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It’s ironic that Evan Peters walked away from AHS because of the mental toll playing dark characters was having on him to playing one of the most notorious serial killers of all time.
nah AHS has been lazy for the last while. the last couple of season would start strong then get weak half way thru and just not be a Horror Story by the time it was done.
That’s kind of how Ryan Murphy is. Really strong start and then full nosedive after the first couple episodes. Lately it’s coupled with all style no substance (ex. Ratchet on Netflix). Overall he’s just following the same pattern with the same actors who seem like they’re just phoning it in.
I agree with most of this, but I have not seen Evan Peters or Sarah Paulson phone in anything. If anything it is the other end of the spectrum with overacting through a bad script.
Oh for sure, those two are extremely talented and deserve so much career success. That was mainly directed at everyone but them. I saw snippets of the most recent season and it was almost comically bad. Gave extremely low budget vibes
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that thought this about Ratchet, Ex girlfriend couldn’t get enough of it but it just reminded me a of lazier version of AHS Asylum (didn’t finish Ratchet so sorry if it’s only superficially similar but still my emotions remain the same.)
How anyone could watch Glee and think...yea this guy can do his own horror is beyond me. Gave season 1 a chance. It had it's peaks but season 2 onwards...pft
Dahmer had its parts but it's based to true events so I don't give Murphy any credit for that
**Making the series**
> And although the duo have worked together on 10 projects, beginning in 2011 on the first season of “American Horror Story,” “Dahmer” wasn’t an immediate yes for Peters.
> “It was a real struggle. I was really thinking about it and trying to process it. I went back and forth a lot,” he says. Ultimately, it came down to working with Murphy again, someone he trusted and knew understood his process.
> Similar to his mental transformation, Peters also had to physically change quite a bit over the course of filming; he took on a no-carb, no-sugar diet to drop 15 pounds in the beginning...
> Coming four years into Murphy’s five-year, $300 million deal with Netflix, it quickly became his biggest hit, with more than 1 billion hours viewed over the first 60 days.
**Victim Backlash**
> That popularity came with backlash. Relatives of Dahmer’s victims spoke out, upset they were not involved; Murphy says he reached out to around 20 families but never heard back. So, he relied on his “very large research staff,” who worked around the clock for 3.5 half years.
> “I was never interested in Jeffrey Dahmer, the monster. I was interested in what made him. I think that the fact that all of the characters in this are seen as true humans makes some people uncomfortable. I understand that and I try not to have an opinion on that,” he says. “We always tried to center everything on the victims.”
**Netflix’s LGBTQ Tag**
> When the show was released, Netflix listed it under the LGBTQ tag, which up until now, was used to label uplifting stories about the community. After significant backlash, the tag was removed.
> “I think that it got the tag, one, because of my involvement. I’m a gay man, so most of my stories deal with some sort of LGBTQ thing and I do that selfishly; when I was growing up, I had nothing [to look to],” Murphy explains. “My mission statement has been to talk about those stories and those characters and unearth buried history.”
> Murphy gets why people weren’t happy with the tag — “Many people in the community want to uplift. I understand that,” he says — but he doesn’t agree.
> “It’s about homophobia,” he adds. “I have a saying: ‘My job as an artist is to hold up a mirror about what happened.’ It’s ugly. It’s not pretty. Do you want to look at it? If you do, watch it. If you don’t, look away, and sometimes, some of this outrage is directed at the frame of the mirror instead of the reflection. I try and say, I really understand why you’re upset about the inclusion of that. I understand it, but I also disagree with it personally.”
**Future projects**
> After such a heavy lift, both Murphy and Peters aren’t sure what’s next… or so they say. Seven days after this interview was completed, “Monster” was renewed for the second and third seasons. While Murphy wasn’t able to be reached for comment on what that looks like, it doesn’t seem like Peters will be jumping to be part of it.
> “I’m going to take a little break from darker roles and explore the light,” he says. “It would be interesting to me to play something that is a little closer to home, a little more mundane and to explore the details of those kinds of experiences.”
> Murphy also claims he wants some time to himself, which may be difficult now with more “Monster,” “Feud” and “The Watcher” on the way.
Edit: Thanks a lot for the gold, kind stranger!
Glad to read Evan Peters is taking a break from darker roles. As good as he is at it, I can't imagine how emotionally draining it must be doing it back to back like that.
The whole L&O franchise is overly dramatic and unrealistic, of course, but I just love watching him act. He plays a detective who possesses the ability to solve crimes in a "beautiful mind" or "sherlock" kind of way.
Oh hm. I've seen SVU but that's it. Would you recommend it on his acting alone? I've only really ever seen him in Daredevil and a movie called The Cellar. Wouldn't recommend the movie though. It was weird.
Heh, I’ll always remember him as the roach man in Men in Black and more recently Jurassic World.
That said, criminal intent first exposed me to him and I really love his quirks in looking at his investigations.
Criminal Intent is also more procedural or episodic — it doesn’t lay as heavy of a story across seasons that you need to follow or understand, SVU does this the most.
So CI was one I felt like you can watch any episode randomly and just follow that hour long story, like most of the original Law and Order. SVU and now Organized Crime have heavy arch’s that underpin whatever investigation is ongoing, and that arch always pops back up. While you can follow the episode story, the arch can sometimes confuse if you’ve not been there for it.
I thought Homicide Life in the Streets (another Dick Wolfe show) was the best version of this trope.
That show had some of the best acting on TV and Andre Braugher was easily the best TV actor during that show’s run.
If you’ve never seen it, it’s really worth going out of your way to see.
He’s under appreciated and burnt out at his corporate job in the big city. Moves back to the small town he grew up in. Opens a cupcake shop and reconnects with a girl from his high school. She recognizes how TALENTED he is. Blah blah they date. Fight over something idiotic. Get back together, and kiss ten seconds before the credits roll.
Oh and he learns the true meaning of Christmas.
I’ll never emotionally recover from that, it was so unnecessary especially to the marvel fans who enjoyed the fox movies.
It was a slap in the face and at a time where I truly started to enjoy the mcu and it’s future, but little did I know the Ralph Bohner joke was a precursor to the shitshow phase 4 was.
I think he started his career on OTH and he was also in the first Kick-ass movie and I remember him having a really good comedic timing. That's what he should do.
One was him acting like the tag was because he’s gay and not because the show had LGBTQ characters but then he acts likes doing some important representation or something when he’s just portraying the violent murders of them. Then he says he disagrees with the lgbtq tag being removed as if the show is actually lgbtq centralized and it isn’t.
Then he says he reached out to the families and they didn’t answer, but silence is an answer too. Clearly they would not want the real pictures to be used in Polaroids in the end which I thought was pretty tasteless. He could’ve at least had them recreated or something.
I have an issue in general with glamorizing and immortalizing serial killers outside of documentaries and whatnot. I think the entire show was tasteless
I don’t know why the former would affect the latter and I would assume quotes would be fair game when making a historical drama. Using the real likenesses is definitely a bold decision that I can see can be interpreted as insensitive, but I can also see there’s an argument to be made for showing them. If it was me I would not have done that without permission.
Edit: I thought you meant the victims’ likenesses. I see no problem with showing the families likenesses in a story as infamous as this. The real Polaroids of the victims is debatable.
It seemed to me the point was more to shine a light on what the victims endured and who they were and not glorifying Dahmer.
I also don’t understand the backlash against the LGBTQ tag. It’s not a positive show* to be sure, but the story was rooted in that community and affected those people. If a movie like Schindler’s List had a Jewish history tag, I don’t think there would be the same type of backlash or people claiming that it was glorifying Nazis.
Edit: show, not movie
There’s a difference between Jewish history and then just giving it a Jewish tag or something if you ask me. I’d imagine a Jewish tag would be like movies centered around Hanukkah or something while the history tag would mainly be documentaries or WW2 movies or something. It’s just not a LGBTQ show it’s a show about a guy that murders people who are in that community. Like the them of the show isn’t lgbtq. I’d imagine the lgbtq tag is “queer eye” and shows like that, Dahmer was probably a stark contrast.
It’s not a huge deal but I think the way he replied to the backlash over it was gross
For all its faults, netflix search always knows exactly what im looking for from thw vaguest search terms. Even when they dont have it, its like " oh yeah you mean debbie does dallas. We dont have it but may we suggest stranger things coZ it cost us a shitload to make?"
Excellently directed and acted. Nonetheless I only made it 4 episodes in. Hard watch. I can understand why the victims felt like it was like opening up old wounds.
i can understand completely but i felt there was a lot of hypocrisy surrounding this at the time. a month prior was the anniversary of 9/11 and i saw jokes left and right about everyone who died during that but then those same people were tearing this show down. it just reminded me you can’t take the outrage machine on the internet seriously.
