From Memetics to Mimetics:

Richard Dawkins, Ren Girard, and Media-related Pathologies

Matthew Taylor
Department of English, Kinjo Gakuin University (taylor@kinjo-u.ac.jp)
Nagoya, Japan
Submitted to COV&R 2002
Abstract
This paper argues that Ren Girard's "mimetic model" offers a more
productive approach to culture than Richard Dawkins' theory of "memetics." After
over viewing both thinkers, I discuss cases of pathological celebrity obsession as well
as their depiction in the media, with reference also to related sociopathologies such
as stalking, "copycat" crimes, and school shooting. Mark Chapman's assassination of
John Lennon and Eminem's depiction of celebrity obsession in his rap hit "Stan" are
key points of reference. I attempt both a "memetic" and a "mimetic" analysis of
violent celebrity obsession. While memetics might indeed offer an interesting
approach to this phenomenon, Girard's mimetic model takes into account real
psychological, interpersonal and cultural mechanisms, which memetics does not.
Introduction
Richard Dawkins and Ren Girard have both focused on imitation to explain
what differentiates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Both of these
influential thinkers also see the human brain as an organ fundamentally structured
by and for imitation. In addition, both see imitation as a contagious or "viral"
mechanism over which humans often have little or no control. And both theorists
have formulated a "genetic" thesis on human culture.
The confluence between the two thinkers ends here, however. Dawkins
posits the existence of "memes," replicating ideas or "units of imitation" which took
over purely Darwinian processes at some point in the human story and might
explain human culture in the same way Dawkins' self-serving gene attempts to
explain heredity or evolution. Girard, in contrast, does not look at imitation in terms
of disembodied ideas but of human relations. Girard calls "mimesis" our imitation of
the desires of others, a powerful propensity which can and does turn rivalrous and
conflictual. Violence itself is "mimetic" and "contagious." Culture for Girard is the
solution (itself violent) to the problem of contagious violence that breaks out in times
of mimetic aggravation.
I believe that Girard's mimetic model provides a superior approach to
understanding human culture. Though memetics is by no means without interest,
especially with regard to the proliferation of mass media, Girard's model takes into
account real psychological, interpersonal and cultural mechanisms, which memetics
does not. Perhaps most importantly, Girard's model, while it offers no comforting
illusions about human nature, suggests how we might begin to honestly yet
compassionately approach the problem of violence that lies at the heart of human
psychology and human relations.
One way to assess the relative merits of memetics and mimetics is to bring
both to bear in analyzing some well-known imitative phenomena. To that end, I
choose the phenomenon of pathological celebrity obsession. This troubling social
pathology seems both imitative and highly symptomatic of our ethos, and any
cultural theory based on imitation should be able to shed some light on it. After
overviewing Dawkins' and Girard's theories, I present the problem of celebrity

obsession, with some reference also to such pathologies as stalking and "copycat"
crimes. I give particular attention to Mark Chapman's assassination of John Lennon
and especially Eminem's rap hit "Stan," which tells the story of a deranged fan whose
idol worship ends in horrific violence. It is an exemplary and highly perceptive
treatment of pathological celebrity obsession. I then attempt to analyze such
obsessions in light of both Dawkins' and Girard's theories. I hope to show that the
Girardian approach is more insightful and productive.
It should be stated that I cannot offer here a comprehensive treatment of
Dawkins' theory, of Girard's mimetic model, or of the criminal pathologies
discussed. The arguments here are of a speculative nature, done in such broad
strokes as a paper of this length will allow. This paper might best be considered a
preliminary "trail run" of the cultural theories of Dawkins and Girard on a
contemporary social problem.
Richard Dawkins and Memetics
Dawkins is a zoologist, evolutionary theorist, and popular defender and
explicator of Neo-Darwinism (a synthesis of Darwin's theory of natural selection and
modern genetics). Dawkins advanced the notion of a "meme" in The Selfish Gene in
the 1970s, describing it as an idea that reproduces itself by being imitated. Memes
proliferate, mutate, succeed or fail differentially, speciate and, in short, evolve in a
manner similar but not identical to that of biological life forms.
Dawkins has not yet elaborated the meme concept beyond a few speculative
chapters in his books and has left it to others to develop the theory.1 Memetics (the
study of memes) is a lively intellectual venture, particularly active in areas related to
artificial intelligence and cognitive science.2 Memetics could be considered a school
of thought within sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, the intellectual effort
to promote the application of evolutionary thought to the human sciences. The
meme concept has also been popular among computer and Internet enthusiasts and
has been a prominent theme in some works of science fiction.3
Dawkins defines a meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of
imitation" (Gene 192). Dawkins posits that, because of the human capacity to imitate,
the meme took over purely Darwinian processes at some key point in the human
story and went on to proliferate, evolve, and produce that clutter of languages,
institutions and artifacts we call "culture." The meme is a cultural replicator, both a
product and an engine of culture.
Christopher Langton defines a meme as "an idea, joke, poem or tune that
spreads throughout a population by being copied again and again as people pass it
on to their friends" (xi). This is a useful basic description of a meme; that is, it is
something akin to an Internet joke that gets passed on to an ever increasing number
of people through forwarded e-mail. However, Dawkins' idea of memes is more
grandiose, and can include massive concepts like "God" (Gene 192) and "hell" (197).
Daniel Dennett offers an intentionally broad and arbitrary list of memes, ranging
from "'Greensleeves'" and "right triangle," to "fire," "wheel," "deconstructionism" and
"calculus" (201). Any idea that is imitated and successfully passed on to a fairly large
number of people is thus a meme.
Dawkins sees memes as competing in a Darwinian manner for human
attention, time, and memory as well as things like "radio and television time,
billboard space, newspaper column-inches, and library shelf-space" (Gene 197). The
meme, like Dawkins' "selfish gene," is therefore a Darwinian force, though one
transposed from the level of biological evolution to the level of human ideas and

