Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Ryan Murphy’s new, strangely titled series on the prolific serial killer (played by Evan Peters), has been a massive hit on Netflix. It’s so popular that eBay actually had to ban people selling his likeness as a Halloween costume. Any show that depicts real life horrors is going to get some pushback. And that Dahmer has gotten, including from some of the families of his victims. The show also earned a more specific criticism: There were complaints about it being listed under the service’s LGBTQ tag, arguing that it demonized the community. The streamer eventually removed that.
via: New York Post
“Dahmer” creator Ryan Murphy is hitting back at Netflix over its decision to de-emphasize the show’s connection to gay history.
“There was a moment on Netflix where they removed the ‘LGBTQ’ tag from ‘Dahmer,’ and I didn’t like it,” Murphy, 56, told The New York Times, referring to the way the streamer sorts content into categories.
“And I asked why they did that and they said because people were upset because it was an upsetting story,” Murphy said. “I was, like, ‘Well, yeah.’ But it was a story of a gay man and more importantly, his gay victims.”
The “LGBTQ” tag is typically used on Netflix to help viewers identify stories about queer characters, for example “Heartstopper,” or the teen lesbian vampire show “First Kill.”
Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, played in “Dahmer” by Murphy regular Evan Peters, was gay. He killed 17 people, many of them queer men of color he encountered in Milwaukee gay bars in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The show, “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story,” which premiered in September, would quickly become Netflix’s second most-watched ever in the English language, in spite of mostly negative reviews and waves of social media-fueled controversy. Netflix quickly removed the offending tag after users on TikTok and Twitter protested. One posted a video, asking, “Why the f–k did Netflix tag the Jeffrey Dahmer [show as] LGBTQ? I know this is technically true, but this is not the representation we’re looking for.”
On Sept 28, Deadline reported that Netflix had removed the tag, but numerous show-inspired battles have raged on, from victims families speaking out, to outrage over fans dressing up as Dahmer for Halloween, to a tourism boom in Milwaukee attracting the curious that has some business owners fuming.
Murphy, who inked a $300 million deal with Netflix in 2018, told the Times he disagreed with the decision.
“I also don’t think that all gay stories have to be happy stories,” he said.
