Contract killers and why Jamie’s a bad role model
David Wilson has warned that our violent media culture is normalising the mindset of a contract killer – and called TV series like The Fall ‘disgraceful’.
The professor of criminology – who co-presents TV3’s new truecrime documentary series Assassins – said hitmen are professionally desensitised to violence and have the ability to detach themselves from murder.
He said they see their victims not as human but as ‘targets’ and this mentality is normalised in violent video games, dramas such as The Fall and YouTube videos of terrorist executions.
‘So many video games are about taking down targets,’ he said. ‘Without doubt, they add to that normalisation of killing. If I ask my first-year students how many have watched a beheading on YouTube, most have. That is generational.
‘None of us would have encountered a live public execution – now they are just a click away. I think that is deeply troubling.’
Wilson, a former prison officer, added: ‘An Irish series I took some exception to was The Fall, which starred Jamie Dornan. I thought it was a disgraceful series. The presentation of sadomasochism and serial murder was gratuitous and it presented misogyny as entertainment. People no longer find it shocking – they are desensitised to what they are seeing, which is pain.’
Wilson presents the six-part TV3 series profiling Ireland’s assassins, alongside leading investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre, with whom he wrote an academic paper – The British Hitman, 1974 to 2013 – published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice in 2014.
For Assassins: Ireland’s Contract Killers, they reveal the anatomy of six infamous contract killings in Ireland. Explaining the difference between how Irish and British assassins operate, the Birmingham City University professor, said:
‘What was surprising about Ireland is how often hits take place on the doorstep – in Britain, the assassinations were away from the glare of the public.
‘The doorstep… is about catching someone unawares when they are thinking of something else. It has something to do with how face-toface Ireland is. Everyone knows everyone else.’ Assassins: Ireland’s Contract Killers, Wednesdays, TV3, 9pm