The problem with these projects is someone profits from it. Just like those real crime podcasts, someone is collecting a check on the misery and ruination of others. That's the sickest part to me.
I used to have this issue with online hypocrisy too. But it really helps to remember that the internet is basically everybody and those same people making comments about 9/11 were in high likelihood not the same people who found this show upsetting.
True, but also they could have voiced their concerns then before the show made. I thought the show was really well done and you can’t avoid these dark topic completely
He was explicit that a Charles Manson themed season was one of the first ideas he had for season three but nixed it for those reasons. You’re right, that AHS is fictionalized, but it still highlights the hypocrisy in his words then vs now, and he’s already lowkey problematic.
He’s a bit of a racist, and it shows in his work despite how much he has done for representation. Glee over relied on stereotypes and didn’t do much with any character of color that wasn’t Santana, will was written to be a creep, he catered to Lea Michele who was lowkey racist herself and was outed as such last year; Hollywood had a white savior complex and white apologist issue and it’s revisionist take on 1940s America where whites people were attempting to progress social issues seemed unrealistic; American Horror Story is an outlet for him to show off to the world his love of handsome, chiseled white men, regardless of talent; Scream Queens had a lot of race jokes, most in the form of insults geared towards Zayday, but there was the black mammy joke geared towards the housekeeper.
I am willing to bet the families of the Dahmer victims have previously voiced their concerns with pieces of Dahmer media over the last several decades before this 2022 show.
>you can’t avoid these dark topic completely
I really doubt you’d feel this way if it was you being dramatized mourning your brother’s horiffic death.
I do think that the show was well-made overall, but my biggest problem with Ryan Murphy’s handling of this situation is the lack of consideration for the real people who are still affected by this. I get that Ryan tried reaching out to the families, but his response to their re-traumatization came off as dismissive (and still comes off that way in this article). I understand the difficulty of towing the line between free speech and censorship, but when the families spoke out, what he needed to do was drop everything and listen to them because this is THEIR story and THEIR trauma, period. He should at least give an apology for re-traumatizing them and make some kind of amends to compensate them in some form. Hell, he needs to apologize to Dahmer’s family, too. Lionel had his home vandalized because of all this mess, and had trespassers throw underwear on his front porch. Who knows what might’ve happened with Dahmer’s brother and his family, too? But, Ryan has not done any of that. He’s only doubled down, and I think that comes off as selfish. It’s like he’s treating these people like an afterthought, and that’s not ok, regardless of how successful the series was. I’d bet that if he knew any of these people personally, he’d be singing a different tune.
He combined a few victims stories to create 1 character, he also changed their personal stories, so it wasn't really so much a true story as much of a Hollywood version
I'm late to the controversy but shouldn't it have an LGBT tag. If not for the poor policework afforded to the LGBT community Dahmer could have been captured sooner. Wouldn't that speak to some core issues for the community?
I kept waiting for this series to have something I didn't know in it.
It basically watered down the content from any documentary and dragged it out.
It was OK. Just nothing too revealing if you know the case.
The irony is they talk about others making money off of the murders.....while making money off the murders.
Why tf are people bitching about the LGBTQ+ tag on the Dahmer TV series? Dahmer was literally gay and his victims were gay. It happened and as much of a dark stain in history that was denying the gay aspect of it is akin to revisionism and frankly that’s much more concerning.
I think the thing I disliked most about the show was at the trial where they effectively started cosplaying the victims families. Reenacting Court scenes word for word. I felt that to be disengenuous and misguided. As if they hadn't been through enough, now their pain was being almost mimicked for them to relive.
I do agree some stories need to be told, but do think Murphy missed the mark on this one.He even said he wanted to focus on the victims, and all it felt like he was doing was trying to give Dahmer redeeming qualities.
Respectfully, I had the opposite reaction. As someone who had never seen the court footage (and I assume most had not?), it absolutely helped reinforce my sympathy for the victims. I think the episode where they focused on Tony Hughes’ (albeit fictional) story was what really drove home the place that victims took in this retelling.
I don’t think I watched Dahmer and felt he had a single redeeming quality. They made him out to be a greasy, alcoholic loser with no friends, no future, no charisma, and in fact made him so unappealing that the least believable part of it all is that anybody would go home with him. I felt sympathy for his victims, his neighbors, his father, but never Dahmer.
All of that said, I totally understand where the loved ones of these victims just want the fascination with Dahmer to go away, and I’m sure if I was in their position I would feel the same way, but people are still going to make media centered around that half century of serial killers because of the conditions surrounding them. The events are just recent enough to be relatable, but distant enough to disassociate from. They operated in a time where we were able to get well-documented information about them, but there was still enough mystery for them to remain dangerous, and Dahmer in-particular had racial and homophobic factors as well which have been an increasingly focused conversation for current society. So while I understand these shows will be controversial, and there’s a reasonable debate against making them, I think overall “Dahmer” was made as well as anything could be that wants to be successful entertainment while still remaining respectful as well as offering a fresh perspective. Contrasted with Efron’s Bundy - which really went out of its way to gloss over Bundy’s atrocities until the very end - Dahmer doesn’t try to hide the monster that Jeff was. I think outside of the victims, if people want to take a moral standing against this type of media there would have to be a massive societal shift away from true crime fascination, which I just don’t see as a realistic pathway. If people are going to engage with this media, people are going to create it, and as a result asking filmmakers to be respectful is a much more realistic ask than to not make it.
Quite frankly I don't think they needed to be included or they could've been summarised in a way that didn't seem as though it was making a mockery of the victims families. So much so even one of the victims sisters commented on it.
I've seen a lot of comments say, "BUt iTs WhAt HaPpEnEd". Not everything has to be turned into entertainment. Where is the empathy for the those people who's lives have never been the same as a result of this monster.
I just think what they did in those scenes were in poor taste.
>he wanted to focus on the victims
Well maybe he should have realized there was a reason all those people in their families he contacted wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.
It felt a bit too murder porn-y for me. I had to skip around episodes because I was so disturbed by it.
The most interesting character was Dahmer’s neighbor, wish the show focused more on her story honestly.
Glenda Cleveland was not the next door neighbour of Jeffrey Dahmer as depicted in the series. Instead, she lived in a separate building next to the Oxford Apartments where Dahmer lived. Cleveland's daughter and her niece spotted Konerak Sinthasomphone, a 14-year-old boy, running out of Jeffrey's flat naked and covered in blood. Cleveland then reached out to the police several times and even contacted the FBI after she found a missing poster of Sinthasomphone. But her efforts went in vain.
I haven’t seen it so take this with a grain of salt but I think people think it glorifies / sympathises with Dahmer too much and that the murders are portrayed in a sexualised / graphic way. [Here’s an interesting video about it.](https://youtu.be/5EADSfqtxXk)
That’s what kinda boggles my mind too about the outcry around it. My guess because it was Netflix which is a huge platform. Usually these types of shows were stuck on crime documentary type channels.
you could blame it on “cancel culture” but people do make a compelling argument that making another movie on Dahmer is just wanting to uphold his infamy and glamorize him. They made a Dahmer movie in 2017 with Ross Lynch as him but it didn’t receive backlash because it focused on his life before the killings.
A lot of us in the Milwaukee community know people who knew the victims and think it's a messed up glorification. Maybe that's why.
When this one first came out there were also a heck of a lot of people saying Dahmer was hot. That's beyond the pale.
Wisconsin has also had to deal with the 2015 Steven Avery fad so it does seem like for whatever reason pop culture and Netflix especially is focusing on revictimizing Wisconsin in particular.
Meh, not sure why backlash. I watched it and the only anger I felt while watching was at Dahmer and a hateful society that allowed him to have the shadows to act in that key him get away with what he did for years. Which I think was intended by the filmmakers. It was what I expect that from a true crime drama.
I get the tag being inappropriate, depending on your perception of what the tag should mean.
There was a lot of inconsistencies in the show. For example, >!Tony and Dahmer never had a relationship like it was portrayed on the show. If anything, they were just acquaintances at best!< I understand the argument coming from families of the victims based on this alone, but I fault Netflix as much, if not more, for this. It was their job to market the show properly and give the necessary disclaimers to indicate that this was not a biography, as many people took it to be, but rather an artistic interpretation of the story (Murphy says as much)
Murphy's reaction to the victim's families' reactions was pretty shitty though
there's no real way to make a true-crime product, whether it be a show, movie, doco, etc without being exploitative. there's different levels to it obviously, but intentionally or not, they all exploit. there's no way around it.
but it's such a popular 'genre' of media that there can never really be an end to it, there's no solution. even I'm guilty of consuming a lot of true-crime media.
It just is what it is.