activity; if ideas succeed, they survive and get reproduced. The human brain, in this
scheme, co-evolved with memes, and humans thus have very enhanced memetic
capabilities (that is, the ability to apprehend and imitate ideas, the ability to retain
ideas, the ability to improve on ideas, and the ability to transmit ideas to others). In
a broad sense, this is a beneficial process in human terms, since humans select ideas
that they think will be useful and often choose well enough. On the other hand,
counter-productive, harmful or self-destructive memes (such as, for instance, vows
of celibacy or suicide bombing) also exist which do not appear to serve positive
human ends (that is, human survival and reproduction).
This is not a problem for Dawkins insofar as we remember that memes (like
genes) ultimately serve their own ends (their own survival and proliferation)
possibly at the expense of their host, the same way an influenza virus might damage
or destroy the health of a human being, but propagate quite successfully in its own
right. This "selfish meme" seems to reach into the physical world and employ it for
its own ends. In Dennett's words, "A scholar is just a library's way of making
another library" (202). That is, we are the unwitting host mechanism memes use to
multiply themselves. Thus, again, memes are very much like a virus, both in the
way they copy themselves onto their host's brain, and in the way they use their host
to propagate themselves.
Memetic evolution is seen as an evolutionary force to be reckoned with, and
one that has already far outpaced biological evolution, the normal Darwinian process
being a slower, clumsier, non-intelligent, purely physical trial and error process. It is
perhaps natural that many memeticians look to artificial intelligence and artificial life
(biological computer simulations and robotics modeled on nature) for the next step
in "cultural" evolution. Many "machine evolution" scenarios have been proposed
whereby intelligent, self-replicating machines transcend the awkward, earthbound
evolutionary process of carbon-based biology, and proceed to surpass and even
replace humanity, and colonize the universe.4 The evolution of intelligent machines
would be primarily memetic, since machines could imitate ideas, improve on them,
and download them directly into their progeny.
I hope that this is a fair summary of memetic theory. If some pieces seem to
be missing, it is in large part because the missing pieces constitute in themselves
some of the ongoing concerns of memetics. For instance, the specification of the
meme remains problematic: what is a meaningful "unit" of cultural replication? A
meme might constitute anything from a slang expression, to a folk tune, to a
symphony, to an entire branch of mathematics, to three major world religions. For
that matter, what is not a meme? If a forwarded Internet joke is a meme, would a
forwarded news item constitute one as well? A "meme" is in practice very hard to
pin down. The "location" of memes is also problematic. Do memes exist in some
combination of gene and brain, in culture, in cultural artifacts, in the process of
cultural replication itself, in some Platonic hyperspace of all possible ideas (c.f. Daniel
Dennett's "Library of Babel")5? Where?
Memetics is in this sense a theory in search of itself. Memeticians are
undecided as to whether the meme has any real explanatory power or will remain
what it is now: a captivating biological analog.6 Indeed, the "meme" concept may
be little more than a banal truism given a glamorous aura by the language of
genetics and computer programming. We already know that ideas appear, are
passed on, elaborated, developed, etc. We already know, for instance, that ideas
like "wheel" or "fire" changed human history. Does calling them "memes" in any
way enhance our understanding?

At worst, it might seem that memeticians do not really seek to explain

culture, but rather to explain it away, perhaps even to formally exclude it. Memes,
apparently, are where the action is, and culture is merely what their human hosts
happen to do to further them. This seems to imply an extraordinary denial of
human agency, and imputes some oddly physical, anthropomorphic, even
animistic properties to disembodied ideas. That is, it seems we actually have to
believe that there are memes out there that want to perpetuate themselves. At the
same time, assuming Dawkins' atheism, we are of course not supposed to believe
any such thing, since there are only natural laws and material processes. This
tension between necessarily anthropomorphic figures of speech about memes and
strictly atheistic first premises often hovers in the background of discussions in
memetics.
Not surprisingly, memetics often tends to encourage breathtakingly facile
and uninformed commentary on art, history, religion, culture, or, in short,
virtually any human phenomenon on which memetics is brought to bear as an
explanatory principle. More fundamentally though, the downplaying or even
exclusion of the human element positions memeticians poorly to make any serious
study of imitation itself, which involves human motives, desires, intentions,
behavior, psychological make-up, relationships, social structures, and the like. In
short, memetics possesses no psychology and no anthropology.
Memetics may in due time overcome these sorts of problems and
limitations as it develops and defines itself. On the other hand, some of the
problems may be endemic. For instance, since memeticians seem to aspire to a
cultural theory with a status equivalent to that of the natural sciences, they may
not feel that any deficiencies in the humanities (literature, history, philosophy, etc.)
or human sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.) are deficiencies at
all.
Yet, the meme concept remains compelling to many people (perhaps
especially to media-drenched baby boomers or younger) particularly as it is
applied to the proliferation of electronic media and especially the Internet. From a
Girardian perspective, Dawkins is certainly to be credited for putting the spotlight
on imitation as the key to human behavior and culture. Indeed, at the beginning
of his foreword to Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine, Dawkins launches what
could almost be a Girardian exposition on imitation, locating it firmly in
psychology and human relations (vii). Yet Dawkins squanders this insight almost
immediately by turning his attention back to the meme as a disembodied
abstraction which, for some reason or other (and the reason does not seem
particularly important), makes us do all kinds of nutty things (but those things
don't seem particularly important, either).
Dawkins has not hesitated to point out that memes can indeed be
delusional, violent, dangerous or self-destructive. (He is especially fond of
demythologizing religion in this manner). For Dawkins and memeticians,
however, these constitute something like side effects, artifacts, epiphenomena.
The self-destructive or self-defeating nature of human "memes" seems to serve
primarily as another puzzle for memeticians to solve in terms of reconciling their
cultural theory to Neo-Darwinism; it is not particularly important as a problem in
itself. Imitation is thus seen in memetics as a more or less beneficial generative
force in human evolution and culture, whatever unfortunate effects it may also
carry in its wake. For Girard, of course, the violent or destructive potential of
imitation is center and foreground, and because it is foregrounded, Girard is able

to comprehend the violence involved in imitation as a generative property in its

own right.
Ren Girard's Mimetic Model
Readers need no introduction to Girard's mimetic model, so I will try to limit
this overview to points of comparison with Dawkins' memetic theory. Where
Dawkins posits a "meme," an idea, Girard posits a "mime," a mostly non-conscious
impulse to imitate others. Girard, of course, calls this "mimesis," or "mimetic desire,"
a powerful human propensity that can and does become rivalrous and conflictual.
"Mimesis" is rooted in animal life in the form of mimicry. Like Dawkins, Girard
considers human beings to be the imitative creature par excellence (Things Hidden 8991), and the brain to be "an enormous imitating machine" (Things Hidden 7). As with
memetics, Girard's theory has spawned a large interdisciplinary project of its own,
spanning the fields of ethology, ethnology, anthropology, philosophy, mythology,
theology, psychology, history, sociology, economics, cultural studies, and literary
theory.7
Where memeticians puzzle over what constitutes a "unit" of imitation, Girard
does not need to grapple with this difficulty since "mimesis" is a process, a dynamic,
an active force or principle, and not an isolatable unit. The "location" of mimesis is
also (in comparison to the meme) less problematic, since Girard sees mimesis as
existing in a demonstrable and well-defined sense within interpersonal relations (and
in the sum total of interpersonal relations which, according to Girard, play such a
major role in structuring the self and identity). The individual is really an
"interdividual" constituted in an ongoing way by mimetic relationship with other
people, as well as cultural entities.8
As with memetics, Girard's mimetic model may appear to take some rather
banal human realities and imbue them with unwarranted profundity; people imitate
each other, get jealous, fret anxiously about status and appearances, and fight
viciously over what appear to be trifles. Thousands of homespun proverbs,
advertisements, works of literature, self-help manuals, films and television dramas
either note or exploit these remarkably unsurprising facets of human existence, yet
Girard insists that we look exactly here for the key to human psychology and
culture.
Unlike Dawkins, Girard has some very specific ideas regarding what
psychology is, what anthropology is, and what culture is. Human psychology is
structured precisely on this deceptively banal imitative impulse. As people imitate
each other, they can easily become each rivals, and rivalry can, in turn, easily become
bitter enmity. Mimesis lays poisonous snares and generates violent and
overpowering delusions. Furthermore, rivalrous conflicts are themselves mimetic
and can spread with frightening speed through a group of people as more and more
them get drawn into the fray. But violence can also be "appeased" or "drawn off"
from the group spontaneously if the rage of its members toward one another comes
to be focused instead on some other individual. Human culture comes into being as
just such a solution to contagious violence.
The solution is that of the spontaneous lynch mob killing (or expelling) a
helpless victim, and the subsequent re-enactment of this act of collective violence in
sacrificial ritual. Prohibitions and systems of social differentiation (as well as gods
and myths) arise around the objects, people or behavior associated with that
"sacrificial crisis." This process, repeated innumerable times, purchases a real but
always insecure "peace" that allows stable human communities to survive, and

