Series like Dahmer are still hurting real victims years after the murders

Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer has been on Netflix since the end of September and the 10-episode series became the second highest-grossing English-language series in Netflix history in just a few days. That wasn’t surprising, after all, the Netflix algorithm did a great job here: True crime, serial killers, cannibalism, necrophiliaplus star producer Ryan Murphy as backstage creator and charismatic Evan Peters in the title role of the well-known serial killer.

But Dahmer was not only given away enthusiastically, the series also caused heavy criticism. There are now even petitions asking Netflix to keep all profits from the project to donate to the families of the victims of the serial killer. But where does the excitement about Dahmer come from? What exactly is being criticized about the series?

In this article we describe:

The Jeffrey Dahmer case has been making money for over 30 years

The Dahmer case is different from other well-known serial killers like that Zodiac Killer or Ted Bundy, whose actions were closely followed by the media and the police for years. Because Jeffrey Dahmer murdered a total of 17 men between 1978 and 1991, whom he also raped and sometimes ate. However, the crimes were never identified as a continuous series prior to his arrest.

One of the reasons: Dahmer deliberately sought his victims among the socially disadvantaged, in primarily African-American neighborhoods and gay bars. The US media reports less about people of color who have disappeared than they do about a white woman from a wealthy area. Although Dahmer wasn’t exactly careful, he could kill relatively undisturbed. The lack of attention and investigative errors delayed the clarification and thus made possible further murders.

Avengers star Jeremy Renner played Jeffrey Dahmer back in 2002:

When Dahmer was finally caught in 1991 and the full extent of his crimes became known, the press jumped on the case. Probably also because a few months earlier The Silence of the Lambs had started in the cinemas, a film about a cannibalistic serial killer. The public only became interested in the 17 victims (most of them black and homosexual) when they were able to profit from the shocking acts.

Hundreds of reporters are said to have been in the Dahmer city of Milwaukee at the same time during the process. Then it broke Dahmer fascination in a number of books and films Rail. The fascination with the serial killer almost culminated in a kind of hero worship. This is of course unbearable for the victims and the families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims. Whether in the 1990s or up to date through the Netflix series.

Victims and loved ones are angry at Netflix – and rightly so

Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer’s story deliberately tries to the fate of the victims and their relatives to put in the foreground. A good first step, of course. However, those affected were not asked whether they wanted this stage at all. Not even the surviving characters who play a major role in the series.

Rita Isbell, for example, the sister of Errol Lindsey, who was strangled by Dahmer didn’t know she was in the series and is played by actress DaShawn Barnes. Rita Isbell’s cousin, Eric Parry, was the first of her family to speak critically to the public. His family is angry because they have not been contacted or compensated in any way. According to Perry, the series is retraumatizing and added in a tweet:

Re-enacting my cousin having a nervous breakdown in court in the face of the man who tortured and murdered her brother is wild.

Rita Isbell herself stated in a later published essay:“It [die Serie] brought back all the emotions I felt at the time.” Isbell practically relived her suffering again and clearly blames Netflix for it. The streaming service benefits from their suffering and that of others:

Netflix should have askedwhether we object [bei der Darstellung bestimmter Ereignisse] have or how we feel about the implementation of the story in general. You didn’t ask me. They just did it. If the series [den Opfern] would help in any way, that would everything doesn’t feel so hard and careless. It’s sad that [Netflix] only wants to make money with this tragedy. This is just greed. Shirley Hughes, mother of Dahmer victim Tony Hughes, also criticized Netflix’s actions.
I don’t understand how they can do that. I don’t understand how they can use our names and post this stuff.

All statements express a lack of understanding about a re-enactment of real, traumatic events that does not include the people involved in their staging. Netflix basically adapted the Dahmer murders like a fictional story. It capitalized on the allure of the real, but didn’t want to deal with the emotional burden that the true crime genre inevitably brings.

Netflix itself did not comment on the allegations. However, the “LGBTQ” tag that the series started with was removed without comment after public criticism.

Legally, Netflix did nothing wrong, the consent of those affected was never necessary. Those responsible for the series already had access to the mostly publicly available court and police documents. A It’s still a morally questionable approachof which the Dahmer series is perhaps the currently largest, but not the only example.

Why Dahmer is representative of a general problem with the true crime genre

True crime is becoming more and more of a business, be it in podcasts, films or series productions by large streaming providers. The controversies often follow quickly. Also one of Netflix’s other major serial killer projects, Ted Bundy: Self-Portrait of a Serial Killer from 2019, drew heavy criticism. Old recordings gave the man who brutally raped and killed several women space to tell his own story. A critical classification was often missing, instead Bundy was stylized in places as a charismatic, attractive genius.

There was also excitement this year around the series Pam & Tommy on Hulu, which Story of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s sex tape told. However, not as a documentary series, but fictionalized narrative, similar to Dahmer.

The sextape was released against the couple’s wishes in the ’90s. Pamela Anderson was subsequently dissected and ridiculed by the public. A traumatizing incident on multiple levels that the series directly repeated because: Anderson had explicitly not given her consent for the series. Pam & Tommy could only be produced because the streaming service bought the rights to an article about the scandal.

Such is the public interest in “real” crime that production companies, streaming services, and broadcasters seem willing to jettison even obvious moral concerns in order to attract the next big wave of audiences with true, shocking, unbelievable stories. Maybe Netflix’ Dahmer series can here at least serve a good purpose: Definitely showing how cynical the true crime business has become.

How do you feel about the controversy surrounding Dahmer?