The last week has seen all sorts of talk and attention placed on both Blonde and Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
Two serialised and fictionalised takes on vastly different people, but no less traumatising accounts fetishised for views.
And it’s verging on the grotesque.
Blonde focuses on the (fictionalised) story of Marilyn Monroe, while the latest Ryan Murphy series centres serial killer Dahmer.
And with barely weeks between release and now, I’m not the only one airing grievances about the unnecessary nature of these productions – because that’s what they are: productions – that profit off of pretty horrific trauma of real people.
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I’ll start with Blonde, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel of the same name, where we have a woman’s grief being used for entertainment in a blurring of fact and fiction.
For instance, and I’m trying to make this as concise as possible, in the film we see Monroe, depicted by Ana de Armas, speaking with her fetus, who goes on to ask her if she’ll ‘not do what she did the last time’ and not ‘hurt’ it, after the film also depicts Monroe having two abortions in grim detail, which is just all sorts of WTF and triggering for absolutely no reason.
Then we get to a scene with ‘the president’ – a thinly-veiled depiction of JFK, one can only assume – in which Monroe is pressured to go down on him while he speaks on the phone denying claims that he ‘molested’ an aide in Texas, nor had a ‘sexual liaison’ with a staffer.
There is absolutely no reason for such contrived scenes involving real people. Why must the very real grief of Monroe be turned up to 11 and made factually inaccurate so we can have something tantalising to watch while munching on popcorn? When this story can so easily be made with a fictional actress it’s a real choice to depict real people in this way.
This isn’t an homage – such as what we saw with Baz Lurhmann’s Elvis, which took artistic license, yes, but had the support of Elvis Presley’s family – but amplification of trauma.
Then there’s the story depicted of Dahmer: another instalment in the classic trope of a serial killer turned into a pop culture deity.
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Artists have name-dropped the killer into their songs for years now, but with this series comes a whole new host of fans.
On social media people are lusting over images of the real Dahmer, sharing their sympathy for the man – who killed 17, may I remind you – and, right on time, search is starting to rise for Halloween costumes so you, too, can dress as the demented killer.
We saw this with Netflix series You, but at least with that one Joe Goldberg is a work of fiction.
By telling the story from Dahmer’s point of view to the extent that people are finding some sort of empathy with him erases the very real, horrendous experiences of the men he killed, and the families who dealt with that anguish.
Don’t even get me started on the fact the series was previously tagged as LGBTQ in an effort to further capitalise on pain.
I understand that twisted stories gather more eyeballs, but it’s time to put an end to the brutal dramatising and blatant fictionalisation of very real moments very real people experienced when there are myriad stories to titilate to make up that won’t affect those still living with grief.
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