The Killer's Lust in Slasher TV and the Creative Risk‐Taking Ventures of A&E

Many contemporary American television slasher series are providing portrayals that explore the sexual desires of the killer characters. Academic inquiries have discussed how slasher series are reconstructing their killers by providing character arcs to develop complex personalities. This article contributes to this area of research by investigating how the killer's lust is exploited in the narrative to shape a sympathetic representation and provide an original and contentious depiction, but at the same time refrain from transgressing the conveyance of incest for institutional purposes that are tied to the organization's culture, writer recruitment and content conceptualization methods, and audience‐targeting objectives. This essay inspects A&E's Bates Motel (2013–2017) to unravel the institutional operations that facilitate the exploration of the sexual desires of the show's killer, Norman Bates, and details how the show's portrayal aligns with A&E's creative risk‐taking programming ventures.