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Killing for Culture: From Edison to ISIS: A New History of Death on Film Paperback – May 1, 2016

by David Kerekes (Author), David Slater (Author)
"I thought I was desensitized. I'm not. No hope for humanity... I feel like my quest is over." --
Comment posted online in reaction to the video, 3 Guys 1 Hammer.

Unlike images of sex, which were clandestine and screened only in private, images of death were made public from the onset of cinema. The father of the modern age, Thomas Edison, fed the appetite for this material with staged executions on film. Little over a century later the executions are real and the world is aghast at brutalities freely available online at the click of a button. Some of these films are created by lone individuals using shaky camera phones: Luka Magnotta, for instance, and the teenagers known as the Dnipropetrovsk maniacs. Others are shot on high definition equipment and professionally edited by organized groups, such as the militant extremists ISIS.


KILLING FOR CULTURE explores these images of death and violence, and the human obsession with looking – and not looking – at them. Beginning with the mythology of the so-called 'snuff' film and its evolution through popular culture, this book traces death and the artifice of death in the 'mondo' documentaries that emerged in the 1960s, and later the faux snuff pornography that found an audience through Necrobabes and similar websites. However, it is when videos depicting the murders of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg surfaced in the 2000s that an era of genuine atrocity commenced, one that has irrevocably changed the way in which we function as a society.
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  1. Print length
    646 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Headpress
  4. Publication date
    May 1, 2016
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1909394343
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1909394346
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About the Author

David Kerekes is a founder of Headpress. He has written extensively on film and popular culture, including the books Sex Murder Art and (with Slater) See No Evil.

David Slater is a founder of Headpress. He has worked as a technician in electronics and engineering industries, co-authored (with Kerekes) See No Evil and has written articles on a variety of subjects. His interests include films, books, open country and Forteana.

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