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Deviance, Dahmer, and Death

There have been six dramatisations of Jeffery Dahmer's murders since 1993: The Secret Life: Jeffery Dahmer (1993), Dahmer (2002), Raising Jeffery Dahmer (2006)(2008), The Jeffery Dahmer Files (2008), My Friend Dahmer (2017), and finally Netflix's Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story (2022). They could be better at coming up with original titles, couldn't they? Or original concepts, come to think of it. It's almost like they're not adding anything, just recycling content to profit off death.

True crime dominates the media market, polluting each corner of the internet with the depraved need for gory and gruesome details of actual crimes, involving real people. Where has this need come from? Is true crime as a genre ethical? How can true crime content normalise and even romanticise deviance? 

On the 21st of September, 2022, Netflix released their self-produced Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story which is a biographical crime 'thriller' that documents the life of the serial killer, cannibal, necrophiliac, paedophile, and sex offender Jeffery Dahmer, who murdered, dismembered, and sexually assaulted seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991.  This is Netflix's 9th most popular English language show of all time, with around 56 million households having viewed all 10 episodes of the series. More than their excellent documentary about Marsha P. Johnson or their striking queer spy-fi Q-Force, their 'thriller' on the disgusting pedophilic murders and sexual assaults of Jeffery Dahmer was better received and earned them way more money. Actually, Q-Force was quickly cancelled due to complaints and bad ratings from homophobes, who called the show 'disgusting,' whilst Dahmer - originally a limited series - was renewed almost instantly as an anthology, with Netflix announcing that at least three other 'thriller[s]' were in the works, dealing the crimes of other 'monstrous' figures. 

At the start of this article, I mentioned that six dramatisations of Jeffery Dahmer's assorted atrocities since 1993, all titled something like 'My Friend - A Monster: Inside The Mind of Jeffery Dahmer,' and those are just the films and limited series - not including the many documentaries and books detailing the life and murder of Jeffery Dahmer. 2022's Dahmer, seems very self-aware, but they certainly don't let this self-awareness get in the way of making money. Admittedly, Dahmer's Evan Peters gives such an incredibly convincing and riveting performance as Jeffery Dahmer - that even if the TV show was about the victims, he would have dominated the story regardless. Episode 6 of the show is an exception to the show's focus on Jeffery Dahmer himself, but even this episode - clearly meant to centre around the victim's point of view - is dominated by Peter's performance as Dahmer in every science he appears in. This is likely the reason for the array of conflicting feelings around the show currently circulating the internet, Twitter to Instagram, Snapchat to the dreaded Facebook. Episode 6 focuses on the life, childhood, and tragic death of Tony Hughes, who was a college student, model, and victim of Dahmer. 

Now, admittedly, I'm part of the problem. After all the hype surrounding 2022's production, I watched all 6 attempts at dramatising Dahmer's murders and hated the experience thoroughly. It definitely wasn't lost on me - after watching all the attempts chronologically - that the actors portraying Dahmer got progressively more conventionally attractive. Carl Crew in 1993, Jeremy Renner in 2002, Rusty Sneary in 2006, Ross Lynch in 2017, and Evan Peters in 2022. Yeah, Ross Lynch! Disney heartthrob Ross Lynch! Most of these actors were certainly sex symbols or at least relevant cultural icons of their era. The disgusting amount of hybrisophilia (sexual attraction to people who've committed extraordinary crimes) directed towards Evan Peters' depiction of Dahmer in 2022 is already apparent on the internet. 

Now let's talk about Ryan Murphy, who created the show. He must suck, right? Well, he also created Glee (2009-15), American Horror Story (2011-), Pose (2018-21), and Ratched (2020-) which I would have no doubt about putting in my top 10 pieces of media I've ever consumed. He is undoubtedly a master of visual cinema, and the aesthetic universe he creates in everything he's made is unmatched. However, he's known for having a very productive career in that he churns out media quickly - which obviously matches Netflix's ethos of pumping out content as quickly and cheaply as possible. He's something of TV's Stephen King, but with a wildly fluctuating level of success not seen in King's work. Quite a bit of Murphy's work is already established, with the socio-psychology, motives, and backstory of most characters being known, like in his limited series with Netflix: Ratched (2020-), which I love with all my heart. The story follows the murderous (fictional) antics of Nurse Mildred Ratched - who was first established in Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest, and later the Oscar-winning film of the same name by Miloš Forman. This is fine in Ratched because the backstory isn't necessary for enjoying the content. The novel is accessible to people like me who want to know more about the fascinating character of 'Nurse' Mildren Ratched. Still, in Dahmer, it's dangerous - it blurs the line between entertainment and documentary, and both dramatises and trivialises genuine mistakes the police made in the Dahmer murders. 

The reason that Dahmer is underdeveloped in Netflix's '22 adaptation is that Netflix has made a profitable analysis, they've curated 10 episodes of gore and brutality because that's what's going to sell. Simply put, a responsible analysis and exploration of the psyche of Jeffery Dahmer wouldn't be as marketable to an audience. Having watched all 6 listed portrayals, it's easy to gather that as the media becomes more modern, the media becomes noticeably more creepy; unnerving. It became more intent on Dahmer - more psychologically intensive on Dahmer, and overstimulation of our senses to match, to create an aura befitting of the story. 

Interest in true crime is nothing new, from public executions in medieval London to obsession over the Jack the Ripper case. It makes sense that after globalisation and broad internet access became available, this obsession would spread to the digital realm, but is it right? I'd love to hear your arguments because I really can't make up my mind. 

Stephen Hick, Steven Tuomi, James Doxtator, Richard Guerrero, Anthony Sears, Raymond Laymont Smith, Edward Smith. Ernest Miller, David C. Thomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsey, Anthony 'Tony' Hughes, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Matt Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Joseph Lacy, Joseph Bredehoft. Remember their names, forget Dahmer.

Again, L'shana Tovah, I hope everyone had an amazing Rosh Hanasha, to all those in Israel and the diaspora who celebrate, either culturally or religiously. 

07/10/2022

by Frankie E.J. Robinson

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