PJ Sills
Arts & Entertainment Editor
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is highly triggering, explicit and exploitative, and focuses on Dahmer’s point of view, which is incredibly uncomfortable. The biopic series came out on Sep. 21, 2022 and is already Netflix’s ninth most-watched series of all time.
The timeline clumsily bounces back and forth between child and adulthood for Dahmer, nonsensically showing many grisly images with him as the central figure. The series goes deep into Dahmer’s adolescent struggles growing up with a volatile household and a father that enables him to dissect dead animals. Frankly, it is inappropriate to try and evoke empathy for a monster. I do not care about his tragic backstory, and how if society had done more for him that things could be different, he did what he did.
The entire show is simply an ugly manifestation of romanticization. They chose an actor, Evan Peters, who is much more attractive than Dahmer was, so they are sexying up a serial killer, which is leading to girls on Twitter and Tumblr to fawn over him. Netflix is reintroducing a horror story to a new generation, but this is not some Halloween story, this is real life. This is real peoples’ trauma. The series focuses on the monster, not the ways victims or families were impacted.
Director Ryan Murphy has a history of directing shows that have not required or contained sensitivity like a series about Dahmer should. Murphy’s two most notable projects were Glee and American Horror Story. In an odd way, this makes sense after watching the series. The series feels more like American Horror Story than it does a serious tragedy.
It is important to show Dahmer preying on black queer men, because it shows that systemic racism is a prominent part of the reason Dahmer was able to murder so many men. But at the same time, it is not done in a way that offers any of the victims or their families reclamation over these tragedies. This show is likely to traumatize viewers and the victims’ families more than anything else.
The most problematic detail about the ethics of this series is that many of the victims’ families were not okay with this series in terms of what they showed. Worse, some weren’t even aware that the series was happening at all, and likenesses of victims and their families were used without consent or consultation.
Rita Isbell, sister to Errol Lindsey, one of Dahmer’s victims, had a breakdown in court screaming and crying at Dahmer in 1992, and the show recreated it without her consent. Isbell was infuriated and went to Twitter to voice her opinions. “I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it.” Isbell added, “But I’m not money hungry, and that’s what this show is about, Netflix trying to get paid.”
The entire series certainly seems like an insensitive cash grab. Additionally, until thousands of people displayed their outrage on TikTok, the Dahmer series had been flagged by Netflix for LGBTQ+ content; indisputably disgusting and not quite the representation we’re looking for. The LGBTQ+ tag is a place to seek belonging and queer/culture history. This show is extra traumatizing for queer people because of the reality of ongoing hate crimes and targeted violence and systemic injustice.
It is admirable that the creators of the Dahmer series want to honor the victims’ lives and celebrate who they were as people. It is understandable that they do not want history to disappear, that they want people to be aware of the atrocities and what made them possible.
However, there have already been five movies, seven documentaries, two novels and even two stage adaptations about various aspects of Jeffrey Dahmer’s life and crimes. The story has been told. Let Jeffrey Dahmer’s name die. Most importantly, do not let him gain notoriety and sex appeal due to unethical production standards spurred on by monetary gain. The effort cannot be a complete success in a show that won’t reach out to victims’ families, and also insists on literally reducing victims to pieces of meat who get preyed upon.