allowed proto-humans to develop enhanced mimetic capacities without slaughtering

each other past the point of extinction. Thus, if brain, behavior and culture are
structured by mimesis, they are also strongly distorted by it. Symbolic thought,
language, myth, and all cultural institutions are founded in one way or another on
this mechanism of sacred violence.
According to Girard, this story is inscribed, though also heavily obscured, in
the myths of every human culture. The wild card in the human story is the JudeoChristian story, and especially the Gospel Passion, which disclose humanity's secret:
the distortion and violence in the human heart, and the false accusations against the
sacrificial victim. Judaism and Christianity introduce a great moral and
epistemological shift into culture, to which human beings (not least Christians
themselves) respond very unevenly, but the shift is decisive, radical, and irrevocable.
Violence has steadily lost the ability to perform any of its standard sacred functions.
This compromises the ability of a society to establish or sustain culturally legitimated
taboos or systems of social differentiation, which used to be generated out of
collective violence. We are face to face with our own violence, exactly the same kind
of violence that first launched us into the hominization process. However, now
there is no longer any sacred mechanism to channel it or buffer us from it. (Thus
human nature is now a moral and spiritual problem that we have no choice but to
deal with, rather than something automatically attended to by culture.)
As with Dawkins' meme, mimesis is contagious, propagates itself, and can
make us do things unwittingly or even against our will. Mimesis can not only be
"selfish" (like Dawkins' meme), it can be frighteningly cunning and destructive and,
given full rein, positively bent on causing as much debilitating torment as possible
for the human it holds under its power. Yet for all this, mimesis (in this distorted
form) is a dumb mechanism that plays on delusions for which human beings are
ultimately responsible. Nevertheless, just as memetics tends toward a rather
anthropomorphic or even animistic mode of thought about memes, mimesis can
also be personified as a presence with its own will and intentions (demonic or satanic
in its rivalrous and violent aspect, loving, beneficent and divine in its non-rivalistic
and pacifistic aspect). Girard thinks there is genuine moral and theological
significance here, and has devoted a large part of his work to its exposition.9
Dawkins is of course an outspoken atheist who has devoted a large portion of his
work to expounding on the erroneous and absurd nature of religious belief.10
Girard's model contrasts perhaps most sharply with Dawkins' theory in the
fact that the mimetic model has attracted serious and sustained interest within the
humanities (particularly literary studies), human sciences (particularly psychology),
and (much less surprisingly) theology and religious studies, and has led to a great
deal of fruitful and original (though not uncontroversial) work in these areas.11
Girard's mimetic model is thus, unlike memetics, not waiting to prove itself before it
can be applied to human concerns, but has already begun proving itself as it is
applied to human concerns.
This very rough sketch of Girard's thought certainly fails to do it justice, but I
hope that it accurately captures some of the relevant essentials. In the next section I
present some well-known social pathologies, which will be subjected thereafter both
a "memetic" and a "mimetic" analysis.
Pathological Celebrity Obsession and Some Related Pathologies
I turn now to some prominent cases of celebrity obsession, both in real life
and as depicted in the media. In 1981, Mark David Chapman assassinated John

Lennon, who had been Chapman's idol but over a number of years evolved to
become his bitterly hated enemy. Chapman was a sensitive child who developed an
elaborate fantasy life to escape frequent strife between his parents. According to his
biographer Jack Jones, Chapman underwent a transformation in his teens,
from a Beatle worshipper and young drug addict at age 14 into an
overnight Christian while he was taking LSD, which he believed the
Beatles had advocated. After his conversion to Christ, John Lennon
made the unfortunate remark that the Beatles were more popular than
Jesus and sang the song, "Imagine There's No Heaven." This deeply
offended Chapman's Christian identity and subconsciously I'm certain
he began plotting John Lennon's death at that time, a full decade before
he murdered the rock legend. ("Death of a Beatle")
Chapman's Christian commitment in fact waned, yet he still identified with Lennon
to the point of choosing an Asian wife (imitating Lennon's marriage to Yoko Ono).
The tragic murder of Lennon took place when Lennon released his album Double
Fantasy after a long hiatus of music-making.
J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye also constituted a major part of
Chapman's imaginative world. Chapman identified closely with the teenage
protagonist of the novel, also to the point of imitation. Jack Jones relates,
Mark, when he turned away from Christianity, believed that The
Catcher in the Rye was his bible. His decision to go from Honolulu to
New York City, to hang around in Central Park, to hire a prostitute, to
get a gun, was a twisted re-enactment of Holden Caulfield's coming of
age in New York City. In many ways, he retraced Holden Caulfield's
steps before killing the man that he had made himself believe was the
ultimate "phony." He believed in some way that by killing Lennon he
could stop the rock star from leading astray another generation of
innocent youth. ("Death of a Beatle")
Chapman describes himself on the day of the murder as someone "literally living
inside of a paperback novel, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye" and "vacillating
between suicide, between catching the first taxi home, back to Hawaii" and killing
Lennon ("A Look Back").
Chapman often felt a profoundly low sense of self-worth, and admits to
seeking substance or identity not only from Lennon but from other celebrities as
well. Chapman comments:
People stalk celebrities -- and this is just my opinion. I haven't studied
psychology -- because they have nothing inside themselves. Their
esteem is rock bottom. And they feel that by writing fan letters or
actually coming in close contact with a celebrity, they feel important.
I know that I did some of those things before the thought of John
Lennon, or killing John Lennon, came into my mind. I went to an art
gallery, and Robert Goulet was there and Leslie Nielsen was there.
And I just wanted to be around them. And I had my picture taken
with Robert Goulet -- I don't think this has ever come out. And I felt

