Trope-a-Lanche: The Serial Killer Movie

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How do we know when we’ve watched too many movies? Do you know who dun it, before they dun tol’ you? Have you spotted tropes (recognizable storytelling patterns, familiar devices, themes, character types, or plot moves that audiences instantly understand because they’ve seen it many times before) in movies so often that you now scream “trope-a-lanche!” when the tropes begin to avalanche. Have you disabled the suspension of disbelief for others, because you dissected the filmmakers intent behind plot devices, characterizations, etc, and you accidentally ruined the movie for them. If you’ve done any of the above, you’ve probably watched too many movies.

I initially mistook the ability to track patterns and tropes for intelligence, until I learned that even the sharpest cinematic observation is in service of absolutely nothing. It was a mark I thought should’ve informed my audience that I was so observant, but all it really did was tell them that I’ve watched too many movies. In some social situations, it pays off to watch a ton of movies. When someone asks you if you’ve seen some obscure movie, and you say yes, it can lead to some conversations. “What was your favorite part?” “What did you think of the actor, the twist, or that one scene.” That gratification is fleeting and rare. I used to be quite proud of the totality of the library of movies I’ve watched, and I used to be quite competitive in that regard. If you try to compete with me over most movies watched now, I’m probably going to let you have that crown, because I consider it an odd brag to say I’ve wasted a bigger chunk of my life watching movies than you have. 

A friend successfully bested me once saying: “I’ll bet I’ve watched more movies than you.”  

“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know why you’d brag about that, but I’m going to guess you haven’t.” 

“Do you watch porn?” he asked. 

“No.” 

“I win.” 

I try to apply the “Everything in moderation” recommendation to every thing in life, and I’ve found some success when it comes to nutrition, but I haven’t found near as much success with popcorn consumption or watching football and movies. The problem with watching too many movies, and obsessing over a subgenre like serial killer movies, is that at some point we’ll reach a tipping point where we’ll be able to characterize every character before they’re fully characterized, know the feng shui of the serial killer’s living room, the state of the abandoned warehouse where they’ll finally locate him, and pretty much how the final showdown will play out. Again, we don’t say this as a brag, as one of the consequences of watching too many movies is that we’ve damaged the joys of suspense and discovery.

The Serial Killer/Profiler Movie 

Unless you’re counting Sherlock Holmes as a profiler, as opposed to a consulting detective, the first cinematic profiler was a character named Will Graham in Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), based on Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon. This wasn’t the first serial killer movie ever made, but it was the first one I saw. It was also the first movie to use the art of psychological profiling to catch a serial killer, as pioneered for the FBI by Mindhunter author and Silence of the Lambs consultant John Douglas and author of Whoever Fights Monsters, Robert Ressler. I loved Douglas’ Mindhunter so much that if there was a stock or ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) in 1995 that focused on serial killer vs. profiler movies and books, I probably would’ve bought a couple shares. I’d probably would be a rich man now too, because I now get a new profiler-chasing-serial killer movie listed on my streaming services so often that I won’t watch them anymore, because I know the template they use, the one laid out by Manhunter, Silence of the Lambs, and Mindhunter, so well that I know it too well.

“I need to get inside the head of the killer,” our archetypal Special Agent of the Behavioral Analysis Unit Rhonda Gunderson says. This rhetoric is one of the numerous tropes of the typical serial killer movie, and the process inherent in doing so will come at great personal and/or professional expense. When our archetypal profiler, Special Agent of the Behavioral Unit Rhonda Gunderson, finds the killer’s Rosetta Stone, she uses it to correctly point out who the killer’s next victim will be. Her fellow Law Enforcement Officials (LEOs) won’t believe Gunderson, until her premonitions turn out to be correct so often that they can no longer question her mindmeld.  

1) The serial killer, with a media-style nickname or moniker, is unusually brilliant, erudite, articulate, cultured, charming, and attractive. (The idea that an unattractive piece of trash who didn’t graduate from high school might impulsively slaughter a bunch of people just isn’t as interesting to us anymore.) We want the horror conducted by our serial killer familiar, so filmmakers make them as clean, neat, and organized as we are. We also love the idea that the serial killer could be that quiet neighbor who seemed so nice and neighborly.  

