True-crime TV audiences seem to have an endless appetite, but the true-crime victims have had more than enough. Eric Perry, cousin of Jeffrey Dahmer victim Errol Lindsey, spoke out on Twitter to express his discomfort with “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s new Netflix series that stars Evan Peters as the infamous serial killer.
“I’m not telling anyone what to watch, I know true crime media is huge rn, but if you’re actually curious about the victims, my family (the Isbell’s) are pissed about this show,” he wrote. “Recreating my cousin having an emotional breakdown in court in the face of the man who tortured and murdered her brother is WILD.”
Perry also noted that because the murders are public record, producers of true crime shows are not required to notify the families of the victims they portray. Perry says that nobody from “Monster” contacted his family, and that they found out about the show at the same time as everyone else.
“So when they say they’re doing this ‘with respect to the victims’ or ‘honoring the dignity of the families,’ no one contacts them,” he wrote. “My cousins wake up every few months at this point with a bunch of calls and messages and they know there’s another Dahmer show. It’s cruel.”
The show’s production team has defended the project, saying that the goal was never to humanize Dahmer but instead to show the perspectives of the victims and explain the ways that race and sexuality informed the killings.
“We had one rule going into this from Ryan [Murphy], that it would never be told from Dahmer’s point of view,” Peters said in a promotional video. “It’s called ‘The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,’ but it’s not just him and his backstory: It’s the repercussions, it’s how society and our system failed to stop him multiple times because of racism, homophobia. It’s just a tragic story.”
Still, Perry doesn’t think that those efforts were enough to justify the show’s existence.
“It’s retraumatizing over and over again, and for what?” he wrote. “How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need?
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