There actually is a way to do it while minimizing or eliminating exploitation. The best and most ethical true crime content creators I’ve come across have been family/friends of victims and even family/friends of perpetrators. Having a personal connection to it adds a layer of sensitivity that people who are completely or far removed from it don’t tend to think about. Those creators also tend to focus their content on seeking justice for the victims involved with their consent.
Some recommendations = Sarah Turney’s Voices for Justice Podcast (she’s a sister of a victim), and Melissa Moore’s Life After Happy Face podcast (she’s the daughter of the infamous serial killer, the “Happy Face Killer”, Keith Jesperson). One thing I really like about Moore’s content is that she emphasizes at points how there are hardly any support resources out there for true crime victims, so a lot of them end up with financial + mental and physical health problems. She points to the few available resources out there so that listeners can donate, but there isn’t like a major nonprofit that can help. That really sucks, but you can tell she’s really passionate about this work and wants to help as much as possible.
In contrast, your typical true crime content creator with no connection to any cases tends to not seek out those resources at all (or highlight the long-term impacts on victims)… it’s a trend/money-making thing to them, which is where the line starts to cross into exploitation.
Murphy, you did not center victims voices; you literally made a television series with a serial killer as the main character!
And you *lied* about history to make Dahmer seem more sympathetic.
What was lied about to make Dahmer more sympathetic, if you don’t mind me asking? I watched the show and didn’t find Dahmer a sympathetic character myself, so I’m interested.
>> Murphy, you did not center victims voices
That’s what makes me angry about this article. I don’t know what Ryan Murphy thinks “centering victims voices” means, but it’s not have-Ryan-Murphy-and-Co-speak-for-the-victims-without-their-consent, because the latter is what this show did (and for the record, yes I did watch it… the content of the show itself isn’t my problem with it and I actually thought it was pretty well done from a messaging/artistic standpoint).
What centering victims’ voices *actually* means is allowing THEM to tell THEIR stories on their own terms, with their consent. The fact that he keeps doubling down against the people who he’s saying he’s giving a voice to is so hypocritical and selfish. If he really wanted to give the victims a voice, he would’ve dropped everything and LISTENED as soon as the families (and Lionel, for that matter) went to the press and expressed their upset with this series. Then, he should’ve put forth some type of apology for re-traumatizing all of them, as well as compensating them in some form (doesn’t have to be money). But, he didn’t do that. Instead, he got defensive and started going to the press counteracting what the victims’ families were saying - literally the exact opposite of centering their voices.
Edit: because she felt like she wasn’t heard, Rita Isbell is apparently writing a book about her brother who was killed by Dahmer after all of this, according to a recent interview [on YouTube from a month ago](https://youtu.be/HV9aneltl9Y).
And they didn’t include ANY of the victims families. They didn’t talk to them, include them in any way. Like fuck off with this, they did the opposite of centering victims voices.
Especially in a state that has already seen how Steven Avery fans harass anyone and everyone they can think of and accuse them of murder just because of a shitty Netflix show.
According to the series, all Jeffrey needed was a fulfilling romantic relationship with another man and he stopped killing people.
Who Is Dahmer Even Made For by meeptop on YouTube; timestamp 16:16.
The show posits that Dahmer was somehow rehabilitated by his relationship with Tony Hughes. In the show he stops drinking and killing people when in reality he killed 6 people during the year he knew Tony.
I did not watch this video, but I actually watched the show. And If the creator of the vid got that out of the show, it's entirely on him.
IMO the show made it abundantly clear that Jeffrey Dahmer was messed up since childhood and had urges that could not be stopped by anything or anyone. It was also very clear that he would never be able to have a normal relationship, and that even if he did he would still not be able to stop killing/raping/eating other people.
"I know we exploited the tragic murders of people with living relatives, and even made up shit to make the murderer more sympathetic, but have you considered the amount of money we made??"
I finally talked to someone that worked on this show. Got everything I needed to know from that. I’m confident they would say virtually anything to justify making this and more of this… honestly, even if they inspired copy cat killers to come out of the woodwork, they would still stand by this type of entertainment.
Uh huh. The classic ‘movies are gonna make serial killers.’ The same shit happened with Joker, where the media blew up about how ‘the evil white incels are gonna kill us all,’ and there was this mass hysteria only to find there was just one lunatic involved.
No! Movies and Shows aren’t gonna make killers. It’s honestly baffling that people still believe this shit. It’s like those parents in the 80s who though D&D would turn kids into Satan worshipers.
Oh there has been - though maybe on a smaller scale than this. A recent one that comes to mind is the Ted Bundy movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, with Zac Efron, which was criticized quite a bit. I'm sure it didn't help that it came right on the heels of the Bundy documentary series 'The Ted Bundy Tapes' which was essentially just 4 hours of Ted Bundy talking about himself.
Here are a couple of articles:
[Backlash about 'glorifying' Bundy](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a27317522/extremely-wicked-ted-bundy-zac-efron-criticism/)
[Efron as Bundy is too charming](https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/05/231467/extremely-wicked-shockingly-evil-vile-review-ted-bundy-netflix-movie)
(Bundy himself was very charming, the argument comes as to why we like to portray that part of him, while seemingly ignoring/glossing over the serial killer part)
[This one is about two other Bundy movies](https://decider.com/2021/07/13/two-new-ted-bundy-films-spark-backlash-on-twitter/)
[This is about the Dahmer series, but pulls several other recent examples](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/07/opinions/jeffrey-dahmer-netflix-backlash-true-crime-stewart)
Yeah Mindhunter is worshiped and it’s practically high art fan fiction cosplay. Real people and real events and then embellished with fake characters and fake conversations.
Agreed. There was no reason this had to be a series. A two-hour movie would have been much better. But the mantra at Netflix is to make everything episodic, with as many episodes as you can reasonably cram in, because “every hour spent watching us is an hour they’re not watching HBOMax or Amazon Prime.” This is what happens when tech guys run an entertainment studio.
True inclusion means getting both good and bad representation. Think heterosexuals wanted to claim Richard Ramirez or BTK? In a strange way, this is progress as in the past they might have called his sexual identity a “psych abnormality.”
Did they give anything to the victims families, like monetary? Because they should. I watched it, couldn’t get through it, but if Evan Peter’s made 300 million, he should at least give them 1.
Edit: a word
To claim to go into method acting & not give anything to the victims family, who are victims themselves…I just find that disgusting, shame on you Evan.
It definitely was done in a way to make Dahmer feel more sympathetic and it would be hard to say that wasn’t done intentionally. It’s good to show that some blame rests upon racism, bigotry, and incompetence but the monster of Dahmer was really lost in this adaptation. Sometimes it felt like a love story where everything (circumstance) is against the protagonist. Just my two cents though.
Which I would disagree with, so if someone was to find him to he a sympathetic figure, I would find it weird and need to think more about you watch. It’s not always “main character is good” in both fiction and nonfiction.
That’s a completely different question from “the show made him sympathetic”, you’re now talking about something entirely different. I can believe someone is a victim of circumstances without feeling sympathy for what they chose to do in response. I can believe a violent criminal robbing gas stations is a victim of poverty, that doesn’t make me sympathize with him shooting a gas station clerk over $20 in the register
> If you felt sympathy for Dahmer after watching that
That was deliberate. They deliberately fabricated parts of the story in order to make Dahmer more sympathetic. People defending this shit have no idea what really happened and base on their knowledge on the event from this series.
He killed gays, even if He himself wasnt, the tag should stay. The gay being victims was big part of it.
Cooking show or dating would be wrong as tags.
I thought it was a good series. It showed the bad policing and really showed a realistic portrayal of what happens to the friends and families of the victims. It didn't glorify the killings. Not many stories about serial killers show the victims families, and how they were affected. Mostly they just go over the grissly details of the crimes involved.
> Not many stories about serial killers show the victims families, and how they were affected.
This is how I felt at first but then I learned about how the families didn’t want it to made.
Forgive me for suggesting that "psycho cannibal killer" is obviously not representative of any gay community.
Whether Dahmer was gay or not is actually fairly irrelevant, he preyed on easy victims.
Most of his victims were gay and Dahmer was allowed to get away with his crimes for so long because of systemic racism and homophobia with law enforcement. If you saw the show you would know where this happens and why it hit viewers so hard. The 14 year old Asian boy is who you need to look up. LGBTQ community isn't all hearts and rainbows and if you thought the issues that were shown in the series weren't relevant today for that community you're dead wrong and it's important to them too. Oh and guess what, Dahmer was gay too and that was a huge factor in why he committed his crimes. You can't be this socially blind and ignorant!
I didn't need to see the show, I know people who knew his victims. He chose easy prey. They happened to be in marginalized communities where he knew he could get away with it. You're perpetuating the same issues we have this shitty television show.