important while I was with them. And then after, you disintegrate
again. You become nothing.
So if you have nothing to start with, and your life consists of fantasizing
about celebrities or being with them, that can become very dangerous.
("A Look Back")
Chapman also fantasized about killing or hurting a great number of people,
and his murder of Lennon was also aimed at Beatles fans. Again, Jack Jones states,
When Mark killed John Lennon, he said he was undergoing a "nuclear
rage" -- that if he would have been able to get his hands on an atomic
bomb, he would have used it to kill millions of innocent people. He
knew and he consciously reasoned, that by murdering John Lennon he
could inflict pain on millions of Beatles fans all over the world. ("Death
of a Beatle")
Thus in addition to violent rage (toward Lennon, Beatles fans, millions of random
hypothetical nuclear victims), and his own suicidal impulses, Mark Chapman's
pathology seemed to be marked by a powerful attraction toward famous figures
(Lennon, Christ, Holden Caulfield, or even randomly encountered celebrities such as
Robert Goulet or Leslie Nielsen) and by a strong tendency to identify with and
imitate them.
Mark Chapman's case is hardly unique. Other celebrities have had lifethreatening or fatal encounters with homicidal fans since, and less dangerous but still
disturbing cases of "celebrity stalking" are fairly common.12 Major celebrities
hesitate now to make public appearances without a bodyguard. A number of films
have unwittingly fed (e.g. Taxi Driver in relation to the attempted assassination of
Ronald Reagan) or fed on (e.g. King of Comedy, The Fan, Misery, The Bodyguard) this
disturbing obsession with celebrities and mediated reality. Eminem's rap hit "Stan"
also treats this phenomenon.
Eminem's song is a powerful and disturbing narrative which shows
considerable insight into this kind of pathology, and merits a close look. "Stan" is
written in the form of fan letters from Stan to Eminem (under his nickname Slim
Shady). Though fictional, the narrative is eminently believable and is doubtless
based on Eminem's experience with fans and his handling a great deal of obsessive
fan mail. The song also distinguishes itself from much of Eminem's other work,
which is often vile in the extreme, self-consciously exploitative (and more often than
not tongue-in-cheek). "Stan" stands out as a very sincere work, one the best popular
treatments of celebrity obsession.
The first letter in the song is actually the third Stan has sent; Stan is already
desperate to make contact:
Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain't callin
I left my cell my pager and my home phone at the bottom
I sent two letters back in autumn, you must not of got em
Stan idolizes Eminem, whose music and posters dominate his life. He explains
that, like Eminem, he too has impregnated his girlfriend, and he identifies closely
with his idol in several other ways.

I know you probably hear this every day, but I'm your biggest fan
I even got the underground shit that you did with Scam
I got a room full of your posters and your pictures man
And later,
See I'm just like you in a way, I never knew my father neither
He used to always cheat on my mom and beat her
I could relate to what you're saying in your songs
So when I have a shitty day I drift away and put em on
Cause I don't got shit else cause that shit helps me when I'm depressed
I even got a tattoo of your name across my chest
The letters, however, grow increasingly desperate and hostile. Stan feels
Eminem has rejected him by not writing back or deigning to sign autographs. Stan
begins to speak of his habit of cutting himself and his increasing alienation from his
girlfriend.
Sometimes I even cut myself to see how much it bleeds
It's like adrenaline; the pain is such a rush to me
See everything you say is real, and I respect you cause I tell it
My girlfriend's jealous cause I talk about you 24/7
But she don't know you like I know you Slim, no one does
She doesn't know what it was like for people like us growing up
You gotta call me man I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose
Sincerely yours. Stan, P. S. we should be together too
The last of Stan's letters is screamed into a tape recorder as Stan, heavily
intoxicated on vodka and "downers," drives along the freeway at ninety miles per
hour.
. . . all I ever wanted was a lousy letter or a call
I hope you know I ripped all of your pictures off the wall
I loved you Slim, We could have been together, think about it
You ruined it now I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it
And when you dream I hope you can't sleep and you scream about it
I hope your conscience eats you and you can't breathe without me
His pregnant girlfriend is locked in the trunk of his car. Stan informs Eminem that
he will drive off a bridge in a suicidal plunge into the ocean, and take his girlfriend
and their unborn child with him:
Hey Slim, that's my girlfriend screaming in the trunk
But I didn't slit her throat; I just tied her up, see I aint like you
Cause when she suffocates she'll suffer more then she'll die too
The last letter in the song is Eminem's own, written to Stan (under the
mistaken assumption that Stan is still alive). Eminem drops the persona he projects
in his songs (that of a jocular sociopath), and speaks to Stan "man to man":

. . . what's this shit you said about you like to cut your wrist too
I say that shit just clownin, dog, how fucked up is you?
You got some issues Stan, I think you need some counseling
To help your ass from bouncing off the walls when you get down some
And what's this shit about us meant to be together
That type of shit will make me not want us to meet each other
I really think you and your girlfriend need each other
Or maybe you just need to treat her better
I hope you get this letter, I just hope it reaches you in time
Before you hurt yourself . . .
But of course the letter doesn't reach Stan in time, and the song constitutes
something of a confession for Eminem, in which he acknowledges his own role in
creating a destructive role model for his fans, one that he himself admits is a false
and somewhat ridiculous projection.
The song captures the same frightening slide seen in Mark Chapman's case:
from idolization, to betrayal, to enmity, and finally to violence. Such pathologies are
by no means limited to fans and celebrities; the vast majority of "stalking" cases
follow the same basic profile of pathological obsession but of course do not involve
famous people. Stalking has also been the subject of numerous films (e.g. Play Misty
for Me, Fatal Attraction, The Cable Guy) uncountable episodes of TV dramas, and has
become a depressingly regular feature of the news. Other violent pathologies like
"copycat" crimes, "thrill" killings, and school shootings bear some close affinities to
attacks on celebrities, since the media (the news, film, TV, pop music, interactive
computer games, the Internet) seems so heavily implicated in the process.
Again, films like Natural Born Killers and Copycat both feed and feed on these
phenomena. The teenage killers at Columbine High School represent a particular
disturbing case, in which murderous film and computer game fantasies were played
out in real life.13 Yet this was hardly the first or last case of school shooting. At this
writing, another mass murder and suicide by an enraged student has just taken place
in a German high school.14 Nor can such violent pathologies be considered any
longer an American or "Western" problem; over the past five years, there has been a
dramatic rise in stalking cases and gruesome indiscriminate killings in Japan (my
own country of residence), heretofore been considered a relatively crime-free nation,
and a model of civic virtues.15
A Memetic Analysis of Celebrity Obsession
As imitative phenomena, the pathologies just surveyed merit analysis in light
of both Dawkins' and Girard's theories. Focusing primarily on celebrity obsession, I
will consider Dawkins' theory first. One problem with memetics is that a discrete
"unit of imitation" is in practice very hard to pin down, thus pathological celebrity
obsession is an exemplary case. We can isolate here a well-defined "meme"
(murderous and/or self-destructive obsession with one's idol) and moreover, one
that is replicated both in real-life and in the media, and whose proliferation can be
traced fairly accurately over the past several decades. Extending the memetic
analysis to the "family" or "genus" of related memes (stalking, copycat crimes, thrill
killings, school shootings) might illuminate a wider range of violent contemporary
pathologies.
The violent or self-destructive element in these phenomena appears to present
a problem for memetics, formulated as it is from Dawkins' strongly Darwinian

