Debuting at the #1 spot of Netflix’s Top 10 list according to Netflix, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” has sparked interest among those who remember the original Menendez’s trials and those only being born during the controversy.
The show came as a second season to “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan and released in September 2022. With its immense popularity came controversy in many avenues, with the most notable being the disturbed feelings of the families of Dahmer’s victims.
Rita Isbell, the sister of victim Errol Lindsey, was included in the series and played by DaShawn Barnes. After the show’s release, Isbell spoke about how the show made her feel “bothered” especially after never being contacted by Netflix about how she felt about her family’s story being included in the series.
Isbell’s cousin Eric Perry also spoke out, and he tweeted about the many media recreations of the story, and said, “It’s retraumatizing over and over again, and for what? How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need?”.
His sentiment is completely valid, but constantly ignored. While many true crime junkies may empathize with the victims when engaging with the content, their interest only motivated those like Murphy and Brennan to produce this disturbing media.
“Monsters” is the same, as the Menendez brothers and family released a statement on X calling the series a “phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare” and called out Netflix for never asking for permission to create the show.
It is wrong for Netflix, or any other media platform, to create shows like these that depict deeply traumatizing events with the sole goal of gaining profit.
In an interview with Netflix, Murphy claimed that he made the documentary with the goal of spreading awareness about sexual assault among men and believes it has done the family good.
That isn’t up to him to decide.
Murphy and Brennan had an obligation to at least ask the Menendez family what they believed would truly benefit their cause before creating the show to prevent hurt and misinformation from spreading.
As consumers of this media, we have an obligation to stop engaging with these sorts of content. Streaming services follow the money, and by disengaging we can demotivate more disturbing media from being produced.
