Serial Killers

Too much sympathy for serial killers

Net ix’s most recent serial killer docu-series ‘Dahmer’ golori es crimes

Katrell Readus readukat000@hsestudents.org

As heartthrobs stalk their prey across our screens deep in a Hollywood portrayal of some release of the new series ‘Dahmer,’ a graphic, cinematically dramatized depiction of sadism seemingly and mutilated more than a dozen men. at is the issue with movies and shows like this one. Men like of the world’s most dangerous serial killers and their crimes, the world watches with bated breath as murders and other crimes are recreated, investigated and solved right in front of their eyes. Murder media has been an everpresent xture of pop culture for decades starting with ‘Telecrime,’ a television program on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), running from 1938–39. is program prompted TV viewers to compete in the mental challenge of unraveling crimes before the show’s police force. Television shows, podcasts and documentaries just like this one have become some of the most popular among media consumers. Programs like these leave viewers gazing upon glamorized reenactments of tragic, life-ending and/ or altering events to simply feed a fright and a boost of adrenaline brought on by the solving of a puzzle. Je rey Dahmer was a proli c serial killer in the 1980s and 1990s. He targeted young men of color, o en luring them to his apartment with the promise of cash or sexual favors, before drugging them, raping them, performing grotesque experiments on them and ultimately killing them. His victims were slaughtered so recently that the memories are still fresh for their families − a wound that is further brutalized with every new series that is created for the sole purpose of making the killings ‘more dramatic.’ Fans ocked to Net ix for the designed to ful ll an audience’s desperate need to see the newest pin-up (in this case actor Even Peters) portraying the ‘villain,’ aching for as much gore as possible. Also included in between the scenes of death and destruction, viewers see his face fall and sadness overtake any other emotion. Tears well in his eyes as he begs the man that would later become his victim to stay. His voice cracks as he asks and pleads to know why everybody leaves him. It is in moments like this in the series where Je rey Lionel Dahmer is just a man longing for love and someone to be with. He is just a man traumatized by a past that only brought pain and treachery. He, in moments like these, was portrayed to audiences as no worse than the everyday man. Strong emotion-evoking scenes like these are where viewers are inadvertently coerced and misguided into feeling sorry for this man, a man who murdered Je ery Dahmer are given sympathy as if any amount of heartbreak, loneliness or rejection could justify the taking of a life. Instead, stylized television media hoping to depict the crimes of famous killers like Dahmer should focus on honoring the victim, on highlighting their process of justice or o entimes the lack thereof. Audiences should be allowed to see the victims as people, as an individual with lives that could have still continued to prosper beyond what they have become now: mere names wrapped together in a “It felt like reliving it all web that leads to one center, over again. It brought back all the emotions I was feeling back the image and name of the person who ended their life. is sympathy and then... infatuation with ‘Dahmer’ The episode with ‘me’ was the only vastly encourages an already one part I saw I didn’t watch the existing and highly perverted whole thing, I didn’t need to watch it. I lived it.” fascination with the docuseries namesake and his crimes. is obsession was - Rita Isabell made clear to the public sister of Errol lindsey, a man killed by Dahmer during the proceeding of what was, as of 2013, the third most watched televised trial when two autographseeking teenagers sat outside the courtroom waiting and hoping for an interaction with the infamous killer. “We just want to see him,” Amy Di Francesco, 16, told New and Record in an original 1992 coverage of the Dahmer trial. “We want to get his autograph if they will let us. at would be cool to have Je rey Dahmer’s autograph because he is a killer.” is is a prime example of the kind of deranged captivation that media industries are advertently or inadvertently creating with programs like this one.