a story of a gay man and his gay victims
September 20, 2024 10:30 PM Subscribe
No creator has put more LGBTQ characters on TV than Ryan Murphy. His Aaron Hernandez show raises the question of why so many are killers.
In an interview with the NYT, Murphy asserts that his shows shed light on the marginalized, that he is unearthing buried history. But critics in both mainstream and queer publications question the tone and content of his work. These shows have drawn criticisms from the family of victims and the family of perpetrators alike.
In 2020, GLAAD awarded Murphy the Vito Russo Award for making a significant difference in accelerating LGBTQ acceptance.
"What’s singularly disturbing about the queer-murderer shows is how closely the portraits they paint of their subjects have come to resemble one another, on a thematic level. The more of them we get, the stronger the message becomes that the formula for homicidal derangement is same-sex attraction + bad dad + broken society, with a side of substance-abuse issues and sometimes a history of sexual abuse. And the easier it gets to internalize the misapprehension that the most salient thing these characters have in common is that they sleep with men, not that they’re cold-blooded killers."Ryan Murphy is the creator and producer of many of TV's most popular series, including Glee and American Horror Story. In recent years, he's focused on true crime, winning major awards and huge viewerships for his series on OJ Simpson, Andrew Cunanan (the murderer of Gianni Versace), and Jeffrey Dahmer. This week alone sees the release of two series focused on the Mendendez Brothers and Aaron Henandez.
In an interview with the NYT, Murphy asserts that his shows shed light on the marginalized, that he is unearthing buried history. But critics in both mainstream and queer publications question the tone and content of his work. These shows have drawn criticisms from the family of victims and the family of perpetrators alike.
In 2020, GLAAD awarded Murphy the Vito Russo Award for making a significant difference in accelerating LGBTQ acceptance.
Unfortunately, the more Murphy investigates this very specific type of character, the muddier his message about the connection between queer men and murder becomes.
Look, I think we can all agree Ryan Murphy is hiding something terrible in the catacombs beneath his luxurious estate. Once revealed, he will no longer be allowed to walk among us, cast out for his sickening (and confusing) crimes against human dignity and anatomy.
Nonetheless this sentence about his 'message' may be the dumbest sentence I've ever read in a TV review. Murphy doesn't have a real message except "watch my TV show." He's at his empty best when he throws violence, beauty and drama on the screen with no real thought, just pure emotion. His 'messages' such as they are, are delivered with the clumsiness of an after-school special moral, and are just tedious interruptions in the cruel fun.
But more than that, has this reviewer never met a gay man? Or, like, any other person? Is it a surprise that someone should be interested in gay villains, gay monsters? I mean I realize I'm only a mentally-ill sample size of one, but when I was a kid I used to keep a poster of Jeffrey Dahmer in my room, and read every true-crime serial-killer book I could get my hands on. But then, true-crime is hugely popular, you can't click anything on Netflix without seeing a million documentaries about killer ex-boyfriends, so it just feels natural that a creator like Murphy would take a popular genre and make it...y'know...pretty. "At times, these shows ... come perilously close to painting their queer murderers as victims." Yes? And? Let us engage our human sympathy, so we're doing more than watching a dour morality play! We like monsters! Why is this news?
posted by mittens at 6:17 AM on September 21 [9 favorites]
Look, I think we can all agree Ryan Murphy is hiding something terrible in the catacombs beneath his luxurious estate. Once revealed, he will no longer be allowed to walk among us, cast out for his sickening (and confusing) crimes against human dignity and anatomy.
Nonetheless this sentence about his 'message' may be the dumbest sentence I've ever read in a TV review. Murphy doesn't have a real message except "watch my TV show." He's at his empty best when he throws violence, beauty and drama on the screen with no real thought, just pure emotion. His 'messages' such as they are, are delivered with the clumsiness of an after-school special moral, and are just tedious interruptions in the cruel fun.
But more than that, has this reviewer never met a gay man? Or, like, any other person? Is it a surprise that someone should be interested in gay villains, gay monsters? I mean I realize I'm only a mentally-ill sample size of one, but when I was a kid I used to keep a poster of Jeffrey Dahmer in my room, and read every true-crime serial-killer book I could get my hands on. But then, true-crime is hugely popular, you can't click anything on Netflix without seeing a million documentaries about killer ex-boyfriends, so it just feels natural that a creator like Murphy would take a popular genre and make it...y'know...pretty. "At times, these shows ... come perilously close to painting their queer murderers as victims." Yes? And? Let us engage our human sympathy, so we're doing more than watching a dour morality play! We like monsters! Why is this news?
posted by mittens at 6:17 AM on September 21 [9 favorites]
Yesterday, I was checking out at the store and happened to be wearing a T-shirt for the Nightmare Horror Bar in Prague. "You like that horror crap?" the clerk asked, and then went into a mini-monologue about what a damaged and sick person one would have to be to like horror.
