Though one of the biggest hits for Netflix for the entire year, drama series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has been courting controversy ever since it premiered. Not only did the series’ gain criticism for its portrayal of the character, and dredging up the memories of his crimes once again by the victim’s families, but also because of how Netflix categorized the series. Unlike when The Babadook accidentally made its way under the “LGBTQ” umbrella, the streaming service actively promoted Dahmer as being a queer story, adding that to its categoriy tags that also included “psychological,” “vintage crime,” and “horror.” After backlash, Netflix removed the tag.
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One person that thoroughly disagreed with this decision however was series co-creator Ryan Murphy, telling The New York Times as much in a new interview: “The rule of my career has been: The more specific you are, the more universal you can become. I also don’t think that all gay stories have to be happy stories. There was a moment on Netflix where they removed the L.G.B.T.Q. tag from ‘Dahmer,’ and I didn’t like it and I asked why they did that and they said because people were upset because it was an upsetting story. I was, like, ‘Well, yeah.’ But it was a story of a gay man and more importantly, his gay victims.”
The controversy of including DAHMER in the LGBTQ tag stemmed from users thinking that its primary principle was one of showing positive representation in media. Just because the show included gay men in pivotal roles didn’t exactly make up for hte fact that they were brutally murdered as well.
Murphy went on to note a scene from the series that he felt the series did incorporate positive themes, adding: “There’s a five-minute scene of three gay deaf men at a pizza parlor talking in sign language about dating, gay life and how hard is it for them. I could not believe that I was getting the gift of putting it on television.”
To date, DAHMER: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has been watched over 856,220,000 hours on Netflix’s streaming platform, making it the #2 English-language TV series of all-time on Netflix. The only show that sits above it on that specific chart is Stranger Things season four, with Dahmer having been watched more than Bridgerton, Ozark, Lucifer, and The Witcher.
