The Dehumanization of Evan Peters & The Ethics of True Crime Media

thanks so much to liquid IV for partnering with me for this video you can use the discount code Kayla says for 15 off plus free shipping on their wonderful products visit the link in my bio for more information I am starting to feel kind of bad for Evan Peters while various men in Hollywood have stepped into the internet's white boy of the month role over the years Evan Peters comes right back in to fill the void whenever he is cast in a new project and from his breakout role in American Horror Story until now people have never stopped being weird about him he is just one of those guys that nobody knows how to quite talk normally about I would assume that this probably does a number on one psyche merely having to exist while a rabid fan base of young girls many of them likely underage constantly indulge in fantasies that involve you ripping their throat out and eating it or whatever I feel for the guy and while I only have a very limited amount of pity for the Rich and Famous I would go as far as to say that this man is currently trapped in a hell of his own making well not really he's actually in a hell of Ryan Murphy's making but we'll get there today we're going to talk about the dehumanization of Evan Peters why he's stuck in this negative feedback loop and what I think it says about about internet Stan culture as a whole but before we talk about how thirsty we all are for Evan over here I wanted to once again briefly mention that I am partnering with liquid IV to help quench your thirst in real life see what I did there if you struggle with dehydration and just not getting enough water intake during the day liquid IV is a really beneficial product to try out I personally enjoy their passion fruit hydration multiplier which gives me an extra boost when I start my day once again you can head down to my bio to use my discount code for 15 off plus free shipping and thanks again to liquid IV for supporting my channel and keeping me hydrated let's go back to where this all started American Horror Story is an anthology horror television series created by Brad valchuk and our old pal Ryan Murphy AHS is more of a complex entity now than it was back in 2011 but season one of the show was definitely ahead of its time while the cast did have some well-known names Tessa for MinGa Connie Britton and Jessica Lange to name a few Evan Peters who until that point had some small roles in Hollywood here and there several of them comedic in nature was really the breakout star with his portrayal of Tate Langdon Tate and violet probably ruined a whole generation of people a lot of murder house actually holds up and in my opinion it's the most consistent season of AHS out of the ones that I've watched and for the record I watched through freak Show and then I stopped caring however Tate's Hall character is the epitome of edgy and over the top and probably would have some very different discourse surrounding him had this aired even like five years later for those who don't know Tate Lang is a ghost that haunts the murder house in American Horror Story season one and he doesn't operate the way that you think a normal ghost would other characters see and interact with him and he is able to cause chaos despite you know the whole being dead thing spoilers here but we eventually learn that Tate who has been pursuing Violet the daughter of the family that now lives in the murder house was actually a mass shooter who was killed by the SWAT team in his room which is why he now haunts the space nothing about Tate is subtle leading up to this either whether it's a scene of him instructing Violet on how to see word herself so that it's harder to stitch or the classic normal people scare me shirt and perhaps the most infamous iconography in all of American Horror Story Tate essays Violet's mom and forcibly impregnates her while he's wearing a [ __ ] suit now again had this aired in 2021 and not 2011 I think the reaction toward Tate would be very different because well in comparison even Billy from stranger things is too much for some people nowadays however 10 years ago people mainly young girls completely ate this [ __ ] up I am of the general opinion that art certainly has its place in the world and that taking the character to this much of an extreme is fine in fact it may have been an intentional choice for us to be bait and switched by Tate's undeniable offbeat charm the way Violet was only to find out that he was more of a monster than he is a man however I don't think anyone could have predicted the reaction to Tate and Violet's Love Story which like was not very introspective at all hell if you look at Fan edits that were posted as recently as this year the comments summarize their entire relationship as a toxic love that places romance above all else and I'm not saying that you can't appreciate Tate as a character and that you must rebuke his existence in every comment section you see fit however this is the starting point in my opinion for the divorcing of Evan Peters from his Humanity I think that the portrayal of this character was so over the top and visceral and it really struck a nerve to the point that many people quite literally started viewing Evan and Tate as one in the same this was also the beginning of a powerful dynamic between Evan and show runner Ryan Murphy as Evan would go on to play various roles in future seasons of AHS as it changed themes and Seasons but everyone always came back to his portrayal of Tate and as AHS lost steam the longer it went on I think the showrunners ultimately knew this going as far as to give the character his own Redemption moment in a crossover season I didn't actually watch any of the newer AHS series but from what I understand they sort of retcon some of the murder house lore to explain that Tate's actions were actually caused by the house because it was built over a portal to hell so Tate was like actually a vessel for this separate entities agenda which means that Violet can now forgive him and they can have their own happily ever after in the afterlife this retcon robs Tate of any of his agency almost as a message to fans that says we know you never let go of this character and now you can feel less bad about liking him I don't keep up with AHS so I don't know how how this was received by Avid Watchers however in a world where young men are more and more likely to end up being a real-life Tate Langdon I don't know if it was the wisest choice to appeal to all of the young girls who want to be with Tate Langdon Evan Peters has never explicitly said how he feels about the phenomenon of Tate and the culture that he created however what he has said is that he wants to do something else and by something else I mean roles that are less dark and depressing a feat that was briefly achieved with his appearance as Marvel's Quicksilver until he was killed off but throughout all of this he has kept a close relationship with Ryan Murphy who has several Muses that he works with across different projects Evan being one of them and in a recent press tour for Dahmer which we'll get into in a moment Murphy acknowledged that Evan has been all but begging to do a comedy in an interview back in 2018 Peter said that Murphy had promised that his next role in American Horror Story would be a comedy and by 2018 he was quoted saying that he needed to take a break from ah just altogether due to his mental health I'm going to take a break regroup decompress