Content Warning: Mentions of physical violence, sexual assault, and death.
True crime has been popular for quite some time. True crime tells the stories of real-life victims and cases. For some strange reason, we find it fascinating, whether it’s to understand the psychology behind it, piece those puzzles together, or just learn to protect ourselves. With that, though, there are consequences.
The main one is that we tend to forget that the victims were real people who suffered actual harm, and that tends to be dramatized and even romanticized for our entertainment.
I’ve been thinking about this recently, primarily due to the drop of the new docu-series Monsters, covering the Menendez brothers.
Now I’m no stranger to true crime, I’ve listened to podcasts and watched documentaries. However, starting the series gave me the same iffy feeling as when I saw the popularity of its predecessor, Dahmer.
If we remember, that, too, is a part of the Monsters anthology, covering Jeffrey Dahmer, a notorious murderer and sex offender. I had to stop because, like Dahmer, that had been heavily romanticized so far that people were creating TikTok edits about him; it felt more like a drama than a horrible thing that had happened in someone’s life.
Let’s remember that the victims’ families were heavily against the series for many reasons, which included them having to relive the trauma for someone to capitalize on their pain, according to Forbes.
Erik Menendez, on whom Monsters focuses, recently told Deadline his issue with the series.
“I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent,” Menendez said.
Monsters isn’t the only show with this problem. Dead Asleep covers the case of Brooke Preston, a young woman who was killed by her roommate. In an article from DailyMail, Preston’s family believes that the series was biased in favor of Randy Herman Jr, the man who murdered her, instead of their loved one, the victim in the situation.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just the media that’s the problem, even if it plays a significant role. Wade Wilson, a man recently sentenced to the death penalty for murdering two women in 2019 and infamously called the Deadpool Killer, has had his own set of admirers according to Newsweek. Ted Bundy did, too.
If the victims’ families and friends are against the stories being out there, shouldn’t we respect them? Instead of sympathizing with the abusers, shouldn’t our focus be on the victims?
I won’t analyze the psychology of this as I’m no expert on hybristophilia. Sadly, this tends to be the case, though, as we know that there are so many men and women out there who are mistreated due to entertainment’s want to romanticize pain. Just look at Marilyn Monroe or Judy Garland. While they aren’t true crime cases, they were real humans who had their suffering monetized. The Blonde documentary will never not upset me.
Bringing awareness to cases is important, especially since the media may not always do it for them. I did watch a documentary a couple of days ago, Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter, and I felt it was done right. They included the victims’ loved ones, on their way to find the killer while not romanticizing him. It’s not fiction and it never pretended it was, either. It was a mother getting justice for her daughter.
Because, again, we tend to forget, that these victims are daughters or sons, mothers or fathers, family and friends of someone. While they might not be ours, they do deserve the respect and courtesy of not being a throwaway object in their own stories. Because it is their story. It should be their names known, not Dahmer, or Wilson, or Bundy.
I suppose now it comes to what we can do. One thing we can do to help is participate in petitions, donations, or calls to keep the investigation going for those who want their loved ones’ stories out there. Call it being an active true crime consumer.