Psychopaths and Religion: The Amalgamation and Sanitation Through Cultural Media / Presenter: Ashley Torres

 

Faculty Mentor: Dr. John Arrington Woodward, PhD

The focus of this academic research paper will be on the representation of cannibal murderers and psychopaths through different forms of cultural media and cinematic media. It will focus on how through cinema and media, the narrative of crime has dehumanized the psychopath’s human actions and the reasoning, or logic, behind their actions; how it has created a modern day mythological monster that has no “real” human connections so we can move on as a society without looking at our own basic human nature. It will include the religious undertones from the beginning of time until now, how through literature and society we’ve criminalized the psychiatric disorder in order to control, purify, and discipline “criminal human conditions” through asylums and understand them through philosophy, and how the media as well as cinema has sanitized us of our connections to them. It will also cover how we as a society have isolated “them” from us and created a modern day “boogeyman.” The paper will also touch a bit on how as a society this form of media consumption has dehumanized and desensitized our own reasoning when confronted with the modern day “Boogeyman.”