What To Watch This Week

Something Macabre vs. Something Funny, Three Streaming Gems: Outsiders Edition, and Stick This Jimi Hendrix in Your Pipe and Smoke It

Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story

Why are we drawn to stories of crime, murder, and mayhem?

For one answer, we might turn to Edgar Allan Poe, who's probably the most influential American teller of eerie tales that ever lived. In one of his greatest stories, "The Fall of the House of Usher," he has his protagonist stop to ponder what it is that "so unnerved" him when he looks at the titular creepy house; in other words, what it is that affects all of us when we come face to face with the macabre:

It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth.

Basically, what Poe's saying here is that the terrifying is terrifying because it takes "natural objects" – things we're familiar with – and puts them into combinations that evoke reactions that are beyond our ability of "analysis," meaning rational comprehension. Stuff is scary, in other words, precisely because we can't use our rational minds to defend ourselves against it, and Poe knew there's something alluring in that.

For another answer to this mystery, we might turn to the words of some of the recent reviewers of the new Netflix show Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which is, as the title indicates, a 10-episode series about serial killer Jeffery Dahmer that focuses in part on the life of the infamous man and in part on the lives of the people he killed.

So a piece in the Hollywood Reporter notes that one can "respect" the show, but goes on to lament that Dahmer doesn't go about pulling of its "interrogation of the intersection of serial killing and race, focused on reclaiming the names and identities of the victims from the perpetrator's notoriety" (a academic jargon-laden phrase which it imagines into co-creator Ryan Murphy's mouth) quite well enough to satisfy the reviewer.

Another piece, this one in Vulture, condemns the show more forcefully, claiming that the show "should" have focused "primarily on the people affected by Dahmer," before lamenting that it perhaps tried to get to "socially relevant subjects" but did a poor job of doing so.

This is the more contemporary conception of the role of the macabre: it exists to help us "interrogate" systems of power, correct past injustices, and address socially relevant subjects. And we should be attracted to it to the extent that it does these things well or poorly.

Perhaps this is all quite interesting, or perhaps it's not, but I bring it up because I think this division – between Poe's attraction to eerie things that are beyond our ken, and the contemporary idea of the macabre as a tool of moral instruction in power relations – explains a great deal about the show itself and how I suspect it might affect you if you decide to watch it.

First off, and this may be obvious but I'm going to note it anyway, you probably shouldn't watch the show if you're not interested in gruesome stuff, or if you like upbeat material. It's down-beat, and involves things like stuffing bodies into barrels of acid, drilling holes in people's heads, and cannibalism. Immediately upon reading this, I'm sure that many of you out there are like, "Ugh, get me out of here!" And if you just had that reaction, go ahead and skip to the the bit down below about Vice Principles, because that's a really funny comedy that contains no cannibalism at all.

But some of you, on reading about bodies going into acid and all the rest, were probably like "Whoa. That sounds gross…but there's this part of me that loves being titillated by that stuff. I think I might check this show out!"

Here’s the thing: Dahmer knows about that part of you, and plays to it. In a way that’s reminiscent of John McNaughton's 1989 film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer – which is for my money maybe the best enactment ever put on the screen of the idea that the actions of these kinds of people are not susceptible to rational understanding – Dahmer immerses you into a world in which something has gone so wrong that the most you can do is squirm around in the face of its existence. It uses a fine bag of technical tricks – an almost expressionless killer (played with real brio by Evan Peters), monotone color and lighting schemes, lots of framing that makes everything feel deadened, etc. – to push you into a feeling of the encounter with the macabre in Poe's sense.

At the same time, though, there's definitely a side of the show that wants to do the contemporary dance with social relevance. And it's precisely because of these competing urges that things get a little dicey. There are, for example, moments in the flashback sequences to Dahmer's youth where pop songs are played to create a kind of heightened, ironic effect, as if to winkingly insist that this kind of horror is somehow a necessary adjunct of American pop culture. Additionally, there are certainly moments, as the above reviews note, where the show trumpets its desire to "reclaim," in the parlance, the story for the victims.

But there's a fracture between these two impulses – highlighting and using the incomprehensible nature of terror on the one hand, and reducing it to a comprehensible (and ultimately comforting) message on the other – and in skittering back and forth between them, the show can feel as thought it either can't decide which master it's serving, or doesn't have the courage of its convictions.

In the end, if you're someone who likes stuff about the darkest tales of true crime, and doesn't mind some bracing material, I think it might be worth adding Dahmer to your trophy case. But if you're looking for a simple recasting of this tale in terms of contemporary morality, I think you'll be disappointed. And if you just want a fun comedy to watch? Read on my friend. Dahmer is available on Netflix.

Vice Principals

This post is starting to run a bit long (it's obviously Poe's fault) so I'll try to keep this one a bit shorter. If you happened to miss Vice Principals when it came out a few years ago, and are looking for a quick (two seasons; 18 total 30-minute episodes) entertaining comedy series, it might bring you some joy.

Vice Principals is the brain-child of, and features, Danny McBride, who at the time was coming off the somewhat underground success of East Bound and Down. (Both shows were co-created by Jody Hill, I should note, and I don't know enough about them to have a clear idea of the working relationship between McBride and Hill; it's also worth mentioning the fine comedic direction of David Gordon Green in this series.)

McBride's bread and butter is playing really obnoxious, overbearing, manly-man types who are funny because that manliness is so obviously a thin veneer painted over raging incompetence and insecurity. To me, his fullest realization to date of the comedic potential of this type occurs with his character of Neal Gamby in Vice Principals, because it's the most touching in its revelations of vulnerability.

