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No 2022 show was more controversial than Ryan Murphy's Netflix show about the serial killer – but there were other real-life dramas that raised ethical concerns too, writes Hugh Montgomery. F Few recent cultural works have shown up the divide between critics and audiences quite like this year's awkwardly-titled Netflix series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. The drama about notorious US serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered 17 young men and boys between 1978 and 1991, was released mid-week in September on the streaming service, with little pre-publicity and no previews made available for press – a common indication that the show or film in question isn't much good. And duly, the media verdicts that did come in were mostly pretty harsh. More like this: – The 21 best TV shows of 2022 – The violent TV universe gripping the US – How Top Gun: Maverick shocked the world By contrast, though, viewing figures proved astronomical: according to Netflix's self-declared ratings, it was watched for 196.2 million hours in its first week of release, at the time giving it the best opening week for a new show on the streaming platform ever, while within 60 days it reached 1 billion hours viewed, placing it in the rare echelons of other globe-conquering cultural phenomena Stranger Things and Squid Game. Whether all those eyeballs on it were favourable – though a 83% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes would suggest most of them were – undeniably people could not stop watching its incredibly grim story play out. And matching the size of its cultural footprint has been the level of debate that it has stirred. Netflix's Dahmer series featured upsetting horror movie-style sequences of the killer entrapping his targets (Credit: Alamy/Netflix) Netflix's Dahmer series featured upsetting horror movie-style sequences of the killer entrapping his targets (Credit: Alamy/Netflix) The root of that contentiousness is perhaps best illustrated by a comparison with another true-crime drama, featuring a number of narrative parallels, which premiered at the very beginning of the year. The BBC miniseries Four Lives also focused on the horrific case of a serial killer who murdered young gay men, Stephen Port, as well as the resulting police failings in dealing with the victims' cases that were alleged by some to be driven by institutional prejudice (homophobia in the Port case and both homophobia and racism in the Dahmer one). Except the whole style and tone of Four Lives was sombre and restrained: when Port appeared, he was a pointedly blank, banal supporting character, with no backstory sketched in, while from the title onwards, the show emphasised that this was the story of his four victims only – or rather the victims' families, for the most part, who consented to and/or cooperated with the show and were depicted fighting for justice for their loved ones. Where Four Lives was sober, though, Dahmer was unabashedly lurid. In its first half in particular, it centred firmly on the killer, played by Evan Peters, taking us inside his world and flashing back to his early development and broken family life while, in the present timeline, featuring graphic, extended sequences of him entrapping his targets within his grisly apartment. Creator Ryan Murphy made his name in part with the homage-filled horror of his anthology series American Horror Story, and here he leans once more into the grammar of horror – the bolts going across the door, the ominous pan across the drill on the kitchen workspace – in ratcheting up the sense of dread. As reviewer Jack King wrote for GQ "it feels as though Murphy is aping the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, Peters' performance not so distant from a socially-stunted Hannibal Lecter". What's more, it was made without the consent of any of the victims' families – and since its release, a number of them have publicly expressed their upset at the show's existence. That has compounded the feeling among many critics that the show isn't simply bad, it is indecent. The Guardian asked "Is Ryan Murphy's Jeffrey Dahmer show the most exploitative TV of 2022?" while an article by Anna Leszkiewicz in the New Statesman, baldly entitled Abolish True Crime, went as far as to suggest that the series proves the genre is "morally indefensible". The key questions it raises Without doubt, the conversation around it lends itself to a wider discussion about the whole nature of what we watch, or should watch, when it comes to true-crime drama and beyond. First of all, it raises the question of focus: is giving a serial killer a narrative platform in itself an act of mythologising and glorification? That has been an increasing feeling within the cultural ether, as a range of works, from books to documentary and docudrama series and films, have made a concerted effort to instead refocus narratives away from notorious murderers and onto their targets. By the same token, in citing evidence for the corruptive consequences of serial killer-centred narratives, some have pointed to the Dahmer-related Tik Toks that have sprung up in the show's wake, in which users have apparently expressed sorrow or sympathy for Dahmer or created "romantic" edits of scenes with him. So should serial killers become characters non grata in – or at least be pushed to the background of – film and TV drama? Jarryd Bartle, a criminology and justice studies lecturer at Melbourne's RMIT University, who has written about true crime and the Dahmer show itself, believes there can be no hard and fast rule on this matter. In fact, he is more sympathetic to