Luca Rocco Magnotta, né Eric Clinton Newman, auditions (unsuccessfully) for a reality show called Cover Guy, in which gay models compete for an underwear-modelling gig. As you can see, he’s not that impressive a physical specimen; very vacuous, very obviously bleached hair, a pretty boy with little substance and not enough muscle (although he does try to convince the agents that he can gain some in time for the shoot!). But he’s certainly not shy of bragging about his good looks or his deep voice. Narcissistic? And how!
And apparently, his narcissism has literary/cinematic aspects, too:
The video [of Magnotta murdering and dismembering Lin Jun] was posted May 25 to a Canada-based website that deals with death and gore.
It shows the perpetrator repeatedly stabbing then dismembering the victim. It also appears to depict cannibalism and sexual defiling of the body.
In the background is the song “True Faith” by New Order, notable for its presence in the film American Psycho.
Nice.
So it would seem that Magnotta, or whatever alias he’s now using, is also an aspiring Patrick Bateman. Somehow, that just fits. After all, with a little digging, we begin to see just what is really wrong with the picture:
To Luka’s short-lived friends, he reported traumatic incest with his mother, and mental illness. People who met him casually (hitchhking, etc.) noticed he was disturbed.
Born under the name Eric Newman, Luka R-M is alienated from his family. It seems that the one man who knew him slightly, he killed. Interestingly, there is no information about his victim, none. There is more information about the massacred kittens than there is about this man.
Labels are pretty deceptive. But I don’t know any word for Luka except “extremely dangerous and damaged adult, history of severe childhood abuse.
Oh yeah, and that reminds me…of this:
“Luka” is a song about an abused child. It made a LOT of waves when it first came out in 1987. It’s one of the few popular songs I know that talk explicitly about child abuse. (“Where is this Love”, by the Payola$, is another; it also speaks of alcoholic parents.) Interesting and significant that Eric Newman should change his first name to that of all names, eh? If he were really trying to pass himself off as Italian, he’d have picked the other spelling, Luca. His awful childhood is showing through the carefully cultivated appearance of a model (who doesn’t model anything), porn star (who starred in no actual, commercial porn), and prostitute (who, according to Susie Bright, actually froze up when he went to bed with clients).
The most salient, and shocking, details of his life are not what the media have chosen to sensationalize; they’re the ones he himself is alternately trying to hide, and unable to help revealing. He is not a sexy beast, he is a psychopath. And psychos — American, Canadian, or whatever — are not born, but made. They are made by abuse, by neglect, by poverty, by mental illness, and by substance abuse.
But of course, in the public’s never-ending lust for gore…and lust, those facts are doomed to go forever unnoticed, it seems.
You’re putting too much on it. Life is full of choices. There is such a thing as evil, and he chose it! Now he is a predatorial reprobate who need to be put down before he inflicts any more pain on society.
Actually, I’ve barely scratched the surface of it, and so have the media.
And this is CANADA. We do not “put down” human beings, no matter what bad choices they’ve made. We’re not barbarians, after all.