Netflix’s Dahmer: The Heart-Eating Heartthrob

On September 21, 2022, Netflix released “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” making great strides in telling the story of the serial killer and cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer, as well as the racism and homophobia that enabled him to kill his victims without any consequences. But in the Netflix retelling of the story, they appealed to some of the darker parts of American society. By casting a White, conventionally attractive actor, the corporation exploited who does and does not receive empathy in our nation.

Most telling of this exploitation are the various clips of brawny Evan Peters exercising, glistening with sweat, as the camera zoomed on his abdominal muscles. These portrayals have made many viewers uncomfortable, such as the YouTube channel KFC Radio, who remarked that the scene was “almost like an 80’s Schwarzenegger type of action where it’s just a lot of glistening muscles. He’s just doing squats…the way they shot it was weird sometimes.”
The sexualized camera lens is evident in the various edits created by viewers that display numerous sexualized scenes of Dahmer dancing, smoking, etc., while shirtless and yet again covered in glistening sweat. The comments below these TikToks claim only to find the actor, Evan Peters, attractive. However, the levity with which they discuss and display the portrayal of Jeffrey Dahmer begs the question: why can Evan Peters’ attractiveness eclipse the show’s tragic and terrifying subject matter?

The answer is evident in the absence of shows with POC main characters that intimately follow a serial killer. The portrayal of both Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy appeal to young women using charming, attractive White actors. One can easily observe the lack of POC equivalents of these shows; instead, these portrayals consist of chilling documentaries that are more, and rightly so, focused on the victims.