The murderers acted with a key demographic in mind, knowing that millions of people would tune in to watch.
So the camera has created a new kind of crowd in the course of our long history of public beheadings. Its entrance on the scene, in France, on 17 June 1939, had a similarly immediate and unequivocal effect.
That morning, the public guillotining of German serial killer Eugen Weidmann, outside the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, was filmed by a spectator — unbeknownst to the authorities. You can see the footage online today. Photographers also recorded the action, and their pictures filled newspapers and magazines in the days after Weidmann’s death.
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When the victim of a beheading is bound and defenceless, he or she becomes a pawn in somebody else’s production. The power no longer derives from the act of decapitation itself, which may require a pathological perpetrator, but it does not require the luck and skill to win a fight. Instead, the power emerges from the reception the slayer receives as he plays his part on the stage. There is no triumph in the killer’s actions until we watch.
Modern technology may offer a hiding place to voyeurs, but it can also give a voice to human decency. No good can ever come from murder, but if public opinion is able to neutralize the killers’ triumph by refusing to broadcast the graphic imagery they want us to see, then this is a step forward.
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