So I’m walking home, listening to the radio, when an ad for Bell ringtones comes on. Actually, not ringtones — personalised ringing. These are messages recorded by celebrities like Ludacris or Stewie Griffin that play instead of the ringing or buzzing sound we are accustomed to hearing when we telephone someone. You go on the Bell website, buy and download your chosen message, and then, when somebody dials you up, they hear 50 Cent asking them why they wanted to phone you in the first place.
And the tagline for the ad? “Bell: Keeping it simple.”
Tonight, I captioned E! True Hollywood Story Investigates: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer. The real message of this programme is just how banal and, frankly, dull serial killers are when pre-mythologised. Dennis Rader, Jeffrey Dahmer, Aileen Wuornos — they’re not acting up there on screen. Their dialogue has no gravitas; it’s not delivered, just spoken. They’re monsters, but they’re not myths, they’re not arresting personalities, the world doesn’t warp around their presence; they’re just people, ordinary people who seem to regard their actions as an interesting hobby. When the judge asks Rader if he’s pleading guilty because he really is guilty, Rader replies, “Yes, sir,” and the tone of his voice says Well, duh.
And in the midst of all this flat, banal horror, the camera turns to a man who was investigating the mid-’70s child murders in Michigan — a detective, a policeman, an attorney, something — as he explains how they knew the children were held somewhere for a few days before being murdered. “When the children were found,” he says, or words to this effect, “they were clean and well-fed, and it seemed that they’d been cared for.”
You can see it in his eyes as the sound from his throat passes through his ears into his brain and he realises he’s shoved his foot so far into his mouth that he can probably still walk comfortably. And then the poor dear man tries to fix it. “Except, of course, that,” he starts, and you can see him wilting as he realises where this sentence is going, but it staggers on hopelessly to the end: “that they were killed at the end of their stay.”
He bows his head, curves his shoulders; his whole body seems to implode around the faux pas, giving off a vibe of Oh sweet merciful crap, you can edit this out, can’t you?
And life goes on.
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