There are few guarantees in life. The sun will rise and set each day, taxes, the fact we are hurtling towards an inevitable demise, and of course, Netflix releasing their annual serial-killer true crime binge that everyone seems to have watched apart from you. In recent years, Netflix has thrown up Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, Making a Murderer, The Ripper, as well as the incredibly successful Conversations with a Killer series, which has featured the likes of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. The most current is Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes.
Additionally, there has been a massively popular and weirdly titled dramatization, Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which has gripped our morbid curiosity arguably more than any series before it. There is this quenchless thirst for documentaries and true crime series about killers and their macabre homicides, which is undoubtedly down to a fascination with a way of life that is so grotesquely alien to the average person. What is it that possesses these people, that they’re driven to commit the most heinous, unspeakable crimes against others? What is it about Dahmer in particular? Does Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes and Dahmer - Monster, give the convicted serial killer an easy ride?
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Conversations With a Killer Quietly Humanizes Dahmer
IFC Films
The case of Jeffrey Dahmer was feasibly one of the most disturbingly harrowing of the many serial killers throughout the 20th century. It was also, concomitantly, one of the most interesting. Raised in a sleepy suburb of Milwaukee, before moving to a similar town in Ohio, Dahmer by all accounts had a relatively normal childhood, raised by his two parents who eventually divorced.
As a teen, his sexual fantasies became increasingly concerning, often involving the complete submission of his partners; thoughts of sex, murder, and mutilation became freakishly intertwined. Conversations with a Killer retraces Dahmer’s steps by his own horrifying admissions, with spine-chilling audio personally detailing the lengths he went to in order to kill mostly young, gay men, and to live out his deepest, darkest fantasies.
While the final segment of the three-part docuseries brings Dahmer’s sanity into question, we are taken on a detailed examination of the killer’s psyche, with the most pertinent question being, “How could any sane person commit these crimes?” However, these questions point toward a wider theory of the documentary as a whole.
The Documentary Form Has a Problem With Killers
Netflix
In order to maintain balance, documentarians will regularly employ different sides of an argument. But, what if there is no argument to be had? The writing is on the wall in big, block-red capitals. Ultimately, Dahmer was damned to rights. Although the documentary lays bare the abhorrent crimes of the Milwaukee serial killer in the most graphic detail, it still has these strong, lingering undertones of sympathy toward Dahmer. His lawyer, Wendy Patrickus, a prominent voice throughout the three episodes, regularly refers to him as “Jeff,” which in itself subtly begins to humanize a man that was capable of the most inhumane actions.
A common theme and avenue of rhetoric that is frequently explored is the idea that Dahmer didn’t fit the bill of your “typical” serial killer. He supposedly wasn’t a sadist who enjoyed inflicting pain on his victims. Much is made of his insatiable desire and longing for companionship, to be loved and wanted. There was this desperation in his behavior, this real want for people not to leave and to stay with him, which of course, seems to subtly make direct reference to the abandonment issues he undoubtedly experienced during his parent’s divorce, and their subsequent distance from him. There is certainly this predisposition to partially excuse his murderous, manipulative tendencies specifically highlighted in Conversations with a Killer, and attribute his extreme social shortcomings to the reasons he would kill.
Dahmer Was a Human Monster, Not a TV Protagonist
All things considered, Netflix’s portrayal of Jeffrey Dahmer is extremely problematic and sets a dangerous precedent. We’ve always had antihero protagonists in television, especially recently, but dramatizing a real-life serial killer is a bit different from the plot mechanics of the fictional Dexter. In some ways, Monster is akin to making a rom-com about Hitler; where does sympathetic humanizing end and exploitative romanticizing begin?
His personal grievances aside, Dahmer was a sociopathic murdering machine. Loneliness is a disease that plagues the lives of millions around the world; issues of abandonment, whether they stem from childhood while watching parents divorce acrimoniously, or develop later in life, simply does not justify nor mitigate the butchering of 17 innocent men. The apologist, pitying byproduct of both Conversations with a Killer and Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is a result of the particular framing of him as this inherently decent man, who was vulnerable, misunderstood, and simply had problems that required treatment.
Despite the sheer gravity of his crimes, the lengthy list of prognoses that came about after the dismantling of his character made the former seem merely incidental. This is a man who knew the difference between right and wrong; he was governed by this inner, monstrous urge to not only control but to zombify other human beings. This wasn’t some sort of external influence possessing him — through The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes in Confessions of a Killer, we listen to Dahmer’s passive, calm tone; he’s self-aware and disarming in equal measure, which in turn is what made him such a master manipulator.
After he was found to be of sane mind beyond a reasonable doubt, the excuses for a man with blood on his hands and a freezer full of mutilated remains should have quickly become a thing of the past, yet 30 years on, Dahmer sympathizers are reborn thanks to the over-objectivity of the two Netflix original releases.
