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Journalism of Courage
The Golden Globe Awards were held last week in Los Angeles, USA to honour works in Films and Television. American actor Evan Peters was adjudged Best Actor in one category, for his portrayal of the real serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in Netflix’s series ‘Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’.
But the appreciation has been far from universal. Shirley Hughes, the mother of Tony Huges, a deaf, black man who Dahmer killed, told the outlet TMZ, “There’s a lot of sick people around the world. People winning acting roles from playing killers keeps the obsession going and this makes sick people thrive on the fame.”
Dahmer is believed to have killed 17 men and young boys – his youngest victim was aged 14 – throughout the 1970s and 1990s in brutal ways, and was a cannibal. And while this series is not the first picturisation of the events, it has come at a time when questions are being raised about the ethics involved in making ‘True Crime’ series, which are based on real-life crime cases.
The 10-episode series mainly shows a dramatised version of the killer’s family background and circumstances, leading up to his arrest and subsequent death in prison.
The show also looks critically at the role played by the local police, in that the killings and missing persons escaped notice for a long time. Many of Dahmer’s victims were black and brown young men, belonging to the LGBTQ community, and the police system’s larger blindspots in investigating issues related to these minority groups have been shown.
In a short while, the series released in September 2022 became one of the most watched English language shows on Netflix, with streaming numbers showing millions of hours of watch time, rivalling its other extremely popular series, ‘Squid Game’ and ‘Stranger Things’.
The first criticism deals with the treatment of victims and Dahmer on the show. Though some have praised it for showing more of the victims’ perspective than others that came before it, that the title itself prominently displays the killer’s name, has led to concerns over further publicising and possibly glorifying him.
Secondly, some of the family members related to the victims have claimed they were not approached before the show was created – an allegation Netflix denies, saying they attempted to reach out to multiple people. Their lack of participation also results in their exclusion from receiving any of the profits earned.
As Ita Isbell, the sister of one victim named Errol Lindsey wrote in Insider, “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. But I’m not money hungry, and that’s what this show is about, Netflix trying to get paid. I could even understand it if they gave some of the money to the victims’ children… If the show benefited them in some way, it wouldn’t feel so harsh and careless.”
Another relative of Isbell said on Twitter, “It’s retraumatizing over and over again, and for what? How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need?” Netflix has made another show about Dahmer’s confession in 2022, and there will be two more Dahmer-like anthologies under the ‘Monster’ banner, focusing on other killers.
Stories about murders, missing people and gore have been fascinating to people throughout history, across cultures. Mainstream Indian TV also has had its share, with shows such as ‘Crime Patrol’ and ‘Saavdhan India’ being wildly popular among Hindi audiences.
Similarly, some of the most popular podcast offerings on Spotify India in English, are shows based on real-life crimes – delving into a detailed timeline of the events, describing the people involved like characters in a movie and often giving out theories.
With the rise of the internet, gathering clues about such cases has also become easy, allowing viewers and listeners to experience the ‘thrill’ of solving a case as a detective would. But while this human interest had continue building, there has been the question of who benefits from producing these stories.
An entertainment-first format allows for creative liberties with facts of a case, mixed with the producer’s own interpretation, and so there is no obligation to treat a case, and the real-life people associated with it with a sense of respect or objectivity.
‘Serial’, a 2014 podcast series by journalist Sarah Koenig, helped podcasts gain new-found popularity when it came out. It retraced the murder of American high school student Hae Min Lee in 1999, as well as the conviction of her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed, who was in prison.
The episodes covering the case have been downloaded more than 300 million times. It revived interest in the case, and in September 2022, Syed was set free after two decades in prison, for a crime he has maintained to have never committed. The judge ruled that the prosecutors did not turn over evidence that could have helped Syed’s defence case.
Similarly in 2022, Christopher Dawson, a former high school teacher and rugby league star of Australia, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for murdering his wife in 1982. Dawson was the subject of the globally successful crime podcast ‘The Teacher’s Pet’, which brought into focus the decades-old case.
But simply helping close a case does not mean such shows are without flaws. Often, crime-based shows can omit evidence, bend facts, and engage in sensationalising cases. However, successful examples of sensitive treatment, often involving those concerned with the case, also exist. Vox cites the example of director Ava DuVernay’s ‘When They See Us’, which tells the story of five men wrongfully convicted of rape and murder.
