Dahmer: Monster - The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022)
Netflix miniseries
Netflix miniseries
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I was curious growing up in the mid-70s and watching all those American documentaries about serial killers. I often wondered why all serial killers came from a developed nation like the USA. According to the FBI, the USA currently has 2,000 active serial killers (325 million population @ 0.00006%). On top of all that, it has the most number of its citizens locked up in prisons. Is modernity directly correlated to mental illness? Perhaps the country's vastness makes one go cuckoo or makes it easy for them to think they can hide their trails and get scot-free. Now experts are telling us that the fact that many families who end up with single parenthood end with this problem. In keeping with rising costs, single parents have to leave their children unsupervised and work two jobs. Children have to learn things on their own. In the century of the self, prioritising individuals rather than communal or extended family living may have perpetuated these many behavioural deviants.
On the other side, a country with such deep pockets has the luxury of re-investigating old cases periodically with newer technologies to smoke out perpetrators. Hence, an apparent increase in the number of instances and discoveries.
Or maybe documentaries and podcasts are scavenging deep into the crypts into the police files to meet the insatiable appetite of crime nerds, and they succeed in making every American look like a potential serial killer in the eyes of a non-American.
Jeffrey Dahmer is an infamous serial killer who lured young men and even a 14-year-old boy to his abode, drug, tortured, mutilated, drilled their skulls to infuse with drugs, dissolved their bodies in acid and even consumed their internal organs.
These miniseries try to tell how this quiet boy turned into a cold monster, tracing his childhood and the family environment in which he grew up. One particular thing that struck me is the frustration that Jeffrey Dahmer's father, Lionel, had to go through throughout his life. He was trying desperately to balance his work as a scientist and his emotionally unstable wife and trying very hard to be an excellent father to Jeffrey. All throughout his life, Lionel is searching for where he went wrong.
Even before Jeffrey was born, his mother was popping pills like they were M&Ms. There was a concern about whether these powerful tranquillisers and anti-emetics had long-term ill effects on Jeffrey. The postpartum depression took an enormous toll on his mother. Jeffrey saw his mother overdosing on pills, and he even had to call 911 when his mother was unresponsive one day.
His parent quarrelled all the time. Still, when Jeffrey was six, his mother delivered his brother. His mother became more distant. His father was frequently away at work, making Jeffrey a loner and left to his own devices. Lionel, as his father, tried his best to live up to his role as a father. The parents separated when Jeffrey was 18, and by then, Jeffrey already had a severe drinking problem and was having issues in high school.
The most exciting thing that struck me from the miniseries is the frustrations the father had to go through trying to put Jeffrey on the right track. At no point did Lionel give up on his son. He also felt guilty that perhaps his genes were the ones that caused his predicament. Anyway, Lionel had had occasional thoughts of killing in adolescence. He wondered whether his father-son outings of dissecting roadkill made him cut up his victims later. He blamed himself for being an absent parent. Still, someone had to bring in the bacon. Should he take the blame solely for how Jeffrey's mother turned out? Was he wrong in taking a new partner? But then, Jeffrey's brother turned out normal. Lionel tried to put Jeffrey back on the right track in so many ways. Oh, how much he tried, unsuccessfully.
This is the curse of having a person with mental illness in the family -so much guilt, finger-pointing, and so many frustrations. Not able to get to the bottom of it, they may resign to the fact that this situation is a curse carried on from previous births, and karma is full throttle in motion.
