Do we really need another show about Jeffrey Dahmer? | CBC News

The new Netflix series dahmer monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has a title almost as long as the trail of Dahmer shows and movies it follows.

Writer-director Ryan Murphy’s series comes about five years after the feature film My friend Dahmer (about the Milwaukee serial killer’s high school years), itself a graphic novel adaptation by childhood friend and cartoonist Derf Backderf.

This book was released in 2012, the same year as the documentary Jeffrey Dahmer’s files, which Dahmer viewed from the perspective of a detective questioning him and a neighbor. Two years earlier, an early career Jeremy Renner took over the role in dahmer, by director David Jacobson.

Of course, these are not the only media about him. In fact, they’re just the ones I’ve seen myself. Alongside this, there are so many TV specials, books, and podcasts analyzing a man who murdered 17 people — mostly black people — that it’s hard to imagine there’s much more to do. Even with Renner dahmerwhich was generally critically acclaimed, the Seattle Times criticized it for offering “no insights that have not been thoroughly discussed in the media,” published 20 years before Mmonster.

And Netflix is ​​already offering another one: the latest season of Joe Berlinger Conversations with a Murderer The series premiered Friday with a focus on Dahmer, having previously profiled serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.

Although Berlinger said a recent interview He wasn’t at all aware of the other show when he made his, he was “sure Netflix programmed it with the Murphy show in mind.”

The flood of shows about Dahmer is just the tip of the iceberg. Along with Bundy and Gacy, he is the three best-known killers from what investigative historian and author Peter Wronsky calls the “golden age of serial killing.”

The three decades between 1970 and 1999 saw about 88 percent of all American serial killers, he said, and laid the groundwork for their transition to what could sadly be described as celebrity.

“They have almost mythical status,” said Vronksy, author of several books on serial killer history, “because we knew so little about them, they were so mysterious.”

The reason there are so many productions today has to do with that “golden age” and what happened after.

The concentration of these killers and their ubiquity in the news ended with Dahmer, who was caught in 1991, says Vronksy. He was “the last of the epidemic era” in the United States

After him, the novelty of the phenomenon began to wane, as did coverage of serial killers. Serial killing itself has also declined, Vronsky said, possibly due to earlier capture of perpetrators, the ubiquity of cell phones, and a decline in homicides in general.

But early 2000s interest in them, and in true crime in general, had exploded again.

“The popularity has increased tremendously, and [in] True crime across the board,” said Chicago-based true crime filmmaker and author John Borowski, of his documentary serial killer culture specifically examined the widespread fascination with such criminals.

“You’re watching the channels now that are specifically just true crime channels that didn’t exist before … They had a few smatterings of shows, but now they’re everywhere.”

That includes everything from the explosion of police interrogation analysis on YouTube (due almost entirely to the popularity of the JCS YouTube channel over the past year) to re-investigations into gruesome crimes (as in make a killer or the bomb podcast Serial) to a newly discovered Fascination with scammers and corporate scammers (like this year We crashed, invent Anna, The Dropout and Super pumped).

But mainly triggered by the huge success of Netflix mind hunterDemand specifically for true crimes involving serial killers has peaked, Borowski says.

“People are fascinated and want to see as much as possible about serial killers,” he said. “They want to see as much, read as much, hear as much about them as possible.”

But since the golden age has ended, that hunger is being sated by returning to the same subjects for seemingly endless reanalysis. Serial killer names work almost like trademarks, with a range of titles linked, production companies can be sure they will command attention no matter the quality.

Before Dahmer, the focus was on Bundy — one of America’s most prolific serial killers, who twice escaped custody before being executed in 1989. In 2019 this was the case Extremely evil, shockingly evil and hideousa Zac Efron-led feature that preceded 2020 Ted Bundy: Falling in love with a killer.

Before that was Joseph James DeAngelo, alternatively known as the East Area Rapist and The Original Nightstalker, who killed at least 13 people. Though he committed most of his crimes in the ’70s and ’80s, he wasn’t caught until 2018 — barely preceded by Michelle McNamara’s book I will be gone in the dark and, among other things, a subsequent HBO documentary.

Also this year’s sleeper hit black phone featured a serial killer modeled on Gacy who — alongside his season of Conversations with a Murderer which debuted earlier this year – also appears in Monster.

New angles

Having new angles or other information that warrants a fresh look is a common selling point.

Borowski says even though Gacy was arrested in 1978, new details are still being uncovered. The Bundy films largely depended on his daughter and former girlfriend breaking their silence to tell their stories. and monster tries to focus more on Dahmer’s victims and the woman who worked to get him captured, Glenda Cleveland.

Jasmyne Cannick says she saw each other in Cleveland monster — a black woman fighting an institution that is not investigating a crime she knew was being committed.

While working as an investigative journalist in Los Angeles in 2017, Cannick helped uncover that political activist Ed Buck had assaulted homeless black men in his apartment and contributed to the deaths of at least two by injecting them with methamphetamine – often while they were unconscious .

Cannick first began covering the story when a man, Gemmel Moore, was found dead at Buck’s apartment, but says he was only arrested and charged when a third man twice overdosed at Buck’s home. she says monster has helped highlight a problem that is always in danger of recurring.

“There is definitely value. I am a journalist. i tell stories I’m a writer,” Cannick said. “I definitely believe there is value in sharing stories… You can be honest and agree with the victim. You can do that.”

But the show’s attempt to juggle a focus on Dahmer’s victims with a humanizing look at Dahmer himself seemed callous to both critics and those directly affected by his crimes.

“I’m concerned that these shows, whether documentaries or fictional recordings, send some sort of sick note to white audiences,” said author Veronica Wells-Puoane in a Daily beast essay. “They remind them of the color of their skin for protection, even from the consequences of their own depravity. Commit a crime and be disgraced with a Netflix documentary.”

MSNBC opinion columnist Evette Dionne made a similar point in her article How Netflix’s new Jeffrey Dahmer series is (again) failing its true victims.

“Americans don’t need a greater awareness of serial killers,” she wrote. “We have to be honest about the consequences of retelling real tragedies.”

Meanwhile, Rita Isbell – sister of Dahmer’s victim Errol Lindsey – said in an interview with Insider that she was never contacted about the showand is upset that Netflix co-opted the story for its own financial gain.

And despite the show’s stated goal of focusing on victims, Lindsey’s cousin Eric Thulhu tweeted shortly after monster‘s disclosure that the series is “retraumatizing” the family.

“And for what?” he wrote. “Like a lot of movies, shows [and] Do we need documentaries?”

In this week, monster Netflix became the ninth most watched English-language TV show of all time.