From Jeffree Dahmer to the Menendez Brothers, true crime has taken on a new chilling angle. On platforms like TikTok and X, the genre is saturated with content that, rather than focusing on the gruesome realities of crime, seems to prioritize something else: the attractiveness of murderers and the actors who portray them.
While true crime has always had a substantial following, recent portrayals including “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” have culminated a darker wave of public fascination.
The result of this romanticized storytelling is a society increasingly desensitized to the traumatic details of real-life tragedies, often sidetracked by aesthetic portrayals. As consumers, we must remain vigilant of the ways we interact with this media. We need to resist becoming mindless viewers, unable to comprehend or empathize with complex themes and instead caring solely about what attracts and excites us.
Shows like “Monster” are marketed as eye-opening accounts of infamous murderers, but they come with an even more sinister implication. More people are hyper-fixated on an actor’s six-pack abs and sweaty shower scenes than the experiences of the roles they depict, often including backstories of neglect and abuse.
Rather than engaging critically with the realities of their crimes, many viewers are drawn to the aesthetic appeal of the actors playing these roles, influenced by what’s known in psychology as “attractiveness bias” or the “beautiful is good” stereotype.
“You tend to assume that physically attractive people also have personality traits that are good,” psychological science professor Dr. Kan said. “You think that they’re more intelligent, more socially competent, maybe more moral, which is obviously against what these serial killers actually are… [Viewers] may also incorrectly perceive them as not necessarily people they look up to, but people [whose] crimes might not seem as heinous.”
Films like “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” on Ted Bundy, along with shows like “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” and “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” bring intensely traumatic, violent histories to the screen. These portrayals confront us with devastating accounts: Bundy’s acts of unimaginable physical and sexual violence, Dahmer’s serial targeting and subsequent murder of young queer men and the Menendez Brothers’ alleged experiences of physical and sexual abuse by their father. Such themes require serious and thoughtful reflection. Yet when the public’s attention is swayed, the horror is diluted, attracting younger, increasingly desensitized audiences.
In several ways, the blame doesn’t fall solely on the viewer but also on production teams who strategically cast conventionally attractive actors, knowing they will generate engagement and viewership. We saw this with Evan Peters’ depiction of Jeffree Dahmer and prior to that with Zac Efron’s film portrayal of Ted Bundy.
This fixation on attractiveness raises questions regarding whether or not we as viewers — or perhaps more broadly, our culture — actually care and empathize with the stories at hand.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be intrigued by true crime or attractive casts, but the blending of the two in shows depicting severe acts of violence raises ethical concerns. The solution isn’t necessarily avoiding these shows altogether, but rather being more cognizant of what we endorse with our viewership.
Ask yourself if you’re drawn to a particular series based on any critical narrative, or simply due to its capitalization of an actor’s appeal. If the latter, consider what that collective desensitization could endorse in the future of television, or in your own moral compass.
Some may argue that our fixation with attractiveness is human nature, and that there’s no harm done if viewers find Evan Peters or Nicholas Chavez attractive. But this fixation comes at a cost, distorting real trauma into mere spectacle. As producers continue to profit off of this model, media surrounding true crime will likely drift even further from respectful retellings and closer to the entertainment genre to exploit the experienced horrors of real people.
Bearing this in mind, next time you press play on the newest enticing true crime series, pause and think critically about what drew you in — if not to consider more broadly what the work stands for, then simply to gain insight about your implicit interests and values.
In a world flooded with content, we must remember that our choices matter, and as enablers of media trends and mob-like mentalities, so does our awareness.
Zena Almeida-Warwin PO ’28 is from Brooklyn, New York. A fan of Theo James, she’s watched every one of his films and shows — naturally, for their intellectually stimulating plots.
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