2) The killer will develop an intricate pattern, theme, or a highly sophisticated puzzle that calls upon the investigators to know their arcane and erudite literary or religious references well enough to compete with his unusually brilliant mind. The investigators must decode his message, puzzle, or worldview to prevent another killing, and one of the LEOs, usually our profiler, will have intimate knowledge of the arcane and erudite reference. At some point, in this period of discovery, one of the LEOs will characterize this as, “A race against time.” 

3) The killer will introduce a philosophical concept regarding the blurring of lines that detail a hypocrisy in society, that Special Agent Gunderson has a flaw he characterizes as similar to the killer’s, or the killer will pound home a vulnerability that speaks to society’s moral relativism. “Well, he’s right about that,” someone in the audience will say.   

4) The cat-and-mouse structure will involve a psychological duel as opposed to a physical one. At some point, Special Agent Gunderson will state that she is maddeningly close to “getting inside the head” of the killer, but she will not be able to tap into that level of evil. She will need to find another unusually brilliant genius serial killer who is still bloodthirsty but incarcerated, to give her insight into the mind of the active killer.  

The Final Showdown

A) When they finally track the killer down, he won’t be home, but Gunderson and the LEOs around her will enter his home. The serial killer’s home will be a meticulously curated horror show of his warped, damaged, and “unusually brilliant” psyche.

B) The lighting inside the home will contain insufficient natural light, and it will be so dark that it will require one of the LEOs to flip a light bulb on, but no one will. They will use flashlights to scour the walls completely covered in newspaper clippings of the murders, Polaroids or stolen photos of the victims (alive and dead). The killer will then label each picture with a sharpie to allow the LEOs to know which body part belongs to which victim.  

C) To further incriminate himself, the killer will provide an enlarged, elaborate map of the city with multicolored pins and red yarn connecting crime scenes, timelines, and obsessive diagrams. (There was one serial killer movie that used yellow yarn as opposed to red. I was like “What the heck? How does yellow illustrate an obsessive need for blood?” My guess is either the filmmakers couldn’t find red yarn, or they didn’t think anyone would notice.) The configuration of the red yarn hooked around the multicolored pins will form a pentagram, or some image the audience will associate with evil. 

D) The killer will have a trophy collection on the dresser filled with personal souvenirs—locks of hair, jewelry, driver’s licenses, underwear, lipstick, or they will have extreme keepsakes in jars in a freezer that contain fingers, teeth, or body parts carefully preserved.

E) When the LEOs and Gunderson leave the serial killer’s living room, they will find a torture cellar or hidden room that real estate agents sell as a “must have” for all prospective serial killers. (How many of us have multi-room, cavernous areas carved out of our basement?) Inside his torture room, the law enforcement officials find various restraints in their workshop, knives, surgical tools, “how-to” books regarding surgery, a bloodstained table and a captive/victim who is barely clinging to life. 

F) In his bedroom, Gunderson and the LEOs find an incredibly incriminating journal with stacks of handwritten notebooks or a single massive ledger filled with detailed accounts of the crimes, philosophical justifications based on literary or religious references, lists of future targets, or pure delusional stream-of-consciousness, Unabomber-style writings. As busy as this room will appear to the naked eye, it be unusually clean, and extraordinary in its tidy, organized manner. One movie even went so far to suggest that its serial killer went to the trouble of developing an almost aseptic quality of sterility. “Why would an impulsive killer worry that much about spreading germs?” we ask. Depending on the over-the-top quality of the production, the serial killer might adorn his room with mannequins posed in victims’ clothes, taxidermy, religious icons mixed with occult symbols, or a bedroom that looks like a shrine. The answer to our previous question will arrive here, as Gunderson suggests that the tidy, organized manner of this man’s rooms illustrate a love/hate relationship the killer has with his domineering mother.

G) The LEOs will also note a chemical smell, usually bleach or formaldehyde mixed with the smell of human decay. To illustrate the smell those of us in the audience cannot smell, one of the LEOs will leave the house to vomit.  

