TIME Magazine takes aim at the Ryan Murphy Industrial Complex
No creator has put more LGBTQ characters on TV than Ryan Murphy. His Aaron Hernandez show raises the question of why so many are killershttps://t.co/GBTnJtitI2
- TIME (@TIME) September 17, 2024
Spooky season is almost upon us, and as though current, real-world horrors weren't already enough, Ryan Murphy has decided to treat us to a double-whammy into the Freudian nightmare that is his mind.
At the moment, two of his true-crime series are airing: one focused on Aaron Hernandez, and the other focused on the case about the Menendez brothers.
TIME magazine decided to dissect his televisual offerings in an article published this week:
Main points:
- Recurring themes of Ryan Murphy's work revolve around societal pressures and cultural stigmatisation, which serve to push individuals towards "monstrous" behaviors.
- The author criticises Murphy's shows for their lengthy and often sensationalist storytelling, which sometimes seems more focused on shocking the audience than providing genuine insight.
- She notes a pattern where the backgrounds of these characters (particularly queer characters) are explored in terms of familial and societal failures, portraying their gradual descent into violence in a predictable, formulaic way.
Choice quote from the article:
"What’s singularly disturbing about the queer-murderer shows is how closely the portraits they paint of their subjects have come to resemble one another, on a thematic level. The more of them we get, the stronger the message becomes that the formula for homicidal derangement is same-sex attraction + bad dad + broken society, with a side of substance-abuse issues and sometimes a history of sexual abuse. And the easier it gets to internalize the misapprehension that the most salient thing these characters have in common is that they sleep with men, not that they’re cold-blooded killers."
- Murphy's portrayal of real-life crimes has been controversial, leading to accusations of retraumatising victims' families and sensationalising violence. However, these shows have been commercially successful.
- At the same time, the author admits that Murphy has probably brought more queer and trans characters to mainstream media than any of his peers. In particular, she praises Pose, as it "showcases a broad range of LGBTQ characters, from saintly heroes to pithy villains to teens making the same mistakes everyone makes at their age".
- The main critique of Murphy's other shows is that, while doing so, he as potentially reinforced negative stereotypes about queer communities.
Read the whole article at the source - it's really good!