Yucking Ryan Murphy's yum

Yucking Ryan Murphy's yum
Serial killer by day, beefcake by night.

Let me preface this by saying that I know Ryan Murphy neither wrote nor directed Monster: The Ed Gein Story, he's just the executive producer. The showrunner is Murphy's frequent collaborator, Ian Brennan, who's overseen all of the series in the Monster franchise. Because it is a franchise at this point, one that takes real-life stories of death and degeneracy, gives them a lurid camp makeover, and turns them into entertainment.

"Lurid camp" has long been Ryan Murphy's brand. It's worked well in American Horror Story, which at various times has featured murder clowns, possessed nuns, and Jessica Lange singing "Life On Mars?" in a Marlene Dietrich German accent. It's deeply tacky to apply it to real-life murderers, though, turning Jeffrey Dahmer into a misunderstood dreamboat and the Menendez brothers into sexy bad boys. Created for tiresome edgelords who wear t-shirts that say "Choke Me Like Bundy, Eat Me Like Dahmer" (both of whom raped and killed children), the Monster series all slyly dodge criticisms by insisting that they're not meant to be depictions of real events, even though they're capitalizing on real terrible things that happened to real people.

If you reacted with an exasperated sigh to the news that Murphy and Brennan's next subject was Ed Gein, you won't be surprised to know that Monster: The Ed Gein Story lives down to your expectations, and then some. Squandering some interesting ideas about Gein's influence on horror, it's so messy and unfocused that its main character gets lost in the shuffle. As is typical of this franchise, however, when he is on screen, he's weirdly sexualized for an audience the filmmakers dare to criticize for watching it.

You know you're in for some repugnant nonsense when the first time we see Ed Gein (beefy hunk Charlie Hunnam, a minimal effort made to look like Gein), he's sensually caressing a cow's teats. Immediately after that, he sneaks into a neighbor's house to peep at some half-dressed teenage girls, then returns home to put on his mother's underwear and engage in autoerotic asphyxiation. Mind you, all of this happens within the first five minutes. This isn't a slow burn look at Gein's descent into depravity, he's already there from the beginning.

Calling it The Ed Gein Story is misleading. The show isn't that interested in who he was or what might have motivated him. Though his relationship with his abusive religious nut mother (Laurie Metcalf) informed every aspect of Gein's life, she dies in the first episode, slut-shaming a neighbor so hard she gives herself a stroke. The parts of Gein's life that are depicted are mostly fictional, such as a sexual relationship with his final victim, shopkeeper Bernice Worden (played here by Lesley Manville). He even gets a would-be love interest, Adeline (Suzanna Son), who shares Ed's fascination with the Holocaust, suggests that he try necrophilia, and generally seems about as fucked up as he is, though it comes to nothing.

Let's be charitable and assume this is taking a page from Joker, and that much of what happens, like Ed going on a wholesome ice skating date, is in his imagination. But it takes an artful hand to make that not seem like a slick, empty gimmick, and that hand isn't present. The script can't even settle on if Ed is a simpleton who doesn't realize that he's killed his own brother, or a crafty sociopath all too aware of what he's doing. In some scenes, he's helpless, encouraged to dig up corpses or have sex with them by other people, but he's also quick-witted enough to successfully pass off his brother's death as an accident.

I get what they're trying to do. Because the Gein case was so long ago, much of what we think we know about it comes from the iconic films it inspired, including Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs. Although it's not so long ago that there isn't any media specifically about it available: the 2021 graphic novel Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? covers all the salient points, and manages to be grisly without resorting to scenes of him jacking off in his mother's bloomers.

Nevertheless, for most of us, the Gein case is a hodge-podge of fact and fiction, and the creators clearly find that more interesting than Gein himself. Stretched out to a punishing eight hours long, episodes are devoted to the making of Psycho, Texas Chain Saw, etc., even diverging into Anthony Perkins' secret gay affairs, whatever that has to do with a necrophiliac serial killer. I am willing to overlook those creative indulgences, though, and even the need to zhuzh up an already horrifying story, because that's the Monster brand and viewers expect it by now.

What I cannot overlook is the show turning the camera on those same viewers and basically saying, "We wouldn't have to make these things if you people didn't demand them." This comes through loud and clear in episode 3, which focuses on the success of Psycho, and how it both typecast Perkins and pigeonholed Alfred Hitchcock as a filmmaker. Even though it made him one of the most important filmmakers of all time, this version of Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) is unhappy about creating a whole new film genre, and appalled at how some audiences treat it as entertainment. You know, kind of how Ryan Murphy productions are supposed to be treated.

Folks, it is rich when creators who got very wealthy through making trash (self-aware trash, but trash nonetheless) criticize their audience for indulging in that trash. This would be like if Guy Fieri, who sells a cheeseburger that has macaroni and cheese and bacon on it, went on TV to gripe about how fat his customers are. The near-pornographic depictions of Gein's crimes are to be expected – hell, I'm not even terribly surprised that it diverges into grotesque fantasies Ed has of the abhorrent acts committed by real-life Nazi Ilse Koch, even though they do nothing but once again inexplicably remove the focus of the show from the character it's named for. But this "You're the real monster here" finger-waving at the viewer is another level of audaciousness.

The day before I started watching Monster, I rewatched Zodiac. Arguably the greatest true crime adaptation of all time, while it doesn't revel in the brutality of the crimes it depicts, it still manages to be more haunting than anything Ryan Murphy ever made. It's jarring in comparison to Monster, which essentially grabs the viewer by the head and says, "You like this? Let me rub your face in it real good, you sicko." Why show one dismembered vulva when you can show three? That's what you freaks demand, no level of degradation is low enough! You're right, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, on behalf of the audiences who are responsible for your success, I'm very sorry. Maybe you should take a break after your next lucrative project, a "not to be taken seriously" adaptation of the crimes of Lizzie Borden.

Gena Radcliffe

Gena Radcliffe

Writer, one-half of the Kill by Kill podcast, born and bred in New Jersey, where the weak are killed and eaten.
Brooklyn, NY