On the Monstrous Dahmer
On the Monstrous Dahmer
The ugly side of exploitation.
My substack essay on Andrew Dominik’s Blonde addressed the critical reactions to the film that vilified the film for supposedly exploiting Marilyn Monroe. Now that I’ve seen Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, I’ve seen the real face of exploitation and feel even more resolute in defending Blonde.
Herein lies the true example of actual exploitation that becomes distasteful, misses the mark, and chokes to a slow death on its own irony.
Quick recap
A biographical study of one of the most gruesome American serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters). Told in 10 episodes, ranging from 45 minutes to 1 hour in length each, it traces Dahmer’s entire life in non-linear chronological order, from childhood to prison. We get a holistic, 360 degree view of the lives Dahmer affected and destroyed, including his father Lionel (Richard Jenkins), his neighbor Glenda (Niecy Nash), a bunch of horribly incompetent police officers and, most poignantly, his victims.
Like I said on my Letterboxd, Dahmer only succeeds as an exercise in flexing its talented muscle. In terms of showing us anything interesting or revelatory when it comes to serial killers, it falls flat. As an all-brawn-little-brain production, I can’t deny that it’s still binge-worthy material for anyone who finds psychopaths compelling. And the problem is…who doesn’t?
Somewhere around the midway mark, though, a sickening feeling creeps up and settles around the idea that creators Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy (of Glee and American Horror Story fame) are spending way too much time focused on building and trying to understand the mythos of Jeffrey Dahmer. Like he’s some kind of urban legend told around a Boy Scout campfire and not a real serial killer from the 1980s. One might even go as far as to say that there’s a perverse undercurrent of glee in this real-life American horror story.
You do get to see different perspectives on Dahmer, which gives the show its most eyebrow-raising flair. Dahmer the neighbor, Dahmer the son, Dahmer the gay creeper, Dahmer the boyfriend even. Ultimately, with how much it emphasizes Dahmer’s demented modus operandi (drills, hammers, drugs, acid, the smell of decomposing flesh etc.) it’s clear that Dahmer is mostly interested in Dahmer the killer.
So it’s a show that’ll leave you pretty disgusted with yourself for even sitting through it, and it doesn’t hold the tiniest flame of a candle to the creative buoyancy of Andrew Dominik’s Blonde - another recent Netflix production accused of exploitation - so nothing can save it from itself. Blonde is painful to sit through but at least it’s filled with artistic purpose, cinematic vibrancy and genuine pathos.
Dahmer concludes with a statement on Jeffrey Dahmer that paralyzes all 10 episodes into stunning redundancy, making you truly wonder “why the hell did I do this to myself?”. For fans of serial killer stories, it’s obviously unmissable, and at its best Dahmer is a showcase for some fantastic talent. Namely, Evan Peters’s award-worthy turn as Dahmer - he embodies the killer so well, by episode 4 he doesn’t have to say a word and you get chills down your spine. Richard Jenkins is equally fantastic as Lionel Dahmer, and provides yet another reminder as to why he’s one of the greatest living American actors around. Niecy Nash also has a couple of scenes that should get her noticed come awards time.
The most haunting episode is the sixth one, titled Silenced and directed by Paris Barclay (a name I won’t soon forget), which tells the story of Dahmer’s victim Tony Hughes (Rodney Burford) - a deaf model who almost, almost comes close to revealing Dahmer’s humanity. It’s simultaneously the best and the worst episode of the entire show. The direction and acting is top notch, but attaching the audience so effectively to Tony while making sure we know how his life will end is a special kind of cruelty and the ugliest kind of exploitation.