You may think that after all the backlash “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” received — including from myself — television writer, director and producer Ryan Murphy wouldn’t create a similar work, but here we are.
On Sept. 19, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story” was released on Netflix. The nine-episode series tells the story of the Menéndez family and how 21-year-old Lyle and 18-year-old Erik shot and killed their parents Kitty and Jose in 1989.
Lyle and Erik claimed self-defense after suffering years of horrific emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their father. They were tried separately at first, and both juries deadlocked. When they were later tried together, both were found guilty and received life without parole.
The case was a media frenzy, and America has not forgotten their story all these years later. Many tend to believe that the boys, while they did commit brutal murders, were acting in self-defense and should not be serving life sentences. But regardless of what people think of the verdict, we should all agree on one thing— this show should not have been made.
It is so bizarre to me that people want to capitalize on other’s pain, and I’m sick of all of these television shows and movies being defended as “morbid curiosity.” It is one thing to research a case and learn about the victims, but it’s another to make it a Netflix top-ten.
When the Jeffrey Dahmer series came out, family members of the victims rightfully blasted the show. Rita Isbell, sister of Errol Lindsey, stated, “When I saw some of the show, it bothered me, especially when I saw myself — when I saw my name come across the screen and this lady saying verbatim exactly what I said.”
She further went on to note, “I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it.”
Now again, you’d think Murphy would change things after this all came out, but 24 people related to the Menéndez brothers have come out to say that the show is a “phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare that is not only riddled with mistruths and outright falsehoods but ignores the most recent exculpatory revelations.” Surprise, surprise, they also “said in their own statement that they have been ‘victimized’ by the ‘grotesque shockadrama’ and that Murphy ‘never spoke to [them]’ before making the show.”
What is even more sickening is that Murphy alludes to an incestuous relationship between the brothers within the series. But he told People that the show is “the best thing that has happened to the Menéndez brothers in 30 years,” and that he’s “used to being controversial.”
He believes that the show is allowing people to talk about the case again, but I personally feel like it is not his place to get that conversation going. I will not be watching the show because I don’t want it to make any more money, and I urge others to do the same. Stop allowing Hollywood to produce media without consent from family members and without enough research. Crime stories are not meant to be entertaining or amped up for amusement.
ajones11@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @araonfacu, x