perspective. The twin evolutionary imperatives of survival and reproduction are

here (as in the case of altruism, vows of celibacy, or young men going off to war)
strongly overridden by some other cultural force. Not even "kin selection" (genes
programmed to work not necessarily for the individual exclusively, but for relatives
or perhaps even a social group) can be invoked here.16 In Eminem's narrative, Stan
takes not only his own life, but the life of his girlfriend and their unborn child. Mark
Chapman, though he already had children, had strong suicidal tendencies, and did
something that would clearly remove him from further reproductive opportunities.
At Columbine, two bright, promising boys forsook the possibility of surviving or
having offspring by shooting themselves (after slaughtering their schoolmates). The
list goes on. Boys and girls and young men and young women are with alarming
and accelerating frequency shooting and blowing up innocent people and taking
their own lives in the process, a decidedly non-Darwinian phenomenon.
Yet one of the strengths of memetics is that it can comprehend non-Darwinian
phenomena like these from within a strictly Darwinian framework, and the great
advantage of the "viral" analog is that, like a virus, memes need not work to the
host's advantage. An influenza virus spreads successfully even though it may
destroy the health of its host, and a "celebrity obsession" meme can perpetuate itself
quite successfully even if its host commits suicide or is otherwise removed from the
gene pool.
The "meme pool" is in fact doing quite well when we consider pathological
violence; the unparalleled expansion of electronic media and the propagation of
venality creates an extremely favorable environment for "violence" memes. A
sensational killing will be reported to millions in broadcast or print. (Since this is the
propagation of an idea, it can be considered memetic reproduction.) With luck, it
may be turned into a book, a film, or a TV special (still more memetic propagation).
Furthermore, a killing may perpetuate itself by inspiring other killers, or may
influence the treatment of criminal "memes" in fictional media, furthering the
"evolution" of this meme. In Mark Chapman's case, nearly all of these things have
indeed come to pass. He has been copied by other homicidal maniacs, has been
made into a book, and has even been interviewed on Larry King Live.17
Here, then, is the key to the violent celebrity obsession meme, and perhaps
the related family of pathologically violent memes. Fame and renown (which are
nothing more or less than the mass duplication of one's personal meme) are
powerful incentives. As Dawkins himself rather excitedly notes, we can overcome
the "selfish gene" (the genetic mechanism of evolution) with our memes, that is, our
ideas, which can be perpetuated in lieu of our genes (Gene, 199). Thus, it is easy to
see how the memetic desire for fame could easily trump the genetic imperative to
reproduce (fame being an alternate form of reproduction). As the author of several
popular books on evolution, Dawkins can propose this with some satisfaction. He is
already famous (or certainly became so after the publication of The Selfish Gene). For
the rest of us, however, fame and renown are uncertain prospects. The vast
majority of us will live and die in obscurity.
To commit a sensational murder, however, tips the odds very decidedly in
one's favor, and the most reliable way to gain fame through murder is to murder
someone famous. This was relatively easy for Mark Chapman. For Stan, his idol
proves less accessible. Nevertheless, as a solution to his practical difficulties, Stan
murders himself, his sexual partner and their unborn child as stand-ins for his idol,
and makes the triple murder-suicide a "statement" that rides parasitically on the fame
of Eminem. It is an impeccable memetic strategy, and quite successful: Stan's genetic

line is cut off, but his "meme" is pressed onto millions of CDs and lives, for all
practical purposes, forever. Everyone gets to hear about his difficult childhood, his
pain, his betrayal and his rage.
Memes override genes, especially in a media-saturated world, and can inspire
violent acts that are self-destructive or detrimental to the host, because sensational
violence reliably achieves memetic propagation for the perpetrator. If the normal
set-backs and frustrations of life become unbearable for us non-famous people, a
sensational act of violence might in some ways redeem our otherwise dreary
existence by enlarging and extending our memes. It is an eminently reasonable
venture.
Some question remain, however. The memetic analysis does in fact extend
rather easily to cases like "copycat crimes" and school shootings, where the
sensational nature of the killing, or the sheer number of dead, might make up for the
victims being more or less random and not at all famous.18 However, "ordinary"
cases of stalking remain problematic. Stalking, even when it ends in murder, does
not reliably achieve fame by any means, yet the obsessions and psychogenesis in
stalking match the profile of celebrity obsession cases remarkably closely. (As
mentioned, cases like Mark Chapman's are, in fact, cases of stalking.) Secondly,
though memetics does go some way toward explaining the violent acts of obsessed
fans, and perhaps even the hostility (jealousy of the idol's memetic prominence), it
does not explain the initial idolization. Why this consuming hatred of one's idol?
Why do celebrities employ bodyguards to protect them primarily from fans, rather
than, say, people who hate their work?
But these are only intimations of deeper questions. In pondering a frightening
pathology like violent celebrity obsession, many of us will want to ask, What is
going on? How do people get trapped in such poisonous, self-defeating obsessions?
By what process do these obsessions lead to deadly violence? Why do some people
take their cues so readily from media? And why do these pathologies increase in
this period rather than another? Yet, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that
memeticians have little interest in such questions. They want to know instead, How
does one reconcile this pathology with the Neo-Darwinian synthesis? And the
answer is, very easily. One posits a "meme" for pathological media obsession. This
idea appears at some point, it gets imitated enough to become a "meme," it
competes in the busy marketplace of all other memes, and it seems to be doing
rather well at the moment; some people want to get famous more than they want to
have offspring, and a celebrity-related killing seems to be a very successful strategy
for getting famous. Darwinian theory is acquitted, and the memetician can go home,
or move on to the next problem.
We are back to the sheer banality of memetics, discussed earlier. Memetics
would seem to be telling us here what we already know (everyone wants their
fifteen minutes of fame) without shedding any further light on the behavior in
question, or on human behavior or culture in general. Instead, we have one or two
more pieces more to slap onto the evolutionary jigsaw puzzle. Can we not ask more
from a theory of culture, even an evolutionary theory of human culture?
A Mimetic Analysis of Violent Obsession
In To Double Business Bound, Girard describes one famous case of celebrity
obsession in some detail. The celebrity was Wagner and the deranged fan was
Neitzsche. Neitzsche's relationship with Wagner followed the classic trajectory of
celebrity obsession (61-77), the same seen with Chapman in relation to Lennon, or