the show than many reviewers, pointing out that it does have more of a focus on the victims than many other true-crime dramas, and many other film and TV treatments of the Jeffrey Dahmer story: the second half of the series does indeed refocus away from Dahmer and towards the victims, and their families, with a single victim, deaf, aspiring model Tony Hughes, becoming the focus of one particular episode. Pam and Tommy dealt with the exploitation of Pamela Anderson but did not receive her consent to be made (Credit: Alamy/Hulu) Pam and Tommy dealt with the exploitation of Pamela Anderson but did not receive her consent to be made (Credit: Alamy/Hulu) But Bartle also says that, while he believes there is benefit in making such dramas more victims-centred, he thinks "it is sometimes difficult to tell these stories without getting into the killer themselves and their motivations". Plus, he adds, "we know from research, in terms of why people watch true crime, that one of the main interests people have is trying to understand the psychology of why people kill". And as for those Tik Toks? "I'm not aware of any research indicating that there are greater rates of this kind of problematic fascination with serial killers these days than there had been in the past," he says. "We've had people be fans of killers in problematic ways for a very long time." Indeed, the Dahmer series itself deals with this, showing people back around the time of his arrest writing him "fan mail" in prison. There there is the question of consent: should true crime dramas only go ahead with the permission of those closely connected to the crimes, given the significant potential for retraumatising? Some would say it should be an absolute line in the sand: as Vox culture reporter Aja Romano wrote: "Make your true crime dramas if you must but make them with the assistance of and respect for the victims. Model your true crime dramas after Ava DuVernay's When They See Us [the Netflix drama about the Central Park Five] made with the full support of its subjects, rather than at their expense". What I've found is that actually there are a lot of people that haven't heard that story before that have now been exposed to it – and I do think there is some benefit to that – Jarryd Bartle However Bartle is again less clear-cut on the rights and wrongs around this issue, given that, as he sees it, the "ethical dilemmas" around platforming a horrific case via a TV drama are not much different from those in crime reporting generally. "[Whatever the medium] there is often a resistance by family members of victims to see something turned into any kind of spectacle that relates to their loved ones and that's completely natural." On top of that, he says, the public interest in telling and retelling some stories has to be taken into account. In the case of Netflix's Dahmer series, he does believe it meets that public interest bar, given the way it suggests how systemic homophobia and racism underlay the tragedy – and also, that while the story may have told many times over, making it into a fictional drama on a mass market streaming platform necessarily will expose it to different audiences. That's something he has felt first hand from speaking to people since the series' release: "If you'd told me two years ago they're going to make another story about Jeffrey Dahmer, I probably would have been a bit more dismissive in saying 'we've had this story told hundreds of times before in different medium'. But what I've found is that actually there are a lot of people that haven't heard that story before that have now been exposed to it – and I do think there is some benefit to that." Murphy himself is keen to emphasise this public interest aspect: having remained quiet around the September release, he has more recently been speaking about the show, and justifying its making. "We weren't so much interested in Jeffrey Dahmer, the person, but what made him the monster that he became," he has said, adding that "It's really about white privilege. It's about systemic racism. It's about homophobia". However it's a framing of the show that, whatever one's opinions about its relative virtues, or lack of them, cannot help but seem disingenuous, given the show's evident dedication to centring "Jeffrey Dahmer, the person", from those aforementioned horror movie sequences to the marketing, which has focused tightly on Evan Peters' sinister, bespectacled visage. "His portrait is coloured with a warm lustre, set between metallic gold panels," wrote Leszkiewicz in the New Statesman of seeing Peters' Dahmer on a LED billboard in central London. "Dahmer has, quite literally, been exalted: raised high over the city in a gilded frame like a god." The troubles with the real-life drama explosion If Dahmer has been particularly controversial, then it's far from the only show this year about real people to have got into hot water. Ripped-from-the-headlines dramas seem to be becoming ever more prevalent, and so it's no wonder that, in tandem with that, the whole issue of fictionalising real people on screen has become increasingly contentious, both when it comes to their representation and their approval. Some other shows that have stirred debate on this front in 2022 include: Pam and Tommy, Hulu's miniseries about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's stolen "sex tape", a story about a woman's most personal experiences being seen by the world without her consent which ironically did not gain Anderson's consent to be made; and The Crown, with a particular fury being whipped up around the latest series and its bending of the facts, perhaps because, as it gets closer to the present