get back in touch with what I feel like I want to do he said not that I didn't want to do any of those roles they're exactly what I wanted to do it was just zero to 100 instantaneously I'm goofy I'm silly I like to have fun I don't like to yell and scream I actually hate it I think it's disgusting and really awful and it's been a challenge for me Horror Story sort of demanded that of me it's been all a massive stretch for me and really difficult to do it's hurting my soul and Evan as a person let me out let me out this is not a dance I'm begging for help I'm screaming for help please come let me out so of course Ryan doesn't necessarily owe Evan Peters anything he's a creative and I'm sure there are thousands of other actors who would kill to be in this position however it's clear that Ryan and his team can do comedy with glean scream Queens being examples so to not even throw Evan a bone after all these years is a little suspicious especially when you consider that the preference toward dark roles didn't end with AHS alright before we talk about Dahmer I need you to know a few things one I did not watch it and I am not going to watch it I do not feel comfortable with its existence and I'm going to tell you why if you want to pass on the ethics of True Crime rant skip ahead in the video the time stamps are below here's where I stand on True Crime media as a whole I do not think it's inherently unethical as a genre but the internet hates Nuance so that's already a point against me the best and most ethical form of True Crime is journalism like I know it's not super sexy to say that you're super into investigative journalism these days however things like Dateline serial 48 Hours even local news all of that is well and good to me for those of you who don't know there are rigorous standards that go into producing journalistic content with regards to True Crime in cold cases all of it is well researched documented and the families of these victims are often involved in the process and ultimately consenting to the media being produced mainly because many of these cases have gone unsolved and they would like to bring awareness to the situation hell I would even argue that there are YouTube true crime series that fall under this category of Journalism even though they're presented a little differently for example I think Kendall Ray does a great job her work is very respectful and she makes an effort to platform a lot of the families of these victims with their consent and she actually relies on the journalism associated with these cases for her scripts and acknowledges that it's about as ethical as you can get here's where we run into issues mukbangs and makeup tutorials where people tell the stories of gruesome murders and pronounce all the names wrong corny Millennial podcasts called my favorite murder surprise party or whatever and my least favorite True Crime reenactments there are no reasons for True Crime reenactments to exist in a world where there is plenty of horror adjacent creative work Loosely based on real murders for example every fictional clown like twisty from AHS or art from terrifier is in some form or fashion based on a real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy but while these characters certainly draw inspiration from a real life story worry the victims are not actively being disrespected on screen because they're not real but when you're fictionalizing an entire real-life murder that took place that's where it gets into yike's territory because you're often insulting the living by proxy for example the thing about Pam a Hulu miniseries based on the murders of Pam hop and starring Renee Zellweger was notoriously panned by critics due to its comedic tone and the family of the victim involved here actively has been speaking out against its existence because it's really weird to see Renee Zellweger Camp up a fictionalized portrayal of the woman who murdered your mom in Cold Blood I feel the exact same way about Dahmer especially because Ryan Murphy confirmed that they reached out to work with the victims families as is standard practice and none of them responded he said it's something that we researched for a long time and we over the course of the three three and a half years when we really started writing it working on it we reached out to 20 around 20 of the victims families and friends trying to get input trying to talk to people and not a single person responded to Us in that process so at that point maybe you should just you know not make the product then and it's Netflix and they're trying to cling on to whatever relevancy they still have left in the streaming Wars so they quite literally do not care as long as it makes them money which it has but I personally just don't want to be complicit in it and if you think that's a pretentious take just wait until 10 years down the line when somebody decides to do a mini series based on Elliott Roger or Nicholas Cruz because it will happen and you will feel very uncomfortable watching it so okay Ryan Murphy gets this deal for Dameron claims that he auditioned 100 people for the role before ultimately settling on our Golden Boy Evan Peters this is not a bad choice and judging by his performance in other similar projects I'm sure he was more than adequate in the role however whenever a male actor takes on a character like this there are usually conversations to be had about method acting this usually happens whenever somebody plays a Batman villain for some reason and Evan did some method acting to get into character for this part Murphy claims that he actually spent months doing things like putting weights in his arms to help imitate Dahmer's walk and posture and watching footage of the serial killer to help him get into a dark place will it get him an Emmy nomination sure was it good for his psyche probably not but now we get back to the question of Evan's agency in this situation he easily could have said no to playing Dahmer but for all the backlash surrounding this series no one is really blaming him they're just sexualizing him and it's fine to find him attractive in the role you like what you like that's always been my philosophy especially when it comes to the fallacy of applying real-life morals to a fictional character but with this whole Dahmer situation I think the phenomenon is worth interrogating when the spotlight is on a real person who did real awful things and it reminds me of how people still feel about Tate Langdon as a character there's something about Evan's Persona in these roles that just drives people straight to sexualization overlooking the bad or more complex parts of the characters themselves but also like what is this doing to Evan as a person I feel as though at this point that Evan is trapped in a negative feedback loop that Ryan Murphy is enabling and I don't think it's the most healthy and I know I'll get the inevitable it's just acting it's not that deep comments but I don't know man there has to be some psychological way to seeing fan edits of yourself as Jeffrey [ __ ] Dahmer so ultimately I hope Evan Peters gets to do his dream comedy one day I hope Ryan Murphy gives this man a break he deserves it Go consume some ethical true crime or don't whatever consume this garbage instead I guess speaking of consuming garbage follow me on Twitter okay bye [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: kayla says

Views: 96,061

Keywords:

Id: 0SXbz7r2DC8

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2022