People love doing that, spinning out a big mess of specious logic and stupid generalizations based on a fondness for horror. I guess you can use it as a launchpad for clickbait essays, too.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:33 AM on September 21 [12 favorites]
People love doing that, spinning out a big mess of specious logic and stupid generalizations based on a fondness for horror. I guess you can use it as a launchpad for clickbait essays, too.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:33 AM on September 21 [12 favorites]
This is an interesting post that raises some great questions, so thanks for doing it!
That said, I don’t really understand these criticisms of Murphy. He is a gay man with an interest in horror and violent crime who wants to tell stories of gay characters. Given his subject matter, it seems obvious to me that many of those gay characters are going to be killers etc.. One could ask what is going on in Murphy’s psyche to make him focus on these themes, but that is a different question.
I was also struck by this comment from the first article;
“Then comes the wider culture, where supporting characters often serve as case studies in systemic oppression or resistance more than as multifaceted people. The cops in Dahmer are nasty, corrupt white guys who might be more repulsed by Jeff’s sexuality than they are by his crimes. Because they don’t care about the poor, Black residents of his building, they ignore repeated requests from Nash-Betts’ Glenda Cleveland to investigate his reeking apartand alarming behavior. “
Isn’t that what more or less happened in the Dahlmer case? (I remember listening with horror to the police radio calls in which they snickered about being called to help one of the victims, dismissing it as “one boyfriend hurting another boyfriend” and sent a young man back to his death). How else is Murphy supposed to portray that?? Again, this seems more like distaste for the themes and subject matter behind Murphy’s work vs properly-founded criticism.
posted by rpfields at 9:08 AM on September 21 [9 favorites]
That said, I don’t really understand these criticisms of Murphy. He is a gay man with an interest in horror and violent crime who wants to tell stories of gay characters. Given his subject matter, it seems obvious to me that many of those gay characters are going to be killers etc.. One could ask what is going on in Murphy’s psyche to make him focus on these themes, but that is a different question.
I was also struck by this comment from the first article;
“Then comes the wider culture, where supporting characters often serve as case studies in systemic oppression or resistance more than as multifaceted people. The cops in Dahmer are nasty, corrupt white guys who might be more repulsed by Jeff’s sexuality than they are by his crimes. Because they don’t care about the poor, Black residents of his building, they ignore repeated requests from Nash-Betts’ Glenda Cleveland to investigate his reeking apartand alarming behavior. “
Isn’t that what more or less happened in the Dahlmer case? (I remember listening with horror to the police radio calls in which they snickered about being called to help one of the victims, dismissing it as “one boyfriend hurting another boyfriend” and sent a young man back to his death). How else is Murphy supposed to portray that?? Again, this seems more like distaste for the themes and subject matter behind Murphy’s work vs properly-founded criticism.
posted by rpfields at 9:08 AM on September 21 [9 favorites]
That is literally what happened with Dahmer's victim Konerak Sinthasomphone. He escaped from Dahmer's apartment, a naked minor on the street, dazed and bleeding from the head. Not only did the cops not care, they suffered no permanent consequences. Officer John A. Balcerzak went on to be the head of the Milwaukee Police Association.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 12:43 PM on September 21 [2 favorites]
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 12:43 PM on September 21 [2 favorites]
I wonder how old Judy Berman is. Seems possible to me that she's too young to appreciate how much society has changed in Ryan Murphy's lifetime. Which is actually a little bit heartening, even if I find this particular essay badly wrong-headed.
"...the implication is that this specific form of difference predestines a person to loneliness and anger and misery, to killing or being killed, regardless of anything else that might be happening in their lives."
See, this is the key failing in her take. She wants to suggest that Ryan Murphy is the one promulgating this idea, to pin it on him somehow instead of considering the possibility that this is a message that basically every gay man of his generation or older was bombarded with from practically every authority figure, radio, TV and pulpit in America since birth, and they've all been stuck grappling with it ever since. I mean, Ryan Murphy lived through the AIDs epidemic, a time when people literally, explicitly said this kind of thing to and about gay men - and at the worst, darkest moments, it probably seemed to be true.
(Besides Murphy himself, you've also got to figure that a lot of his subject matter was soaked in this idea their entire lives as well. It's hard not to wonder how much an impact the thought "Well, if I'm already declared a monster for something outside of my control, what's the downside to just leaning into it and BEING a monster?" had on them.)
