Mickey and Mallory drive Route 66 leaving a trail of bodies, and television, instead of recoiling in horror, turns them into idols: prime time news specials, fans, T-shirts. Natural Born Killers is less about two killers than about the media circus that adores them. It is the thesis of cultural criminology pushed to delirium: crime and its image feed off each other until they become spectacle — and everyone, journalists and public included, is part of the show.
// The theoryCrime as emotion and as image
Cultural criminology looks at what the cold theories ignore: what it feels like to offend and how crime is represented. Jack Katz (Seductions of Crime, 1988) reclaimed the "foreground" — the lived emotion of the act — and Mickey and Mallory are pure foreground: they kill not for loot but for the adrenaline, the vertigo and a twisted sense of transcendence that binds them. But Jeff Ferrell added the other half: the media loop. Crime produces images, images produce fascination, and fascination produces more crime seeking its own image. The film is that loop: stylized violence about violence that manufactures stars of violence.
That is why Oliver Stone shot it like an epileptic music video — saturated, kitsch, deliberately unbearable: he does not film the killers with the true-crime gaze that exalts them, he satirizes that gaze. The truly monstrous character of Natural Born Killers is not Mickey; it is Wayne Gale, the journalist who follows them, interviews them and ends up, camera in hand, taking part in the slaughter he is broadcasting. Cultural criminology points precisely there: the line between reporting on violence and feeding it by turning it into spectacle is far thinner than journalism admits.
The phenomenon has a name and data. The copycat effect — dubbed the "Werther effect" after the wave of suicides that followed Goethe's novel — documents how spectacular coverage of a violent act inspires its repetition. That is why journalistic protocols now exist — do not name the shooter, do not spread his manifesto, do not turn the victim count into a scoreboard — born of the very lesson Natural Born Killers caricatured: every time the screen rewards the killer with fame, it writes the script for the next one.
The media loop
Cultural criminology holds that crime and its representation can no longer be separated: they live in a loop. The killer consumes violent fictions, acts in search of his moment of fame, the media turn him into an icon, and the next one learns from that template. Mickey and Mallory do not exist outside the cameras that chase them — their violence is choreographed to be seen. The question the theory leaves is uncomfortable: when the shooting is broadcast live and the shooter has written a manifesto for the algorithm, where does the crime end and the spectacle that rewards it with the only thing it sought — being watched — begin?
Get the map of theories for free
Subscribe to the criminal archive —one case a week, no spam— and I'll send you The map of theories: the great currents of criminology on a single sheet.
// The subjectThe lovers who need an audience
What sets the Knoxes apart from a lone killer is that their violence is expressive and shared: they kill like performers, and their love feeds on the act. There is no calculation (they steal almost nothing), no trauma that fully explains it (though the film hints at it for Mallory): there is joy, style and a need for an audience. They are the embodiment of Katz's seduction of crime — the "I can do this and you're watching" — but also its media product: without the television that turns them into legend, they would be just two more criminals. The film drives it home in its ending, when they escape by killing the journalist after he has immortalized them: the star devours the one who created it, yet only existed thanks to him.
Mickey y Mallory
// The crackSatire or fuel?
Cultural criminology — and the film itself — carry a dangerous paradox: by representing violence as spectacle in order to criticize it, they risk continuing to sell it as spectacle. Natural Born Killers tried to denounce the fascination with crime and ended up, for part of the audience, glorifying it (copycat crimes were attributed to it). It is the same charge leveled at the theory: describing the "rush" of crime so vividly can end up aestheticizing it and forgetting the victims, who in the film are almost set dressing. Understanding the seduction of crime does not require filming it to cool music. The line between analyzing the spectacle and being its next episode is, once again, razor-thin.
Don't give them the prize they seek
If part of contemporary violence — from the mass shooting to the viral video — seeks above all to be seen, then how we tell it stops being neutral: it is part of the problem or of the solution. Cultural criminology pushes toward a journalism that does not grant killers the stardom they crave (do not spread manifestos, do not idolize the perpetrator, keep the focus on the victims), and toward a critical eye on our own consumption of violence as entertainment. Mickey and Mallory are immortal only because someone switched on the camera and millions watched. Turning off that incentive — denying them the audience — is perhaps the most effective way to keep the next couple from being born killers for the screens.
Three key takeaways
- Cultural criminology (Katz, Ferrell) joins two things: crime as emotion (Mickey and Mallory kill for the rush, not for money) and as image (the media turn them into idols).
- The media loop: crime → spectacle → fascination → more crime seeking its image. Natural Born Killers is a satire of the culture that idolizes the killer, not an apologia.
- The crack: representing violence to criticize it can keep selling it (copycat crimes, victims as set dressing). The lesson: do not give killers the audience they seek.
Sources · further reading
- Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. Basic Books.
- Ferrell, J., Hayward, K. & Young, J. (2008). Cultural Criminology: An Invitation. Sage.
- Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime. Routledge.
- Jewkes, Y. (2004). Media and Crime. Sage.
- Phillips, D. P. (1974). «The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide: The Werther Effect». American Sociological Review, 39(3).
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Mickey y Mallory?
Mickey y Mallory («los Knox») es un villano de Asesinos natos, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. Mickey and Mallory drive Route 66 leaving a trail of bodies, and television, instead of recoiling in horror, turns them into idols: news specials, fans, T-shirts.
¿Por qué Mickey y Mallory (los Knox) se convierte en villano?
Natural Born Killers and cultural criminology: Mickey and Mallory don't kill for money, they kill for the rush and for fame — and the media chasing them turn them into stars. Crime as spectacle, and spectacle as accomplice.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Mickey y Mallory?
El caso de Mickey y Mallory se analiza desde la Criminología cultural. Cultural criminology (Katz, Ferrell) studies crime as emotional experience and as media image. Mickey and Mallory Knox, of Natural Born Killers, embody both faces: they kill for the adrenaline and the meaning (Katz's "foreground"), and the media turn that violence into a spectacle that creates more violence (Ferrell's media loop). The film is a satire: it does not glorify the killers but the culture that idolizes them. Its uncomfortable lesson is that consuming violence as entertainment is part of the problem, not a neutral spectator.
