Since we've gotten to the subject of seriality, one of my favorites, I just have to jump back in. I have to admit from the beginning that I haven't seen either of Cim's examples, so I'm just extrapolating from what she's written. And just making it up as I go.

When I think of serial killers (or as in the case of Superman, serial saviors), I naturally come back to Mark Seltzer's discussion of addictive violence (Serial Killers, 1998). He argues, among many other things, that serial killing is connected to the cultural phenomenon of stranger intimacy. Through TV and radio talk shows, for example, we become intimate with the problems of strangers—their private becomes a part of our public experience. This overestimation of the importance of the personal results in category confusion between private and public, personal and social spheres. Our cultural interest in the "torn and open psyches" we witness on Oprah and Jenny Jones isn't all that different from our fascination with the torn and open bodies left by the serial killer.

Might we not connect Superman and the serial killer Bruno via their hyper-developed tendencies to form intimacies with strangers? Cim describes Superman as hearing our every word (Oprah or Dr. Phil?) and loving us despite (or because of ) our flaws. Like talk show hosts and the implied audience, Superman internalises the private needs of strangers. Bruno's externalisation of the internal, his projection of the personal onto the social, is nothing more than an attempt to share his own pain with strangers. This makes him Superman's necessary opposite. Both require stranger intimacy in order to define themselves. Both require the wounds of others to be all that they can be.

What this says about music, I can't really say. Maybe it has something to do with a cultural dance where serial killers and serial saviors mirror each other's movements…. Or maybe not.