It is one of the most watched series on Netflix, which has accumulated 500 million hours of viewing during the first 28 days of its broadcast and has generated a lot of reactions on social networks: “Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story “, fiction series around the life and crimes of the serial killer nicknamed “the cannibal of Milwaukee” broke all records. As a reminder, Jeffrey Dahmer (played in Ryan Murphy’s mini-series by actor Evan Peters) is a serial killer, who died in 1994, who murdered 17 young gay men in the 1980s, most of them African-Americans. .
Quickly, the figure of Jeffrey Dahmer and the universe associated with it (including his instruments of torture, or his cannibalism) became viral online: memes galore, parody videos on Tik Tok, sale of products bearing the image of the serial killer, explosion of disguise sales for Halloween… To the point that even the former Minister of Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, refers to it in a Tik Tok video to talk about 49-3, causing a bad buzz in passing. Sonya Lwu, who runs a YouTube channel specialized in criminal affairs and criminology, has the impression that “people disconnect with reality because it is a series and not a documentary, and at no time does it indicate that the series is inspired by real events “. Before adding: “the problem with the Internet is that things go viral and everyone comes to add their two cents, even under cover of clumsiness”.
The fascination with serial killers, a phenomenon far from new
A clumsiness that can go far, like the Complex Club, nightclub in Aix-en-Provence, which decided to dedicate an entire evening to the serial killer on the occasion of Halloween. In a montage relayed on its Instagram account, the club showed images of real victims of the murderer as well as bloody crime scenes. A communication and a macabre theme that have earned the club hundreds of insulting messages on social networks. “People are flabbergasted with that, but the fascination for serial killers has always existed: when you look at Ted Bundy or even Landru in France… Dahmer was already a meme before the series” explains Sonya Lwu. Even before Ryan Murphy produced the miniseries, serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer already had their memes. “I think it’s part of a defense mechanism against this kind of horrible acts, it’s a very dark humor that allows you to breathe on this type of subject” analyzes the criminology expert.
But as usual on the Internet, the sudden success of the series surprised everyone, including the creators of “True Crime” content, specializing in criminal cases. “I felt the same after the release of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the biopic about Ted Bundy (played by Zac Efron, editor’s note), but more accentuated” is surprised Sonya Lwu. The series seems to have reached a large audience, including not necessarily fans of criminal cases. “People either loved it or hated it, but no one was indifferent,” adds Sonya Lwu. Like many series, that of Ryan Murphy benefited from a popularity snowball effect, where everyone started to watch it at the same time. A success to which must be added its release a few weeks before Halloween…
Saint Bernard syndrome and a story that sometimes forgets the victims
As Sonya Lwu reminds us, the sometimes obsessive fascination with serial killers is not new. She gives the example of Richard Ramirez, a serial killer nicknamed “The Tracker”, who committed ten rapes and 14 murders in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1985. Sentenced to the death penalty, he received, like many other serial killers, dozens of love letters from young girls. “I hang it up a lot on women, with a bit of a desire to protect these people. This is what I call the Saint-Bernard syndrome: we will identify with the outsider, with the misunderstood guy, telling ourselves that if he had received more love, it would be better” develops the specialist in criminology.
Some videos or messages on social networks even focus on an argument aimed at “apologizing” Dahmer, without taking into account the victims and what they may have suffered. In the case of the Ryan Murphy miniseries, the families of the victims were not consulted. If globally, the stories around serial killers are very much centered around a certain romanticization of the perpetrators of violence, Sonya Lwu was quite surprised at the treatment made by the series. “The first episodes are very centered on him, and the further you go, the more there is a huge place that is made for the victims and their families. The show doesn’t talk so much about Dahmer,” she adds. If the reproaches of the families of victims to Ryan Murphy are legitimate, “the series is not the worst thing that I have seen in terms of the treatment of victims”. A few days before Halloween, the controversy around the figure of Dahmer seems to continue…