Would You Like Some Serial Killers With Your Binge Watching?

Monday is about movies. Or TV. Today, it's about the Netflix series "Dahmer".

When Jeffrey Dahmer was captured, jailed, and then killed by fellow inmates, it was worldwide news. The monster was grounded, and then terminated, and international bulletins did a surface skim – telling us that this closeted gay man, a disturbed loner, had engaged in necrophilia and cannibalism. In maximum security, word had gone around about the severity of his crimes, and he had been destroyed by other killers and career criminals.

I was in my final year of high school, and remember this vividly. When I moved to Wellington to attend university, the first big gig I saw was the band Violent Femmes. Their brand-new album had a 30-second song-snippet called Dahmer is Dead. I hoped they would play it that night at the concert, not actually expecting it. But they did!

And so, I read a couple of books about Dahmer, a couple more that mentioned him alongside other infamous killers (Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy) and then in the early 2000s I saw a biopic, some docos and a few other movies about other serial killers.

These sorts of films have always been connected – for me at least – to watching horror films. The true horror of this extreme true crime material is lurid and oddly captivating. My cod philosophy 101 take has always been that we are interested in learning about such monsters because it makes us feel better about anything bad, we have done in this life. At least I never went that far!

 I wasn’t going to watch Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, new to Netflix and a top-trending show. One that is inspiring a bit of old-fashioned water-cool chat.

I wasn’t going to watch it because I know the story. And I wasn’t going to watch it because of the sick and odd glorification; this trend to get a cool, young lead actor – maybe someone with some sex appeal even – and go through a story that’s not only abhorrent but also well known in the culture already.

Netflix, too, loves a sickening true crime story: Its desperation to pull back some market share has seen it pump out the limited series’ talking about rapists, murderers, serial fraudsters and kidnappers. The torture-porn of it all is too much for many, but just as often we unwind at the end of a day traipsing through our lives by watching the story of someone far worse than us or anyone we know – we call it interesting and remind ourselves that in our darkest moments we never went that low eh!

Netflix isn’t telling great stories here; it’s making serial killers sexy! If it does that, people will watch. If people tell themselves after, that some great acting helped tell a great story then that’s just a huge bonus.

So I was never going to watch Dahmer – no way. And also, as I said, no need. I’ve clipped that bus ticket already, and the recent film My Friend Dahmer was my final viewing on the matter. Not that it’s in any way definitive, I’d just had enough. I’d read the graphic novel/memoir it was based on (and I genuinely do recommend that).

One of the many times recently when I’ve been asked if I was watching the new Dahmer, I said that I couldn’t be bothered – and also I didn’t condone it at all, and furthermore, Jeffrey Dahmer was the worst of them actually. Because there was such sadness there and society was not to carry the entire blame, but there was baggage there that was different to the cold-hearted duplicity of Gacy, for interest, or the arrogance and alleged charm of Bundy.

But I have a now 11yo boy who asked me if he could watch Dahmer. That is obviously its own worry – but something I understand, since when I was a teen, I was reading about Ed Gein and Ted Bundy and others. Like I said, part of the journey when you’re a horror fan. A significant part of the true crime wheelhouse too. Kids at school egg each other on to be more advanced than their mates, to push the boundaries, to pretend like they’re taking some real risks. And that’s a separate, more worrying story actually. Teenage boys, in particular, and I consider my son at 11 to be similar to where I was at when 13-14 given the hyper-speed of the internet obliterating all playing fields.

When Anthony Hopkins won awards for his portrayal of the famous fictional serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, we didn’t yell about glorification. We talked about range.

There was never any way I was going to let Oscar watch Dahmer –  don’t  worry. As liberal as I am with allowing him to see a lot of stuff that is restricted to an older age, as long as we’re watching it together and talking about it I do have some pretty clear lines.

But maybe I should watch what I’m not allowing him to see?

Recently, I’ve been reading Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Murderers. It’s an easy read, given the subject matter, and it’s useful; reminding us of the mainstream media’s complicity in making shock-value stories for the If It Bleeds It Leads files. There are better books on the subject, but as a very basic 101 this is helpful and at times illuminating.

Last night I watched the first half of the new Dahmer series.

And…I am loving it.

All my satchel-clutching stories about the glorification of it and the social responsibility that Netflix is ignoring, and the fact that I already knew everything you need to know about the story and probably a bit extra that you really didn’t need to know…well, all of that went away almost instantly.

The first episode pulled me in – with taut, tension-filled filmmaking. A beautifully intense, dark, and subtly propulsive score by the dream team of Warren Ellis and Nick Cave caught my ear immediately, and the acting of Evan Peters (Dahmer) was instantly hypnotic. By the time that legendary character actor, Richard Jenkins arrived on the scene as Dahmer’s dad I was sold.

Which means I’m a hypocrite.

Which is part of why we are drawn to such stories. We don’t, for a second, understand how any of this could happen. We condemn it, we could never condone it in any way. And yet we fill our heads with these stories. We tell ourselves that we are getting a deeper look into the troubling world of the darkest reaches of the most forbidden desires of the most desperate, confused and unhinged humans; people that – in the end – could barely pass as human. And we are doing it to remind ourselves of what it is to be human, of what it takes, and of how we make it along in this world mostly just fine, certainly without sinking as low as a person can seemingly go.

It is a strange, but compelling place to drag one’s self.

So I’ll be hoovering up the last of Dahmer across the next couple of nights. And I will tell myself that it has been worth it. And I will find something ‘light’ to follow it up. And then I’ll read another book about another killer, and I’ll go down a wee rabbit hole for a bit. And then Netflix will cast a handsome young, white, male star (perhaps a former teen idol or someone known only for being ‘good’ in movies) as the next monster in the next must-see glorification of the personification of actual true evil. And I will say that it’s horrible. I won’t need to see that. I’ll watch anything else for a bit. Then I’ll decide that I should probably see what it’s all about anyway, just to figure it out or write it off.

And I’ll sit down and hoover that up too.