Warning: This post features explicit details of murder that could be triggering for some readers.
Listen to this story being read by Gemma Bath, here.
I spend my days telling the worst kinds of stories; murder, rape, assault, child abuse and suicide.
These are the kinds of topics I immerse myself in as News Editor and host of our True Crime Conversations podcast here at Mamamia.
I do this work because I believe in telling victims, and survivors, stories. I want perpetrators held to account, and I want to make sure that by talking about their crimes, we can make sure we learn the lessons that might stop them from happening again.
I watch a hell of a lot of true crime documentaries and shows. You'd think I'd reach my limit at work... but no, that interest follows me home too. I am known to settle in on a Friday night with the latest true crime streaming service offering, which is exactly how I found myself watching Netflix's Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story last week.
Watch the trailer for Netflix's Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Post continues below.
But I got two episodes in and had to turn it off.
Don't get me wrong, the cinematography and casting was brilliant, but the delivery was so unsettling and so graphic that I simply couldn't stomach it.
As a biographical crime drama, this retelling is by no means a documentary. It's actors playing real people, who bring the story to life. I started watching because I do enjoy these types of 'based on a true story' series. I thought Stan's Nitram for example, which followed the story of the man who murdered 35 people in Tasmania's Port Arthur massacre in 1996, was really well done. But this felt different.
Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer - known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster - who murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. His crimes were heinous. He didn't just kill his victims; he dismembered them, raped them, and took part in necrophilia and cannibalism.
This series explores of all that - in gruesome detail - and that's where it crossed the line for me. In Nitram, we didn't see the final moments of victims. There was actually no violence involved - it was all just alluded. But in this retelling, we watch these boys and men's final moments on screen. We see heads in fridges. We see Dahmer being intimate with his deceased victims and drinking blood from IV bags. We see closeups of victims' bloodied, bruised faces in death, and him disposing of their lifeless bodies.
Sure, that makes sense in a fictionalised horror film, but these are real people, with real families who are still very much alive. I felt uncomfortable watching their realities play out on my screen with all the suspense and theatre a 'serial killer show' demands. There is a difference between showing blood in the context of a documentary exploring a case, and seeing it dramatised with suspenseful music and actors depicting the fear those men must have felt.
According to Netflix, the new series aimed to "give notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims a voice."
It does in the sense that it tells the story of marginalised communities, and police racism and homophobia at the time - all important factors to revisit and reflect on. But I would push back on the inference that this series 'gives them a voice' when it focuses more on their killer and the way he murdered them, than their lives.
Read more: Glenda was convinced her neighbour was a serial killer. Police didn’t believe her.
The families say otherwise too.
"I’m not telling anyone what to watch, I know true crime media is huge rn, but if you’re actually curious about the victims, my family (the Isbell’s) are pissed about this show," tweeted Eric Perry, who says he is a cousin of Errol Lindsey who was murdered by Dahmer in 1991.
"I was never contacted about the show," Errol's sister Rita Isbell said in a personal essay published on Insider.
"I feel like Netflix should've asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn't ask me anything. They just did it.
"I could even understand it if they gave some of the money to the victims' children... the victims have children and grandchildren. If the show benefited them in some way, it wouldn’t feel so harsh and careless. It’s sad that they’re just making money off of this tragedy. That’s just greed."
It's not a new concept to recreate real-life events for screen. And of course, you can't please everyone. But I have no connection to any of the men murdered in this show, and I myself felt uncomfortable. It just felt too real and graphic and personal.
There's a time and place for letting crime inspire entertainment, but this series took it too far. I have never been one for gore - something this show has in spades - but it's more than that.
It's a depressing, horrible watch with very little reprieve, and it's made even more distressing by the fact that it actually happened.
Feature Image: Netflix.
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