Dahmer Final Opinion: Whether You Want To Or nOT, I Think It Needs To Be Seen

 

 

Earlier this year I wrote a long series of articles as a reaction dealing with the rise of television series celebrating the serial killer in our society. Prominent among my reasons for doing so was the immense critical and award nominations for Dahmer at the end of last year, which served as a preview of this year’s Emmy nominations and as likely several awards.

Having just completed watching the series in the course of a month I am inclined to see that I made an error that I so often condemn other critics of doing: making snap judgments without having seen the show.  As I wrote in my initial review earlier this month no one who chooses to watch Dahmer on Netflix will enjoy it in a conventional sense. (I also asked who would get pleasure out of it; Ryan Murphy and his fellow writers actually answered this question, which will be part of the reason of this review.) Indeed there has been a general sense of repulsion for its existence since it ended up premiering last year and I imagine little will be done to discount people’s opinions even with reviews like this.

As I mentioned in my initial review there is nothing in Dahmer that does anything to glamorize or celebrate him. Evan Peters is riveting to watch every moment he is on the screen but that is because throughout the series, it’s not because his Dahmer is charismatic or even a human being. It’s obvious that all of the fans that Dahmer gets after he is caught are clearly more representative of something fundamentally rotten at the core of our society; Murphy and Peters make it very clear that there is nothing in Jeffrey’s character worthy of admiration or even humanity.

Only once before he is caught do we see any sign of a human being – and it’s clear that it comes solely from an outsiders perspective. In ‘Tony’, we spend much of the episode following an African-American college student, who is not only gay but also deaf. He is in a way as much of an outsider as Jeffrey is.

From the moment Tony sees Jeffrey in the bar he trolls for his victims we know that his fate is sealed. What is fascinating is how much of the episode Jeffrey seems to be trying his hardest to deny who he is. By the time this episode airs, Jeffrey has already killed three people, has tried to kill two more and is now a registered sex offender. We know from the narrative that Jeffrey stopped killing for a while but we’re not entirely sure why and neither is he.  But from the first time the two of them meet, there’s clearly some kind of connection that shocks even him. He takes out the package which contains his drugs to put in his drinks – and then he puts it away.

The episode is surprising because this is the first human relationship Jeffrey has truly ever had and it actually seems to working for him.  He stops drinking, he starts taking better care of himself and he invites Tony up to his place. Again he takes out the drugs, again he stops himself, and for the only time in the entire series he makes an effort to open himself up to another human being.  There’s a moment after the two spend the night together that we truly seem to think Jeff might have turned a corner – and then the next scene shows that Jeff could not escape his nature. It is the only killing he feels something akin to remorse – or at least as close as he come to in.

The rest of the series Murphy and company make no attempt to show that Jeffrey Dahmer is anything but the monster he is. However, as I wrote the first time, that’s not the real purpose of Dahmer. Instead Dahmer from pretty much to start to finish is a searing indictment of a society that did everything in its power to ignore what Jeffrey Dahmer was doing, did nothing to punish the people or the system that let him get away with it, and has decided to celebrate this horrible human being and ignore all the wreckage left behind.

Even before Dahmer moves into the building where he will commit the lion’s share of his murders, he has already escaped justice twice. Once he brought a victim back to his grandmother’s house – where he had already killed three people – but his grandmother saw him after he had already drugged him. He put the victim on a bus. The victim reported what happened to the cops, but the cops chose to believe a white criminal over his African-American victim. On another occasion Jeffrey kidnapped and sexually assaulted a fifteen year old Thai boy. This time he was arrested and sentenced to jail for a year as a sex offender. But once again, the system chose to let a white college student get a wrist slap and ignore the victim. When the victim’s father tries to give an impact statement, the judge seems bored and asks him to translate as if having another language makes him inferior.

By the time he has moved into the apartment where he will commit the lion’s share of his murders, Dahmer is part of a system that has decided to turn a blind eye.  Then the story changes its focus to Glenda Cleveland’s perspective after she learns the truth.  We hear a handful of what must have been countless calls over the years and the police never bother to show up. In one of the more frightening scenes in the episode, Jeff learns about what has happened and comes to Glenda with a sandwich as a peace offering.  In all honesty this scene might very well be the one that earns both Peters and Nash their Emmys because it shows them both trying to be what they aren’t and not succeeding: Jeffrey is doing everything in his power to try to be a good neighbor and failing; Glenda trying to maintain steely resolve in front of a man she knows has killed countless people.

