CNN
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Netflix will feature plenty of big-name stars in the coming weeks as the streaming service begins its ramp up to awards season. But its current leader, its MVP of the month, is Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer who died in 1994.
“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” is currently Netflix’s most-watched title, according to its self-reported data released Sept. 27, racking up more than 196 million watch hours over the past week. And in case that didn’t satisfy interest in all things Dahmer, it will be followed on October 7 by “Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes,” the latest installment in that docuseries franchise, which in the past has featured Ted Bundy and more recently John Wayne Gacy.
Clearly, there is an enduring fascination with serial killers that has fueled interest in some of the most prolific and heinous strata of them – what criminologist Scott A. Bonn has called “monsters of celebrities” in a 2017 article for Psychology Today – so the public is hardly an innocent bystander in this rather sordid equation.
Yet the renewed fascination with Dahmer again raises the question of whether these Hollywood productions featuring charismatic actors – here, Evan Peters, while Bundy has been played by Mark Harmon and in recent years Zac Efron, Chad Michael Murray and Luke Kirby – can’t help but romanticize them in a media-obsessed age. (In an interview last year, Kirby admitted he had to overcome “an ‘ick’ factor” before taking on the role of Bundy in “No Man of God.”)
‘Monster’ producers Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan were clearly aware of these concerns, seeking to put more emphasis on Dahmer’s 17 victims and a justice system that allowed him to get away with murder as well. long as he did.
Nonetheless, there’s a disturbing quality to the way the program — with the benefit of 10 episodes to tell the tale — extends some of these encounters and portrays the grisly evidence of Dahmer’s crimes.
Netflix opted not to make the series available for review before its debut, which didn’t hurt a commercial performance that ranks among the best of its dramas, such as “Stranger Things” and “Bridgerton.” This strategy also might have avoided some of the controversy that subsequently emerged over the production’s impact on the families of the murdered Dahmers.
In a first-person account for Insider, for example, Rita Isbell, the sister of Dahmer victim Errol Lindsey, said she was featured on the show: “I feel like Netflix should have asked if it bothered us or how we felt about doing this. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it.
As noted, interest in “famous freaks” is nothing new, and Dahmer’s current resurgence isn’t the first and won’t be the last we’ve seen of him, either documentary or dramatized. . In a crowded media landscape, serial killers have acquired their own currency.
What the genre’s popularity doesn’t address, however, is, as Kirby put it, the “ick” factor. While “Monster” may have sought to pre-empt some criticism, it’s one that Netflix – and indeed, the entertainment industry – hasn’t addressed.
“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” is currently streaming on Netflix, and “Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes” will premiere on October 7.