The Editor's Mess

It’s a well-known secret that dead celebrities can rake in big bucks. A lucrative, if morbid subsection of the publicity world has devoted itself to the effort, making a buck off of anything and everything it can brand with a dead celeb’s face, body, voice, or film clip. Branding has given necrophilia a whole new meaning.

Michael Jackson, for instance, who died 11 years ago, raked in $60 million in 2019. Elvis Presley, dead 43 years now, came in second at $39 million, and Marilyn Monroe, dead since 1962 rolled in an impressive $13 million. There’s GOLD in them thar rotting corpses!

So it shouldn’t surprise me that a recent slew of Ted Bundy movies and documentaries are raking in big bucks. He was a celebrity after all; a murderous, necrophiliac, psychopathic celebrity sex criminal, but beggars can’t be choosers. Hollywood doesn’t care about those minor faults, just asses in seats, or in this case subs zoning out with some DoorDash on their ironic beanbags.

Anyway, I found myself binging “Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer,” and was feeling pretty guilty about it. Hadn’t I paid this cretin enough attention so many years after his execution? I’d watched the movies, with all the bad recreations, all the crime docs, even sat through Zac Efron confessing his undying love for Lily Collins in “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” and suffered through John Malkovich’s Southern accent.

Why? White middle-aged males have to by law. Don’t take my word, it’s on Google.

“Falling for a Killer” was an interesting perspective on Bundy: on one hand, he was a murderous psychopath, on the other he was a Republican who seemingly treated his girlfriend and her daughter ok. Besides the Republican part, it does seem like a contradiction worthy of being explored dramatically to learn something, hopefully, about our conventional definitions of good and evil.

(Come on, you’ve looked at Mitch McConnell at least once and wondered how many bones you’d find digging up his basement crawlspace.)

Nevertheless, I admit I’m conflicted watching this type of stuff and helping fill up the coffers of the producers and streaming services marketing these things. I mean Elvis made $39 million last year for the companies and individuals who own his various likeness and intellectual property rights. By the end he was in pretty sorry shape, but his career was a famously productive one. He gave millions, perhaps billions of people some joy and fun. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was our song when I married my wife, and I’ll bet that’s hardly unique: he was an icon for rock ‘n roll with soul and Memphis today exists as a testament to his legacy.

None of those positives apply to Bundy. He didn’t give anyone joy and fun, except perhaps when he was executed in 1989. He caused misery to dozens of families, destroyed so many lives and everything and everyone around him, including his girlfriend and her daughter as this documentary shows. He was a destructive force, one that shouldn’t ever be admired…. Yet he was.

There was more than one young woman at his trial who found the killer “fascinating,” and smiled when describing him or talking about being close to him. Is that just morbid fascination or something else, maybe one key to understanding how he was able to get away with murder for so many years. In any case, it’s not something to be promoted or admired.

If you catch any person at the right moment, they can appear to be saints, martyrs, or villains. That’s the danger with this kind of publicity. No one can deny that Marilyn Monroe’s new jewelry collection is cool, even this many years after her unfortunate demise. But effectively glorifying a murderous psycho and enriching a bunch of opportunists looking for ratings or new subs isn’t cool, it’s as dumb as those women who gushed over seeing Ted up-close and personal, with or without a bloody log in his hands..