day, memories become sharper. Then there was Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal, the bizarre HBO show in which comedian Fielder purported to help people rehearse key moments in their life, and blurred the boundaries between reality and fiction in a way that some felt was inherently problematic (although arguably, too, that was the point). The latest series of The Crown inspired much debate about its bending of the facts (Credit: Alamy/Netflix) The latest series of The Crown inspired much debate about its bending of the facts (Credit: Alamy/Netflix) What's more, it's a conversation that has crossed over into the legal realm, with action either being taken or threatened by those portrayed or referenced in high-profile shows about their depiction. In September, Netflix settled a lawsuit with Georgian chess master Nona Gaprindashvili over an inaccurate reference to her in their hit 2020 miniseries The Queen's Gambit. Meanwhile in August it was revealed Rachel DeLoache Williams, the former friend of "fake heiress" Anna Sorokin, was suing Netflix for defamation and false light invasion of privacy for her depiction in this year's Inventing Anna. In June, Michael Peterson suggested he was planning to consult lawyers about the making of the HBO drama The Staircase, exploring the notorious true-crime case of his wife's death, which he described as containing "egregious fabrications". And in Dahmer's case, a tabloid newspaper report in October suggested Jeffrey Dahmer's father Lionel was seeking legal advice against Netflix for its two Dahmer shows, Murphy's drama and the documentary series Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, according to Lionel's assistant – though it's not clear in this case what his basis for a legal challenge would be. There will be a pressure on TV makers to be more careful in their message – are they producing facts or are they producing fiction? – and make sure the viewer knows which is which – Helena Shipman "I'd certainly say that we've noticed an upturn in this kind of inquiry," says Helena Shipman, a specialist in defamation at solicitors Carter-Ruck about cases involving the depiction of people in TV dramas. And while there may not have been any major victories on this front yet, Shipman says the law in this area hasn't really been tested – "so I don't think we can safely say that Netflix [and others] have got nothing to worry about. In fact, quite the opposite". Undoubtedly, she thinks, with the increasing amounts of based-on-a-true-story dramas being made, "there will be a pressure [on TV makers] to be more careful and that is careful in their message – are they producing facts or are they producing fiction? – and it's incumbent on them to be much more careful to make sure the viewer knows which is which." Saying that, though, a simple disclaimer – of the kind seen before episodes of Inventing Anna ("This whole story is completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up") and in the trailer for the most recent series of The Crown (which described it as "inspired by real events" and a "fictional dramatisation") – does not get TV-makers off the hook. "That's neither here nor there," says Simpson. "Unless it's made absolutely clear which parts are fiction and which parts are fact, then the producer is shifting the onus of working that out onto the viewer – but actually the legal responsibility lies with the producer and the publisher." But legal ramifications are one thing, and morality quite another. So are we drifting into dangerous territory with the explosion of these real-life dramas? And ethically, are the makers of them going too far – or rather, not far enough? It definitely feels like we've reached a point where conversations – about representation, consent, and the sheer necessity of recreating certain traumatic events as dramatic entertainment – are coming to a head. Yet at the same time, the ratings for Dahmer speak for themselves. Perhaps, as Bartle suggests, there's an instinctive morbid curiosity driving people to watch such a show that is timeless. "It has been a well-documented feature of humans throughout history," he says. "And I do think some of the criticisms that I've seen of the Dahmer series are very quick to view that as necessarily a corruptive or bad impulse, but I view it as a natural [one]... I would be more disturbed if there was some kind of moral regime to say 'people don't need to know about these things, people don't need to hear about graphic crimes'. That to me is a more counterproductive social impulse." Equally, a viewer may condemn a piece of work as unethical, but that may not necessarily stop them watching it all the same – such is the fickle nature of human behaviour. Indeed, the almighty backlash against Dahmer hasn't stopped a whole "Monster" anthology series focusing on "other monstrous figures who have impacted society" now being commissioned – something that has made its critics get more queasy, with the suggested implication, via Netflix's talk of a Monster "universe", that real-life "monstrous figures" are as franchisable as superheroes or space operas. Bartle himself will be reserving judgment, saying "each new entry needs to be judged on its own merits", though he does wonder "if they're going to learn from some of the backlash about victims' families this time around and [factor] that in for future series". Certainly, there will be a lot of people watching intently. |
