Thursday, October 6, 2022

Q Toon: True Crime

Just because it's a cartoon doesn't mean it's supposed to be funny.

When I emailed the description of last week's cartoon to my editors, I commented that I didn't want to opine about a movie — in that case "Bros" — I hadn't yet seen. This week, I'm opining about a TV miniseries that I do not intend to watch.

I didn't know anyone in Milwaukee's LGBTQ community when Jeffrey Dahmer was on the loose, but that episode in history is still too raw for me. There are people who were directly affected whose story may well deserve to be told, but I have no desire to see how Hollywood treats this dark moment in Milwaukee history.

One hopes that their miniseries is done respectfully and not as a Grand Guignol spectacle. It may become a classic alongside such headline-to-screen fare as "Psycho" and "Rope," two renowned, sensational Hitchcock films that arguably fed on real people's pain.

I'm not arguing that this miniseries should never have been filmed, even if I don't intend to watch it.

What I am upset by are the memes that have begun to show up in my Facebook and Twitter feeds using screenshots from the miniseries to make frivolous comments on other stuff.

The families of Dahmer's victims can avoid watching the Netflix show, which will be done and gone in some months. It's not as if there's likely to be a sequel.

But these stupid memes stay around forever. Many of you are too young to have seen that I'm Not Saying It's Aliens guy, but he's still popping up on everyone's screens. Ditto the Real Houswives Dinner Kitty, who ought to well onto its second or third life by now.

Yes, there were Dahmer jokes before social media took off.

They weren't funny then. And adding a picture of Evan Peters doesn't make them clever now.

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