The Romanticization of True Crime Stories

Murders, threatening letters, grotesque images of a crime scene, and unexplainable serial killers with a disarminging, charismatic face that hides the horrors committed at their hands. There is a fascination that comes with understanding the haunting and gruesome minds of serial killers, evident in the many television shows and films being produced about them every year. This fascination is similar to the phenomenon of being unable to look away at tragedy, like driving by a car crash and being unable to stop yourself from observing the damage done. While we can excuse this as part of the human mind’s sick and twisted nature, it is actually a ‘fight or flight’ response that is activated as the brain tries to process received data. How does it make us feel? Scared, disturbed, paranoid? How could we survive this? Do we have the strength and cleverness to fight the assailant, or do we run? No matter if we actively ask ourselves these questions as we consume these stories, our subconscious’ inability to look away becomes both a survival instinct and an opening for companies to profit. This human fascination to dig deeper into tragedy is what makes criminal stories in television and film so successful.

It’s normal to be equally disturbed, yet intrigued by these heinous crimes as it stems from the natural curiosity of human nature. What does prompt concern, however, is the escalation of simple interest to obsession, and even more disturbingly, romanticization. We are seeing a resurgence of true crime stories being brought to life with television series like American Murder: The Family Next Door (2020), Dahmer (2022) and The Watcher (2022), as well as movies such as My Friend Dahmer (2017), Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019), Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel (2021), and The Tinder Swindler (2022). It is important to note that not all of these examples involve a serial killer and include other crimes, such as stalking and fraud. What is also important to note here is how successful these series and films have become. There seems to be an endless demand for crime stories, a niche genre similar to horror and thriller. Even when the stories claim to be “based on real events”, with the image of wanting to finally tell the truth behind these crimes, more often than not the events and details become increasingly fabricated and convoluted to appeal to shock factor. This can be seen in serial killers that have multiple shows or movies made about them, each one varying in story structure and format. Take for example, the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy himself, whose stories have been featured in many shows from Netflix’s Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) to Amazon Prime’s Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer (2020) and the star-led film mentioned above, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (starring Zac Efron as Ted Bundy and Lily Collins as Bundy’s girlfriend, Liz Kendall). When there are so many remakes of the same killer’s stories, especially if they ignore the perspective of the victims, it becomes easier to separate the killer from their actions. They transform from being a real person that caused real consequences to a character on screen.

This can be seen in the stories about Ted Bundy, a serial killer notoriously known for using his good looks and charm to lure women into a false sense of security before murdering them. Bundy has long been romanticized for his looks long before any of the biopics or films were made about him, but casting an extremely attractive and famous couple (Efron and Collins) to portray Bundy and his girlfriend certainly does not help the matter. These stories are under the pretense that they want to tell the truth when that is secondary to their “entertainment” factor. When these killers are eternalized in television shows and films by successful, well-liked actors, that is how they will be remembered by the public. These repetitive hours of production that go into “dissecting” the minds of the killers to try to understand why they did what they did does not provide any closure to the public and certainly not the victims. It only makes them into celebrities, who deserve no recognition but live on forever because of our desire to understand them.

Another infamous serial killer that has hooked social media more recently is Jeffrey Dahmer, also know as the Milwaukee Cannibal who lured young men, mostly people of color, into his grasps before brutally dismembering and murdering them. Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, better known as simply Dahmer, is one of the newest releases of true crime shows and has become Netflix’s biggest show debut since Stranger Things Season 4. The show generated 196.2 million hours of views within its first week, becoming one of the most successful Netflix shows to date. Even though the show appears to avoid glorifying Dahmer, instead choosing to tell the ten-episode series through the lives of both Dahmer and his victims, its success does raise concerns to its impact on the victims and its influence on people’s perceptions of serial killers. Even though the storytelling does not shy away from the atrocities committed and the incompetence of the police, as well as the victims lack of compensation from authorities and the general public, its overwhelming success as a multimillion production seems ironic to the issues it addressed. Not only is the show profiting from its success despite criticizing the public’s lack of compassion for the victims, certain audiences are also romanticizing Dahmer, despite the fact that the show itself addressed the tone-deaf love letters Dahmer received from fans. No matter if the show tries to be accurate to the real events that happened, its dramatization due to being a form of entertainment, first and foremost, takes center stage and the story can never be fully accurate to what happened. Such discontentment about the inaccuracy and lack of concern for how the show affects the victims’ families can be heard from the mother of one of Dahmer’s victims, Shirly Hughes. Shirly Hughes, whose son Tony Hughes had an entire episode in the show dedicated to his story, expressed her concern along with relatives of other victims in an interview, stating: “I don’t see how they can do that…I don’t see how they can use our names and put stuff out like that out there.” Although creator Ryan Murphy and Dahmer’s actor Even Peter claim that the show aims to tell the stories of the victims, the simple fact is that those families were not notified and not compensated, despite the tremendous successes profited from their pain.

Examples from Twitter:

The attraction to criminals can come from the natural curiosity to understand why certain people would want to create such acts, which is only amplified if that particular criminal is attractive or charming. This is because such characteristics, committing ugly acts while also appearing amiable are two juxtaposing traits that seem confusing and unrelated. While there is a science behind finding serial killers fascinating, nothing justifies the romanticization and glamorization of their horrific acts. Such tweets like the ones shown are insensitive to both the victims and family of the victims, blatantly ignoring the irreversible damage caused by the culprit. Even if trying to understand the minds of criminals can help lessen the unknown “horror” that drives our “fight or flight” response, especially if these criminals are behind bars or deceased because it eliminates the danger they pose, that does not invalidate the damage they have committed. 

A line between being truthful and being entertained at the expense of others’ pain and suffering must be drawn. It almost seems wrong to describe these true crime stories as “entertainment” when the stories told involve real consequences that have affected the lives of so many. The truth is, these aren’t just fictional stories, but someone’s reality. When these very true events are adapted into television series and films, they automatically begin to lose their grip on reality, especially if the retelling is fabricated or exaggerated for dramatic effect. To the general audience, it feels safe to watch these shows from behind our screens— if anything, it’s just another horror story to be consumed. But when we take the time to step back and remember that the television screen separates us from the story does not separate the character from their acts, perhaps we will find some humanity and compassion for those affected.