Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer story; is it too much?

 By Phoebe Cunningham       photo credit: imbd
​The Jeffrey Dahmer Series was released in late September in 2022, and since then its ratings and reviews have been incredibly mixed. The series on Netflix consists of 10 episodes, all based on the story of real-life killer Jeffery Dahmer. Dahmer is famous for his incredibly intimate slaughtering of sixteen men. The witnesses and survivors of his terror lived to tell their story, and eventually the jury convicted Dahmer: he was charged with fifteen of the sixteen murders. 
   This documentary goes into detail about the events in Dahmer’s life that caused his motivation for the killings and how the events supposedly went down during his spree. The show on Netflix shows Dahmer’s childhood, his adult life, and the trials followed by jail time. 
   Numerous websites state this show as “not suitable for kids under 17 years old.” This popular opinion based on reviews doesn’t stop many children from watching the show, and the kids that have seen it may be traumatized from the blood and real-life events that seem impossible for most humans to perform. On review sites, young people have said “These shows are starting to get out of hand! No one ever ever ever needed to be exposed to a detailed and disgustingly vivid presentation of something so macabre.” Dahmer is also famous for the cannibalism of his victims after he killed them, which the actor performs in the show. The scenes where he does this convince lots of viewers to turn their heads away from the screen because it might just be too much to think about that happening in real life. 
   Common Sense Media, a review and rating site, writes that “This show is amazing but is the most violent thing I have ever seen in my life. This show can trigger psychotic traits so if you are under 18 and you watch this be careful because this show is hardcore.” Most reviews on this website talk about the gore and the acts that Dahmer commits. Some are negative because of this, but some of the viewers are intrigued by this aspect. 
   From seeing the series, there are in fact lots of sensitive scenes, like when Dahmer is shown killing the men he hunted and eating their remains. There are other actors featured in these scenes like Shuan Brown. He portrays one of Dahmer’s attempted victims that goes through trauma and lives to tell his story. These scenes were honestly a bit much, although it is relevant to the plot, and some details are unnecessary for viewers, like the cannibal scenes. 
  There is controversy surrounding the glorifying of murder by creating a Netflix show about Dahmer because throughout his life, he was motivated by attention. Despite passing away in 1994, he would have craved this kind of attention from the show. Although this show is the most realistic reenactment of what happened during Dahmer’s reign of terror, it might just be too much gore for lots of viewers.

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