Since its release, the record-breaking ‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story‘ has had more than one controversy over it. The latest one on the list is the decision of Netflix to recognize the series under the category LGBTQ.
‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’ is a take on the crimes committed by Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer who was a cannibal. The series had been tagged as LGBTQ category by Netflix besides categories like dark, horror, and vintage crime. This led to backlash from viewers who found the action objectionable. After the criticism, Netflix removed the tag from the series, but the harm had already been done.
The LGBTQ tag is commonly used for denoting content that represents untold or unrepresented well-written, wholesome stories of people of the community, a recent popular example being Netflix’s own well-received series ‘Uncoupled’ and ‘Heartstopper’. Theoretically ‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’ has the protagonist Dahmer who is gay and so were a number of his victims. However, the series has no wholesome LGBTQ story worth telling. If anything, the series is an indication that the community may have been discriminated against even then, since it is reportedly the victims being gay was a reason for the police taking as much time as they did to arrest Dahmer.
In an instance in the series, despite a neighbor accusing Dahmer of kidnapping and murder in front of the cops, they still ask Dahmer to bring the victim back to his apartment so as to get to understand the situation better, something that is not done since it may cause the victims to relive the trauma all over again.
This has further fuelled the debate of how Netflix is profiteering from such a dark tragedy. It is to be noted that the sister of a victim had earlier talked about how watching her victim impact statement from the killer’s 1992 trial dramatized in the show bothered her and had her relive the same trauma all over again. She even accused Netflix of greed.
However, this is not the end of Netflix’s interest in Dahmer. Another true series titled ‘Confessions with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes’ is up for release in a few days. We don’t know whether the mistake was a smart marketing move to use the Netflix suggestion algorithm that misfired or if it was a genuine mistake. What we do opine, however, is that as the biggest OTT platform in the world, Netflix should be more careful about such details when dealing with such sensitive topics, especially if it concerns a society that is marginalized even today.
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