ontheedgeofeverything

While Blaine and I still haven’t finished watching the entirety of Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story, we are slowly working our way through the episodes. We have a handful left to complete, but part of the reason it’s taking us a little while to finish it is because it really is so damn dark and heavy, and I have enough difficulty getting through one episode, let alone multiples, in succession.

I’ve seen mixed reviews about this production, and more than I remember reading about and seeing for the previous two Monster series Netflix aired – the first was about Jeffrey Dahmer, and the second was about the Menendez brothers. Blaine watched both, whereas I only watched the Dahmer one.

A decent amount of the negative feedback I’ve been seeing about the Ed Gein production is that a lot of people feel as though it romanticizes Ed Gein, and if you don’t know much about him, allow me to say he is not someone who should be romanticized to any extent. He was mentally ill and committed atrocious acts that inspired characters like Buffalo Bill and The Chainsaw Massacre.

I’m a little surprised to see and hear opinions about the Ed Gein production romanticizing who the man was. I would argue the opposite, because I find the show to realistically depict the horrors of severe mental illness and how it can drive someone to a point they cannot come back from. I don’t find the show to glorify or idolize Ed Gein in any manner, and if anything, I think the show does an excellent job of trying to show the human side of him that fought to surface right up until the end.

This show is beyond disturbing and is extremely unsettling, but I’m not watching it for those reasons. I’m watching it to gain a better understanding of who Ed Gein was, and what drove him to commit the horrific things he did.

Photo by Thibault Penin on Unsplash