Shows and documentaries about serial killers. No, I don’t “love” serial killers or admire them in any way, shape or form. But the whole thing sort of amazes me. Just the mere fact that these people exist is crazy for me. I saw this show a few years on Netflix called Mindhunter. It was nothing short of amazing. Just a beautifully done show that really captured the terrifying and dark atmosphere surrounding these people.
There was a recent controversy about the mini series on Jeffrey Dahmer that was produced and aired by Netflix. Some victims considered it “insensitive” to have to relive their trauma, in a sense, by the whole ordeal being rehashed thirty years later. I’m not unsympathetic to that argument — it is awful. But the thing is, the fascination I have with this matter is shared by millions of people around the world. I traveled to a number of countries. I’ve wandered the streets at night, and sometimes I would wonder… who are these people next to me on the sidewalk? Who are the people in the bars, the teachers in the schools, the cops that serve and protect, the doctors and nurses professed to heal?
They’re not always, who they seem to be. People have secrets. People do horrific, unimaginably cruel things and get away with it, sometimes for years or even decades — the “Golden State Killer” being outed as a former cop and doting grandfather named Joseph DeAngelo some forty years after his final killing, for instance. So who are these people? Who are our neighbors, our relatives, our friends? Some so normal in public, so odd in private. So good in appearing kind and so cruel when no one is watching…
These things get to me. They haunt me. And watching such films I am overcome with this strange sense of calm — reminded not only of my own relative ‘normality’ but of my safety, comfortably wrapped under a blanket on my sofa as I watch the screen of my TV. The way I’d listen to the rain as a kid and fall asleep glad to not be a hobo and have a roof over my head when the weather isn’t kind. Yes, I’m odd, I know it. But like John Lennon sings… “I’m not the only one.”
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