The Morality of Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer gains media attention yet again through Netflix’s new series

Abbiegail Luker

Jeffrey Dahmer’s infamous glasses, a style of which has been repopularized with the surgance of Netflix’s breakout series.

Abbiegail Luker, Reporter
November 3, 2022

“Dahmer – Monster: the Jeffrey Dahmer Story” premiered on Netflix about a month ago, and since then, I’ve heard and seen the most vile things. I can sincerely say that I’ve felt incredible grief this past month. For the victims and families. For the fact that they will never be allowed to forget and heal from what has been done to them.  For the injustice that has been inflicted unto them and the injustice they will continue to receive.

Before even having watched Dahmer, I mentioned to friends and family how strange this was. Why did we need another Dahmer story? Wasn’t there enough? To make things worse, why was it so detailed? Why did it have to show everything so accurately? It was downright disrespectful. 

What really got me was in saying just how awful this was, I got relatively blank stares. General agreeance, or looks of boredom. Faces that said “it’s not that serious.” When looking into it, I found many either making jokes about him or expressing their attraction to him. I found impersonal news stories about what the families had to say. Why is it so hard to find someone who seems to truly care about this? Why aren’t there more of us repulsed by this? I can’t be the only one. I have been baffled by the moral implications I have run into of where our society is headed while writing this. I cannot grasp what could be remotely funny or attractive about a serial killer, or even just an actor portraying him. This isn’t some fictional story to poke and prod at. This is real life. Jeffrey Dahmer was only caught 31 years ago, a couple months before my sister was born. My own parents remember watching the news coverage of him when it happened. Steven Hicks, Steven Tuomi, Jamie Doxtator, Richard Guerrero, Anthony Sears, Ricky Beeks, Edward W. Smith, Ernest Miller, David C. Thomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsay, Anthony Hughes, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Matt Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacy, and Joseph Bradehoft. These aren’t just names. These were real people. People who Dahmer brutally killed. Nothing is funny about that.

I cried many times watching this show. I got physically ill thinking about the families watching it. Seeing themselves, reliving what was likely the worst time of their lives; to a T, might I add. I don’t know any of these people personally. I can’t be sure why I feel for these families so strongly, I just do; and to see the show try to tack on this sentiment of how terribly the families were treated in the last couple of episodes is grossly ironic. They themselves are contributing to the media’s blatant disregard towards human life in making this show. They have enabled a new generation to jeer at something they don’t care to understand. 

The sickest part of all of this is nothing will change. There is no happy ending. Most of you will finish reading this and not think twice about it, forget it, and move on. We get the luxury of forgetting this man. The families do not, and they never will. Companies will continue to create sick pieces of media such as this and profit off of others’ pain and there is nothing we can do about it. There is no conclusion because this is not the end.