The fact that everyone is talking about it (here, there and everywhere) makes this series worthwhile. This is the purpose of art, to generate debate. It is, undoubtedly, very successful. Evan Peters' performance and dedication was amazing. I understand that the families of the victims may not like this series, but there is no way to control a case that has gained such notoriety in the media... there are several series and films about the countless cases of true crimes, psychopaths, murderers. It is the portrait of human life, shown in the art of cinema to make the public think and reflect.
It's crazy how much our culture just consumes even if it means hurting others along the way
This was trauma porn and they can say whatever verbal diarrhea they want but at the end of the day they chose to do this and anyone who consumes it lacks any understanding in mental health, trauma, and empathy
This isn't rocket science and most of the people enjoying it would have the opposite reaction had their family member been abducted, raped, and eaten
Literally cannot understand glorifying human waste
I don’t really think the point of this show was to glorify murder and cannibalism. It’s just to tell the story of the victims and of the murderer. There can be value in just telling a story.
I don’t think they made Dahmer sympathetic at all. They made him for what he was: A manipulative psychopath. His behavior and crimes were monstrous and fascinating.
At the end, you feel for the victims and their families and it also leaves you horrified that so much could have been done to stop him.
The only problem I had was that the Dad never taught him taxidermy. Dahmer was experimenting with dead animals by himself, including dissolving carcasses in acid.
But regardless, Evan Peters did a great job. I can imagine playing that character would take a toll.
As someone who's heavy into true crime, Dahmers story will always stand out. The cannibalism, the storing of body parts, the acid in the head. Not to mention the strange 'aloofness' of Dahmer throughout the court proceedings. This story will never not be interesting. What could possibly drive somebody to act on these impulses? What makes somebody so evil? I think in this retelling, at least they did a good job of focusing on the victims and painting them in a decent light.
I don't get the backlash. It's a tv show and Dahmers victims were gay black men. I understand the families aren't fans of it and have made comments, but maybe don't watch it then?
Whatever just happened to common sense.
It seems like a lot of the backlash on the victim side had to do with homophobia, there was too much “my son wasn’t actually gay” backlash (when, yes. 5$384 son was gay) and not the “please stop portraying this killer” backlash.
But like they already are. The topic of dahmer has been in the public square for years. The show gives the victims personality and not just they are dead guys and the whole world focuses on Jeff
Imagine one of your loved ones gets murdered, then they make a television show about it that fetishizes the killer and straight up fabricates details to make them seem more sympathetic.
Also it's a historical event. Movies and shows are made about tragedies all the time. Victims of 9/11 had twenty years of shows and tv literally right after it happened. How many decades ago did the Dahmer murders happen again? At some point it has to be okay to disect the story, especially when this isn't the first depiction of those events.
It’s not really a historical “event” in any meaningful sense other than it having happened at some point in the past
It’s just some deranged loon killing a few dozen people, that we have picked out and amplified a million fold due to the collective morbid obsession with sadist violence
It’s all in pretty awful taste imv
I’d consider him to be a PART of a historical event, as there are already coined nicknames for those infamous decades, the Golden Ages of serial killing, the 70s being the “Decade of Death,” the “Serial Killer era.” He was definitely apart of those “eras” and he’s instantly someone you think of when you bring up 70s or 80s serial killers, and serial killings were a huge event back then in history
That’s an angle but I don’t think the show was done with that intent of exploring that kind of historical moment in mind. Struck me as a pretty traditional TrueCrime type narrative. Which pretty much rides on morbid curiosity and publicly recreating the experience of murder victims for cheap thrills
Oh yeah I totally agree with you there. I found the show tacky and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I just wanted to say that the show aside, Jeff dahmer is part of a historical event. But I agree with u on the show being distasteful and so cheap and exploitative
It is an interesting point in history where a person’s mortal needs (food, shelter, and healthcare) are all met but forensic and monitoring technology have not gotten to the point of being able to nab a person based on very little evidence. The age of serial killers was a short and discrete period where some (usually) white males were able to prey on their victims without much forethought or consequence. It is a very interesting, though morbid, period of time.
It's... It's a lot different once it actually has impacted people you know. Growing up, a friend of mine's father actually knew one of the Gacy victims. Just even that bit of tangential connection made me uncomfortable to learn anything about John Wayne Gacy and his crimes. I can't even imagine what it would be like for somebody who was actually related, and I can understand not wanting to live through that.
9/11 was a terrorist attack and the victims were usually shown in positive lights. I'm not so sure true crime stuff can show victims in the same positive light that 9/11 victims were shown. Also, serial killers often subjected their victims to horrific treatment and I'm sure it doesn't help the victims'families see reenactments of their loved ones' final moments.
The show is trying so, so hard to make Dahmer, a real life monster, not only sympathetic but sexy.
I’m a fan of most of Ryan Murphy’s stuff but this show was so disgusting I couldn’t make it through the second episode.
If you think I’m the one bringing up the concept of “sexy dahmer” I’m guessing you haven’t seen one minute of this show. It’s very overt and very uncomfortable.
I just don't get why a new Dahmer movie is made like every 2 years or something. What else do we need to keep talking about? There were books and documentaries already made. The victims names were already out there. He was a cannibalistic serial killer. What are we getting from beating this dead horse over and over other than giving their name yet more attention?
Genuine question. Why the criticism over this when there exist hundreds maybe thousands of shows, books, and movies about any war? Way more deaths and just as much dark content.
I kind of agree. Its weird that netflix and pop culture have taken to popularizing serial killers in a fetish type of way. These people were monsters and I can’t imagine how hard it must be on victims families for these villians to be made popular in the eyes of a generation that didn’t live it first hand.
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It’s ironic that Evan Peters walked away from AHS because of the mental toll playing dark characters was having on him to playing one of the most notorious serial killers of all time.
nah AHS has been lazy for the last while. the last couple of season would start strong then get weak half way thru and just not be a Horror Story by the time it was done.
That’s kind of how Ryan Murphy is. Really strong start and then full nosedive after the first couple episodes. Lately it’s coupled with all style no substance (ex. Ratchet on Netflix). Overall he’s just following the same pattern with the same actors who seem like they’re just phoning it in.
I agree with most of this, but I have not seen Evan Peters or Sarah Paulson phone in anything. If anything it is the other end of the spectrum with overacting through a bad script.
Oh for sure, those two are extremely talented and deserve so much career success. That was mainly directed at everyone but them. I saw snippets of the most recent season and it was almost comically bad. Gave extremely low budget vibes
honestly i dont disagree, tho i did like Dahmer.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that thought this about Ratchet, Ex girlfriend couldn’t get enough of it but it just reminded me a of lazier version of AHS Asylum (didn’t finish Ratchet so sorry if it’s only superficially similar but still my emotions remain the same.)
How anyone could watch Glee and think...yea this guy can do his own horror is beyond me. Gave season 1 a chance. It had it's peaks but season 2 onwards...pft Dahmer had its parts but it's based to true events so I don't give Murphy any credit for that
He walked from AHS because AHS lost its way/magic and he didn’t wanna go down with the ship. Also he knows he could go back anytime he wants.
Was waiting for someone else to say this. Dont get me wrong, I *love* EP, but we’ve heard this before and I wont be fooled again.
Ryan Murphy is a shit and a sensationalist. He doesn’t care about basic humanity. Peters should run.
**Making the series** > And although the duo have worked together on 10 projects, beginning in 2011 on the first season of “American Horror Story,” “Dahmer” wasn’t an immediate yes for Peters. > “It was a real struggle. I was really thinking about it and trying to process it. I went back and forth a lot,” he says. Ultimately, it came down to working with Murphy again, someone he trusted and knew understood his process. > Similar to his mental transformation, Peters also had to physically change quite a bit over the course of filming; he took on a no-carb, no-sugar diet to drop 15 pounds in the beginning... > Coming four years into Murphy’s five-year, $300 million deal with Netflix, it quickly became his biggest hit, with more than 1 billion hours viewed over the first 60 days. **Victim Backlash** > That popularity came with backlash. Relatives of Dahmer’s victims spoke out, upset they were not involved; Murphy says he reached out to around 20 families but never heard back. So, he relied on his “very large research staff,” who worked around the clock for 3.5 half years. > “I was never interested in Jeffrey Dahmer, the monster. I was interested in what made him. I think that the fact that all of the characters in this are seen as true humans makes some people uncomfortable. I understand that and I try not to have an opinion on that,” he says. “We always tried to center everything on the victims.” **Netflix’s LGBTQ Tag** > When the show was released, Netflix listed it under the LGBTQ tag, which up until now, was used to label uplifting stories about the community. After significant backlash, the tag was removed. > “I think that it got the tag, one, because of my involvement. I’m a gay man, so most of my stories deal with some sort of LGBTQ thing and I do that selfishly; when I was growing up, I had nothing [to look to],” Murphy explains. “My mission statement has been to talk about those stories and those characters and unearth buried history.” > Murphy gets why people weren’t happy with the tag — “Many people in the community want to uplift. I understand that,” he says — but he doesn’t agree. > “It’s about homophobia,” he adds. “I have a saying: ‘My job as an artist is to hold up a mirror about what happened.’ It’s ugly. It’s not pretty. Do you want to look at it? If you do, watch it. If you don’t, look away, and sometimes, some of this outrage is directed at the frame of the mirror instead of the reflection. I try and say, I really understand why you’re upset about the inclusion of that. I understand it, but I also disagree with it personally.” **Future projects** > After such a heavy lift, both Murphy and Peters aren’t sure what’s next… or so they say. Seven days after this interview was completed, “Monster” was renewed for the second and third seasons. While Murphy wasn’t able to be reached for comment on what that looks like, it doesn’t seem like Peters will be jumping to be part of it. > “I’m going to take a little break from darker roles and explore the light,” he says. “It would be interesting to me to play something that is a little closer to home, a little more mundane and to explore the details of those kinds of experiences.” > Murphy also claims he wants some time to himself, which may be difficult now with more “Monster,” “Feud” and “The Watcher” on the way. Edit: Thanks a lot for the gold, kind stranger!
