Sorry Evan Peters, for Dahmer's victims, nothing good came out of your Netflix show
Dahmer’s Golden Globe victory is another reminder that not everyone benefited from the massive success of Netflix turning trauma into entertainment
One of America’s chief manufacturers, the true crime industrial complex talks a big game. As much as creators like Ryan Murphy like to say that they aren’t glorifying dead-eyed maniacs who kill and eat people, it doesn’t stop fans from tweeting things along the lines of “Jeffrey Dahmer can eat me.” Ultimately, by being played by an attractive, capable actor of Evan Peters’ caliber, some level of glorification is inevitable. Yet the same is not true for the victims on these shows and the families on the sidelines watching others benefit from their loved one’s stories.
In the case of the horrifically titled Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, how the victims fit in has long been controversial. After Dahmer premiered, Murphy defended the project saying, “We reached out to 20, around 20 of the victims’ families and friends trying to get input, trying to talk to people and not a single person responded to us in that process. So we relied very, very heavily on our incredible group of researchers who… I don’t even know how they found a lot of this stuff. But it was just like a night and day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people.”
It’s almost as if they didn’t want him to uncover the truth about private people made public in the worst way imaginable. One of the victim’s sisters contradicted Murphy’s claims, saying they were never even contacted. In an essay for Insider, Rita Isbell, the sister of Eroll Lindsey, who was murdered by Dahmer in 1991, wrote, “I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it. But I’m not money hungry, and that’s what this show is about, Netflix trying to get paid.”