liberal gun laws in the world, laws inscribed into their constitution, no less.
It may never be possible to prevent the birth of monsters. Those who perpetrate Las Vegas or Sandy Hook are not monsters. John Wayne Gacy was a monster, as was Ted Bundy and the whole gallery serial killers that have reaped their deadly harvests of human life. Though the most prolific serial killers are not American, their prevalence is greater in the States. And if that fact doesn’t make you wonder, nothing will.
The reason Adam Lanza and Stephen Paddock are not monsters is because their crimes could have been prevented. Stricter, more sensible, gun laws would have made these mass shootings impossible. The proof is in the stark reality that such crimes rarely happen in other countries. It’s the old joke about why a dog licks its own bollocks. Because it can. In America, mass shootings happen because they can.
We may never know what makes a Gacy and we’ll never be able to prevent the next one from doing what they feel must be done. That’s why he’s a monster.
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