ABSTRACT
Popular
serial killer narratives, like David Fincher’s film Se7en, stage the
conflict between killer and detective as one of competing authors. While
committing the crime and covering his tracks, the murderer constructs a
narrative for the detective, who, in turn, needs to rewrite the received story
so that it will serve and reaffirm the social order. Iconic representations of
textual production abound throughout Se7en. Moreover, Fincher goes to
great extent to identify the two authorial positions with the agenda of,
respectively, modernism and postmodernism, exploring, in the process, the
possibilities of modernism as a counter-ideology to the prevailing postmodernist
discourse of the film itself.
Key
words: Serial killer narrative, authorship, Se7en, modernism,
postmodernism
＊Steffen
Hantke (韓克庭)
has published essays and reviews on American popular culture in film and
literature. He is the guest editor of an issue of Paradoxa devoted to
horror, as well as Area Chair for the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American
Culture Association. He has taught in China and Taiwan, and currently lives
and works in Denver, Colorado.