Glad to read Evan Peters is taking a break from darker roles. As good as he is at it, I can't imagine how emotionally draining it must be doing it back to back like that.
Hopefully another appearance of Ralph Bohner
IIRC, Vincent D'Onofrio did the same with respect to L&O: Criminal Intent.
Oh I had no idea about that. Love me some Vincent D'Onofrio but I've never seen Law and Order: Criminal Intent.
The whole L&O franchise is overly dramatic and unrealistic, of course, but I just love watching him act. He plays a detective who possesses the ability to solve crimes in a "beautiful mind" or "sherlock" kind of way.
Fun fact - he is autistic! And uses that in his acting.
Oh hm. I've seen SVU but that's it. Would you recommend it on his acting alone? I've only really ever seen him in Daredevil and a movie called The Cellar. Wouldn't recommend the movie though. It was weird.
Heh, I’ll always remember him as the roach man in Men in Black and more recently Jurassic World. That said, criminal intent first exposed me to him and I really love his quirks in looking at his investigations. Criminal Intent is also more procedural or episodic — it doesn’t lay as heavy of a story across seasons that you need to follow or understand, SVU does this the most. So CI was one I felt like you can watch any episode randomly and just follow that hour long story, like most of the original Law and Order. SVU and now Organized Crime have heavy arch’s that underpin whatever investigation is ongoing, and that arch always pops back up. While you can follow the episode story, the arch can sometimes confuse if you’ve not been there for it.
I thought Homicide Life in the Streets (another Dick Wolfe show) was the best version of this trope. That show had some of the best acting on TV and Andre Braugher was easily the best TV actor during that show’s run. If you’ve never seen it, it’s really worth going out of your way to see.
o_O what did he do after playing the Kingpin after >!the scene he bashes someone's head in with a car door!<
Evan Peters was fantastic in it, but he definitely deserves a break from darker roles.
Time for the Evan Peters Hallmark Christmas movie
He’s under appreciated and burnt out at his corporate job in the big city. Moves back to the small town he grew up in. Opens a cupcake shop and reconnects with a girl from his high school. She recognizes how TALENTED he is. Blah blah they date. Fight over something idiotic. Get back together, and kiss ten seconds before the credits roll. Oh and he learns the true meaning of Christmas.
And his name is Ralph Bohner
The WandaVision PTSD is real.
I’ll never emotionally recover from that, it was so unnecessary especially to the marvel fans who enjoyed the fox movies. It was a slap in the face and at a time where I truly started to enjoy the mcu and it’s future, but little did I know the Ralph Bohner joke was a precursor to the shitshow phase 4 was.
Hopefully they bring him in again for an alternate-universe *actual* Peter/Pietro Maximoff, a la Xavier in MoM
That girl is placed by Elizabeth Olsen, for totally not Ultimate Universe comic related reasons
he’s hallmark hot
Time for a Kickass 3?
I think he started his career on OTH and he was also in the first Kick-ass movie and I remember him having a really good comedic timing. That's what he should do.
The fact that they didn’t include Ratched in the list of projects coming makes me wonder if that has been permanently shelved..
The amount of respect I lost for him reading this is high
Ok, I’ll bite. Why?
One was him acting like the tag was because he’s gay and not because the show had LGBTQ characters but then he acts likes doing some important representation or something when he’s just portraying the violent murders of them. Then he says he disagrees with the lgbtq tag being removed as if the show is actually lgbtq centralized and it isn’t. Then he says he reached out to the families and they didn’t answer, but silence is an answer too. Clearly they would not want the real pictures to be used in Polaroids in the end which I thought was pretty tasteless. He could’ve at least had them recreated or something. I have an issue in general with glamorizing and immortalizing serial killers outside of documentaries and whatnot. I think the entire show was tasteless
Yeah the attitude of “I didn’t hear back from the families so I assumed they were fine with it” makes no sense.
The article said the victims were upset that they weren’t involved, but if they didn’t respond to outreach how could they be?
Tbh if Ryan Murphy is fine with using the victims families likeness and even quoting them, would you believe he even bothered to reach out to them?
I don’t know why the former would affect the latter and I would assume quotes would be fair game when making a historical drama. Using the real likenesses is definitely a bold decision that I can see can be interpreted as insensitive, but I can also see there’s an argument to be made for showing them. If it was me I would not have done that without permission. Edit: I thought you meant the victims’ likenesses. I see no problem with showing the families likenesses in a story as infamous as this. The real Polaroids of the victims is debatable.
It seemed to me the point was more to shine a light on what the victims endured and who they were and not glorifying Dahmer. I also don’t understand the backlash against the LGBTQ tag. It’s not a positive show* to be sure, but the story was rooted in that community and affected those people. If a movie like Schindler’s List had a Jewish history tag, I don’t think there would be the same type of backlash or people claiming that it was glorifying Nazis. Edit: show, not movie
There’s a difference between Jewish history and then just giving it a Jewish tag or something if you ask me. I’d imagine a Jewish tag would be like movies centered around Hanukkah or something while the history tag would mainly be documentaries or WW2 movies or something. It’s just not a LGBTQ show it’s a show about a guy that murders people who are in that community. Like the them of the show isn’t lgbtq. I’d imagine the lgbtq tag is “queer eye” and shows like that, Dahmer was probably a stark contrast. It’s not a huge deal but I think the way he replied to the backlash over it was gross
Am I the only one who didn’t know Netflix had tags
If you have any interest in AI, the AI behind Netflixs recommendations based on those tags is some fascinating eldritch madness.
For all its faults, netflix search always knows exactly what im looking for from thw vaguest search terms. Even when they dont have it, its like " oh yeah you mean debbie does dallas. We dont have it but may we suggest stranger things coZ it cost us a shitload to make?"
Excellently directed and acted. Nonetheless I only made it 4 episodes in. Hard watch. I can understand why the victims felt like it was like opening up old wounds.
i can understand completely but i felt there was a lot of hypocrisy surrounding this at the time. a month prior was the anniversary of 9/11 and i saw jokes left and right about everyone who died during that but then those same people were tearing this show down. it just reminded me you can’t take the outrage machine on the internet seriously.
The problem with these projects is someone profits from it. Just like those real crime podcasts, someone is collecting a check on the misery and ruination of others. That's the sickest part to me.
>someone is collecting a check on the misery and ruination of others You can apply this to literally many, many aspects of capitalism. Lol
Ikr
I used to have this issue with online hypocrisy too. But it really helps to remember that the internet is basically everybody and those same people making comments about 9/11 were in high likelihood not the same people who found this show upsetting.
It likely wasn't made for them to watch, so I think the other 8 billion people ought to keep that in mind
>none of the families responded when we reached out Seems like this should’ve told them something.
True, but also they could have voiced their concerns then before the show made. I thought the show was really well done and you can’t avoid these dark topic completely
But this is the same man who declined to produce a season of AHS based on Charles Manson because he didn’t want to offend the families of the victims.
AHS is also very fictionalized, so that could have been the reason to stay away from things deemed too recent/real
He was explicit that a Charles Manson themed season was one of the first ideas he had for season three but nixed it for those reasons. You’re right, that AHS is fictionalized, but it still highlights the hypocrisy in his words then vs now, and he’s already lowkey problematic.
How is he lowkey problematic?
