Ted Bundy Anti-Feminist? (Arts and Culture)

Recently, Amazon released a new docuseries called “Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer”. It is a series that interviews many people that had some sort of connection to the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. The series starts off by introducing the viewer to Bundy’s long term girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall-- the one who gave the most insight to how Bundy acted and the events that happened behind the scenes when they were dating. In addition to the interview of Kendall, her daughter Molly contributed to the series by giving insight to Bundy’s behavior leading up to the killings. The series in general really focuses on the time period in which Bundy conducted his killings. The killings took place during the time when women were fighting for equal rights in the feminist revolution. The series has women come on and talk about how they faced inequality during this time in the police force and even the world of broadcasting. There were also women that spoke on how they survived an attack from Bundy when they were younger. The victims explained that Bundy came up to them in the same manner: A man who was injured and needed help. Psychologists explained that Bundy focussed on women because of their caring nature made them easy prey. The focus on feminism in this series suggests that Bundy had a strong disliking towards women, and used them to his advantage during this time of revolution.

In general, I really enjoyed this series, but I didn’t feel like they focussed on the victims of Bundy as much as they should have. As I scrolled through the ratings on Amazon, I saw someone saying that they were disappointed how the docuseries was more about the feminist revolution rather than the killings themselves. He also mentioned that there was not much evidence that proved Bundy was killing women because of his hatred for them which I agree to. There was no clip of him in the series or evidence that was shown to prove that he killed women in response to the feminist movement during that time. With this being said, I also think that the title of this series was extremely inaccurate to what was actually shown in the series. The title suggests that the audience will get an in-depth look at how Kendall met Bundy and how their relationship panned out as the killings started. Yes, the first episode goes into how Kendall and Bundy met and the other episodes give glimpses into how their relationship ultimately fell apart, but the majority of the series pays attention to how women were viewed as less than a man during that time. I really enjoyed this series, but I feel like there was too many subjective opinions on why Bundy killed that were not backed by evidence.

-HH :)