The Cutprice Guignol

I’ve been watching the Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk-helmed American Horror Story since it came out back in 2010, and even reviewed several seasons of it episode-by-episode over the years. It’s a show that has a lot going for it (and a lot going against it, mainly the quality) and, in my eyes, really brought horror to mainstream TV in a way we hadn’t seen before. For that, I’m grateful. But what I’m not grateful for? The way the show has handled depictions of real-life crime within the walls of its fictional anthology universe.

Now, to be clear up-front: I don’t think that real-life crime should be entirely removed from fictional stories. It’s tough territory to navigate, for sure, but it can be done well: American Crime Story, particularly the second season, is a great example of that for me, in terms of contextualizing the case and allowing the victims their humanity in the process.

But there’s no doubt that true crime in general is a touchy subject when it comes to entertainment – as somebody who has created true crime content for several years now, I know how carefully creators need to tread to create something that isn’t in utterly horrible taste. There’s also a case to be made for the fact that no entertainment should be made of true crime cases, regardless of how respectful – that making money off violence and suffering inflicted on others is inherently wrong. While I’m not dismissing that out of hand, I think true crime’s dominion in pop culture right now requires us to consider what is tasteful and appropriate with regards to these stories, given that they’re simply not going anywhere anytime soon.

So with that said, let’s take a look at American Horror Story’s catastrophically bad true crime takes, and why I find them so bafflingly awful. I’ll start at the beginning, with the first season, Murder House, which featured a sub-plot revolving around Elizabeth Short (played here by Mina Suvari). Short, best known by her nickname the Black Dahlia, appears in the Murder House story as a victim of a murder by nitrous oxide at the hands of a dentist who was once a resident in the titular murder house. In the series, she’s depicted as a naïve seductress who uses her sexual wiles to get what she wants from the men around her, eventually leading to her death at the hands of the dentist who she seduces in exchange for free dental work. Later in the series, in her ghostly form, she performs in a softcore lesbian encounter with another female spectre for the entertainment of one of the season’s leading men, Ben.

I cannot tell you how much I hate this depiction, and how dreadfully insulting and inconsiderate I find it to Short’s memory. Since her body was discovered, she’s been victim of lurid speculation about her sexuality her genitals, her sex life, and how her apparent good looks might have influenced her violent murder and mutilation. American Horror Story not only indulges this speculation, but takes it even further – treating viewers to a scene of Short performing sexually for one of the male characters, completely uncritically. Her only appearance in the series after Murder House came in Apocalypse, where she briefly turns up to be tortured and mutilated by Michael Langdon to prove a point about his powers. They dredged up her corpse to turn it into jerk-off material, and then brought her back just to mutilate her more. It’s honestly, to me, grotesque, and the first time I really started having my doubts about the show.

Next, let’s jump forward to Cult, and its depiction of the Zodiac killer – or, as they depict him here, author Valerie Solanas. I wrote at the time of this episode’s release just how bad I think this storyline is, but since then, I’ve found it even more frustrating and galling. Much of Valerie Solanas’ work (most famously The S.C.U.M Manifesto) was dedicated to the dismantling and critiquing of the patriarchal systems of power that allowed men to harm women. To point the finger at her – however facetiously – as the person behind one of the most notorious acts of violence committed by a man of the century seems to me like a deliberate attempt to mock her life’s work.

I understand Solanas, in real life, did commit violence in her shooting of Andy Warhol and Mario Amaya, and I would have taken no issue with the show exploring that, but to use her as an out-there Zodiac suspect is to reduce her and her actual victims to a throwaway joke. Some might argue that her real-life violence removes any requirement for the respect or even vaguely accurate depiction of her, but until pop culture starts taking a swing at writers like Norman Mailer for similar acts of violence, I’m going to see this as a specific attempt to tie Solanas to a crime that she obviously, evidently didn’t commit.

Finally, let’s get to the tipping point for me that turned the show into an absolute nightmare joke at the expense of victims of misogyny, rape, and violence: the depiction of Richard Ramirez in 1984. Played by Zach Villa, the season depicts him as a sexy, satanic bad boy, having hot hook-ups with murder groupies in gym showers, shooting him like a goddamn boyband member. In real life, Ramirez was a serial rapist and murderer of children and women; I can’t see this depiction of him as anything other than a foul joke at the expense of the suffering and violence he inflicted on his victims. If it’s an attempt to critique the sexualization of serial killers, which I’ve seen some critics argue that it is, it’s simply not well-executed enough to get that point across. The show indulges in Ramirez as a sexy, smouldering bad boy far too much to get away with turning around and claiming it was all just a commentary on the true crime community. Either way, I think it’s a failure: either a blundering miss of an attempt at critique, or a genuinely disgusting indulging of the sexualization of and fandom around serial killers like Ramirez (and Dahmer, after that first Monster series, but that’s another discussion for another time).

And here’s the kicker for me: there are so many cases that have inspired stories in this show without directly name-dropping the perpetrator or the victims. Richard Speck’s case influenced a storyline in Murder House and John Wayne Gacy clearly served as inspiration for John Carroll Lynch’s turn in Freakshow. Even though the real-life connection is clear, distancing these stories from the actual cases makes the show’s interpretation of them far less problematic. Fiction has taken influence from real life for a long time, and, while some people may find even these fictionalized takes on these crimes inappropriate, I don’t take much issue with them. They can explore the cultural impact of these cases, as the American Horror Stories of the title, without dredging up the victim’s suffering or bringing further direct attention to the perpetrator’s names.

Which leads me to the question: why? Why choose to fictionalize some of these stories, and keep others intact, with the real names and details of the crime lifted straight from real life into the show? I can only assume it’s because the creators and writers of these respective seasons and storylines wanted to say something specific about these people: they wanted Elizabeth Short to seduce her way into her own murder and hump a hot woman on a couch, they wanted to tie Valerie Solanas to the Zodiac killings (for some fucking reason), they wanted to create a version of violent sex offender Richard Ramirez dripping with sex appeal for the gals to swoon over (and, after they rehabilitated sex criminal and murderer Tate in Apocalypse for the sake of creating a few more Tumblr gifs, I doubt they were not aware of how the fandom would react to this kind of depiction). Knowing that they have chosen to fictionalize stories over the course of the show’s run leaves me with the impression that invoking these real-life crimes, victims, and perpetrators was a deliberate choice to convey a deliberate story about them, no matter how obviously in bad taste many of them were.

There are plenty of other depictions of real historical figures that I take issue with: Marie Laveau being turned into a baby-killing witch in Coven and the serial killer party in Hotel that feels far too much like a name-dropping cameo for true crime know-it-alls than an anything else spring immediately to mind. And, in all fairness, there are also depictions that I have no major issue with at all, such as Evan Peters as Jim Jones in Cult. And I do understand that, with American Horror Story, the clue is in the title: the stories they invoke here are American horror stories, but the tasteless, schlocky tone the show all-too-often approaches them with is, quite literally, adding insult to injury.

None of this is to say I hate the show, or that it’s terrible and worthless because of these inclusions. Like any piece of media, it needs to be evaluated as a full piece before making any sweeping statements like that (though, damn, after Apocalypse, I was ready to write it off for good). But these depictions are undoubtedly problematic, and especially strange given then show’s fictionalizing of other true crime cases.

Are you a fan of American Horror Story? What do you think of the show’s depiction of real-life true crime cases, including the ones I mentioned in this article? Let me know in the comments!

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(header image via The AHS Zone on Twitter)