Stan in relation to Eminem. First Neitzsche idolized Wagner, then hysterically

condemned him, then developed his "will to power" doctrine to triumph over him,
and finally descended into madness, alternating between extreme megalomania and
the most abject victimage in the struggle with his (by then dead) rival.
The outcome of each obsession (Chapman, Stan, Neitzsche) is different, but
the overall pattern is generic: idol worship, degenerating to idol hatred, deteriorating
further to destructive or self-destructive madness. Girard argues that a similar
dynamic characterized the relationship of Schiller and Holderlin, and Rimbaud and
Verlaine (Double Business 62). Thus, in Girard's theory, we have a framework ready
to describe the kind of obsessive pathologies we have been examining. A model (the
idol) becomes an obstacle and rival (the object of increasing resentment and hostility)
and finally a double (the being with whom our identity is dangerously compromised
in a violent struggle, either real or internalized).
The mimetic "double bind" accounts for the idol/enemy paradox seen in
pathological celebrity obsession. Girard posits that, since we lack an independent
basis for our self and identity, our eyes are drawn first to another human being as a
model for imitation. As we draw closer to our model, however, we may encounter
resistance, because the model senses that our imitative gesture is appropriative.
Hence, the mimetic "double bind" (from Gregory Bateson); the model invites
imitation, then repulses our imitative gesture (Things Hidden 290-93). The model
says, in so many words, "Imitate me, but don't imitate me." The resistance we get
(real or imagined) informs us that we have failed, that we are unworthy as imitators.
Secretly, we agree, because (as beings who lack independent being and look to
others to form our desires) it is our own sense of emptiness which led us to imitate
the model to begin with.
But the situation is particularly aggravating because the model has inspired us
to imitate him or her only (or so it appears) to obstruct us, to reject our imitation, to
expose our lack of self-sufficiency, which the model appears to possess instead of us.
The obstruction strengthens rather than weakens our fascination with the model.
We may be more and more inclined to see the model as an object of hatred,
someone who has even robbed us of our being. Girard writes in Deceit, "Only
someone who prevents us from satisfying a desire which he himself has inspired is
truly an object of hatred. The person who hates first hates himself for the secret
admiration concealed by his hatred" (10-11). Thus, the model may be for us first an
idol, then a rival, and finally a double, someone in whom we intensely invest our
identity. Violence may result, either against the model, against ourselves, or a
substitutional violence against a third party.
Celebrities are relatively likely to become sources of such obsessions because
celebrities, in this media-saturated age, are most obviously models (e.g. of dress,
speech, mannerisms, attitudes, life styles). The celebrity shows us what's "cool," what
to desire, and we dutifully imitate. However, the celebrity lives in a transfigured
world; the adoration of thousands or millions converge mimetically on him or her.
At the same time, celebrities do not seem so very different from ourselves, or so
impossibly inaccessible, and often rise to fame by portraying ordinary people (in
story or song). The celebrity stokes up our desire for the transfigured life even as he
or she reveals the comparative emptiness of our own. The celebrity cannot help but
set up an infuriating double bind, especially for people who may be the most
devoted fans: the celebrity is for them a living provocation, a model to imitate, and a
model that is impossible to imitate.

The cruel logic of this double bind dictates that hostility does not drive us
away from our idol, but toward him or her. Our sense of being rejected (real or
imagined) confirms our worst fears about our unworthiness, as well as the
comparative worthiness of the model. The hated enemy is thus more our model
than ever, and from here on, any sign, or even lack of one, can evoke an increasingly
hateful agitation. Morally (or religiously), one can say that we should give up the
game, and renounce our desires as illusory, but this "self-knowledge" would be an
admission of our lack being, of the radiant self-sufficiency we hope to find
somewhere, and which drew us to the model in the first place. We will do anything-up to and including going mad, killing somebody, or killing ourselves--rather than
concede defeat, than give up on mimetic desire and its increasingly violent and selfpunishing "rewards."
As mentioned, the kind of obsessive pathology considered here is by no
means limited to celebrities. Cases of stalking exhibit almost exactly the same
psychogenesis, without the conspicuous celebrity element, and the
model/rival/double analysis would apply to these obsessions as much as they
would to celebrity cases. Other violent pathologies like school shootings and
"copycat" crimes are less straightforward, but are nonetheless strikingly "mimetic" in
nature, and conform closely to the historical evolution of mimetic desire posited by
Girard.
To expound this, let us return for a moment to the phenomena of celebrity
worship. The intense adoration and intense hatred that are so often focused on
celebrities are two sides of the same coin, and are consistent not only with Girard's
psychological thesis on mimesis (the "double bind") but also with his anthropological
thesis on sacred violence. A celebrity almost automatically takes on an aura that is
deeply sacrificial. The instantaneous polarization of adoring fans against a celebrity
is palpably real in tabloid scoops, and in the converging crowds of photo-hungry
paparazzi, waiting for the lucrative photo opportunities that will humiliate the target.
Camille Paglia has consistently (and astutely) noted the religious and sacrificial
element in celebrity worship.19 However, while Paglia sees this as a re-assertion of
pagan vigor suppressed (unsuccessfully) by Christianity, Girard would tend to view
it instead as symptomatic of a collapse into a pre-cultural state, of a sterile,
destructive "sacrificial crisis" with no viable sacrificial resolution, or hope of one;
sacrifice simply does not work any more. Our very proclivity to make Hollywood
and celebrity worship (of all things) serve as place holders for the sacred is itself
evidence of our frantic desperation in a world in which the sacred (in Girard's sense
of the term, that is, a functioning sacrificial culture) can no longer exist. If celebrity
worship is a religion, then never before has religion been a more transparently
tawdry and illusory business.
How did this state of affairs come about? Girard argues that our general
media obsession manifests a phenomenon that has been going on at least since the
Renaissance, but really goes back to the radical destructuring of culture made
possible by Judaism and especially Christianity. The Gospel Passion is in fact, for
Girard, the most radical "meme" that has ever appeared in human history, a raw
narrative of brutal and cynical violence that has thrown a monkey wrench into the
sacrificial machinery that has heretofore sustained humanity. This certainly does
not mean that violence no longer exists, but it does mean that it no longer has any
sacred power, sustainable culturally legitimacy, or efficacious social and
psychological effects.20 This is good news insofar as civilization has slowly been
freed from the mechanism of victimage, and enjoys unprecedented gains in

