Ryan Murphy's latest Netflix series, 'Monster: The Ed Gein Story', has been criticised as a morally dubious exploration of a grave-robbing murderer. The third season of the anthology, which previously covered Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers, focuses on Ed Gein, who murdered at least two people and stole bodies from graves, inspiring films like 'Psycho' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. However, early episodes are described as a 'pure freak show', with little effort to do more than grimly titillate.
The show stars Charlie Hunnam as Gein and Laurie Metcalf as his overbearing mother, who brutally shames his sexual impulses. Critics argue that the portrayal of a religious-nut mother is a tired trope, seen before in 'Carrie' and 'Bates Motel'. The series attempts to diagnose Gein's hangups with terms like 'gynophilia' and schizophrenia, but saves its more humane assessment for the end, leaving earlier episodes feeling reckless in their leering examination of gender expression.
There are concerns that the show carelessly conflates gender queerness with harmful deviance, a theme that has become a Ryan Murphy specialty. While Murphy only produced this season, his authorial stamp is evident in the garish performances and insistence on pushing boundaries. The treatment of Anthony Perkins, the semi-closeted star of 'Psycho', is also criticised for drawing a straight line between queer identity and depraved self-loathing, a troubling pattern in Murphy's work.