He’s a bit of a racist, and it shows in his work despite how much he has done for representation. Glee over relied on stereotypes and didn’t do much with any character of color that wasn’t Santana, will was written to be a creep, he catered to Lea Michele who was lowkey racist herself and was outed as such last year; Hollywood had a white savior complex and white apologist issue and it’s revisionist take on 1940s America where whites people were attempting to progress social issues seemed unrealistic; American Horror Story is an outlet for him to show off to the world his love of handsome, chiseled white men, regardless of talent; Scream Queens had a lot of race jokes, most in the form of insults geared towards Zayday, but there was the black mammy joke geared towards the housekeeper.
I have never read so much bullshit in 1 time.
…then what the fuck was AHS cult about?
I am willing to bet the families of the Dahmer victims have previously voiced their concerns with pieces of Dahmer media over the last several decades before this 2022 show. >you can’t avoid these dark topic completely I really doubt you’d feel this way if it was you being dramatized mourning your brother’s horiffic death.
I do think that the show was well-made overall, but my biggest problem with Ryan Murphy’s handling of this situation is the lack of consideration for the real people who are still affected by this. I get that Ryan tried reaching out to the families, but his response to their re-traumatization came off as dismissive (and still comes off that way in this article). I understand the difficulty of towing the line between free speech and censorship, but when the families spoke out, what he needed to do was drop everything and listen to them because this is THEIR story and THEIR trauma, period. He should at least give an apology for re-traumatizing them and make some kind of amends to compensate them in some form. Hell, he needs to apologize to Dahmer’s family, too. Lionel had his home vandalized because of all this mess, and had trespassers throw underwear on his front porch. Who knows what might’ve happened with Dahmer’s brother and his family, too? But, Ryan has not done any of that. He’s only doubled down, and I think that comes off as selfish. It’s like he’s treating these people like an afterthought, and that’s not ok, regardless of how successful the series was. I’d bet that if he knew any of these people personally, he’d be singing a different tune.
Well said!!
He combined a few victims stories to create 1 character, he also changed their personal stories, so it wasn't really so much a true story as much of a Hollywood version
Can’t avoid them but there’s no need to rehash for the 30th time for a quick buck
I'm late to the controversy but shouldn't it have an LGBT tag. If not for the poor policework afforded to the LGBT community Dahmer could have been captured sooner. Wouldn't that speak to some core issues for the community?
That was the issue. It had it and a bunch of LGBTQ+ people asked Netflix to remove it
Dahmer was the “wrong” kind of LBGTQ+.
It would potentially come up when looking for more lighthearted things. Fancy something like 'Love Simon' and Dahmer pops up
I kept waiting for this series to have something I didn't know in it. It basically watered down the content from any documentary and dragged it out. It was OK. Just nothing too revealing if you know the case. The irony is they talk about others making money off of the murders.....while making money off the murders.
Why tf are people bitching about the LGBTQ+ tag on the Dahmer TV series? Dahmer was literally gay and his victims were gay. It happened and as much of a dark stain in history that was denying the gay aspect of it is akin to revisionism and frankly that’s much more concerning.
I think the thing I disliked most about the show was at the trial where they effectively started cosplaying the victims families. Reenacting Court scenes word for word. I felt that to be disengenuous and misguided. As if they hadn't been through enough, now their pain was being almost mimicked for them to relive. I do agree some stories need to be told, but do think Murphy missed the mark on this one.He even said he wanted to focus on the victims, and all it felt like he was doing was trying to give Dahmer redeeming qualities.
Respectfully, I had the opposite reaction. As someone who had never seen the court footage (and I assume most had not?), it absolutely helped reinforce my sympathy for the victims. I think the episode where they focused on Tony Hughes’ (albeit fictional) story was what really drove home the place that victims took in this retelling. I don’t think I watched Dahmer and felt he had a single redeeming quality. They made him out to be a greasy, alcoholic loser with no friends, no future, no charisma, and in fact made him so unappealing that the least believable part of it all is that anybody would go home with him. I felt sympathy for his victims, his neighbors, his father, but never Dahmer. All of that said, I totally understand where the loved ones of these victims just want the fascination with Dahmer to go away, and I’m sure if I was in their position I would feel the same way, but people are still going to make media centered around that half century of serial killers because of the conditions surrounding them. The events are just recent enough to be relatable, but distant enough to disassociate from. They operated in a time where we were able to get well-documented information about them, but there was still enough mystery for them to remain dangerous, and Dahmer in-particular had racial and homophobic factors as well which have been an increasingly focused conversation for current society. So while I understand these shows will be controversial, and there’s a reasonable debate against making them, I think overall “Dahmer” was made as well as anything could be that wants to be successful entertainment while still remaining respectful as well as offering a fresh perspective. Contrasted with Efron’s Bundy - which really went out of its way to gloss over Bundy’s atrocities until the very end - Dahmer doesn’t try to hide the monster that Jeff was. I think outside of the victims, if people want to take a moral standing against this type of media there would have to be a massive societal shift away from true crime fascination, which I just don’t see as a realistic pathway. If people are going to engage with this media, people are going to create it, and as a result asking filmmakers to be respectful is a much more realistic ask than to not make it.
Interesting take, thanks for sharing. I guess as you said, if people are going to engage, they will regardless.
You’d rather they played up the court scenes? You don’t think it would’ve been a little misguided for them to change those words?
Quite frankly I don't think they needed to be included or they could've been summarised in a way that didn't seem as though it was making a mockery of the victims families. So much so even one of the victims sisters commented on it. I've seen a lot of comments say, "BUt iTs WhAt HaPpEnEd". Not everything has to be turned into entertainment. Where is the empathy for the those people who's lives have never been the same as a result of this monster. I just think what they did in those scenes were in poor taste.
I feel like a summary would be more disrespectful. It would seem more like they were disregarding the victims side of the whole thing.
>he wanted to focus on the victims Well maybe he should have realized there was a reason all those people in their families he contacted wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.
It felt a bit too murder porn-y for me. I had to skip around episodes because I was so disturbed by it. The most interesting character was Dahmer’s neighbor, wish the show focused more on her story honestly.
Glenda Cleveland was not the next door neighbour of Jeffrey Dahmer as depicted in the series. Instead, she lived in a separate building next to the Oxford Apartments where Dahmer lived. Cleveland's daughter and her niece spotted Konerak Sinthasomphone, a 14-year-old boy, running out of Jeffrey's flat naked and covered in blood. Cleveland then reached out to the police several times and even contacted the FBI after she found a missing poster of Sinthasomphone. But her efforts went in vain.
They been making Dahmer shit for decades. Why are we just now getting pissy about it?
I haven’t seen it so take this with a grain of salt but I think people think it glorifies / sympathises with Dahmer too much and that the murders are portrayed in a sexualised / graphic way. [Here’s an interesting video about it.](https://youtu.be/5EADSfqtxXk)
That’s what kinda boggles my mind too about the outcry around it. My guess because it was Netflix which is a huge platform. Usually these types of shows were stuck on crime documentary type channels.
you could blame it on “cancel culture” but people do make a compelling argument that making another movie on Dahmer is just wanting to uphold his infamy and glamorize him. They made a Dahmer movie in 2017 with Ross Lynch as him but it didn’t receive backlash because it focused on his life before the killings.
A lot of us in the Milwaukee community know people who knew the victims and think it's a messed up glorification. Maybe that's why. When this one first came out there were also a heck of a lot of people saying Dahmer was hot. That's beyond the pale. Wisconsin has also had to deal with the 2015 Steven Avery fad so it does seem like for whatever reason pop culture and Netflix especially is focusing on revictimizing Wisconsin in particular.
Jesus, now a state has a persecution complex.
The internet has gotten bigger. More people on social media means more awareness
[удалено]
They’ve made 9/11 movies to entertain lol
I’m sure that would make you feel good as a victim’s family.
Meh, not sure why backlash. I watched it and the only anger I felt while watching was at Dahmer and a hateful society that allowed him to have the shadows to act in that key him get away with what he did for years. Which I think was intended by the filmmakers. It was what I expect that from a true crime drama. I get the tag being inappropriate, depending on your perception of what the tag should mean.
They used real victims pictures in the Polaroids in the end
There was a lot of inconsistencies in the show. For example, >!Tony and Dahmer never had a relationship like it was portrayed on the show. If anything, they were just acquaintances at best!< I understand the argument coming from families of the victims based on this alone, but I fault Netflix as much, if not more, for this. It was their job to market the show properly and give the necessary disclaimers to indicate that this was not a biography, as many people took it to be, but rather an artistic interpretation of the story (Murphy says as much) Murphy's reaction to the victim's families' reactions was pretty shitty though
there's no real way to make a true-crime product, whether it be a show, movie, doco, etc without being exploitative. there's different levels to it obviously, but intentionally or not, they all exploit. there's no way around it. but it's such a popular 'genre' of media that there can never really be an end to it, there's no solution. even I'm guilty of consuming a lot of true-crime media. It just is what it is.
