That house was actually the site of his first murder. Even more specifically, it was filmed in the actual house where Dahmer and his family lived. One of the movie’s most interesting quirks is that it was filmed in the actual town where Jeffrey Dahmer grew up. “The funny thing is, I’m told by (the artist behind the graphic novel) that some of the things that I put in that I thought were coming from me were also incidents that happened to Jeff.” “My own parents ended up splitting up right after high school, there are just qualities or emotions that I remember, it wasn’t as toxic as (Dahmer’s parents’) marriage at all but it was just enough that I could relate to that story and I could relate to that time in his life, and that gave me an extra energy to find some parallels which made him more relatable as a person. Meyers admits that to find the human at the heart of his protagonist, he drew from his own teenage years: “If I do it right and I’ve been successful at doing it then people will bring their empathy to it because I’ve brought the forces to play for you to care about the characters on the screen. That’s for the psychologist in all of us to kind of deduce that it’s a mixed back of influences. I’m a dramatist, I’m not a psychiatrist who is trying to come to some conclusion. “It’s the fusion of all of those things that creates this person. It’s like, these are all the devices that are pressing on him, knowing that he’s also wired wrong, that he has proclivities that are evil and ghastly.
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“I didn’t want to put judgement or blame one singular force as being its fault. Smartly, Meyers avoids focusing on one specific incident or moment which made the murderer. His difficult home life, his alcoholism, his closeted homosexuality, his fascination with seeing inside bodies are all touched upon. Where My Friend Dahmer succeeds most is its exploration of the forces which made Dahmer a killer. Murderers are called ‘evil’, ‘inhuman’, ‘monsters’, or ‘insane’.
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Still, despite the interest in serial killers, we’re squeamish about acknowledging their humanity. Society has an obsession with serial killers, both real and fictional. During a memorable exchange at the BFI London Film Festival, one viewer was quick to criticise Meyers’ approach, accusing the director of being too sympathetic towards that ‘monster’ that was Jeffrey Dahmer.īut, responded Meyers, was Dahmer not a man?