COPYCAT
Murder by Any Other Name - C'est la "Meme"
A film review by Gerard Martin
Copyright 1995 Gerard Martin
Directed by : Jon Amiel Photographed by : Laszlo Kovacs. Written by : Ann Biderman and David Madsen Edited by : Alan Heim and Jim Clark Music by : Christopher Young. Starring : Sigourney Weaver, Harry Connick Jr., Holly Hunter, Dermot Mulroney, William McNamara, Will Patton
In Jon Amiel's film COPYCAT, a vicious and premeditated act of murder is more than a perfunctory plot concept, more than a cinematic reconstruction of a fatal event, and more than an immoral lethal act. Long before psychologist Helen Hudson, played by Sigourney Weaver, takes a magnifying glass to COPYCAT's first murder scene glossies, the act of murder is defined as something more elaborate than the mere slaying of a life.
Serial murder as the art of semi-ritualized killing would ordinarily be the movie's principal overriding theme if not for the unexpected presence of a possibly clandestine narrative element that finds its analog somewhere in the modern-day dint of a powerfully ubiquitous communication media infrastructure.
In today's rapid-transit communication environment, "media" is, after all, the plural of medium, and a copy of a copy is often far more than the double sum of its number. At some point, a copy or replication of thought, point of view, bias or prejudice becomes memetic--so many replicated components seeking to attach themselves to value systems of previously existing memes.
A "meme" is defined by cultural evolutionists as a cognitive-behavioral pattern that can be transmitted from one individual to another through communication. Memes are ideas that function in the mind in much the same way as a gene or virus would function in the body. Just as viruses can leap from body to body, ideas will leap from mind to mind.
COPYCAT begins with a birds-eye view of a university campus grassy glade. Students have flocked together in groups of two and three. As our point of view descends, we also see briefly where a female student is silently reading a book.
As our field of vision descends even further, a building appears in the distance. A narrative voice-over is heard describing the scene of a murder. As the scene changes to a view inside the building, the spoken words are emanating from a large projection screen. A more complete view of the stage shows Dr. Helen Hudson, the speaker behind the podium, who has just finished a book about serial killers. She is the celebrity of her own lecture.
In a matter of seconds, three powerful media--the book, the lecture and the television screen--are introduced and revealed as the powerful agents of dissemination that they are. Then briefly our attention is directed into the shadows of a capacity audience where FBI statistics would suggest that possibly one of our nation's "35 white males aged 20 to 35 years" serial killers might be lurking. Seconds later in the lecture hall audience--a hand gesture, a silently mouthed threat, a revolver cocking, hesitation at the podium--and we know that he has just been located. Signs are evident that Dr. Helen Hudson is about to begin the ride of her life.
Minutes later into the story but months later in real life; having survived a brutal assault on her life, Helen Hudson remains a house-bound victim suffering the agony of acute agoraphobia and intermittent attacks of anxiety. She is a prisoner in her own home. We can see her but Dr. Hudson is not sure that she wants to see us.
The murder rate in San Francisco must be comparable to most any other city of its size in North America. But what makes a series of murders serial? This is where the insights of Dr. Hudson become inestimable. Though evidence indicates that each of the killings was performed by a different person, Dr. Hudson insists on a serial pattern for the crimes. After fourteen frantic attempts to communicate her knowledge to police, homicide investigating officer M.J. Monahan, played by Holly Hunter, takes the telephone receiver and quickly judges her "knowledge" to be inconsequential. Monahan is, of course, soon apprised of Dr. Hudson's estimable credentials. We very quickly see them together again at her apartment where apologies and requests for assistance are negotiated and settled.
Dr. Hudson is perhaps correct in her assessment of a serial pattern to the crimes. Soon realized is the full extent to which this is no ordinary killing spree. But how could she know? The serial murderer, played by William McNamara, very meticulously pays homage to every detail of other previous slayings by past nefarious darlings of the broadcast media -- Dahmer, Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler and others--who were all made famous through relentless media coverage. It is as though he became those people and they became his modus operandi!
The copycat nature of the crime surely suggests that the victims of the story were killed more by media "meme" than by mere mortal man? Memes of a harmful nature can obviously be very deadly when we consider how the spread of thoughts and ideas might actually be analogous to the rapid spread of a deadly virus. Instead of moving from body the body, the analogy would be a rapid or exponential ideological movement from mind to mind. Indeed, if direct bodily contact is necessary for the spread of a disease, what different kinds of direct contact might assist the spread of a meme?
We might first ask ourselves about some of the more popular memes in existence. Writer-zoologist, Richard Dawkins who coined the term, gives us a host of them--the belief in Santa Clause, the existence of the tooth fairy, and then, for the adults, potentially parasitic memes like the advertiser's slogan or jingle.
But what of some of the potentially more deadly memes like those leading up to the events of the post World War II Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union, the soon thereafter immense military industrial build-up during the cold-war, and present-day neo-Nazi assertions that the killing of six million Jews never happened?
Never missing an instance, COPYCAT offers us an utterly complete tour of every circuit, every pathway, every promiscuous avenue by which memes and their carriers can reach our eyes, ears and other vital organs. Even Dr. Hudson, who would never leave her apartment, is not immune. The best display of this is the full extent to which she is hard-wired to the Internet--multiple graphical windows on her computer workstation screen, real-time chess games in colorful three dimensions, and extravagant video animation with full teleconferencing potential. As if the most important carriers were limited to a computer desktop, there is then her television, her police radio scanner and almost always the telephone, right? If still not convinced, then listen for a catchy tune by THE POLICE.
COPYCAT gives us the usual for our money. However, considering that this movie is riding in the wake of other successes of the genre like THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and, more recently, SEVEN, the "usual" is understandably not always enough. Fortunately, COPYCAT offers more than the usual. In addition to intense co-protagonist performances by Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter, this film is brimming with subtle intelligence and satire--even from the villains! In a cinematic portrayal where the tiniest memetic details can echo and reverberate up and down through the multi-threaded channels of our media-tuned make-up, this movie is a treat that, like all good thrillers, will soon bear rewatching!
-- gmartin@well.com
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