Horrific people are fascinating. We crave them—we look for them everywhere, in the news, TV shows, and our favourite films. This week’s top two shows on Netflix are Perfect Couple and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. One is fiction, the other reality, yet both revolve around violent murders. Some might argue our fascination for violence is human nature, while others blame societal degradation. Regardless, these stories absorb us, and the fine line between entertainment and glorification has become alarmingly thin.
First, we must make some distinctions before diving deeper. It is important to distinguish between different types of horrific figures, to see the different ways our glorification or romanticisation of them take place. We can broadly categorize them into two groups. On one side, we have serial killers, psychopaths, and truly evil individuals who we generally recognise as such. On the other, we find scammers, criminals, and drug lords—figures we shamelessly admire and whose glorification is more often accepted, despite the profound immorality they show. Though their stories are approached differently in films and shows, our odd perceptions of them remain.
Take a look at the first category– murderers, widely recognised as vile. Consider the 2019 film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile by Joe Berlinger, which recounts the crimes of American serial killer Ted Bundy during his peak killing spree between 1974 and 1978. While the film doesn’t portray Bundy as a good person, it stops short of depicting him as the absolute monster he was. Instead, we see a charismatic man—clearly deranged—but also seductive, even charming. He is eloquent and seems kind; well, at least when he isn’t kidnapping women. His dual personality was a fact; he was said to be a social person, hiding well his monstrous side, but the film, as many true crimes do, does not emphasise properly the ultra violent terrifying reality of Ted Bundy.
This perception of Ted Bundy in the film is heavily influenced by one key element: casting. Zac Efron, whatever you think of him, is not an extremely wicked, strongly evil nor vile person, it is simply hard to perceive him this way. Its difficulty results from the fact that for many of us, Zac Efron rhymes more with Troy Bolton than Ted Bundy, more BayWatch Lifeguard than psychopathic murderer. Because of our prior associations with his previous characters, we struggle to fully perceive him as the terrifying person Bundy was. The result is a more humanised, even likeable Bundy. Viewers go on TikTok to drool over edits of Zac Efron as him, not seeing the horrific reality that they are romanticising a serial rapist and murderer of at least 30 women, including his youngest and final victim, who was only 12 years old. Murderers and rapists do not deserve recognition or romanticisation, they have to be depicted as who they are, horrible people.
Now, turning to the second category—scammers, drug lords, or corrupt businessmen. We admire them with far less shame. We openly celebrate their power, which society often equates with attraction. Take the series Narcos, which tracks the life of Colombian narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar as he evades capture by secret services while running his multi-billion-dollar drug empire. Escobar is an objectively horrific figure. He plunged his country into chaos, which still hasn’t fully recovered 30 years later. He not only cultivated, but took pride in the destruction of safety and stability across much of Latin America, killing thousands in the process. Yet, despite his cruelty, we find ourselves fascinated—sometimes even rooting for him.
Another example is Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. The film is so compelling that we can’t help but root for its protagonist, Jordan Belfort. Belfort, a scammer-turned-Wall-Street-titan, thrives on fraud and illegality, destroying companies and lives with ruthless dishonesty. Yet we romanticize the power and wealth he generates, even though they are built on deception.
Ultimately, these TV shows are so addictive because nothing is as compelling as fear, which true crime particularly generates. However, there is a danger in stories that blur the line between admiration and condemnation. Making shows about horrible people isn’t inherently problematic, but when portrayals lack realism, it becomes easy for social morals to be distorted, leading to the normalization of truly deviant and criminal behaviors.
Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash