✦Elzary
Cinema·5 min read·👀 Watched 2022.09.27

Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story

Less indifference, less discrimination, and have kids only when you're ready. What he wanted, in the end, was just company.

2022 · Crime Biography · Ryan Murphy · Netflix

Less indifference, less discrimination — and have kids only when you're prepared.

I never thought I'd finish this kind of extremely bloody, dark, true-story material — meanwhile the Hannibal someone recommended four years ago is still sitting unwatched, hahaha.

Setting the scene: ignored since childhood

His father was a chemist devoted to his work; his mother suffered severe postpartum depression — but perhaps that era had little research on it, which is why she blindly gulped pills, leaving her emotions wildly unstable. Every time she met her husband it was a fight, and she paid no attention to little Dahmer.

Later the deeply incompatible parents somehow had a second child, and the mother naturally left, taking the younger son. Being abandoned may have planted a seed in Dahmer's heart. I think, because he didn't want to be abandoned again, wanting to be the one who "controls" others, he chose the most extreme method — killing people and keeping their limbs and organs, so they'd accompany him forever.

A few (few, few) thoughts

The psychological shadow of being abandoned young warped his values; add to that 1970s–80s America, where attitudes toward homosexuality weren't as open as now, causing his repression. A soul starved of company, empty and hollow, drove him to do these appalling things — but none of these reasons can excuse his crimes.

Still, I always feel it's true that "family" holds an enormously important share in a child's character formation — after all, so many external factors can push a person toward the pathological. What's such a pity is that Dahmer had no one to teach him how to cope, and even more of a pity is that his family missed chance after chance to save him from becoming a serial killer — yet his dad actually seems the one who cared most about him! And he didn't even know that what Dahmer wanted was just "company" 😭😭. So I think that's why many people finish this show feeling darkened.

The most heart-wrenching part

Nothing beats the stretch between Dahmer and Tony. I watched their conversation soon after they first met many times — two people both longing to be understood, who finally met. But because of Dahmer's insecurity, rooted in childhood abandonment, what could have been a beautiful love story was forced to stop, ending in tragedy. Later on I genuinely felt my heart crying — he really did put his feelings into Tony, softening and holding back many times, but... but... it still ended this way 😭💔

A while ago I had this thought: are extroverts extroverted because they crave being understood? Thinking about it again, it shifted to: introvert or extrovert, everyone probably wants to be understood — just expressed differently.

— "You have to try so hard just to be understood. Isn't that exhausting?" — "It is, but if I don't try, I'll have no one." — "But writing everything down — isn't that tiring?" — "Writing it with you feels okay."

"Maybe we should pretend to be strong — and maybe one day we'll forget we're pretending."

#series#crime#netflix
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