But then if you accept that Ryan Murphy isn't the source of this idea but just an artist wrestling with his hangups and his trauma and his darkness through his chosen medium, you aren't left with much to write about, since artists wresting with their particular hangups is, well, [gestures emphatically at ~90% of all art since the dawn of time, in the process accidentally clocking Woody Allen in the face and giving him a bloody nose]
posted by mstokes650 at 1:28 PM on September 21 [10 favorites]
"...the implication is that this specific form of difference predestines a person to loneliness and anger and misery, to killing or being killed, regardless of anything else that might be happening in their lives."
See, this is the key failing in her take. She wants to suggest that Ryan Murphy is the one promulgating this idea, to pin it on him somehow instead of considering the possibility that this is a message that basically every gay man of his generation or older was bombarded with from practically every authority figure, radio, TV and pulpit in America since birth, and they've all been stuck grappling with it ever since. I mean, Ryan Murphy lived through the AIDs epidemic, a time when people literally, explicitly said this kind of thing to and about gay men - and at the worst, darkest moments, it probably seemed to be true.
(Besides Murphy himself, you've also got to figure that a lot of his subject matter was soaked in this idea their entire lives as well. It's hard not to wonder how much an impact the thought "Well, if I'm already declared a monster for something outside of my control, what's the downside to just leaning into it and BEING a monster?" had on them.)
But then if you accept that Ryan Murphy isn't the source of this idea but just an artist wrestling with his hangups and his trauma and his darkness through his chosen medium, you aren't left with much to write about, since artists wresting with their particular hangups is, well, [gestures emphatically at ~90% of all art since the dawn of time, in the process accidentally clocking Woody Allen in the face and giving him a bloody nose]
posted by mstokes650 at 1:28 PM on September 21 [10 favorites]
a mini-monologue about what a damaged and sick person one would have to be to like horror.
Horror has this weird status. So many people enjoy horror, especially kids, and sometimes we do so furtively. At the same time society sneers at it.
posted by doctornemo at 4:14 PM on September 21
Horror has this weird status. So many people enjoy horror, especially kids, and sometimes we do so furtively. At the same time society sneers at it.
posted by doctornemo at 4:14 PM on September 21
By the way, now that I've watched a few episodes of Monsters, I have to say, this is Murphy at his best. I don't know how you watch this without seeing a very particular art--an art that associates gayness, masculinity, danger, disease, violence, crime and death, without trying to draw little cause-and-effect arrows between them. It works best when talking about history, specifically 80s-90s history; if you watch the prison shower scene, for example, you're seeing something that can't be disentangled from, say, Todd Haynes' Poison, and the oiled-up shininess of 90s VHS gay porn. It's not a perfect recreation by any means (there's an actress who simply can not hold a cigarette and I find it so distracting), but it is so engrossing as a look at the artifacts of that time.
posted by mittens at 8:42 AM on September 23 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 8:42 AM on September 23 [1 favorite]
I have not paid attention to Ryan Murphy since he started his horror bent, but here's his response to complaints from Erik Menendez.
But as the 58-year-old noted, that doesn’t mean that every theory portrayed—including one that Erik and his brother Lyle were involved in an incestuous relationship—will be received favorably, especially for the subjects themselves.
“There are people who say that never happened,” Ryan admitted, before adding, “There were people who said it did happen.”
But as the longtime producer added, “I'm used to this. I write about provocative things and controversial things, and my motto is 'never complain and never explain.'”
My impression of Ryan Murphy has always been that he's into sensationalism, and throwing in incest, well...
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:23 AM on September 24
But as the 58-year-old noted, that doesn’t mean that every theory portrayed—including one that Erik and his brother Lyle were involved in an incestuous relationship—will be received favorably, especially for the subjects themselves.
“There are people who say that never happened,” Ryan admitted, before adding, “There were people who said it did happen.”
But as the longtime producer added, “I'm used to this. I write about provocative things and controversial things, and my motto is 'never complain and never explain.'”
My impression of Ryan Murphy has always been that he's into sensationalism, and throwing in incest, well...
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:23 AM on September 24
I'm curious; has there been any confirming evidence in the years since about the sons' story of abuse? My impression from all those years ago was that there wasn't any external evidence, so it was possible it was was true, possible it was a story made up to try to escape consequences. I'm wondering because I ran into some Menendez fangirls elsewhere on the net who were all convinced it was inconvertably true and that the murders were a wonderful thing. I ducked out of the conversation fast, because I didn't think I was going to get any reliable information out of them, but perhaps Metafilter can help.
posted by tavella at 11:03 PM on September 26
posted by tavella at 11:03 PM on September 26
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posted by dorothyisunderwood at 10:59 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]