It was this weekend the most viewed series on Netflix, topping the top 10 in more than 70 countries. This Monday, Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is still number 1. However, it was put online on the sly last Wednesday, without much announcement effect or advertising zeal. Surprising, given that one of the co-creators of the series is none other than Ryan Murphy, one of the most powerful showrunners, linked to the platform by a 300 million dollar contract.
This reduced visibility therefore did not prevent the ten episodes from finding their (large) audience. This is not entirely a surprise because content related to true crimes, news items, regularly make the beautiful hearings of Netflix. And then, Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the most infamous serial killers in the United States.
Between 1978 and 1991 he killed seventeen young men and teenagers. The details provoke disgust. He drugged several of his victims whom he planned to turn into “zombies”. He ended up killing them, then dismembering them. He also conducted “experiments” by dissolving flesh with acid, and his criminal enterprise also included rape and acts of cannibalism. Sordid.
Evan Peters, chilling
Is the spectator who decides to launch the viewing moved by a macabre voyeurism? Maybe. The first episode is chillingly dark. Unlike other Ryan Murphy series, including The Assassination of Gianni Versace tracing the criminal odyssey of Andrew Cunanan, no flashy sequence, camp, or humorous does not defuse the tension. Evan Peters, in the title role, is chilling. He delivers what is called a performance.
“We are tempted to try to understand and know definitively why someone like Jeffrey Dahmer is what he is. Or was. We will never know the reason for his actions. It’s an unpleasant truth, but you have to accept it, ”says a judge character in one of the last episodes. The series thus tells us explicitly that it cannot claim to explain why the killer acted in this way.
The anger of the relatives of the victims
Was it really necessary, then, to dive back, through fiction, into the horror of this affair which has already been recounted in a profusion of articles, books and documentaries? No, say the relatives of the victims. “My family is angry at this series. It brings the trauma back again and again, and for what? “, was indignant on Twitter Eric, the cousin of Errol Lindsey, murdered in April 1991. “This revives a certain trauma for the LGBT community of Milwaukee [dans le Wisconsin, où Jeffrey Dahmer a commis la majorité de ses crimes] “, told the Fox Scott Gunkel, who worked in a gay bar in the city at the time.
Criticisms that must be heard and that the series seems to anticipate when it evokes the way in which the serial killer was glamorized by pop culture: he had become “a Halloween costume”, appeared on humorous Christmas cards , was the hero of a series of comics such as Dahmer against Jesus. Hollywood also considered bringing the story to the screen through the book written by Jeffrey Dahmer’s father…
The turning point of episode 6
“It’s not a Halloween story, it’s my life!” exclaims Glenda Cleveland, Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbor – wonderfully portrayed by Niecy Nash – when her relatives talk to her about trying to find a peaceful existence once the criminal is behind bars.
“It’s not a Halloween story, it’s shattered lives,” could be the series’ note of intent. Halfway through, the scenario abandons the criminal to focus on his victims and their loved ones. The moving episode 6 is thus devoted to Tony Hugues, a young deaf and mute thirty-year-old, shown as a solar being and full of love, whose end was tragic. A little later, it is the trauma of the Sinthasomphone family that is examined. One of their sons, Konerak, was killed at age 14 by Dahmer after he managed to escape. Two police officers found him in the street, naked, his head bleeding, visibly under substance. Despite Glenda Cleveland’s protests, they preferred to believe the white twenty-something who explained to them that it was her boyfriend, that he had been drinking, that they had argued. The police did not seek to find out more and delivered the teenager to the predator before turning on their heels.
“The more I learned about the case, the more I realized it was more than a horror show. It is a metaphor for the evils that afflict the nation, ”says, in episode 7, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a figure in the fight for civil rights. The majority of Dahmer’s victims were racialized men from underprivileged backgrounds, whom he lured to his home with the promise of paying them $50 in exchange for photos. Jesse Jackson points to “bad policing, underserved community, low value placed on young men of color, especially if they’re gay.” People of color still have no voice, and when we speak up, we are too often ignored. »
“You believe a white person who has a record more than a black person who doesn’t”
On these aspects, the scenario is edifying, it recalls the many times when the police could have arrested Jeffrey Dahmer, but they did not. For example, the fact that Ronald Flowers was found drugged in a field the day after his encounter with the criminal did not lead to a thorough investigation. “If I understand correctly, you believe a white man who has a record more than a black man who does not,” the young man annoys in front of a police officer.
“It’s a story of deep systemic injustice, of people who have been hurt and let down by society in many ways,” said Rashad Robinson, series producer and president of Color of Change. » In a video used for the promotion of the program, he pleads in favor of the good intentions of the series: “It is a different story from those that have already been told. Certainly, it is about Dahmer, but also about the victims and the community. And the appalling impact that has had, not only the acts of which Dahmer was capable, but also the way in which the police were complicit, who have the leadership in Milwaukee, the media and many others in society. It is not a lone wolf affair contrary to what is said each time. »
Glenda Cleveland, heroine
Accounts of the case generally tend to obscure Glenda Cleveland’s role. Living in a building next to that of Jeffrey Dahmer, she called the police several times to tell them her concerns about the fate of Konerak Sinthasomphone. In vain.
The series gives him back his place. She is shown there as living in the apartment adjoining that of the murderer, hearing the cries and smelling the pestilential odors emanating from the adjoining accommodation. According to Milwaukee Sentinel, she would be amalgamated, for the purposes of fiction, with Pamela Bass, the real direct neighbor of Dahmer. “She embodies how we don’t treat the people who should be the protagonists of the story as such, as a result of which we make the wrong decisions by not paying attention to the people we should be listening to,” Rashad said. Robinson.
It is therefore no coincidence that Glenda Cleveland is the first character to appear in episode 1 and if the final episode ends with her departure. His dignity, his strength of indignation and the refusal to remain impassive in the face of horror triumph. She is the heroine that the series celebrates.