freedom, equality, justice, democracy, and the like. But as culturally sanctioned
taboos and social differentiation disappear, competition and acquisitive rivalry
come more and more to the fore, as we see in the present era. The
"democratization" of mimesis makes people more and more alike, and thus puts
them ever more frequently in rivalrous relation to one other.
People are more susceptible to conflict and psychological disorders as all of
the ancient problems with human relations return now in full force. James Alison
writes,
The social institutions, rites, and prohibitions which protected
us from each other's violence no longer do so effectively. We are left
bearing in our desire vis-a-vis each other--meaning in all our
relationships both intimate and public--all the complications of
violence, rejection, and competition which now have no public
resolution. . . . Some find this lack of public resolution too hard to
bear and come to crystallize in their own lives a visible sacrificial
resolution to this desire: addiction, obsession, madness, and
psychotic behavior are different in degree, not kind, from what
drives us all. (14)
The media exacerbates such symptoms by making an ever more direct appeal to
mimetic desire, advertising being an obvious example, celebrity worship another.
Such an incitement to desire would be unthinkable in an archaic or traditional
society, where the potential for violence would be instinctively recognized.
However, this tendency is not new. Girard has devoted a much of his
literary interpretation to the exacerbation of mimetic effects by the media,
showing how writers such as Dante (Double Business), Cervantes and Flaubert
(Deceit) have been astutely anatomizing this social development for centuries.
(Mark Chapman's Romantic identification with Holden Caulfield is structurally
identical to Don Quixote's identification with Amadis of Gaul, strongly
corroborating Girard's non-Romantic interpretation of that great novel.) These
trends, clearly outlined as early as the Renaissance, undergo an accelerated
evolution into the staggering media inundation we experience in the present day:
There is a gradual transition from chivalric novels to serial romances,
to the modern forms of collective suggestion which become
increasingly abundant and suggestive. . . . [Triangular or mimetic
desire] penetrates the most petty details of daily existence. As we
sink deeper into the hell of reciprocal mediation, the process
described by Cervantes becomes more universal, more ridiculous,
more catastrophic. (Deceit 104)
The "catastrophe" comes about from the collapse of the distance between subject
(the one imitating) and model (the one being imitated), inflaming the "double bind"
effects described earlier. People used to be kept at a distance from each other by
taboos and social distinctions (e.g. veneration of authority figures). But subject and
model are getting closer and closer to one other, so close, in fact, that pathological
individuals do not see any distance at all. Instead of taboos and social
differentiation, we must now rely increasingly on restraining orders, bodyguards
and SWAT teams.

The school shootings at Columbine High School seem to encapsulate almost

all of the worst sociopathic effects comprehended under the rubric of Girard's
mimetic model. The slaughter at Columbine was a thoroughly "mimetic" crime.
The teenage killers were themselves mimetically tangled, Erich Harris presenting
himself as a model to his cohort, Dylan Klebold, who dutifully followed him all the
way to bloody mayhem and suicide. As mentioned, the boys also took their cues
from the nihilistic messages of pop culture, and explicitly "copied" the violence of
other shootings, of TV and film, and especially of interactive computer games.
They used the Internet both to access the most scandalously evil models for
personal emulation and to present themselves as such. Finally, the immediate
motive for the shootings was the cruel intra-group rivalries which were taking
place within the boys' school and became their morbid obsession. From beginning
to end, the crime was characterized by overpowering fascination with the "Other,"
be it their partner in crime, their social rivals, their idols, the followers they hoped
to inspire, or the attention they hoped to gain from the public.21
As observed earlier, school shootings, stalking and "copycat" crimes can no
longer be viewed as a particularly American or "Western" problem.22 Any
industrialized democracy (that is, stable, relatively prosperous countries under the
rule of law, where nearly everyone's basic needs are assured), will be increasingly
prone to outbreaks of these kinds of violent pathologies. "Advanced" civilization is
incubating and hatching precisely the kind of Dostoyevskian nightmares Girard has
been talking about for four decades.
Conclusion: Meme or Mime?
In a venue such as this, it might be tempting to portray Dawkins and Girard as
enemy twins locked in a death struggle for the same concept, but the truth is that
they are more like ships passing in the night. To my knowledge, Girard's work is
never cited by memeticians, and likewise, very few references to Dawkins can be
found in the work of Girardian scholars. The loss is not equal on both sides,
however. Dawkins could stand to learn quite a lot from Girard, while Girard, I think,
has very little to learn from Dawkins. Girard's model easily subsumes memetics by
accounting for memes: the first "meme" is the corpse of a murdered victim. (The last
meme is also the corpse of a murdered victim; these are the "alpha" and "omega" of
culture.) Yet the Neo-Darwinism is dispensable in Girard's model. Mimesis is simply
not a Darwinian force. Rivalry and scapegoating are "hard-wired" responses in
human beings, but they are also self-organizing phenomena embedded in culture,
phenomena which inevitably take place when two human beings coexist (generating
rivalry) or three or more human beings coexist (generating scapegoating).
Furthermore, these phenomena are not necessarily based on real human needs or
practical advantages, but as often as not on monstrous phantasms and harmful selfdeceit, at both individual and collective levels.
Girard's theory, particularly the mimetic "double bind," accounts for what
Dawkin's does not: the evolution of the idol into a bitter enemy. Further, Girard's
model extends more readily to cases of stalking, where we see the same process
without the conspicuous celebrity element. The mimetic model is also better able to
comprehend the outbreak of violent social pathologies, and their relation to the
media, as part of the entire human story, anthropologically, culturally, and
historically. I won't deny that memetics also offers an interesting perspective on
mass media, or that most of the pathologies considered in this paper could be given a
fairly plausible memetic reading. (Investigating how Mark Chapman's celebrity

assassination meme was passed on to other sociopaths and how it subsequently

influenced the development of the stalking meme might indeed be illuminating.23
However, since memetics fails to see imitation as something structuring, and
structured by, human relations, it misses almost completely the psychological and
anthropological, as well as cultural and historical significance of imitation.
Neither has memetics (and this is surprising for an offshoot of evolutionary
thought) proposed any very definite theses regarding why, how or when the
"meme" took over purely Darwinian processes and launched us into hominization. 24
It is ironic that Girard, an influential Christian thinker, has put forward an
unflinchingly brutal evolutionary scenario as well as a profound demystification of
religion, yet the devout atheists working with Dawkins theory of imitation seem to
know nothing about either. One could perhaps go further and suggest that
memeticians have fatally crippled their theory by not taking religion seriously. No
doubt most memeticians harbor, like Dawkins, a great distaste for religious belief in
general, and thus are unwilling to see it as anything but, at best, a rather unpleasant
"memeplex" or meme complex that has hitched a ride on human culture. Yet rather
than being demystifying, such an approach may itself amount to a kind of ritual
expulsion. The memeticians add yet another layer of myth over religion and human
nature, leaving us as blind as ever to the way they profoundly structure one another,
even when (perhaps especially when) we are trying very hard not to be religious.
The following observation by Girard might apply very well to memetics:
Religion always scandalizes in periods of decomposition
because the violence that had entered into its composition is revealed
as such and loses its reconciliatory power. Humans are soon moved
to make religion itself into a new scapegoat, failing to realize once
more that the violence is theirs. To expel religion is, as always, a
religious gesture--as much today when the sacred is loathed and
abhored as in the past when it was worshipped and adored. All
attitudes that do not recognize the founding victim are never
anything more than opposing errors, doubles that eternally exchange
the same gesture without ever 'hitting the mark' and collapsing the
structure of sacrificial misrecognition. (Things Hidden 32)

Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to Julie Shinnick and Michael Cholewinski for helpful and
encouraging comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and especially to Katherine
Almquist for detailed critiques and corrections while the paper was in progress. All
errors and flaws are my own.
Notes
1. See for instance Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1991); Aaron Lynch, Thought Contagion (New York: Basic Books, 1996);
Robert Aunger, ed., 2000. Darwinizing Culture (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000); Susan
Blackmore, The Meme Machine (New York: Oxford UP, 2000).
2. See again Daniel C. DennettConsciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown,
1991) and Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine (New York: Oxford UP, 2000).

