Does casting Evan Peters in Netflix series about Jeffrey Dahmer glorify the serial killer?

You can be forgiven if you think seeing Evan Peters work out is something you want to see.

Watching the actor lift weights with sweat rolling off his muscular abdomen in a new series certainly sounds watchable. The only problem is that the scene takes place while the actor assumes the role of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

In his latest role, Peters, with “American Horror Stories” and “Wandavision” credits to his name, has ironically breathed new life into the cannibalistic killer responsible for taking so many lives. The actor stars in “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” It’s a Netflix series created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan that became the streaming service’s most-watched ever series in its first week, with 196.2 million hours already watched.

Though popular, the dramatic retelling of the man who murdered and dismembered 17 men and teenagers between 1978 and 1991 has led to questions about the glorification of violence and the sexualization of serial killers.

The fascination with serial killers is not new. The 2013 finale of “Dexter” drew 2.8 million viewers in the U.S. in its inaugural airing, breaking a record for the series and for Showtime when it aired. When the scripted series about a vigilante serial killer was rebooted again last year as “Dexter: New Blood,” it delivered 2.2 million viewers across linear and streaming platforms for its series premiere.

This isn’t the first time Netflix has popularized the idea of a handsome actor playing a heinous serial killer. Zac Efron was cast as the infamous Ted Bundy in 2019’s “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.” The same year the network began streaming episodes of “You,” the scripted series about a Manhattan bookstore manager (played by the attractive Penn Badgley) who started killing anyone he developed feelings for. According to the New York Times, the series bombed on cable with only 650,000 tuning in on Lifetime when it aired. But it had an incredible streaming resurrection with 40 million viewers watching it within its first four weeks on Netflix.

Texas State University graduate and psychology academic Kenady Strutz wrote her thesis on romanticizing serial killers in film prior to graduating this year. Reviewing hundreds of articles including the earliest depictions of serial killers, she concluded that a favourable portrayal of killers can be harmful. With regard to casting Efron as Bundy, Strutz writes “ … to portray America’s most infamous serial killer as a Disney star turned American heartthrob contradicts and refutes every instinct we have to incriminate Ted Bundy.”

Strutz elaborated on that point in an interview with the Star.

“I think it’s really hard to disassociate Zac Efron playing Troy Bolton in ‘High School Musical’ to him playing Ted Bundy. He has this whole fandom base, so why wouldn’t you want to watch him in this new role? I can see where there are similarities in appearance between Zac Efron and Ted Bundy or Evan Peters and Jeffrey Dahmer. But I think these handsome men have been cast because it doesn’t hurt the box office and beautiful people are more interesting to watch.”

Victoria Selman sees it differently. The well-respected author of thriller novels says Bundy was a handsome man who used that to lure his victims. To ignore that is to do a disservice to the story, she said.

Her bestselling novel “Truly, Darkly, Deeply” examines a serial killer’s legacy through the eyes of his daughter. Selman drew inspiration for the book from a number of real-life serial killers who had children including the “Green River Killer” Gary Ridgway and “BTK” Dennis Rader. Like Bundy, they too hid behind a mask.

“Bundy played on his good looks and charm to get close to his prey. His appearance was the very reason he was able to trap his targets so effectively. Leaving that aspect out of any retelling would fail to explain why his victims were so taken in by him. And in a society so preoccupied with looks, any of us might have been too.”

Selman believes misconceptions about how serial killers “should” look present their own dangers.

“It’s comforting to believe evil has a face that we would recognize if we stumbled into its path. It’s a myth propagated by Hollywood with its cast of Disney villains kidding us, from the moment we can work a TV remote, that bad people ‘look bad.’”

Coltan Scrivner is a research scientist at the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark. The lab is dedicated to the scientific investigation of frightening activities. Scrivner has carved out a niche in the concept of morbid curiosity. That’s something he believes could be related to our interest in violent re-enactments.

“Morbid curiosity deals with the fact that dangerous stuff exists in our environment, whether that’s another dangerous person or a disaster. And it’s typically in our best interest to try and avoid those things. We don’t want to meet Dahmer in real life. We don’t want to be stuck in a hurricane or be in a car wreck,” Scrivner explained to the Star.

The researcher believes the reason behind the popularity of the Netflix shows isn’t merely because of the actors cast as the killers. He believes other elements attract us to these stories.

“Morbid curiosity motivates us to find situations where the threats to our own safety seem low but the learning benefits still seem high. If you can put that in an entertainment format, there’s kind of a one-two punch where your brain is telling you that you are getting important information (from these shows). But it’s also an entertaining and well-constructed story.”

As far as the sexualization of serial killers and who is the most susceptible, Amanda Vicary believes women tend to be more drawn to true crime stories and the perpetrators behind them. The chair of psychology at Illinois Wesleyan University has conducted extensive research related to crime and the justice system and believes gender plays a crucial role in the fascination of a serial killer.

“Women, more than men, like to hear about the killer’s background, his motives and what led them to kill. Women appear to be drawn to true crime because they are looking for ways to prevent being a victim themselves.”

Vicary said she doesn’t watch the dramatizations. She believes the greatest danger of these shows is the harm that reliving the death of their loved ones can cause victim family members.

“I can’t imagine watching a loved one’s murder portrayed on a TV special that I didn’t feel was serving a greater purpose. These types of shows could also lead to the glorification of violence in general, which is never good. We don’t want young people to grow up thinking violence is sexy.”

In a statement provided to Insider.com, Rita Isbell, the sister of Errol Lindsey (one of Dahmer’s victims) says the series which re-enacted the victim impact statement she delivered at Dahmer’s sentencing in 1992 was painful.

“When I saw some of the show, it bothered me, especially when I saw myself, when I saw my name come across the screen and this lady saying verbatim exactly what I said. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought it was me. I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it.”

Unfortunately for Isbell and despite Vicary’s warning, it appears the appetite to see a cannibalistic killer is still omnipresent and as the ‘Dahmer’ series proves, still uncomfortably insatiable.

Murtz Jaffer is a Toronto-based entertainment writer and a freelance contributor for the Star.

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