Producer Ryan Murphy has addressed some of the concerns raised around his hit show, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
The show hit Netflix last month and quickly clocked up over a billion streams. This places it in the top three of Netflix’s all-time audience hits.
However, despite the show’s creators saying the production would tell Dahmer’s story from the viewpoint of his victims, some relatives and friends of those killed by Dahmer said they found the production exploitative and traumatizing to watch.
Related: Here’s why viewers are calling Ryan Murphy’s Jeffrey Dahmer series exploitative and traumatizing
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Murphy took part in a Q&A event about the show yesterday at the DGA Theatre in Los Angeles. Before the discussion, the audience watched episode six of the show. It focussed on Dahmer’s relationship, and murder, of a deaf, black man: Tony Hughes.
Attempts to speak to families before making the show
Murphy defended the research that went into making the show. He also says he got no assistance from any of the victim’s families and friends, despite efforts on his part.
“It’s something that we researched for a very long time,” Murphy said, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter. “And we, over the course of the three, three and a half years when we were really writing it, working on it, 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.”
Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer is known to have murdered 17 men. Many were young gay men of color. The show looks at how one of Dahmer’s neighbors, played by Niecy Nash, alerted the police on more than one occasion to her concerns about Dahmer and the young men he had in his apartment. However, authorities repeatedly brushed her off.
Paris Barclay, who directed episode six, said the show wanted to celebrate the lives of the victims and show they were more than statistics.
“They weren’t just numbers, they weren’t just pictures on billboards and telephone poles. They were real people with loving families, breathing, living, hoping. That’s what we wanted it to be about.”
Related: Netflix’s ‘Dahmer’ backlash continues as eBay bans costumes and killer’s father speaks out
A memorial to those murdered by Dahmer
The show looks at Nash’s character, Glenda Cleveland, questioning why no memorial to the victims was ever erected. City officials knocked down the apartment block where Dahmer murdered most of his victims. The site became a park. However, there is no plaque or any other marker of those murdered there.
Murphy said, “Anything that we could do to get that to happen, you know, I would even be happy to pay for it myself.
“I do think there should be something. And we’re trying to get a hold of people to talk about that. I think there’s some resistance because they think the park would attract people who are interested in paying homage to the macabre… but I think something should be done.”
bsg1967
This guy is trash and the audacity blaming victims families for not responding to his reopening unimaginable trauma. When is Murphy going to be cancelled
bachy
It’s the timing of Murphy’s exploitive, glamorizing melodrama of his “sexy” gay psychopath Jeffrey Dahmer that is the most damning.
Americans are currently struggling against one of the most overwhelmingly hateful, bigoted and anti-gay political agendas in recent history. So why did Murphy think the American public needed this vile story of a twisted gay serial killer transmitted to their living rooms just now? And they’re lapping it up. For all the good it’s going to do us, he may as well be working for the GOP hate machine!
And no, a plaque commemorating the victims in a park in f**king Milwaukee is not going to help– especially now that he’s supplied the enemy with so much emotional ammunition during a critical election year.
Thanks for jacksh|t, Ryan Murphy. ALL the millions made from your horribly misguided, self-serving series should be donated to supporting Democrats in swing states!
Neoprene
An awesome docu-drama. Well done, Ryan Murphy! And what a nice gesture to offer up a statue or something for those traumatized by the death of their family member. Perhaps a small replica of a cruisey gay bar with pretty strobe lights and lots of happy glitter!
smittoons
Yeah, the show is such a glorious celebration of the victims. He’s so trashy, I just can’t bring myself to patronize anything he does, even though I know the OJ series was quality.