3. See especially Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (New York: Bantam, 1993) and
Iain M. Banks, Feersum Endjinn (London: Orbit, 1995).
4. I have overviewed "machine theology" critically in my essay "The
Abolition of Humanity and the Contours of the New A-Theology," The Virtual
Dimension, ed. John Beckmann (New York: Princeton Architectural Press) 97-119.
The seminal reference on teleological projections involving evolving artificial
intelligence is John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological
Principal (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994). See also Hans Moravec, Mind Children
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). "Transhumanist" is the general
appellation for this worldview. For an introduction to transhumanism, see the
webpage Transhumanity, World Transhumanist Association, 12 May 2002
<http://www.transhumanism.com/index.htm>.
5. See Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1995).
6. The uncertain, tentative status of memetics as a theory is suggested both by
Dawkins and long time meme proponent Daniel Dennett. Dawkins writes in the
foreword to Blackmore's Meme Machine, "Any theory deserves to be given its best
shot, and that is what Susan Backmore has given the theory of the meme." xvi: viixvii. Dennett writes in the foreword to Aunger's Darwinizing Culture, ". . . the point
of this book is not to ensure that the meme flourishes, but to ensure that if it does, it
ought to"(emphasis in original). vii: vii-ix.
7. See for instance Robert Hamilton-Kelley, ed., Violent Origins (Stanford:
Stanford UP, 1987); Raymond Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats? trans. Maria L.
Assad (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); Paul Dumouchel, ed., Violence and
Truth (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988); Jean-Michel Oughourlian The Puppet of Desire
(Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991); James G. Williams, The Bible, Violence and the Sacred
(Valley Forge Pa: Trinity Press, 1995); James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong (New
York: Crossroad, 1998).
8. The mimetic relation of the self to others and to cultural entities is
developed in greatest detail by Oughourlian in Puppet.
9. See for instance Girard's recent I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G.
Williams (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 2001).
10. This side of Dawkins is perhaps best represented in his well-known The
Blind Watchmaker(London: Penguin, 1991).
11. For literary applications see for instance Girard's own, Deceit Desire and the
Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976); Resurrection from
the Underground, trans. James G. Williams (New York: Crossroad, 1997); A Theater of
Envy (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1998). For psychological applications and
significance see again Oughourlian, Puppet and Eugene Webb, The Self Between
(Seattle: U of Washington P, 1993). For theological applications see for instance
Schwager, Scapegoats and Alison, Joy.
12. For an outline of celebrity obsession cases, see "I'm Following You:
Inside the Mind of a Stalker," Stars Online 11 May 2002
<http://www.stars.com/lifestyle/101937575136736.htm>.
13. For coverage of the Columbine massacre see "Anatomy of a Massacre,"
Newsweek 3 May 1999: 45-51.
14. For coverage see "18 dead in German school shooting," BBC News 26
April 2002
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1952000/1952869.stm>.

15. For sampling of notable Japanese crime trends see "Complaints about
Stalkers Skyrocket," Mainichi Daily News Interactive 26 April 2001
<http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news/mdn/search-news/850909/stalking-020.html>; "Madman stabs 8 kids dead in school rampage," Mainichi Daily News
Interactive 9 June 2001 <http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news/mdn/searchnews/850909/osaka20killings-0-13.html>; "Notorious Kobe killer moves step closer
to freedom," Mainichi Daily News Interactive 20 Dec 2001
<http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news/mdn/search-news/850909/kobe20killer-03.html>.
16. See Dawkins' own informative exposition of kin selection in The Selfish
Gene. (New York: Oxford UP, 1989) 88-108.
17. The cited interview with Chapman above, "A Look Back at Mark David
Chapman in His Own Words," is from Larry King Live Weekend, Aired 9:00 p.m. ET 30
September 2000, CNN.com Transcripts, 5 May 2002
<http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0009/30/lklw.00.html>. Jack Jones (whose
quotations are cited in this paper) has written Chapman's story in Let Me Take You
Down (London: Virgin Books, 1994), though unfortunately at this writing I have not
yet had the opportunity to read it.
Chapman's murder of Lennon is in fact a "copycatted" crime that is linked
strongly not only with John Hinckley's attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan,
but also with the stalking and murder of the young actress Rebecca Shaeffer. Both
perpetrators imitated Chapman's devotion to The Catcher in the Rye, and Shaeffer's
murderer wrote disturbing confessional letters to Chapman before the killing. See
again "A Look Back," in which Chapman notes these facts and appears to express
remorse at the celebrity murders he has inspired. Furthermore, through Shaeffer's
murder, Chapman's crime is linked (historically at least) with all subsequent stalking
cases; the current usage of the term "stalking" began after Schaeffer's murder, as did
a number of protective legal and law enforcement measures in response to it. For a
retrospective overview see again "I'm Following You."
18. At this writing, exactly the same idea has been articulated in a note left
in the very recent mailbox bombing: "If I could, I would change only one person,
unfortunately the resources are not accessible. It seems killing a single famous
person would get the same media attention as killing numerous un-famous
humans." See "Mailbox Bombs Hurt Six in Illinois, Iowa," Yahoo News 4 May 2002
<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid=716&e=3&u=/a
p/20020504/ap_on_re_us/mailbox_bombs>.
19. See Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (New Haven: Yale UP, 1990) and her
highly perceptive (and rather prophetic) essay on Princess Diana, "The Diana Cult,"
The New Republic 3 Aug. 1992: 23-26.
20. See Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled (New York: Crossroad, 1995) for a
particularly clear exposition of these social and cultural implications in Girard's
thesis.
21. For details on Harris and Klebold, see again "Anatomy of a Massacre."
22. See note 15 on Japanese crime trends and sociopathologies.
23. See note 17 above. The influence of celebrity murderers on one another is
very clear, as is also their historical relation to pathologies like stalking.
24. For a very interesting but somewhat vague memetic evolutionary
scenario, see Blackmore, Meme Machine 99-107.
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