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Jan 15, 2023Liked by Frederick Woodruff

I've seen every documentary on Dahmer (that I'm aware of) and personally, I thought Evan Peters' acting was superb. Doesn't make much sense to me that people are outraged because he didn't mention the victims. WTF. Acting is his job. His career. He won an award for doing a good job. I doubt few, if any, of the "public," especially those who watched the documentary could even name the victims.

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100% agree with all of this. Evan Peter's virtually chanelled Dahmer in that show. As John says in the comment below- the facination is all about the What If, the How, and the unbelievability of it. Great post.

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Jan 16, 2023Liked by Frederick Woodruff

I'm quoted above as saying "“Dahmer’s victims are beside the point," which sounds heartless and irresponsible. It needs context:

Nobody wants to be remembered as a data point in a series of murders. The story that captures the imagination is the story of the killer. Why, how, and his ability to elude capture.

In such tales of off-kilter minds there is always a fascination that turns on what if it were us. What if we were the killer. What if we met the killer. It is not in the deaths of his victim's that we can understand an extreme of human nature like Dahmer, but in his twisting journey to become an obsessional killer ... or is it, a tale not of becoming but of manifesting what was always there?

In Dahmer, we are confronted with the reality of evil. Evil is a term burdened with a religious glaze. This is no reason to dismiss it out of hand. Evil, as this piece suggests, is something real and innate. We need no psychobabble to wish it away, no futile fretting over an unfortunate childhood, as if had only this happened instead of that Jeffrey Dalmer would be a fulfilled man. There is something feral about evil, embedded in the primitive mind bereft of tribal allegiance to the human condition and the evolved morality of living with others.

Evil, and the way it confounds us, is the fascination that looms over our interest in transgressive figures like Dahmer. And in this contemplation, the victims are merely the data points, not the pivot points, of the story.

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