Osgood Perkins Nails the Problems With Ryan Murphy’s ‘Monster'

Osgood Perkins is a fantastic artist, even if his work hasn’t always clicked with me. I loved Longlegs and have enjoyed it more and more with each watch. Its creeping dread, striking visuals, and crackpot performance by Nicolas Cage make it a fantastic experience. Not to mention its effortless introduction of the supernatural. Meanwhile, I hated The Monkey. It was devoid of tension and thought it was much funnier than it was.

But, dammit, the film felt just as much like Perkins’ brainchild as Longlegs did, and I can’t begrudge it for that. The man is a singular artist, and sometimes that won’t land with everyone. That’s okay, because he’s still offering something that feels like a singular vision. He has a firm point of view, so I will be seated at his next movie and I will listen when he discusses art, especially if he has a stake in what he’s discussing.

Something I knew I would not be seeing is Ryan Murphy’s Monster. I haven’t watched any season of it, and, admittedly, that started because I have no interest in Murphy, who feels like Perkins’ antithesis. He wears his influences on his sleeves in a way that feels like an homage, but teeters more toward uninspired knockoffs. He owns the tone and presentation of his shows, but they’re all empty calories.

That isn’t what kept me away from Monster, however. I stayed away from that because it felt insane to present Jeffrey Dahmer in any glamorous way. There were also relatives of Dahmer’s victims pleading with people not to watch the show, who were rightfully upset that their stories were being exploited in the first place. The second season, about the Menendez Brothers, received similar criticisms. And the current season, about Ed Gein, has been slammed for wild inaccuracies and exploitation.

Perkins’ father, Anthony, appears as a character in the show, which feels crappy. The actor played Norman Bates, a character loosely inspired by Gein, but that’s where the connection ends. Perkins was approached by TMZ for his thoughts on the show. He said that he “wouldn’t watch it with a 10-foot pole,” and slammed the attempt to turn Gein’s monstrosities into “glamorous and meaningful content,” and added his concern that culture is being “reshaped in real time by overlords.”

I remember having a similar feeling when the trailer for this season of the show dropped. Images reminiscent of Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were being used, as if tying them together, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. While Gein served as an inspiration for many characters, his form of evil was far more mundane and hidden. He’s not some pop culture icon. Perkins notes that these true-crime adaptations are “increasingly devoid of context and that the Netflix-ization of real pain (ie, the authentic human experiences wrought by ‘actual events’) is playing for the wrong team.”

He’s right! Media literacy is not nearly as strong as it should be, and shoveling stuff like this into people’s mouths is going to affect how they view historical events and people. Stories are more than just their exciting parts, and people are more than caricatures, whether they existed in the public eye or not. Perkins is right to criticize this nonsense, not only because of his displeasure with how they have portrayed his father, but because the whole enterprise is disgusting.