The setup is as follows. Gamby is a domineering, annoying vice-principal at a high school; he has a suitably ridiculous nemesis in another vice-principal named Lee Russell (the phenomenal Walton Gogggins). In the pilot, the current principal retires, and both Gamby and Russell feel as though they deserve to take his place. Instead of hiring one of them, though, the district hires a smart, well-educated woman named Dr. Belinda Brown (played by Kimberly Hébert Gregory). So Gamby and Russell put their interminable feud on hold and decide to drive this new principal out of office so one of them can take her place.

The virtues of the show are many. McBride and Goggins both play it big, matching the absurdity of their characters to the absurdity of the events that occur. And yet at the same time, the show has a really keen eye for each man's weaknesses and fears, allowing them to become fully rounded, if outlandish, human beings. The show also has a surprising skill at portraying how useless so many of the adults who are involved in education can seem to the kids they are purportedly educating. Which is to say that it has the ability to draw the adult viewer back to their youthful days, when it was so achingly clear how many stuffed suits there were at the front of the class and in the administrative offices, and how unable the students were to do anything about it.

This is not to say that it's a show that's anti-school, or anti-teacher, in any way. Like all great comedies, it loves its subjects and at the same time happens to think its subjects are ridiculous, because all organizations tend towards the ridiculous, conceived of and administered, as they are, by human beings. The subjects here are the people running high schools, human ambition, and the tragedy of the fact that virtually all our dreams exist at or beyond the very limits of what we may possibly achieve, and the show loves them all. Available on HBO Max.

Three Streaming Gems: Outsiders Edition

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001, John Cameron Mitchell)

Back when such places existed, as I've mentioned before in this space, I worked in a video store (an establishment, kids, that rented out round shiny objects called "DVDs" that contained movies) which was the very definition of "the inmates running the asylum." We clerks took turns picking movies to play on the in-store TVs, and during one strange and distressing month, one of my co-workers decided to play The Fast and the Furious every time his turn came around – and I’m being pretty darn literal here: we're talking at least once a night, three or four nights a week; in retaliation, a girl played Hedwig and the Angry Inch every time her turn came around. So I have viewed and listened to this film many, many times. (The other is also seared into my memory.) And Hedwig has never failed to strike me as brilliant, beautiful, and moving. Based on a stage play, it tells the story of the titular young East German fellow (there used to be a big wall splitting Germany in two, kids), who falls in love with an American soldier and gets a sex-change operation in order to accompany that soldier back to America. Things don't go quite as planned, there's tragedy and heartbreak, some glamor, a few meditations on the true nature of gender and identity, and it's also a rock and roll musical with some kickass tunes. Great stuff all around. Available on Kanopy.

Heathers (1988, Michael Lehmann)

Do people watch Heathers anymore? Is it the kind of movie that everyone has already seen, or the kind that readers of this space will watch for the first time, be fascinated by, and rush off to tell their friends about? Who knows! But there was certainly a time when Heathers was something of a cultural touchstone, and if you'd like to revisit the dawn of the '90s (a decade without which, incidentally, the approaches to Dahmer that I wrote about above would be inconceivable) and have a heck of a good time doing it, I'd recommend this film. It's a black comedy starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater about a high school girl who gets involved with the wrong guy and kinda partly accidentally starts killing people in her clique. If you were either angsty or had to deal with annoying, rich, popular kids when you were in high school, you may find this one particularly savory. Available on Amazon Prime

The Ladykillers (1955, Alexander Mackendrick)

Here are some outsiders for you: an eccentric little old lady who lives alone in a big house and loves to report imaginary crimes to the police, and a gang of five thieves who rent rooms in her house – pretending to be a string quintet that needs a place to practice – so that they can pull off a heist next door. And here are some names for you: Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, and Cecil Parker. In other words, it's a wonderful concept for a comedy (see the scene where these terrible rascals are forced to attend an old ladies' tea party) with an extraordinary cast, all of which adds up to one of the greatest crime capers ever made. If you're looking for a terrific old movie that has everything from straight-ahead slapstick to mouth-puckering black humor, this is a film for you. Available on Amazon Prime and Roku (premium subscriptions required), or for free at the Internet Archive here.

Bonus Content: Was Jimi Hendrix Really From This Planet, or Did He Descend From Some Other, More Ethereal Realm?

As you can probably tell from the above heading, I think Jimi Hendrix was pretty great. This is not an uncommon opinion by any means, but I think it's worth journeying back in time to listen to his stuff, though, particularly in fraught times, because of the reasons he was so wonderful.

Notable among these is the fact that he was able to imbue his music with such an incredibly deep humanity. When he was playing at his very best, he allowed you access to the most rare of things: some of the ways the world is beautiful, as experienced from inside another person.

And I think the clip below – an instrumental studio version of "Bold as Love" that appeared on a box set from 2000 called The Jimi Hendrix Expereince – is perhaps the finest thing he ever recorded. There are some moments here, particularly after he steps on the fuzz pedal at about 2:10, and then starts finding that series of dispsy-dos around 3:15, when this listener at least would swear that Hendrix is no longer playing as his puny mortal self but channeling something larger, something more universal, something sweet and pure and thrilling about what it means to be human in a cosmic sense. Like he has ascended to another plane. But he hasn't. He's still playing as his puny mortal self, that's the thing – which means that what he's channeling is something sweet and pure and thrilling about how it feels for him to be human. And that's what you're taking into your ears – and understanding – when you listen. Which is a pretty damn miraculous piece of communication, if you ask me.

So give it a listen if you like rock and roll guitar. And if you're serious about this kind of stuff, find a high-quality recording, put on some headphones, and play it loud.