H) Finally, one of the LEOs will say, “You’ll want to see this” to Special Agent Gunderson. The LEOs will all be standing around a board, and they will make room for Special Agent Gunderson. On this board, she will see amateurish photos taken from an amateurish camera. These pictures will be purposefully amateurish with odd angles. After she methodically walks past them, she will finger the last one and whisper, “He’s been watching us all along.”  

As noted, the house will empty, save for a victim clinging to life. The killer will either be on the run, hunting his next victim, or about to return at the worst possible moment, but the house overflowing with proof that the profile the incredibly brilliant and talented Special Agent Gunderson created was right all along. 

I) An eye-witness account suggests that the serial killer is in an abandoned warehouse. When Gunderson and the LEOs approach, it’s dark out, and there is heavy rain that soaks everything but actors’ hair. When Gunderson and the members of the LEO team she trusts approach the warehouse, black SUVs and SWAT vans roll up quietly. Guns are drawn. Flashlights cut through the darkness. Someone whispers over the radio: “We’ve confirmed his presence. He’s in there. Proceed with extreme caution. We’re on high alert for the possibility of booby traps.” Gunderson will shut off her radio, and she’ll encourage her team to go to radio silence, as they approach the entrance of the warehouse.

The warehouse is entirely empty when they enter, and the natural light shining from the abandoned warehouse roof is broken by the shadows of beams and the occasional bird flying from beam to beam. To break up the spooky silence, a bird will fly too close to Gunderson to provide a jump scare as she walks through the warehouse with her gun poised. At some point in her walk through the warehouse, Special Agent Gunderson becomes separated from her team, as the LEOs begin clearing the various rooms in the warehouse. She will enter the most incriminating room that has evidence in the form of more wall clippings, trophies, and that same lingering chemical smell. She will put the back of her hand to her nose and scrunch her face to illustrate for us how bad this smell is.  

J) The killer appears in the dark corner of this room. He is sitting in a walnut brown Baxton studio Billie side chair. He is not surprised when Gunderson enters. He’s been waiting for her. (I would love to see a scene where one of the LEOs locates him first, and he says, “What, wait a second, who are you? Go get Special Agent Gunderson, and tell her to be taken aback by my calm yet authoritative stance.”) The media monikered serial killer is in a dark room, lit only by limited natural light and occasional flashes of lightning. (In some movies, his face remains in shadow for another beat.) He congratulates Gunderson for displaying her incredible and unprecedented talent and intelligence by finding him, and he further compliments her by saying that only she could understand him well enough to develop the profile she did. He also states that as incredibly brilliant and intelligent and talented as she is, Special Agent Gunderson couldn’t have arrived at such knowledge of him if she didn’t have intimate or familiar knowledge. “No one else can understand us,” he says, explaining how elements of her past leads her to understand his methodology better.

“I’m nothing like you,” the incredibly brilliant and incredibly talented Special Agent Gunderson says. 

“We’re more alike than you know,” he says with a smile. 

K) The media monikered serial killer will then drop a lengthy exposition regarding his methodology, and once that’s complete, we will hear the sounds of boots stomping on the stairs and radios crackling as the LEOs join Gunderson in the abandoned warehouse room. “Hands where I can see them!” they will shout with weapons drawn behind her. The lighting will become more dramatic, as all of the flashlights light the room (or the lightning flashes become more frequent), as the serial killer and Gunderson begin exchanging words (Sometimes they shout, sometimes they whisper. This is one of the few points in the typical serial killer movie where the filmmaker has some discretion.) When Special Agent Gunderson finally reaches her “nothing to lose here” point, she will seek to take action, but the serial killer will stop her in her tracks by revealing the final victim (Either the initial victim that caught Gunderson’s attention, her daughter, or some young girl to whom she’s developed some form of affection) to raise the stakes.  

