When Roxie Hart in Chicago rhetorically asked, “Who says murder’s not an art?”, it was a work of fiction, but you couldn’t make up the Broadway musical opening level frenzy that has swept the nation as Luigi Mangione (practically a fictional character name) and the United Healthcare murder news has gripped the news cycle by a variety of body parts.
Consider the headlines: Newsweek could hardly restrain itself, using quotes in a story including “too hot to convict” and “Luigi Mangione got the full package, free him.” CNN anchors gushed about “dropping the banner” from their tv report so they could see his abs, and even Fox News acknowledged the “bad boy” appeal of the 26-year-old Maryland Ivy League graduate, albeit in the least sexy way while complaining about his eyebrows.
Vogue drowned in the pop culture moment, using phrases like “erotic, straight-up arousal, bang-able vigilante,” and reporting the killer’s tweets are “so graphically horny they can’t be quoted.” They’re also asking the brave crime-fighting questions lile “Has Ryan Murphy secured the story rights?” and declaring “the court of public opinion has apparently made its verdict.”
This isn’t the first attractive killer in American history to get a pass from women. The Menendez brothers, recently in the news due to the release of recent docuseries and potential resentencing, were famous in part because of their wealth and looks. In 2014, “hot felon” Jeremy Weeks inspired the hashtag #FelonCrushFriday and got a modeling contract while in prison due to his attractive mug shot. And Ted Bundy, who confessed to raping and murdering 30 women before his execution in 1989 (law enforcement officials believe the number is much higher) amassed a vast fanbase including women who showed up to the courtroom during his trial dressed like his victims, so they could look more appealing to him. All before the internet. Bundy married one of his admirers, Carole Ann Boone, in 1980 after his murder conviction; she gave birth to their daughter while Bundy was on death row.
The Luigi effect on social media (and locally in Maryland) has been widespread and relentless. Part of the story is the “political purge” story of the “delay, deny, defend” imprint on the bullets, the “do you hear the people sing” French Revolution story of a corporate greed takedown. We ask if famed director Ryan Murphy has the rights because there is a story to tell—this is a UPenn-educated kid who suffered a debilitating back injury, sticking it to the man in the most literal and figurative sense; he’s become a tragic American hero to many who’ve suffered much at the hands of a failed healthcare system. The fact that a father of two children is dead seems like collateral damage to many, which is shocking to some.
Kimberly Bond of Metro, against the trend of many young women, asks: “Instead of checking whether Mangione had a brat summer, we should be interrogating what radicalised such a young man with the world at his feet to have allegedly committed murder. Constant discussion of how good looking the supposed perpetrator may be is obscuring the real question–why has the death of a healthcare insurance CEO led to celebration?”
While fake “we don’t snitch” tweets from Burger King may be amusing, one aspect of this story is attractiveness bias or “pretty privilege.” Would a murderer who was a different race, age, weight, build, or attractiveness be receiving the same treatment in society, with legal expenses being paid? One wonders.
“I worry how the internet may have very well poisoned our minds, whether we are now simplistic enough to assume looks dictate morality,” says Bond, “and whether we really are willing to forgive the very worst things because the perpetrator is classically handsome.”
In the meantime, comment sections across the internet are teeming with “alibis” of the killer’s whereabouts during the murder (hint: their bedrooms), references to him as “baby daddy,” and even one comedian in a jury selection sketch declaring the killer could “murder my p*ssy.”