In a frenzy

In begins with (the wildly hyperbolic) jockstrap frenzy (in an ad featuring notable male buttocks), followed by some playfulness that treats jockstrap frenzy as a laughable absurdity, turns to raw, terrifying frenzy, then the specialized zones of murder frenzy / frenzy murder and feeding frenzy, concluding with the ecstatic state of sexual frenzy (in a section not suitable for kids or the sexually modest; I’ll issue a warning when we get to the really raunchy stuff — though from the outset this posting is suffused with sexual matters not to the taste of some of my readers).

jockstrap frenzy. According to the company’s website, Daily Jocks sent out this sale offer on 5/15:

30% OFF JOCKSTRAP FRENZY
(#1)
Massive Jockstrap Frenzy Sale Starts Now!

For some reason, the ad didn’t reach my mailbox until 5/19, when I reported on Facebook:

Just arrived in my e-mailbox, an announcement from the Daily Jocks company of a 30%-off sale on underwear billed as a jockstrap frenzy. Now, I have witnessed some high levels of jockstrap enthusiasm, reaching even to jockstrap excitement (jocks are powerfully symbolic for many men of my kind, after all), but I haven’t seen actual frenzy — out of control, deranged — and I hope I never will. (I know, I know, hyperbole.)

Here I started from the literal sense of frenzy, as in NOAD:

noun frenzy: a state or period of uncontrolled excitement or wild behavior: Doreen worked herself into a frenzy of rage.

But it’s routine for the vocabulary of extremity to be used hyperbolically, to refer to notable but much less extreme situations: I was dumbstruck by their wickedness (though in fact I could speak), he was on fire with desire (though there were no flames), etc. These usages are so routine that dictionaries usually don’t list the hyperbolic senses, even if they’re more frequent in actual usage than the literal, attenuated, senses — as is surely the case with frenzy. Literal frenzy is scary stuff, except in the case of sexual frenzy, where it refers to to an ecstatic altered state of consciousness; but even in the sexual domain, frenzy is very commonly used for sexual arousal well short of ecstasy.

And then the frenzy of the DJ ad seems not to be sexual — I discern no suggestion that the jocks on sale will cause man-oriented men to come in their pants, or even to get a hard-on (maybe a genital twinge at most) — but commercial, a quickening of urges to buy DJ jockstraps. And so jockstrap frenzy seems more than a little silly, even laughably ridiculous. Actually subjected to ridicule on the mad heiress webpage (which I can find no summary information on):

when textiles attack. The title of mad heiress vignette xxiv, in which jockstrap frenzy is the subject of the fifth item:

(#2) jockstrap frenzy keeping company with feral bathrobes and Calvin Klein cannibal briefs (thank god I’m a Tommy Hilfiger guy; licking testicles is as far as Tommy briefs will go)

Raw, terrifying frenzy. I offer you the maenads and Bacchanalia. From Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, maenads (Ancient Greek: μαινάδες) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the thiasus, the god’s retinue. Their name, which comes from μαίνομαι (to rave), literally translates as ‘raving ones’.

… Often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by Dionysus [into] a state of ecstatic frenzy through a combination of dancing and intoxication. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped with a pine cone. They would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads or wear a bull helmet in honor of their god, and often handle or wear snakes.

… Bacchanalia: Cultist rites associated with the worship of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus (or Bacchus in Roman mythology), were characterized by maniacal dancing to the sound of loud music and crashing cymbals, in which the revelers, called Bacchantes, whirled, screamed, became drunk and incited one another to greater and greater ecstasy. The goal was to achieve a state of enthusiasm in which the celebrants’ souls were temporarily freed from their earthly bodies and were able to commune with Bacchus/Dionysus and gain a glimpse of and a preparation for what they would someday experience in eternity. The rite climaxed in a performance of frenzied feats of strength and madness, such as uprooting trees, tearing a bull (the symbol of Dionysus) apart with their bare hands, an act called sparagmos, and eating its flesh raw, an act called omophagia. This latter rite was a sacrament akin to communion in which the participants assumed the strength and character of the god by symbolically eating the raw flesh and drinking the blood of his symbolic incarnation. Having symbolically eaten his body and drunk his blood, the celebrants became possessed by Dionysus.

The frenzy of a compulsive serial killer. murder frenzy ‘frenzy to commit murder’ / frenzy murder ‘murder committed in a frenzy’. From Wikipedia:

Frenzy is a 1972 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It is the penultimate feature film of his extensive career. The screenplay by Anthony Shaffer was based on the 1966 novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Squareby Arthur La Bern. The film stars Jon Finch, Alec McCowen and Barry Foster and features Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Bernard Cribbins and Vivien Merchant. The original music score was composed by Ron Goodwin.

The plot centres on a serial killer in contemporary London [he rapes women and then strangles them with his necktie] and the ex-RAF serviceman he implicates.

(#3) Barbara Leigh-Hunt as the central victim in the film; note the necktie

In a very early scene there is dialogue that mentions two actual London serial murder cases: the Christie murders in the 1940s-1950s and the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888. Barry Foster has said that, in order to prepare for his role, he was asked by Hitchcock to study two books about Neville Heath, an English double murderer who would often pass himself off as an officer in the RAF

feeding frenzy. A term in ethology for actual murderous frenzy. But the Wikipedia page notes the familiar hyperbolic usage as well:

a feeding frenzy is a type of animal group activity that occurs when predators are overwhelmed by the amount of prey available. The term is also used as an idiom in the English language.

Examples in nature. For example, a large school of fish can cause nearby sharks, such as the lemon shark, to enter into a feeding frenzy. This can cause the sharks to go wild, biting anything that moves, including each other or anything else within biting range. Another functional explanation for feeding frenzy is competition amongst predators. This term is most often used when referring to sharks or piranhas.

English language uses. It has also been used as a term within journalism.

The term is occasionally used to describe a plethora of something [AZ: a metaphorical usage, and attenuated]. For instance, a 2016 Bloomberg News article is entitled: “March Madness Is a Fantasy Sports Feeding Frenzy”

sexual frenzy. I’ll start with an antic George Booth cartoon, in which the (fatal) frenzy in question was probably just arousal:

(#4) From the New Yorker issue of 6/7/99

The term sexual frenzy is sometimes used to refer to erotomania / hypersexuality (nymphomania in women, satyriasis in men) — an enduring state of heightened desire for sex and search for sexual connection.

Note: this is the point at which kids and the sexually modest should go away, because I’m about to get into man-on-man sex.

More pointedly sexual frenzy is also used as a variant of sexual ecstasy, referring to a short-term altered state of consciousness focused entirely on the pleasure of a sexual act and revealing itself in a characteristic facial expression. As here:

(#5) Tommy Defendi fucking Marcus Mojo, both in sexual frenzy, both with ecstatic facial expressions