Evan Peters is one of many stars who went home with a Golden Globe this year. The young actor won the Golden Globe for Best Actor Male in Limited or Anthology Series, starring in Dahmer- Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story. He plays the character of Jeffery Dahmer, a deranged serial killer who traumatized the USA for nearly a decade.
Netflix’s series received a lot of criticism from not just critics, but victim’s families have also criticized the show for ‘its lack of respect’ and ‘glorifying killers’ and ‘acknowledging the victims who continue to live with the pain’. The Golden Globe controversy attracted similar criticism.
Real Victim families accuse Evan Peters of glorifying Serial Killers
The family of the Victims raises a valid question, “How many times do we need this?”, this is the third time between 2017 to 2022 that Dahmer’s story is being turned into a show, podcast, movie, or a book. Even though true crime is big, people are gobbling it up quickly, but the families have expressed their resentment. They said it retraumatized them, seeing the stories, and posters, again and again, they are having to relive the horrors and no one is telling their stories.
It is because of this that the families accuse the show of glorifying a heinous serial killer. Leading these accusations is Isbell, the sister of the victim, Errol Lindsey. She wrote a personal essay to Insider revealing her feelings about the show.
“I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it.”
After Evan Peters won the Golden Globe for best actor in Limited or Anthology Series, Shirley, mother of Tony Hughes who was also a victim of Dahmer, became furious. She told TMZ that the actor should have used his platform to shine a light on the victims and acknowledge them. She added, that he should have Hollywood put an end to telling crime stories like these.
The distraught mother scoffed at Peter’s acceptance speech and commented,
“There’s a lot of sick people around the world, and people winning acting roles from playing killers keeps the obsession going and this makes sick people thrive on the fame.”
Shirley concluded by saying, “It’s a shame that people can take our tragedy and make money. The victims never saw a cent. We go through these emotions every day.” This sentiment resonates throughout the victim’s families.
The makers and Evans Peters say they tried contacting the families.
The creators of the show, Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan claim that they tried to reach out to around 20 family members of the victims but none of them responded, so they relied on research to create the stories. The makers also emphasized three years of rigorous research that went into the pre-production of the show.
According to the show’s description,
“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is a series that exposes these unconscionable crimes, centered around the underserved victims and their communities impacted by the systemic racism and institutional failures of the police that allowed one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade.”
However, despite the description, victims feel they have been under-represented and the show faced criticism for the same. The makers said that they did not want to focus on just Dahmer and the violent crimes he committed. The makers wanted to celebrate the victims and highlight police negligence, racism, and homophobia that paved way for Dahmer to kill 17 men without getting caught.
Dahmer- Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer story is streaming on Netflix.
Source: TMZ