L) A struggle breaks out: a brief, brutal fight in a confined space, knives flashing, a gun sliding across the floor, and Gunderson will begin look around the abandoned warehouse to use something in the warehouse against him. When she finds something elaborate that triggers an elaborate something else that won’t harm the female victim, the killer becomes separated from the victim, and the serial killer is tackled, slammed against a wall or the floor, and cuffed by one of the LEOs. He will smirk an evil little smirk while they’re apprehending him, and he’ll whisper one final line to Gunderson while being taken away, something like, “Society will never truly understand us.” 

M) The scene ends with the killer being led away in the rain under harsh floodlights. Gunderson will remain in the room of the abandoned warehouse for a beat, staring at the wall of evidence or the trophies, looking hollowed-out rather than triumphant. Rainwater drips from the ceiling, and one of the LEOs will congratulate her on doing what he considered impossible. “You are an incredibly brilliant, intelligent, and talented woman,” one of her subtly yet unmistakably misogynist detractors will say. “And I can’t believe you did it, but you did. It’s over, it’s finally over.”

“I wish I could believe that,” Special Agent Gunderson whispers, glaring at something poignant in the serial killer’s display. “I wish I could believe that,” she says fingering it. The camera zeroes in on that poignant artifact that foreshadows the future horror this episode could portend, which everyone who watches too many movies knows is the sequel(s).

Long before I learned about “movie tropes”, my friends and I talked about movie tropes all the time without using a term we had never heard before. We watched so many movies that we could spot the tropes before the movies delivered them. We never turned it into a drinking game. If we had, our brains would be more damaged than they already are, because each genre, and subgenre has an algorithm that one movie maker created to set a precedent. Once that precedent was set, the filmmakers, the studio execs, the investors, and all of the players involved demanded that the creatives involved in the movie follow the same blueprint that the precedent setter set to prevent confusion for the audience. 

Based on the ubiquity of current profiler-chases-serial killer movies, we can guess that they make a lot of money now, but they also cost a lot of money to make. There are low-budget, independent movies of course, but most movies cost a lot to make. Those movies require big budgets, and big budgets require approval from the hierarchy or the greenlight authority to get through the chain of gatekeepers that wield different kinds of power. The director and screenwriter have to answer to all of them if they want to make it to the next stage, and from what I hear these gatekeepers are very generous with notes on how the directors and screenwriters can make their project less confusing for the audience. Filmmakers have been subjected to this process long before I was born, and it will continue to work this way long after I’m gone. Some screenwriters and directors refuse to concede to these notes, and we call them two things: auteurs and unemployed screenwriters and directors. The auteur is an artist whose personal creative vision is strong and distinctive that he might be able to tell the gatekeepers what they can do with their notes. Most auteurs are not welcome in most genre movies, because genre film fans grow accustomed to certain rhythms, rhetoric, and patterns, or what we now call tropes. When one of the auteurs is so talented and brilliant that they find a way to make a decently budgeted movie without conceding to “the notes” those I know and love say, “I just found it confusing. I don’t know why, but it confused me, and I didn’t like it.” Those of us who watched too many movies strive to find movies from auteurs who break the system by refusing to kowtow to notes from production studios and investors. Yet, we know that most movies are so expensive to make that the artistic vision screenwriters and directors prize often gets so diluted by those who know far more than I do about how to appeal to audiences and make a lot of money in the process, but it does tend to make movies very similar to those of us who watch too many of them.  

Too Many Movies, Too Many Tropes I: The Heist Movie

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How do you know when you’ve watched too many movies? Some of us know the patterns and themes so well that the joy of discovery in most films is so gone that we probably won’t be able to thoroughly enjoy another movie until dementia kicks in.

The only thing we love more than puzzles and patterns is being able to figure them out. Our favorite classic and mainstream rock songs follow a A,A,B,A,B,C,B, and B verse-chorus song structure where A = verse, B = chorus, C = guitar solo. Steve Martin once said that three beats are funnier than four. Those of us who are not in these industries usually don’t see these patterns and structures for what they are, but we love knowing what will happen next. When it happens the way we predict, we richly reward those who make us feel smart, so they keep following the patterns. When we reach a point where we watch too many movies, however, we know the beats, patterns and structures so well that the joy of discovery diminishes.

