Netflix’s new limited series “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” is out. And, not news to you, its existence confirms, yet again, our obsession with serial killers. Our obsession with the violence of hideous men.
This weekend on TTBOOK we are spending some time with some hideous men as well. Hopefully not to glorify them. Or, to depict their acts for some quick sensation of violence porn. Empathy is the attempt here.
We talk with the American soldiers who guarded Saddam Hussein up to his execution. And we have a conversation with a journalist who spent hours with Ander Breivik – the man who killed nearly 70 teenagers in Norway in 2011. And yes, we talk about Jeffrey Dahmer – through the eyes of his high school friend.
Can an evil man be a decent person? It’s a question not meant to merely provoke. It’s a fundamental one that digs deep into what it means to be human. To sin. To forgive. To punish. To pay penance. To be absolved. To kill. To admit that maybe some people are beyond hope. Or harder yet, that there is hope.
Empathy. Now there’s that word again. Hard one, in the light of hideous men. But maybe the most important word of all.
–Charles