The Dangers of Romanticizing a Killer
Violet Rhoades
Crime shows will always be prevalent in society. From Dateline, to Criminal Minds, almost everyone has seen one at some point in time. As more and more shows are produced, more and more people are romanticizing the abuse, along with violent crimes that take place during these films. This has been more apparent than ever with celebrity depictions of real murderers. From Zac Efron as Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, to the now extremely popular, Evan Peters as Jeffery Dahmer in Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, people are forgetting to separate the actor from the sick and twisted character they play.
In many cases, these people who crave this romance through the silver screen serial killer, hold an obsession with it as well. Classic teen dream boats are apparently not enough for thousands of teens nowadays, as they’ve found a new type within real-life killers. No matter if it's the actual killer or a celebrity depiction of it, these people are romancing toxicity/abuse in the form of love or attraction, and they’re ignoring the appalling crimes these individuals have committed.
One day as I was mindlessly scrolling through TikTok on my phone, when I came across a video that showed a young girl who pretended to have a conversation with Jeffery Dahmer with the song ‘rockstar’ by Post Malone playing in the background. In the video, she claimed some kid was being mean to her at school. The video then cut to a picture of Evan Peters as Jeffery Dahmer as he called her names like ‘love’ and ‘sweetheart’ saying he would deal with it. The video ended with a picture of him from a scene in the show in which he was eating one of his victims. Increasingly I grew more concerned as I clicked the sound to see it was a trend that thousands of people were participating in.
It's important for these young kids with impressionable minds to learn that the victims of these serial killers are real. They aren't just a character that someone came up with, they were real-life people that had their lives taken away from them by disturbed sociopaths. We need to remember that so many of these killers thrive on the adrenalin of attention. By giving them this attention, even if it's by romanticizing them, you're giving power to the killer, and taking it away from the victims.
A big part of these new crazed fans is due to the show's production. In Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the depiction of Jeffery Dahmer almost made it seem as if they wanted the audience to sympathize with the killer. During the show, Dahmer’s made out to be misunderstood, and the producers skip over so much of the torment that Dahmer put his victims through. They make it seem that his rough upbringing gave him the right to murder, violate, and mutilate 16 men and boys from minority communities. Dahmer made a conscious decision to murder those people, and he deserves no sympathy for his actions.
Errol Lindsay was only 19 years old when Dahmer poured hydrochloric acid into his head after drilling a hole in it, all while he was still conscious. He then decapitated the boy and disposed of his body. After the new Netflix adaptation, his sister Rita Isbell was forced to relive all those awful memories after she was shown that her brother's gruesome death was being used for monetization. In an essay for Insider Isbell reported “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.” She continued, “But I'm not money hungry, and that's what this show is about, Netflix trying to get paid.”
These multi-million dollar productions don’t care about educating people on what really happened, or the families of the victims that were actually there when everything happened, they only care about making money and profiting off of others' trauma. It's not just Dahmer's victims' families that have spoken out. Families of victims of Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper have spoken out about the glorification of Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, and Kemper in Mindhunter.
The next time you want to watch a new film about a serial killer, think about the victims. There are 7.837 billion people on the earth and there are countless people to obsess over rather than a crazed killer. Think about what the families of victims would think if they saw you sympathizing with the sociopath that took away their son, or daughter's life, even if you were just making a joke.
Sources
https://theaggie.org/2022/10/14/why-romanticizing-serial-killers-can-be-dangerous/
https://www.the-sun.com/news/6319027/who-was-jeffrey-dahmer-victim-errol-lindsey/
https://www.insider.com/rita-isbell-sister-jeffrey-dahmer-victim-talks-about-netflix-show-2022-9