We all have past times, and I spent my youth trying to watch every movie ever made, and the VHS movie rental stores in just about every strip mall in my big town/small city came very close to helping me achieve that. In the 80s and 90s, we could grab our groceries on the way home from work, buy a pizza, and rent a movie without walking a block. We did D) all of the above on weekends and some weekdays. It was so convenient that it was a little too convenient. It wasn’t as convenient as clicking a mouse, but you get the point. 

We had cable TV back then, and about forty different channels, but there was “nothing on!” so often that we rented movies to fill the gap. We ended up watching so many movies that we watched too many, and I can now look at the year a movie was made, its genre, and the superficial characteristics of the actors involved to tell you who is going to be the good guy, the most no nonsense, yet incredibly intelligent member of the crew, and who will end up being the bad guy. I can also pretty much tell you what rhetorical devices they’ll use to progress the plot, the tropes (i.e. recurrent themes, literary devices, and cliche) they’ll drop, and its conclusion. When we reach this point of watching too many movies, a genre such as the heist film, becomes so formulaic that our pleasure of discovery evaporates. 

Heist Films

“We don’t do this for the money,” is a trope that the typical, archetype character who masterminds a bank robberies issues to his naive apprentice who doesn’t understand why the money they stole is now a secondary concern.

Heist movies fall under the action genre, so no one expects the complexities inherent in a James Joyce novel, or a plot as rich as Oedipus Rex or The Alchemist. We just want action, a whole lot of fun, and some semblance of contextual logic. And that’s where they lose me, the logic, because if I were to rob a bank, I would do it to grab as much money as I could in the precious few moments I have. The movie bank robbers do that to complete the action sequence, but once the bank robbery scene is over, the money becomes a secondary concern to them for the rest of the film. 

“It’s not about the money,” the Joker said in The Dark Knight (2008) while burning a massive pile of cash. “It’s about sending a message.” Most screenwriters don’t have the characters in their script say this specific line, but they send the message through various scenes.  

Soon after the bank robbers celebrate their successful theft, they abandon the money when one of their fellow crew members is wounded or captured. “Can’t they help their crew member AND keep the money?” I whisper to my fellow movie goers. “It’s not all about the money, Larry,” someone will invariably say. It isn’t, and I get that, but these guys just risked their lives, their livelihood, and their freedom to steal this money. Label me with whatever pejorative you choose, but if one of my crew stubs his toe, I will cater to his needs AFTER placing the money in a very secure place.

If a romantic interest is endangered, or a personal code is tested, all of that money is left behind without reservation. Just about every movie ever made contains a love interest, and what kind of man would worry about their money when their love interest is in danger? If the filmmaker doesn’t have the mastermind do something, like throw all of his money off a bridge to save her, they’ll lose about 75% of the audience. I get that too, but again, can’t he find a way to save her AND the money?  

The money is a literary device, a MacGuffin, that filmmakers employ to define the character of their characters, and virtuousness thereof, but the paradox is that real life bank robbers only resort to robbing banks as a desperate effort to get money. The movie depicts these characters as clean cut, intellectual types who have a lot going on in life, and they just happened to choose bank robbery as a profession rather than becoming an electrician, a plumber, or a bus driver. Yet, even though they’re not as desperate as the typical bank robber, we’re talking about a lot of money, and my guess is most crews would experience a lot of dissent when the mastermind instructs them to give it all up.   

The primary reason movies about bank robbers are not about money is because we’re not about the money, and we find the pursuit of money icky. Movie bank robberies are about loyalty to our fellow man, the excitement of the plan to defeat a federal bank’s high tech security system, and the chase that follows. The money they make is nice of course, but heist movie filmmakers depict those who seek to quietly enjoy it, or use it to secure a comfortable retirement as suckers, squares, and rubes who believe in the power of the almighty dollar.  

The greater sentiment that is that these nuanced and virtuous fellas are not about living materialistic lives, and they find the thought of living like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg abhorrent, because Capitalism is soulless. This is made abundantly clear throughout the movie, but the crew could used some of the money they successfully stole to afford themselves a decent lifestyle while planning their next heist. “That’s not what this is all about!”  

