Tales of Outrage and the Everyday: Fear of Crime and Bodies at Risk

Abstract

A couple of years ago, in the small community of Snowtown in South Australia, police announced the discovery in a disused bank vault of a number of bodies decomposing in drums of acid. The find created great media and public interest, particularly as further bodies were located, in what was rapidly labelled Australia’s worst serial killing. Yet, despite the rather ghoulish fascination, the response to the case evinced none of the wave of emotion, indignation and demand for public action that accompanied the massacre at Port Arthur, Tasmania, some years earlier. It appears not all bodies are equal, nor do their deaths generate the same level of fear and anxiety about the risk of violent crime. These two multiple killings present contrasting moral tales, each disclosing the frames through which the media and the public interpret and react to violence. The chapter uses the concept of outrage to explore how bodies, and in particular female bodies, are constructed as sites of risk and to suggest how such representations can be challenged.