Ryan Murphy’s “Dahmer,” a series about infamous American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, premiered on Netflix on Friday. However, not many people may have known that.
Even though the series is currently at No.1 on Netflix’s TV shows, the show has received very little publicity, even by the streamer’s standards. The first trailer and poster art dropped just five days before its release, a second trailer arriving the day before.
That appeared to be it for publicity according to The Guardian who indicate there was no premiere, no screeners and no interviews. Critics reviews have been mixed at best for the series, and the show’s wordy title has caused some confusion.
Part of that could be due to the material as the writer suggests that the killer is “undoubtedly fetishised” in the series. As several reviewers have pointed out, much of the first half of the series uncomfortably dwells on Dahmer himself.
The same reviews suggest it’s not until the latter half that it shifts towards its originally pledged focus of showing the perspective of his victims and how elements like race and sexuality played into institutional mishandling of the investigation.
In the wake of the show’s premiere, Eric Perry – a cousin of one of Dahmer’s victims Errol Lindsey – has taken to social media to voice their disgust with the creative choices in the series. Perry says in a tweet:
“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 p—-d about this show. It’s retraumatizing over and over again, and for what? How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need? Like recreating my cousin having an emotional breakdown in court in the face of the man who tortured and murdered her brother is WILD. WIIIIIILD.”
Perry added in a follow-up tweet that because the information is all public record, there was no obligation or requirement on the show’s backers to contact those involved in the story, meaning they learned about the series at the same time as everyone else.
From the late 70s to the early 90s, Dahmer killed seventeen men and boys, and he has already been the subject of dozens of television, film and podcast projects with actors like Jeremy Renner and Ross Lynch having played him.
Evan Peters, Richard Jenkins, Niecy Nash, Penelope Ann Miller and Molly Ringwald star in “Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” which is now available on Netflix.
Sources: Twitter, The LA Times, The Guardian