And even after Dahmer is caught and sentenced to life in prison, we only get the illusion of justice. The Milwaukee officers who sent one of Dahmer’s victims back to his apartment to be murdered are suspended by the chief but show nothing resembling remorse at what they have done. And it turns out to be a token effort: both men are back at the department by the time the case is resolved, our hailed as civic heroes while they spend their spare time harassing the father of one of the victims.  The tenants have to go back to their apartment but they do not feel save living in the same place a killer did. They sleep in the hallway but the super tells them they have to go back for safety reasons. Eventually the building is torn down because the owners don’t want any association that their building held a monster.

And in the meantime Dahmer finally finds the acceptance he never did in public life. Left unstated, perhaps because it is separate from this, is how much our society seems to worship these monsters. Not hate them, worship them. Jeff receives a huge amount of fan mail and donations over the year he’s in prison. He is interviewed by Dateline to ask him why he did what he did. Comic books and cards are written about him and people rubberneck at his building. (In a perfect irony Glenda’s daughter attacks one of those white teenagers and is arrested for when that young man presses charges.) Lawsuits are files but the city doesn’t pay nearly what they should. The clearest sign of remorse comes from a real estate developer who while having dinner sees a rapt audience watching Dahmer on TV and walks out in disgust. The next day he hears about the auction of Dahmer’s goods and pays well-above market price in order to have it destroyed. He then gives the money to the victims’ families.  It is by far the only real heroic gesture in the series.

In what may be the saddest irony the only person who seems willing to take responsibility for Jeffrey Dahmer’s actions is in fact Jeffrey Dahmer. He freely confesses to everything and actually wants the death penalty to be used. In the final episode, which parallels the execution of John Wayne Gacy, Dahmer has a conversation with the prison chaplain about why there are people like him. The chaplain gives the kind of excuses we’ve heard before the interstate highway system, PTSD from Vietnam – but Dahmer asks if its possible there are some people who are just plain evil.

Some might see the last episode where Dahmer claims to find God as hypocritical. That’s partially true but looking in the scene where he meets his end at the hands of another psychotic inmate I wonder if that is what Dahmer was looking for all along.  The chaplain talks of the New Testament God, but perhaps the God Dahmer was looking for was Old Testament the one who reigns down fiery vengeance for the evils he has done. He puts up no real resistance in the final scene; it’s almost as if he’s expecting what was coming and in a sense has almost been hoping for it.

A clearer message is the one we get in the final scene where Glenda has spent the entire episode trying to find a way to move on from her experience. She repeats the same advice to the father of one of his victims but we don’t know if its for him as much as it is for herself. And in the final scene we see her trying yet again to find a memorial for the victims of Jeffrey Dahmer, pleading with the city to do something for it.  We know even before the end titles no memorial will be set up, not now and even and even after being publicly shamed by this docudrama, probably not ever.

In my original piece I argued that TV and films have, with few exceptions, done everything in their power to make the serial killer a figure of fascination and mystique. I expect nothing will change after Dahmer.  There is something about our culture that looks at the monsters in the world and sees them as something that needs to talked about, and that in turns leads to worship and celebration. So much of this century’s TV is about celebrating the monster from Criminal Minds to Law & Order: SVU to Hannibal to Dexter and who knows how many other pale imitations in between. Part of that is because, as Dahmer states, the villains always more interesting than the heroes.

Murphy’s Dahmer turns this narrative on its ear.  Dahmer is positively inhuman and definitely a monster to be sure, but the only way he is interesting is because he’s a killer.  Murphy makes it very clear that monsters like Dahmer are allowed to get away with it because of a criminal justice system that has no real use for investigating crimes or helping its citizens. I said it before and I’ll say it again: the actions that we see in Dahmer are far more of a justification to defund the police than the most extreme things that happen to this day.  Some argue that the police commit horrible abuses under the guise of the badge; Dahmer actually says that they don’t even use their badge for the purposes they were given in the first place.

And all of this makes it clear that there is something deeply sick in our society where we worship a man who eats his victims and does nothing to even acknowledge the people he killed. Maybe the only reason we celebrate Hannibal Lecter is because we never see the family of the census taker whose liver he ate with Fava Beans.  The biggest flaw of so many of these shows investigating serial killers is that they spend so much time with the killer and the killer keeps coming back because we like the actor and don’t care about the lives of the victims he ruins.

I imagine there are still people who even hearing this description or even seeing Dahmer will make the judgment that it’s just another celebration of a monster and exploits his victims. Murphy is making another argument – our society celebrates people like Jeffrey Dahmer and doesn’t even care about the people he kills or the wreckage he leaves behind.  I have little doubt some of those same people will argue that this series is no fun and in the same breath wonder why Mindhunter was canceled. These are the people who need to see Dahmer – and while they’re at it, take a good look in the mirror.