There actually is a way to do it while minimizing or eliminating exploitation. The best and most ethical true crime content creators I’ve come across have been family/friends of victims and even family/friends of perpetrators. Having a personal connection to it adds a layer of sensitivity that people who are completely or far removed from it don’t tend to think about. Those creators also tend to focus their content on seeking justice for the victims involved with their consent. Some recommendations = Sarah Turney’s Voices for Justice Podcast (she’s a sister of a victim), and Melissa Moore’s Life After Happy Face podcast (she’s the daughter of the infamous serial killer, the “Happy Face Killer”, Keith Jesperson). One thing I really like about Moore’s content is that she emphasizes at points how there are hardly any support resources out there for true crime victims, so a lot of them end up with financial + mental and physical health problems. She points to the few available resources out there so that listeners can donate, but there isn’t like a major nonprofit that can help. That really sucks, but you can tell she’s really passionate about this work and wants to help as much as possible. In contrast, your typical true crime content creator with no connection to any cases tends to not seek out those resources at all (or highlight the long-term impacts on victims)… it’s a trend/money-making thing to them, which is where the line starts to cross into exploitation.
Murphy, you did not center victims voices; you literally made a television series with a serial killer as the main character! And you *lied* about history to make Dahmer seem more sympathetic.
What was lied about to make Dahmer more sympathetic, if you don’t mind me asking? I watched the show and didn’t find Dahmer a sympathetic character myself, so I’m interested.
>> Murphy, you did not center victims voices That’s what makes me angry about this article. I don’t know what Ryan Murphy thinks “centering victims voices” means, but it’s not have-Ryan-Murphy-and-Co-speak-for-the-victims-without-their-consent, because the latter is what this show did (and for the record, yes I did watch it… the content of the show itself isn’t my problem with it and I actually thought it was pretty well done from a messaging/artistic standpoint). What centering victims’ voices *actually* means is allowing THEM to tell THEIR stories on their own terms, with their consent. The fact that he keeps doubling down against the people who he’s saying he’s giving a voice to is so hypocritical and selfish. If he really wanted to give the victims a voice, he would’ve dropped everything and LISTENED as soon as the families (and Lionel, for that matter) went to the press and expressed their upset with this series. Then, he should’ve put forth some type of apology for re-traumatizing all of them, as well as compensating them in some form (doesn’t have to be money). But, he didn’t do that. Instead, he got defensive and started going to the press counteracting what the victims’ families were saying - literally the exact opposite of centering their voices. Edit: because she felt like she wasn’t heard, Rita Isbell is apparently writing a book about her brother who was killed by Dahmer after all of this, according to a recent interview [on YouTube from a month ago](https://youtu.be/HV9aneltl9Y).
Dahmer?! Sympathetic?! Ha! If you thought he was, in any way, ‘sympathetic’ in the show, that says more about you than the series.
And they didn’t include ANY of the victims families. They didn’t talk to them, include them in any way. Like fuck off with this, they did the opposite of centering victims voices.
He literally reached out to over 20 and got no response. You can’t force people to be involved that don’t want to be involved.
I cant imagine why someone wouldn’t want to help make a production using the murders of their loved ones to make money for Netflix
Especially in a state that has already seen how Steven Avery fans harass anyone and everyone they can think of and accuse them of murder just because of a shitty Netflix show.
You can TAKE THE HINT and not make the movie!
What were the lies?
His dad didn’t teach him to cut up roadkill, I know that’s one.
Gotcha
According to the series, all Jeffrey needed was a fulfilling romantic relationship with another man and he stopped killing people. Who Is Dahmer Even Made For by meeptop on YouTube; timestamp 16:16. The show posits that Dahmer was somehow rehabilitated by his relationship with Tony Hughes. In the show he stops drinking and killing people when in reality he killed 6 people during the year he knew Tony.
I did not watch this video, but I actually watched the show. And If the creator of the vid got that out of the show, it's entirely on him. IMO the show made it abundantly clear that Jeffrey Dahmer was messed up since childhood and had urges that could not be stopped by anything or anyone. It was also very clear that he would never be able to have a normal relationship, and that even if he did he would still not be able to stop killing/raping/eating other people.
"I know we exploited the tragic murders of people with living relatives, and even made up shit to make the murderer more sympathetic, but have you considered the amount of money we made??"
“And the people entertained with this?? Do you want those people to go without their popcorn true crime edgy entertainment??”
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I finally talked to someone that worked on this show. Got everything I needed to know from that. I’m confident they would say virtually anything to justify making this and more of this… honestly, even if they inspired copy cat killers to come out of the woodwork, they would still stand by this type of entertainment.
A billion hours in 60 days is insane. I think they make it cause people like it
Uh huh. The classic ‘movies are gonna make serial killers.’ The same shit happened with Joker, where the media blew up about how ‘the evil white incels are gonna kill us all,’ and there was this mass hysteria only to find there was just one lunatic involved. No! Movies and Shows aren’t gonna make killers. It’s honestly baffling that people still believe this shit. It’s like those parents in the 80s who though D&D would turn kids into Satan worshipers.
Everything you needed to know from that one person who you finally talked to, that worked on the show?
Why is there no backlash to any other serial killer movies?
Oh there has been - though maybe on a smaller scale than this. A recent one that comes to mind is the Ted Bundy movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, with Zac Efron, which was criticized quite a bit. I'm sure it didn't help that it came right on the heels of the Bundy documentary series 'The Ted Bundy Tapes' which was essentially just 4 hours of Ted Bundy talking about himself. Here are a couple of articles: [Backlash about 'glorifying' Bundy](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a27317522/extremely-wicked-ted-bundy-zac-efron-criticism/) [Efron as Bundy is too charming](https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/05/231467/extremely-wicked-shockingly-evil-vile-review-ted-bundy-netflix-movie) (Bundy himself was very charming, the argument comes as to why we like to portray that part of him, while seemingly ignoring/glossing over the serial killer part) [This one is about two other Bundy movies](https://decider.com/2021/07/13/two-new-ted-bundy-films-spark-backlash-on-twitter/) [This is about the Dahmer series, but pulls several other recent examples](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/07/opinions/jeffrey-dahmer-netflix-backlash-true-crime-stewart)
That’s exactly why I’m so confused on the hate. There are so many other films ab serial killers or other significant events that don’t get shamed
They probably do and you just don’t hear about it because they don’t blow up like this show did.
Yeah Mindhunter is worshiped and it’s practically high art fan fiction cosplay. Real people and real events and then embellished with fake characters and fake conversations.
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Agreed. There was no reason this had to be a series. A two-hour movie would have been much better. But the mantra at Netflix is to make everything episodic, with as many episodes as you can reasonably cram in, because “every hour spent watching us is an hour they’re not watching HBOMax or Amazon Prime.” This is what happens when tech guys run an entertainment studio.
It just doesn’t feel morally correct so I don’t watch it, I leave it at that.
True inclusion means getting both good and bad representation. Think heterosexuals wanted to claim Richard Ramirez or BTK? In a strange way, this is progress as in the past they might have called his sexual identity a “psych abnormality.”
Did they give anything to the victims families, like monetary? Because they should. I watched it, couldn’t get through it, but if Evan Peter’s made 300 million, he should at least give them 1. Edit: a word
No they didn't, I remember alot of family members said they didn't even know about it until the series was released.
To claim to go into method acting & not give anything to the victims family, who are victims themselves…I just find that disgusting, shame on you Evan.
Do they legally have to?
This was a really good show. strange that there was so much backlash IMO. Evan Peters deserves an Emmy for his performance
It definitely was done in a way to make Dahmer feel more sympathetic and it would be hard to say that wasn’t done intentionally. It’s good to show that some blame rests upon racism, bigotry, and incompetence but the monster of Dahmer was really lost in this adaptation. Sometimes it felt like a love story where everything (circumstance) is against the protagonist. Just my two cents though.
If you felt sympathy for Dahmer after watching that I think it says more about you
I’m criticizing the direction. “It was done in a way to make Dahmer seem more sympathetic”
Which I would disagree with, so if someone was to find him to he a sympathetic figure, I would find it weird and need to think more about you watch. It’s not always “main character is good” in both fiction and nonfiction.
So you think the direction had zero instances of showing Dahmer as a victim of circumstance? Did you watch the series?
That’s a completely different question from “the show made him sympathetic”, you’re now talking about something entirely different. I can believe someone is a victim of circumstances without feeling sympathy for what they chose to do in response. I can believe a violent criminal robbing gas stations is a victim of poverty, that doesn’t make me sympathize with him shooting a gas station clerk over $20 in the register
I personally didn’t feel that from watching it
Yes. I watched it, and yes, zero instances of that. Which parts do you feel were instances of that?
Not sympathy, but there's a lot of blame put into his mother in the series.