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1923, which premiered on Sunday in the US, is the latest addition to a television empire so enormous it has a name, the Taylor Sheridan universe – or more simply, the "Taylorverse". Once a struggling actor, Sheridan turned to writing films with acclaimed screenplays that merged action and complex characters in Sicario (2015) and Hell or High Water (2016), and later wrote and directed Wind River (2017). But the old-fashioned Yellowstone, which he co-created, was a popular success that changed everything for him. Sheridan has since created 1923 and an earlier Dutton origin series, 1883, as part of a reported $200 million contract with Paramount for multiple shows. They include the current Tulsa King, with Sylvester Stallone, and The Mayor of Kingstown with Jeremy Renner, and two upcoming series, the contemporary Yellowstone spinoff 6666 and the CIA drama Lioness with Zoe Saldana. What are the Taylorverse's politics? The three Dutton family series are a phenomenon partly because of their singular, retro vision. Sheridan's shows embrace the heroic myth of the Old West and of American individualism, reinventing it for today's increasingly divided country. It is a paradoxical vision. The shows have always acknowledged that white settlers usurped the land, tragically robbing and mistreating the Native Americans. At the same time, the series' message seems to be: Hey, the Duttons own it now, and they're in no hurry to give it back. The Dutton heroes speak most directly to those conservatives who want to return to a glorified past, when patriarchs ruled and the government left them to their own devices. But the shows are elusive enough culturally, and entertaining enough as drama, to reach liberal viewers, too. Sheridan has said that his series are not, as they are often called, Republican "red-state shows" – yet while they do avoid overt political statements, his claim is disingenuous. With Yellowstone's emphatic idea that the country was better in the past, its politics quickly became a flashpoint, a central part of the cultural conversation about the show. John Dutton is constantly battling the Native Americans and big corporations that want to take over his ranch. He rails against the government, city dwellers and environmentalists. In the current season, the show's fifth, he has become Montana's governor, running on the promise, "I am the opposite of progress. I am the wall it bashes against". Governor Dutton's political party is never acknowledged one way or another, but if that message isn't conservative (with a small c), nothing is. As the sociologist and cultural critic Tressie McMillan Cottom said in a discussion with Vulture about the show, "Yellowstone is a powerful cultural object in large part because it does not feel like a political object to millions of people". And just last week, The New York Times bluntly called the show "a mirror for American politics". The article that followed was a focus group with what the paper calls "superfans" from across the political spectrum about the show's appeal. The feature itself is an indication of how central Yellowstone has become culturally, even though the results are disappointing, with bland answers that praise the series for "authenticity" and for the Dutton family's tight bond. Yellowstone is conventional and sometimes not very good, its dialogue on-the-nose and ridiculous – but it continues to expand its reach The trajectory of Yellowstone's cultural traction is easier to chart. The show premiered in 2018, and was popular almost exclusively in the heartland, but by 2021 it was US television's highest-rated drama overall. In the last year alone it has gone from what Vanity Fair called "The Most-Watched Show Everyone Isn't Talking About", to generating a flutter of articles wondering why it didn't get Emmy nominations. That question shouldn't be a mystery. The show is conventional and sometimes not very good, its dialogue on-the-nose and ridiculous. When John Dutton's daughter, Beth (Kelly Reilly), warns a business competitor: "You are the trailer park, I am the tornado", the line does not land as ironic or campy. But the series continues to expand its reach. According to The Wall Street Journal, by season four, 28% of viewers were in small towns and 28% in major cities, where it barely registered at first. Yellowstone has proved a potent force with its mix of Western elements, melodrama and contemporary political currents (Credit: Paramount/Alamy) Yellowstone has proved a potent force with its mix of Western elements, melodrama and contemporary political currents (Credit: Paramount/Alamy) Part of the secret of the Sheridan universe's success is that the natural landscape is vast and pretty, and the family's loyalties, betrayals and infighting can be absorbing even when the plot turns are ludicrous. In 1883, the Duttons headed West and Jacob's brother, James, created the Yellowstone ranch on the site where his daughter, Elsa, was buried. In over-the-top Western fashion, she staggered around with a poisoned arrow through her abdomen and even rode a horse before the arrow killed her. Elsa's excruciatingly overwritten narration ran through the series: "The river doesn't care if you can swim. The snake doesn't care if you love your children." Unfortunately, her voiceover turns up again in 1923, but at least she offers useful information, telling us that Jacob and Cora arrived in 1894 and raised James' two orphaned sons. And she follows Cora's lethal first scene with a voiceover that goes to the heart of the Sheridan world. "Violence has always haunted this family," she says. "We hunt it down, we seek it." A promising new entry So far, it is great fun to watch Ford and Mirren gamely roaming around the Old West. Mirren, with the accent of an Irish immigrant, totes a rifle and drives a buggy. Ford wears a Stetson, rides his horse into town amid cars on