These movies are about the slick and smooth mastermind, and his ability to research the details of the bank’s security system and locate its primary weakness. They’re about the mastermind and his crew executing that plan, but it’s mostly about the crew members, and how he assembled them for this one, last big hit. One of the crew members, the getaway driver, knows how to drive cars fast, and when I write fast, I mean fast. Another crew member knows how to handle himself in stressful situations, but he can be a little trigger happy, and the mastermind takes a moment out of the planning stage to virtue signal to those in the audience that he doesn’t want anyone hurt. He does this by cautioning his trigger-happy friend about controlling his violent impulses during this heist. The final, missing piece is Schmitty the long-since retired safe cracker who is the only one who knows how to crack the otherwise uncrackable safe that this bank has.  

The mastermind and Schmitty sit in an abandoned warehouse smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, and talking and laughing about old times, when the mastermind turns to him, “Do you think you can do Minneapolis again?” the mastermind asks. 

“That was a lifetime ago, MacDavid,” Schmitty confesses. “I’m retired, and I have grandkids. I’m old is what I’m saying, and the ears ain’t what they used to be.” 

 “We could really use you here, Schmitty!” the mastermind replies. “If you have one more in you, we could really use you.” The scene closes with no definitive answer from Schmitty, but he reappears later, to dramatically announce his decision with a leather-crackling bro hug.   

Depending on the gritty nature of the heist film, no one gets hurt during the robbery, and as all heist movie fans know by now, most of the money the bank holds is FDIC insured (It’s not. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures against various forms of bank failure, not bank robberies.) With that misinformation, those of us in the audience think bank robberies are the perfect crime, and we wonder why we don’t rob banks often. It seems like such a victimless crime.  

As we’re nearing the close of this heist pic, we’ve spent the last eighty minutes trying to keep our mind in the off position, because we know it’s about action and fun, but that contextual logic keeps nipping at our heels like a Chihuaua. They’ve pounded this idea that it’s not about the money so often that we ask, why did they take it? Why didn’t they just live their virtuous lives without the distasteful need for money? That’s just snarky, you say, and I agree. How about the movie makers have their characters run into the bank guns-a-blazing, point their guns at people in a menacing manner, and scream, “Everybody down. Everyone on the floor!” If they don’t have a Schmitty, they can find the vice president of the bank and force him to open the vault, and then once they have all of those piles of money sitting right in front of them, they walk away. They walk away without touching that money! Message achieved! Virtue unlocked! Take that! materialistic, greedhead who thinks it’s all about the money! By filming the scene this way, the filmmakers could provide a a culturally relevant statement against the system and the man who try to convince us that it’s all about the money.

“Why did we go through all that again?” the naive, unsophisticated young lad asks the wily, veteran bank robber who just masterminded a non-monetary robbery. 

“Because it’s not about the money, Chet,” the mastermind says with a squinty-eyed look and a grimace of disdain. “It’s never been about the money, and if you can’t see that at this point, get out of my car!”  

I could see writers and directors creating a character who disabuses the notion that his decision to become an animal husbandman was not about the money. “It’s not about the money, Chet. It’s about them,” he says with a loving gaze sent out to his cattle, “and if you can’t see that, get out of my barn!” I can see movies about individuals in various medical fields, areas of law, and even those involved in selling insurance saying it’s not about the money as much as helping people, but the idea that a bunch of bank robbers are somehow more interested in righting cultural wrongs, civility, and the plight of their fellow man over money just doesn’t square with me. And if you’re going to argue with me about movie makers sending important messages out to the greater culture, I won’t hear it, because I want a contextual alternative delivered by one of the characters in the movie. I don’t want subtext, meaningful omissions, or the slick, cool guy mastermind shaking his head saying, “You just don’t get it, Chet, and you probably never will.” I want an alternative specifically stated, but I know that no movie maker will answer because there is no viable alternative that an audience will buy.  

