The sons killed the parents so brutally that the police suspected the mafia. Filmed by Netflix | Currently.cz

“It’s really about white privilege, systemic racism and homophobia,” the writer-director explained two years ago Ryan Murphywhy he created an anthology called Monster. Her first series spun off a story about a serial killer, cannibal and necrophiliac with an unhealthy interest Jeffrey Dahmer.

The ten episodes detailing his crimes were produced without the consent of the survivors and sparked debate about the ethics of the true crime genre. Is it okay to make a suspicious scene out of the murder of 17 young men and give so much media space to the criminal?

Murphy defended himself by saying that the main theme of Monster lies elsewhere. In the list, however, he forgot the most important motivation, why Netflix and other streaming platforms almost every week there is a new story dedicated to how someone was raped, kidnapped or murdered: money. Murders cause morbid curiosity and increase viewership and thus brand value. Despite the noble words about educating the audience, it is still primarily business at heart. Trauma becomes entertainment, serial killers are commercialized just as much as superheroes.

The miniseries about Dahmer also had a higher response. In 60 days, it crossed the mark of a billion times watched. Naturally, it has spawned a series that Netflix released late last week. In it, Ryan Murphy and a team of screenwriters largely solve the case of brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted in 1996 for the brutal murder of their parents, multi-millionaire José Menendez and his wife Mary Louise. The creators leave us in no doubt about their guilt. The first of nine episodes captures the murder with tragic intensity.

On the wrong track

Gun-wielding sisters break into a mansion in Beverly Hills, California. The father and mother are sitting in the living room watching TV. The ensuing carnage, in which body parts literally fly through the air, is shot from every angle imaginable, with no sign of respect for the dead.

It is not easy to answer the question of whether it was necessary for the story to see José’s head explode across the room. Likewise, dubious authority choices, balancing between self-serving motivation and deliberate over-stylization, will gradually increase.

The execution of the murders is so brutal that the police at first suspect the mafia. The brothers are too rich, too privileged and handsome for anyone to see them as murderers. It is no surprise to anyone that, instead of being sad, they are fully enjoying their inheritance. Expensive cars, clothes, hotels and branded sparkling water, because they will definitely not drink the tap anymore. A twentysomething American Cooper Koch a Nicholas Alexander Chavez they play Erik and Lyle as self-pitying, self-pitying scumbags who can’t show any real emotion. Even if they are against the death penalty, the only thing that matters to them is whether they have a good enough tan. The series doesn’t give us reason to empathize with them, which is just fine.

The drama of the first episodes also discourages identification with the main characters. Despite the meat in the middle, the second season of Monster looks like something between a telenovela, a family sitcom and a satire à la Such habitual killers by Oliver Stone.

The Los Angeles sun gives the scenery a golden hue, the interiors are full of rich colors, and the many editing sequences are underscored by soothing period music. Everything relates to well-being or the desire to live to the fullest. And also zero sympathy. A similar distortion of reality would have made more sense if the narrative had adhered to the sociopathic brothers’ point of view.

But the series always jumps in time and changes the idea. We see the events leading up to the crime as well as the subsequent investigation and trial from the perspective of police officers, a defense attorney, a journalist or a psychologist, to whom Erik unexpectedly entrusts what he and Lyle have done. .

Later, the creators give a lot of space to parents. Jose in appeal Javier Bardem he is a terrible bully who tries to hide his anger with a funny smile. But he still can’t resist the urge to humiliate his son and the wife he plays Chloe Sevigny.

Like a watch

When detectives finally find out who did the killing, Erik and Lyle base their defense on abuse. They are said to have been sexually, physically and emotionally abused by their parents throughout their lives. The series wisely treats their claims as nothing more than conjecture.

When Erik describes in the fifth intense episode what he had to face from his father, the camera only takes tens of minutes of the young man’s face, which he approaches slowly. No images confirm the truth of his words this time. It is mostly justified by the irreproachable Javier Bardem.

Despite the support of praise shows, the mosaic of voices and opinions does not create a complete picture of the controversial issue, let alone a picture of the social mood of the time, as Ryan Murphy managed to do in the excellent series. Lid against OJ Simpson from 2016. This time it was just a mix of different pieces that repeated the information previously released.

The brothers went through two trials that lasted a total of seven years. The scenes from the courtroom, where the witnesses, we already know, are among the most boring.

The narrative expands in breadth, new characters are added all the time, and at the same time it remains on the surface. The brothers remain caricatures with a vague or inconsistent psychological dimension. We can only see more examples of how easily he can lie.

The schizophrenic attempt to understand the trauma of Erik and Lyle, at the same time not making them victims and not being unfair to José and Mary Louise, leads to no strong moral center or clear goal at the series. It offers a bit of each and forgets the main thing – the reason we should spend eight hours of our lives on it.

The first series about Dahmer, despite everything, was valuable in at least one respect. She pointed out the police’s blind spots in the investigation of murders involving gay men and African Americans. The story of Lyle and Erik Menendez does not go beyond the banal statement that no one is born a monster, but that he is one as a result of construction and different types of abuse of power. But we will find out relatively soon. The remaining few hours are like a jammed album that, like the murder brothers, repeats the same song over and over.

But when we go back to the motivation behind such shows, the disproportionate number of events makes sense. More shows mean more hours on Netflix. So the company will be able to boast again of boring looking figures, which say nothing about quality, but will please the shareholders.

It is already known that the main character of the third series Monstra se happened Ed Gein, who was an appropriate choice from a platform that gives money to murderers. A man nicknamed the Butcher of Plainfield was infamous for digging up corpses from graves and turning them into relics.