Netflix finds a global hit with true crime series ‘Monster’

Series tells the story of Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer and cannibal

Today's expression: Take liberties
Explore more: Lesson #523
November 24, 2022:

In the ultra-competitive world of streaming, Netflix has found a worldwide hit: its series called "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story." In ten parts, the series tells the story of one of America's most notorious serial killers. While the facts of the story have been known for some time, the series tells the story from a new perspective. Plus, learn the English expression "take liberties."

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A new Netflix series revives the story of an infamous serial killer

Lesson summary

Hi everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, lesson number 523 for Thursday, November 24, 2022. JR is the producer and he has uploaded this full lesson to PlainEnglish.com/523.

Coming up today: The world of streaming video is increasingly competitive. For big streamers, it’s not enough to have a deep library of good shows and movies. To hold onto customers, they have to continuously release big hits. And this fall, Netflix had a big hit. It’s called “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” With little promotion, it rocketed to the top of Netflix’s streaming library in the U.S. and around the world. But the series has also attracted its share of criticism as well.

In the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you what it means to “take liberties” with the truth. And we’ll have a song of the week, too.

Just a quick note before we get started: This is a grim story. The details are public—they’ve been public for decades. But if you want to go in fresh, this lesson will have some spoilers. And second, this lesson contains some graphic descriptions of a serial killer. If that makes you uncomfortable, you might want to pick another lesson from the archives for today.

Netflix’s ‘Monster’ shows Dahmer killings from a new perspective

Before this fall, if you said the name “Jeffrey Dahmer” to most Americans, they would know a few things. Serial killer—they would know that. Cannibal—they know that. Possibly they would know he was murdered in jail.

But for those of us who didn’t live through the story, the other details are a little murky. I was about ten years old when his crimes were revealed—too young to really follow the story. Although the Dahmer case was extensively publicized, and there have been books and documentaries, there were a lot of key details I didn’t know.

For example, I didn’t know that the murders took place in Milwaukee. I didn’t know he targeted gay and bisexual men for romantic encounters. I didn’t know he performed sexual acts on the bodies of his victims. I didn’t know he primarily targeted minority men. And I certainly didn’t know that police in Milwaukee turned a blind eye to what was happening, even after neighbors and others repeatedly called to report their suspicions.

That all changed with this fall’s release of “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” a limited series on Netflix. The series rocketed to popularity: it is Netflix’s second-most-popular series in English and racked up billions of minutes of views in just the first three weeks. According to Nielsen, it was the most popular show on streaming for three consecutive weeks.

Over the course of ten, 45-minute episodes, “Monster” tells the story of perhaps America’s most famous serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. He grew up in the American Midwest, was a bit of a loner, an outsider in school. He had some weird habits, including dissecting roadkill.

He drank a lot, was fired from multiple jobs, and was even discharged from the Army for alcohol abuse. He did not go to college, but bounced around from job to job. He was twice convicted of sexually-related offenses: once of exposing himself and once for sexual assault.

From age 19 until he was caught at age 31, Dahmer killed seventeen men and boys. Each time was a little different, but his killings followed a theme. He would approach a victim he found attractive, often in Milwaukee’s gay bars. He would invite the victim to his home, to a hotel, or to a bathhouse. He would drug the victims, perform sex acts on them, and often kill them. He sometimes disposed of their skeletons and organs in large vats of acid. He admitted to eating their flesh and organs; he was a cannibal. He preserved body parts, like skulls, as souvenirs.

The story shows that neighbors repeatedly called the police, complaining about the smell, screaming, and other loud noises coming from Dahmer’s apartment. He also had a few close calls in his own family home.

Police often refused to get involved. They ignored warning signs, dismissing them because they were from minority communities. In one particularly distressing story, a 14-year-old boy escaped from Dahmer’s apartment and asked neighbors for help. He had been drugged and abused by Dahmer earlier that evening.

When police arrived, Dahmer convinced police that the boy was actually nineteen, not fourteen, and that the two were romantically involved. Police accompanied the teen and Dahmer back to Dahmer’s apartment and considered the matter a domestic dispute. At the time they returned the fourteen-year-old, the corpse of another body was still in Dahmer’s apartment, decomposing. The fourteen-year-old became Dahmer’s next victim that same night.

The series is grim. The episodes take time to tell the stories of the victims, to shed some light on the minority gay community in a small Midwestern city in the days before gay marriage and before general acceptance of homosexuality.

But it is important to remember that “Monster” is entertainment, not a documentary. The series draws on public records: police and court records, Dahmer’s own lengthy statements to police, extensive reporting, his father’s memoirs, among others. But it also takes some liberties for the sake of the story.

The liberties are forgivable, but they are liberties nonetheless. They take two forms. First, the series tries too hard to explain how Dahmer became who he was. Dahmer’s father did not encourage his interest in dissecting roadkill as a teenager, as the story suggests. His mother was portrayed as highly unstable: in the series, she was drug-addicted and crazy. Real life may have been more mundane; she may have suffered from depression. She died years ago and did not leave a memoir, so we won’t know her side of the story. In these ways, the series bends the truth to try to explain Dahmer’s behavior—something that is probably unexplainable.

Second, the series exaggerates both good and evil—again, keep in mind this is entertainment. The police officers who ignored the fourteen-year-old did not receive a union award for Officers of the Year, as the series portrays. Dahmer’s neighbor, Glenda Cleveland, did not live next door to Dahmer; her character in the series is a composite of several characters. She did act courageously, but many other neighbors and relatives also helped; their names were not in the series.

Still, the series is remarkably true to the truth, in part because there was so much information to draw on. Evan Peters plays an uncanny Jeffrey Dahmer—his appearance, mannerisms, gait, and manner of speaking are all spot-on .

But the series has also attracted a fair amount of criticism—and that criticism illustrates the delicate balance of the true-crime genre. That’s what we’ll talk about on Monday.

Two more Monsters

As I was writing this lesson, Netflix announced that it had signed up the producers of this series to create two more—not two more seasons about Jeffrey Dahmer, but about other serial killers who have had an impact on society.

The producer is Ryan Murphy. He’s behind the popular series “American Horror Story.” He also produced the Netflix series “The Watchers,” also based on a true story. Netflix signed him up for another season of that one, too.

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Expression: Take liberties