And that, fellow heist film fans, is the core of the “It’s not about the money” heist film philosophy. We don’t want our heist films to be simplistic, of course, and a dirt bag robbing a bank just for the desperate need for more money would be too simplistic for us to watch and too simplistic for a screenwriter to write. Screenwriters want it complicated, they love twists, complicated, conflicted characters, and a deep, rich plot they consider a reflection of them. The other, less complicated reason is that we don’t want to spend our hard-earned money watching a movie that is all about the money, and the moviemakers want to appeal to our worldview that the simplistic pursuit of money is just plain icky. The final, idealized statement that it’s not about the money is supposed to make us go, “Awww!” with a heartfelt smile. We could call the movie production studio’s writers and directors illogical, ideological, or even pathological for continuing to perpetuate this trope, but we’re the ones who rent, buy, and now click on their movies so often that they continue to create them with this heartfelt premise in it … for the money.       

Killing the Irish II: Oliver Cromwell 

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Oliver Cromwell was ON A MISSION FROM GOD to destroy Ireland. Historians don’t care for that word “destroy”. “He didn’t want to destroy Ireland,” they say. “It was a British colony. Why would he want to destroy a colony that enriched Britain? The word destroy involves hyperbolic, moralizing.” If destroy is an operative term to achieve a desired effect if destroy, what term should we use to describe the effort to deprive a citizenry of their religious practice, political power, farmland, and food? Oliver Cromwell was a bad guy who wanted to destroy a colony, but historians don’t care for such stark characterizations, because they’re oversimplified, icky terms used by nonerudite nonhistorians who lack academic knowledge or scholarly learning. 

If Oliver Cromwell (O.C.) wasn’t a bad man, he was definitely a mad one. The primary driver of his hostility toward Ireland was to avenge the political and religious freedoms and the land gains they made in The 1641 Ulster Rebellion. That Rebellion appears to have begun as an attempt at diplomacy to achieve political and religious freedoms, and to negotiate for Irish land ownership in Ireland, but as history repeatedly shows, every serious quest for freedom eventually involves barrels of one kind or another. The Irish achieved de facto political/religious gains and land reoccupation in this Rebellion, but they were never securely legalized by Charles I. 

Cromwell’s Revenge 

Before King Charles I could codify these Irish gains, Cromwell played an instrumental role in having King Charles I beheaded, and the Irish Royalists further angered him by remaining royal subjects of the crown.

To presumably garner support, Cromwell politically framed The 1641 Ulster Rebellion as a “massacre” of the British Protestants living in Ireland. Cromwell considered reversing the unformalized freedoms gains the Irish made during The Ulster Rebellion a vital part of his mission from God, and he sought to return the unformalized land gains regained by Catholics to the Brits. He labeled Catholicism a security risk and a religious insult to the British empire. To complete his mission from God, Cromwell sought to impose the good, clean Puritan order to try to finally put an end to Irish cries for freedom.  

Cromwell used these directives to invade Ireland (eight years after the Ulster Rebellion), as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and general (commander) of the Parliamentarian army sent there. The Ulster Rebellion resulted in as many as 12,000 Protestant deaths (soldiers and civilian) in Ulster, be they through direct acts of violence, and the resultant deaths of exposure, starvation, and disease. To avenge those deaths, Cromwell’s invasion wiped out roughly 5,000–7,000 people (mostly soldiers, plus hundreds to low thousands of civilians). So, the vengeful element of his invasion fell somewhat short in pure numbers, when calculating the direct acts of violence alone. Yet, modern scholarly estimates put total population loss, resulting from the long-term consequences of Cromwell’s invasion at roughly 230,000–325,000 deaths, with the great majority being Irish Catholics (a modern estimate puts that number at 200,000 killed, of whom about 137,000 were civilians). Those larger numbers resulted from the long-term consequences of Cromwell’s invasion that include later commanders carrying out Cromwell’s vision by fighting the guerrilla resistance to that which Cromwell imposed on Ireland. Yet, Cromwell’s scorched earth tactics (slaughtering Irish livestock, burning their farm fields, forcing them off family farms, and blocking Irish ports importing food) played a significant role in destroying Ireland.   

