TW: Contains references to serial murders, gore, Nazi imagery, and incest
Between self proclaimed lovers of dark humor, true crime enthusiasts and those who obsess over Luigi Mangione, violence has become increasingly idealized. This fascination often shows up in entertainment and popular culture. A standout example of romanticized crime comes from a series that was second on Netflix’s most watched list when it debuted, with over 12 million views. Each season is centered around different convicted murderers, and each story is more gruesome than the last.
The latest installment of “Monster,” released Oct. 3, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, follows famed criminal Ed Gein. Gein’s crimes as a convicted murderer and body-snatcher inspired iconic films in the horror genre, such as “Psycho,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
The show’s previous two seasons focused on the stories of the Menendez brothers and Jeffrey Dahmer. In the season that follows Gein, the young females he obsesses over, all based on real victims, are objectified, sexualized and brutally tortured on screen. In a review published in The Guardian, Richard Lawson writes: “The Ed Gein Story spends most of its early episodes giving us pure freak shows.”
Sophomore Elliot Gilats is unsettled by the reality of true crime media. Gilats is very interested in horror films, but less so in true crime documentaries. “With true crime, people like to take it too far … it can be kind of intrusive or invasive, especially when people forget the impacts of true crime,” Gilats said.
Despite the especially gory nature of the most recent season, controversy is not new to “Monster.” After the first season was released, relatives and loved ones of Dahmer’s victims felt that the show misrepresented the harm perpetrated.
Similar criticism continued into the second season, where it was notably hinted that brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez engaged in an incestuous relationship.
Junior Sofie Dogwill was an avid viewer of “Monster” up until the most recent season. “I thought it was really interesting because I love true crime documentaries, and I wanted to just kind of see the depiction that Netflix had of the Menendez brothers’ story,” Dogwill said.
The idea behind the incest plot line came from a throwaway note from a juror in Erik Menendez’s trial joking that “Erik and Lyle were ‘doing’ each other.” Following the season release, the brothers penned an open letter about how the show misrepresented their story, to which Murphy publicly replied, expressing that the brothers should be grateful that their story was told at all.
The backlash “Monster” has faced reared its head once again in the wake of the latest season, where the series not only depicts vivid and violent hallucinations, but attempts to invite empathy to a terrifying figure in Gein, who was also known as the “Butcher of Plainfield” — a reference to his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin. In addition, the series gives Gein a fictional obsession with real German war criminal Ilse Koch that borders on romanticizing Nazism.
“It’s not a character in a TV show, these are real things that happened. And when people kind of forget that … that’s when it gets muddy,” Gilats said.
In regards to why serial killers are so engrossing to some, Dr. John Fisher, criminal justice program coordinator at the University of Texas Permian Basin, wrote, “We give respect to the alpha male … A serial murderer is probably the epitome of that alpha domination, we’re taught that we’re not supposed to kill other people. So, what would cause a person to go out to target, to stalk, to track and then to kill somebody? We are a society that’s very inquisitive.” While there are certainly healthy and respectful ways to recount and process atrocities, the “Monster” series is not that.
