viewership record
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The new Netflix series Dahmer – Monster: the Jeffrey Dahmer story causesquite a stir. Far too gruesome and explicit, or so it sounds in theinternational press and on social media. Meanwhile, the series does break aviewership record.
Marijn SlijperOctober 3, 202203:00
When Jeffrey Dahmer’s father reports to the police station, the officers havesome unpleasant news. They found “several objects indicating that your soncommitted multiple murders”. As there are: a human head, two hearts, malegenitalia, five skulls, a complete skeleton and a vessel of acid containingthree torsos. The ‘different objects’ are also depicted. After all, such asummary is only abstract. Based on the remains on the cookware, the policealso believe that Dahmer ate some of his victims. Officer to father: “We’llleave you alone for a while to get yourself together.”
A little earlier we saw how things usually work. From Dahmer’s dingy apartmentcomes the sound of a power saw. The next shot, he rinses a bloodied carvingknife. He then picks up his next victim in a gay bar. Dahmer ostentatiouslylocks the door. Just as emphatically he mixes a narcotic substance into thebeer. And so the horror is staged for twenty minutes.
The new Netflix series Dahmer leave little to the imagination. Theperversion is especially good in the first two episodes. That has come to becriticized by the makers. The explicit scenes are disrespectful to the victimsand their relatives, it sounds like. After all, the series is not fiction, buttrue crime. Between 1978 and 1991, lust killer, necrophile and cannibalJeffrey Dahmer murdered seventeen boys and men. He could go on for far toolong. He ended up getting 15 life sentences. After two years he was murderedby fellow inmates.
fuss
It is striking that Netflix launched the series almost silently. When aproducer like Ryan Murphy, who was brought in by Netflix for a record amountof 300 million dollars, comes up with something new, it is usually preceded bya sophisticated promotional campaign. This time, the promotion was limited toa trailer that was dropped on the internet five days before release.
Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer in the new Netflix series.Image SERBAFFO/NETFLIX
Among other The Guardian suggests that Netflix itself may also realize thatit did not produce an overly sophisticated product. “Hard to watch andnauseating,” the British newspaper said. “It seems like something has gone sowrong that Netflix has decided to create as little attention as possible.”
That didn’t work out too well. In the five days after its release, the serieshad already been watched 196.2 million hours. In comparison: the second mostwatched series reached 60.97 million viewing hours. Dahmer therefore sets arecord: never before have so many people watched a series on Netflix in theweek of the premiere.
Film critics, however, are a lot less enthusiastic. Metacritic, a site thatbrings together reviews, calculated a score of 4.5 out of 10. “A carnival ofhorror”, for example, writes The Telegraph.
Netflix itself emphasizes in a message on the website that it gives Dahmer’svictims a voice. The streaming service says it will show the story from thevictims’ point of view. In addition, they take “a critical look atinstitutional racism, white privilege and homophobia”. Initially, Netflixlabeled the series – in addition to ‘dark’ and ‘horror’ – also as ‘lhbtq’.Community members were outraged and eventually the tag was removed.
Critical look
The makers show themselves, certainly later in the series, critical ofsociety. After all, the police action in the Dahmer case was lax. Not leastbecause the perpetrators were white and the victims of color, and often gay.For example, episode two shows how black local residents find a bloodied,unconscious and unclothed boy. They call the police, but when Dahmerapproaches and claims it is his drunken eighteen-year-old friend, they believehim. The agents will still go to Dahmer’s apartment. For fear of “walking intosomething” they barely get past the front door. Konerak Sinthasomphone, agedfourteen, is murdered.
The episode also makes clear why the makers are accused of sensationalism.Horrifying is the scene in which Sinthasomphone undergoes a primitive kind oflobotomy. That ultimately overshadows Netflix’s “critical eye.”
Relatives of Dahmer’s victims are also not very impressed by all the goodintentions. Rita Isbell, sister of Errol Lindsey, one of the victims, wrote apersonal essay on insider. The series reenacts her emotional speech incourt: “I was never contacted about the series. I think Netflix should haveasked us if we objected and how we feel about it. They didn’t ask me anything.They just got to work.” As far as she’s concerned, the streaming service isall about money: “Netflix wants to earn.”
Her cousin Eric Perry also makes himself heard. On Twitter, he addressed thoseplanning to watch the series: “If you’re really curious about the victims, myfamily is frustrated with the series. It traumatizes again and again. And forwhat? How many films, series and documentaries are yet to come?”