the dusty street, and figures out how to survive a drought. Paramount+ released only a single episode for review (that premiere drew a large audience of 7.4 million viewers), so there's no way to know how well the series will hold up or how political it might become, but it is obvious that Jacob and Cara will face interlopers and changing times. More tellingly, the new series expands the scope of the Dutton story, positioning them in the context of US history itself. Jacob and Cora's great-nephew, Spencer (Brandon Sklenar), is now a big game hunter in Nairobi, having nightmares about his experience fighting in World War One. A subplot shows Native American girls at a boarding school where they are forced to abandon their own language, and where an abusive nun (Jennifer Ehle) raps their hands with a stick, and a priest (Sebastian Roche) beats both the nun and a student. Sheridan's attention to the injustices Native Americans have suffered is an important strand running through his career. Wind River is a taut, first-rate drama about an investigation into the suspicious death of an Indigenous woman. And in Yellowstone, Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham), the Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of Broken Rock, is a mostly sympathetic character who wants the Duttons' land back for his people and says he will use the white man's conniving business tactics to get it. That one thread tilts the Sheridan universe a bit so that it can't be seen as purely conservative. Violence and scorn for the government and the law are the traits that best define the Duttons and the culture of the Sheridan universe Hitting all the notes of a Sheridan Western, 1923 also includes a cattle drive. If you're not a fan of long scenes of cattle or sheep moving across the screen, the fast-forward button is your friend. And Cora explains to her other nephew's fiancee that the Dutton men will always put the ranch before women; just get used to it. Yellowstone set that pattern, mixing the Western with melodrama and political undercurrents. In the current season John's son Jamie (Wes Bentley) is now Montana's attorney general, plotting against the family. Kayce (Luke Grimes), his youngest son, is married to a Native American woman, Monica (Kelsey Asbille), and they seem to flit between Yellowstone and the reservation from one season to the next. Beth, once a corporate shark, is back at the ranch, smoking and drinking constantly, bent on helping her father and on destroying Jamie. At times Yellowstone resembles Bonanza if one of the sons on that classic Western had been a vindictive, out-of-control, Daddy's Girl. Sheridan's 2017 film Wind River showed his interest in exploring the injustices suffered by Native Americans that has carried into his TV work (Credit: Paramount+) Sheridan's 2017 film Wind River showed his interest in exploring the injustices suffered by Native Americans that has carried into his TV work (Credit: Paramount+) But violence and scorn for the government and the law are the traits that best define the Duttons and the culture of the Sheridan universe, as if even the 2022 descendants still lived in the Old West. The family has a taste for vigilantism, a tactic the shows don't always condone but never actually condemn. In previous seasons, Jamie has killed a snoopy reporter and his own biological father. Kayce has killed his wife's brother in a range battle over cattle, and murdered a sexual predator because he deserved it. John ordered the deaths of two men who had kidnapped his grandson. He is positioned as the sympathetic hero even when he justifies murder, saying "We don't kill sheep, we kill wolves", a sentiment based on the premise that you can't trust the government to find justice. And as governor, he spends a lot of time complaining about being governor. The show is so cynical about politics and government that Dutton admits to his children that he is only in office so his power will protect the ranch. In a recent episode he chooses to stay home branding cattle instead of meeting the US President, who is giving a speech on the reservation. Yellowstone never lets us know if that President is meant to be Joe Biden or a fictional counterpart. But at the same event, Rainwater makes what is the only specific political reference in all of Yellowstone's seasons. Distrusting the value of any president showing up, he says, "Obama visited Standing Rock two years before he tried to run a pipeline through it". Whether that comment remains an anomaly or not, the outsized fictions of the Sheridan series have always stood in for real-life issues. The hunting, gun culture of the West is a core value of the Duttons, and divisive in reality. Beth Dutton's underhanded financial manoeuvres and the show's depiction of the corporate world send a message that big business has long been evil and corrupt. Although Sheridan's empire continues to grow, he may have built the ending of Yellowstone into the series from the start. In 1883, a Native American points James Dutton toward the land that would become the family ranch and says, "In seven generations my people will rise up and take it back from you". James answers, "In seven generations you can have it." The seventh generation is Kayce and Monica's adolescent son, Tate (Brecken Merrill), the grandson John has frequently referred to as his heir. Tate has always been the potential figure of reconciliation, both a Dutton and Native American. He may be the future for a country that was built on the division between its Native people and the settlers. But given Sheridan's slippery, retro West, don't count on it. |
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