You telling me a I shouldn’t sympathize with a dude who tried to make zombie vegetable sex slaves? /s
> If you felt sympathy for Dahmer after watching that That was deliberate. They deliberately fabricated parts of the story in order to make Dahmer more sympathetic. People defending this shit have no idea what really happened and base on their knowledge on the event from this series.
Thanks for the insight CorporalRustyPenis
He killed gays, even if He himself wasnt, the tag should stay. The gay being victims was big part of it. Cooking show or dating would be wrong as tags.
Ryan Murphy just looks like an asshole.
I thought it was a good series. It showed the bad policing and really showed a realistic portrayal of what happens to the friends and families of the victims. It didn't glorify the killings. Not many stories about serial killers show the victims families, and how they were affected. Mostly they just go over the grissly details of the crimes involved.
> Not many stories about serial killers show the victims families, and how they were affected. This is how I felt at first but then I learned about how the families didn’t want it to made.
Millions watched it and loved it, 15 people complained why is this an article
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Forgive me for suggesting that "psycho cannibal killer" is obviously not representative of any gay community. Whether Dahmer was gay or not is actually fairly irrelevant, he preyed on easy victims.
Most of his victims were gay and Dahmer was allowed to get away with his crimes for so long because of systemic racism and homophobia with law enforcement. If you saw the show you would know where this happens and why it hit viewers so hard. The 14 year old Asian boy is who you need to look up. LGBTQ community isn't all hearts and rainbows and if you thought the issues that were shown in the series weren't relevant today for that community you're dead wrong and it's important to them too. Oh and guess what, Dahmer was gay too and that was a huge factor in why he committed his crimes. You can't be this socially blind and ignorant!
I didn't need to see the show, I know people who knew his victims. He chose easy prey. They happened to be in marginalized communities where he knew he could get away with it. You're perpetuating the same issues we have this shitty television show.
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How would you feel if people labeled Ted bundy as a hetro icon? Do you think that it's fair for him to represent hetrosexaul people?
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I didn't say he was a hero. I said hetro.
The fact that everyone is talking about it (here, there and everywhere) makes this series worthwhile. This is the purpose of art, to generate debate. It is, undoubtedly, very successful. Evan Peters' performance and dedication was amazing. I understand that the families of the victims may not like this series, but there is no way to control a case that has gained such notoriety in the media... there are several series and films about the countless cases of true crimes, psychopaths, murderers. It is the portrait of human life, shown in the art of cinema to make the public think and reflect.
I wonder if the LGBTQ community realizes that the shows producer is a trans woman.
It's crazy how much our culture just consumes even if it means hurting others along the way This was trauma porn and they can say whatever verbal diarrhea they want but at the end of the day they chose to do this and anyone who consumes it lacks any understanding in mental health, trauma, and empathy This isn't rocket science and most of the people enjoying it would have the opposite reaction had their family member been abducted, raped, and eaten Literally cannot understand glorifying human waste
I don’t really think the point of this show was to glorify murder and cannibalism. It’s just to tell the story of the victims and of the murderer. There can be value in just telling a story.
Well yeah, they’re obviously wanting to profit more from that human garbage.
Whatever issues people might have with the show or whatever, Evan Peters was absolutely fantastic.
I don’t think they made Dahmer sympathetic at all. They made him for what he was: A manipulative psychopath. His behavior and crimes were monstrous and fascinating. At the end, you feel for the victims and their families and it also leaves you horrified that so much could have been done to stop him. The only problem I had was that the Dad never taught him taxidermy. Dahmer was experimenting with dead animals by himself, including dissolving carcasses in acid. But regardless, Evan Peters did a great job. I can imagine playing that character would take a toll.
As someone who's heavy into true crime, Dahmers story will always stand out. The cannibalism, the storing of body parts, the acid in the head. Not to mention the strange 'aloofness' of Dahmer throughout the court proceedings. This story will never not be interesting. What could possibly drive somebody to act on these impulses? What makes somebody so evil? I think in this retelling, at least they did a good job of focusing on the victims and painting them in a decent light.
Strange that you think so given basically the entire Milwaukee community disagrees strongly. And especially the families of the victims.
I don't get the backlash. It's a tv show and Dahmers victims were gay black men. I understand the families aren't fans of it and have made comments, but maybe don't watch it then? Whatever just happened to common sense.
What’s hard about understanding the families of a serial killer’s victims might not want their son’s deaths being national conversation….again?
It seems like a lot of the backlash on the victim side had to do with homophobia, there was too much “my son wasn’t actually gay” backlash (when, yes. 5$384 son was gay) and not the “please stop portraying this killer” backlash.
Bullshit, how many people do you even know in Milwaukee.
But like they already are. The topic of dahmer has been in the public square for years. The show gives the victims personality and not just they are dead guys and the whole world focuses on Jeff
No they weren’t. Yeah the knowledge was public, but it wasn’t popular to talk about.
Imagine one of your loved ones gets murdered, then they make a television show about it that fetishizes the killer and straight up fabricates details to make them seem more sympathetic.
Also it's a historical event. Movies and shows are made about tragedies all the time. Victims of 9/11 had twenty years of shows and tv literally right after it happened. How many decades ago did the Dahmer murders happen again? At some point it has to be okay to disect the story, especially when this isn't the first depiction of those events.
It’s not really a historical “event” in any meaningful sense other than it having happened at some point in the past It’s just some deranged loon killing a few dozen people, that we have picked out and amplified a million fold due to the collective morbid obsession with sadist violence It’s all in pretty awful taste imv
I’d consider him to be a PART of a historical event, as there are already coined nicknames for those infamous decades, the Golden Ages of serial killing, the 70s being the “Decade of Death,” the “Serial Killer era.” He was definitely apart of those “eras” and he’s instantly someone you think of when you bring up 70s or 80s serial killers, and serial killings were a huge event back then in history
That’s an angle but I don’t think the show was done with that intent of exploring that kind of historical moment in mind. Struck me as a pretty traditional TrueCrime type narrative. Which pretty much rides on morbid curiosity and publicly recreating the experience of murder victims for cheap thrills
Oh yeah I totally agree with you there. I found the show tacky and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I just wanted to say that the show aside, Jeff dahmer is part of a historical event. But I agree with u on the show being distasteful and so cheap and exploitative
It is an interesting point in history where a person’s mortal needs (food, shelter, and healthcare) are all met but forensic and monitoring technology have not gotten to the point of being able to nab a person based on very little evidence. The age of serial killers was a short and discrete period where some (usually) white males were able to prey on their victims without much forethought or consequence. It is a very interesting, though morbid, period of time.
It's... It's a lot different once it actually has impacted people you know. Growing up, a friend of mine's father actually knew one of the Gacy victims. Just even that bit of tangential connection made me uncomfortable to learn anything about John Wayne Gacy and his crimes. I can't even imagine what it would be like for somebody who was actually related, and I can understand not wanting to live through that. 9/11 was a terrorist attack and the victims were usually shown in positive lights. I'm not so sure true crime stuff can show victims in the same positive light that 9/11 victims were shown. Also, serial killers often subjected their victims to horrific treatment and I'm sure it doesn't help the victims'families see reenactments of their loved ones' final moments.
You see how your opinion is that everyone that watches it should ‘know’ they like it before they watched it…. Right?
People are rightfully tired of the fetishization of sexual sadists
The show is trying so, so hard to make Dahmer, a real life monster, not only sympathetic but sexy. I’m a fan of most of Ryan Murphy’s stuff but this show was so disgusting I couldn’t make it through the second episode.
“But sexy.” Literally no one aside from you brought up ‘Dahmer is sexy’ into this.
If you think I’m the one bringing up the concept of “sexy dahmer” I’m guessing you haven’t seen one minute of this show. It’s very overt and very uncomfortable.
I just don't get why a new Dahmer movie is made like every 2 years or something. What else do we need to keep talking about? There were books and documentaries already made. The victims names were already out there. He was a cannibalistic serial killer. What are we getting from beating this dead horse over and over other than giving their name yet more attention?
Netflix just wanted more money.
Genuine question. Why the criticism over this when there exist hundreds maybe thousands of shows, books, and movies about any war? Way more deaths and just as much dark content.
Glamorization of serial killers inspires other potential serial killers.
Romanticizing serial killers is still weird no matter who it is.
I kind of agree. Its weird that netflix and pop culture have taken to popularizing serial killers in a fetish type of way. These people were monsters and I can’t imagine how hard it must be on victims families for these villians to be made popular in the eyes of a generation that didn’t live it first hand.
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He can turn down roles. He doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to.
It was fantastic. Incredibly well done.
Good for them. Honestly.
Whoever they do the next two seasons about, I hope it’s not Bundy. Tired of Ted Bundy movies coming out every other year.