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Should we be …concerned?
Lets consider the evidence.
To be fair, Bundy is not the only true-crime heavy hitter getting revisited these days.
(My Friend Dahmer, anyone?)
So why the sudden renewed interest?
I dont want to be known as Ted Bundys lawyer, but unfortunately thats happening again.
He calls todays obsession the Bundy binge, and is totally blown away by it.
And hes not the only one who finds the attention disconcerting.
They dont understand why anyone would want to know more about the man who blew up their lives.
The Bundy mythos is totally tied up in the idea of handsomeness-as-mask.
He and Jeffrey Dahmer seem to be the heartthrobs of the serial-killer genre, she says.
It just draws in people.
Its the weird factor they cant seem to put two and two together.
Perhaps its precisely that all thatquestioningandwondering that enables us to keep coming back, too.
Theres the philosophical stuff: Why?
What was he really like?
(Born evil, says Browne.)
But then there are the chillingly pragmatic questions: Was Ted responsible for more murders than he confessed to?
Unsolved crimes in California?
If thats the case, whywouldntwe keep on trying to know him?
Calderon has been interviewing people whove never spoken up about Bundy before, and theyre getting older.
That being said, our relationship to Bundy these days is not one of pure terror.
Its not that threats like Bundy have gone away its that the Bundy binge is now aesthetically permissible.
), they dontfeellike a front-of-mind modern worry.
Consider the showMindhunter,an austerely nostalgic lookat the days of serial killing.
What else could possibly be this exciting?
Or the retro aesthetic of serial killer glasses.
All of this is only made possible because were scared of other, less knowable monsters these days.
Our focus has changed, as far as what were fearful of, says Calderon.
Fears of terrorism and nuclear war ranked much higher still.
Just like it doesnt matter that Ted Bundy picked his nose.
In contrast, the mass shooter is someone who might still get us.
Uniquely terrifying, the WashingtonPostcallsmass shootings.
(Uniquely terrifying in 2018, that is.
In 2048, we might be making movies about them.)
We can return to our curious questioning: What was he really like?
What did his girlfriend think?
Did he have a conscience?
Did he have a soul?
Because his crimes happened in a time that feels hazier, simpler.
We dont wear our hair like that these days.
We dont chat with strangers.
We dont leave our doors unlocked.
Bundy was our monster, yes.
But hes not our monster anymore.
