For years, Eric Wynn was the only black drag queen at Club 219 in Milwaukee. He performed as Erica Stevens, sang Whitney Houston, Grace Jones, and Tina Turner for her devoted fans and eventually won the title of Miss Gay Wisconsin in 1986 and 1987. .
Wynn, now 58, said of his time in clubs in the late 1980s and early ’90s, “I had a group of black kids who represented me.” let them know that they had seen them, because they finally had a representative on stage.”
Among them were Eddie Smith, known as “The Shake” because he often wore a scarf around his head, and Anthony Hughes, who was deaf. Hughes was “my absolute favorite fan” and blushed when Wynn winked at him from the stage, in return Hughes taught him the ABCs of sign language.
“He was sitting there laughing at me while I was trying to learn sign language with my big old false nails on,” Wynn recalled with a laugh.
But then the group of young black men started to dwindle, Wynn said.
“They were there, but suddenly there were fewer,” he said.
Smith and Hughes were two of them. 17 young people Jeffrey Dahmer murdered, mutilated, and cannibalized in a series of murders that primarily targeted the gay community in Milwaukee from 1978 to 1991. Dahmer was a regular customer of Club 219. In 1994 he was sentenced to his 15th consecutive life in prison.
Dahmer’s life has been the subject of several documentaries and books, but Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” dramatizes the murder in a 10-part series produced by Ryan Murphy. Starring Evan Peters as Dahmer and Niecy Nash as a neighbor who repeatedly tried to alert the police, the film explores Dahmer’s gruesome story through the stories of his victims. We aim to
For many critics, that attempt quickly fell through when Netflix classified the series into the LGBTQ vertical when it premiered last month.label peeled off After arguing on TwitterWynn and the families of the victims questioned the need to dramatize and humanize serial killers.
“It couldn’t be more wrong, it was just bad timing and it was out of the media’s hands,” Wynn said, adding that he was “disappointed” in Murphy. I thought.”
Murphy, who rose to fame on the high school comedy show Glee, has explored true crime before. In his mini-his series, American Crime Story, Gianni tackled the assassination of Versace, the OJ Simpson trial, and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. But from “The Normal Heart,” which is based on a play written by AIDS activist Larry Kramer, and “Pose,” which depicts the 1980s New York City ballroom scene, to the Wynn-stopping “Monster.” The turn was Murphy’s turn.
Regarding “poses,” Wynn said: He added: And he turns around and is actually attacking the black gay community. ”
Instead of focusing on the victims, Wynn said, “Monster” focuses on Dahmer.
Netflix did not return requests for comment.
in an insider essayRita Isbell, whose brother Errol Lindsay was murdered by Dahmer, explained that she saw Depiction of her victim’s statement Dahmer’s trial in the Netflix series “Try It Again”.
“It brought back all the emotions I was feeling at the time,” she wrote. “I never heard back about the show. I feel like Netflix should have asked if we care or how we felt about making it. They just did it.
Eric Perry, stating that he is a relative of the Isbell family, wrote that the series was “broken over and over again. For what?”
Scott Gunkel, 62, worked as a bartender at Club 219. Dahmer was the customer. Gunkel watched his first two episodes of “Monster”, but he was unable to continue. He and his friends “didn’t want to repeat it,” he said.
“The first episode had absolutely no background on the victims, which blew me away,” he said of the episode, adding that the bar scene didn’t accurately portray the racial mix of gay bars in the city at the time. As the show portrays it, it was mostly white instead of black.
Gunkel also recalled that Hughes, who is deaf, came to the bar and waited for the bar to get busy. Hughes was one of the few victims to receive a full episode dedicated to his story.
“He got there early, had two sodas, and wrote me a note to keep the conversation going,” recalls Gunkel. “He disappeared, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
This is partly because the Dahmer era coincided with the AIDS epidemic. The Netflix show has opaque references to the crisis, including police reluctance to help victims and a scene in a public bath where condom use is discussed. But Gunkel said it’s not uncommon for customers to disappear.
“There was a saying at the bar that if someone isn’t there anymore, they either have AIDS or they’re married,” Gunkel recalled.
The AIDS epidemic, combined with the temporary lifestyles of many gay men in Milwaukee, combined with “systemic homophobia and racism targeting the community” provided a perfect cover for Dahmer, he said. Wisconsin LGBTQ History ProjectTakacchi was 18 when Dahmer was arrested.
“People were always looking for something new, and people always disappeared,” said Takachi, now 50. “This one was different, because it just got worse and worse.”
The missing persons poster climbed “like a tree in Club 219 until it reached the ceiling,” he said.
The show brought back those memories, Takacchi said, and also surfaced those who claimed it was related to the Dahmer era, which wasn’t.
“This is the invisible price of the Dahmer revival,” he said.
Nathaniel Brennan, an adjunct professor of film studies at New York University who is teaching a course on true crime this semester, said cinema is “an inherently exploitative genre.”
Even with good intentions, “the victim becomes a pawn, a game, or a symbol,” he said.
Modern true crime often falls prey to unresolvable tensions, said Brennan. “We cannot afford to forget it, but expressing it is never perfect,” he said. “That balance has become clearer over the last 25 years. ”
Criminals are often portrayed with a tragic background, he said. “There is the idea that if society had acted more, it could have been avoided.”
Much of “Monster” is dedicated to Dahmer’s origins, including suggestions that hernia surgery at age four and his mother’s postpartum mental health problems may have affected his mental development. increase.
Wynn, who now lives in San Francisco, said he had no plans to watch the series, and said Murphy owed the victims’ families and the city of Milwaukee an apology. .
He hadn’t talked about Dahmer’s years in a long time before the series premiered.
“I did it this morning,” he said. “I’m still doing it so I don’t forget.”
Sheila McNeil Contributed to research.