Last month, Netflix released the short series “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” which illustrates the narrative of one of the most known serial killers in the world and the cannibal that murdered and ate 17 men over 13 years. Besides, he was sentenced for necrophilia.
On social media was told a lot about the revolt that causes each episode, reporting cases of rape, racism, and prejudice against the LGBTQIA+ community, but when the criminal was arrested in 1991, he received several love letters from his admirers. And it’s surprising that in 2022, Dahmer is also adored by some people on the internet.
There are several comments of affection for the killer on social media, consolidations, praise, and even sexual interest in Dahmer. This is not the first time that this has happened, even Netflix, in 2019, asked that there be no kind of romanticization with Ted Bundy, also a murderer and ‘star’ of the documentary that had premiered on the platform.
The director, Ryan Murphy, follows a path of showing the trajectory and possible justifications for crimes such as the lack of parents in Dahmer’s childhood, causing a certain empathy for a version of the murderer that didn’t exist in real life. In true crime documentaries, it is necessary to report the facts, but with care to not go beyond limits and reach a romanticization.
Ryan opts for a narrative that is extremely focused on the murderer and not on the victims and public awareness, thus generating a certain eroticization of the murders. Only after the fifth episode does the fiction change course and makes it more interesting.
One example is the sixth episode, Silenced, where Tony Hugues, Dahmer’s 12th victim, narrates his point of view of the story, recounting his dreams and childhood up until the beginning of the model’s relationship with the killer. He is placed as a possible turning point in the cannibal’s trajectory, and the love can transform him. But there are no indications or reports that the two had a relationship, why did the production choose to invent it?
In the audiovisual world, it is common for directors and producers to create bonds in the stories to generate more public attachment and there is nothing wrong with getting attached to fictional villains, but Jeffrey Dahmer committed these crimes, he is not a fictional villain. He murdered people and made many suffer.
A family member of Errol Lindsey, one of the victims, said on social media that he was not consulted for the production of the series.
“My family found out at the same time as everyone else. When they say they are making these productions ‘with respect to victims’ or ‘honoring the dignity of families, no one gets in touch with us. My cousins wake up almost every month to calls and texts from their relatives, so they know a new series about Dahmer is coming out. It’s cruel”
Eric Perry tweeted
The problem is not to tell the story, but to dramatize and fantasize about it.
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The article above was edited by Giullia Cartaxo.
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