As horrific as these Cromwell’s actions were, the idea that he personally enriched himself as a result of the invasion might be more nefarious. After Cromwell seized the land The Ulster Rebellion unofficially secured for Irish Catholics, Cromwell not only took that land back from Irish control, he seized more land from Catholic Irish farmers. He seized the land to pay the soldiers of his New Model Army of which he was a senior commander, and as the senior commander, he was allocated Irish land, one plot of land was 5,225 acres. He also used the allocation of land to repay loans the “Adventurers” made to Parliament to fund the invasion, and of course Oliver Cromwell was one of those “Adventurers”. He was given 1,257 acres to repay his loan. He also drew substantial official pay and allowances as Lord Lieutenant and general (including a daily rate while in England and £2,000 per quarter while in Ireland, plus transport funds). So, not bad for a man purported to be on a mission from God. 

I am not an academic or scholar of Irish history, it’s relationship with Britian, or the inner workings of the United Kingdom, but the limited research I’ve done for this article informs me that Cromwell was a leader who sought to slaughter the Irish for a religious differences, his own enrichment, and for a broader accumulation of his own power, but does that mean he was a bad guy? It might be hyperbolic, moralizing, overly simplistic, and lacking nuance to say so, but if I were to bullet point this all out on a chalkboard, or dry erase board, I would check, check, check my way to yes, and I don’t think I need letters after my name to arrive at that conclusion.

I think Oliver Cromwell cloaked himself in religiosity to convince Parliament, British citizens, and that image in the mirror that he was a righteous warrior as opposed to some simplistic notion of a bad guy. I also think the difference between the terms bad guy and warrior is relative to our respective eras, as the citizens of yesteryear were more apt to adorn a leader of men a warrior irrespective of the messy details that might lead modern men to consider that same leader a bad guy.   

There were numerous bad guys who were declared warriors before Oliver Cromwell and since. What’s the difference, and how have those definitions changed and evolved over time? Norse mythology and historical accounts show that the Vikings and their ancestors valued empathy and sympathy as important virtues, but spiritual motivation of the Norse religion reinforced a mindset of aggression and conquest rather than mercy. The concept of bæðr (honor) meant that a warrior’s reputation and the honor of their kin were paramount, and killing an enemy was part of fulfilling that honor. Did Cromwell follow the same mindset, and does it diminish his bad guy qualities? What’s the difference between a righteous warrior who just happens to slaughter thousands and a bad guy who inflicts suffering with cinematic, maniacal laughter?  

Although it may not stop most bad guys, modern man decided to codify the difference between righteous warriors and evil bad guys through Geneva Convention laws, Hague Regulations, Rome Statute, Protocols I and II, specific weapons treaties, human rights treaties, and customary law. This global legal network criminalizes and prohibits acts of barbarity in both war and peace, and it provides greater definition of good guys who happen to take military action versus the bad guys who act in barbarous ways. These instruments work together to try to provide some accountability for serious violations of international law. Whether or not these treaties and laws successfully deter barbarism is difficult to qualify or quantify, but my guess is a modern Oliver Cromwell would have a more difficult time promoting his mission from God to the Brits or these world bodies.  

He would’ve had his defenders of course, defenders who echoed modern historian’s characterization, that he didn’t want to destroy Ireland, he just wanted to rip its heart out, so it would never make the mistake of thinking it could be a country again. He didn’t want to destroy Irish citizens. He just wanted to end their form of religious worship and any political dissent they may have considered in the future. Do we have any Catholic priests or political scientists in the audience? If we do, could you tell these modern historians that taking away a person’s political power and their religious practice tends to have an effect on their self-esteem? Modern historians say that suggesting Cromwell wanted to destroy Ireland is hyperbolic and moralizing, and he just wanted to end their food supply and steal their land. To do so, he knew he needed to slaughter their livestock, burn their farm fields, and block their ports to prevent food from getting in. I understand that historians prefer to view historical events from a dispassionate viewpoint, but how is that not an attempt to destroy a country? Do we have a biologist in the audience today? If we do, could you inform these historians that causing a famine tends to weaken a country from the inside out to the point of total destruction.