Netflix is ​​not impartial in the Menéndez case

In less than a week since its premiere, the controversy is already served. From prison, Erik Menéndez himself has attacked the television series and the image it offers of them. These criticisms have received an almost immediate response from Murphy himself, who maintains that in the plot they have limited themselves to giving all points of view with total respect. Although the Menéndezes are right about one thing, the series is not so impartial as its producers try to tell us and it does seem that they believe that murderers lie. I find it logical that they didn’t like it, because the truth is that they don’t come out very well.

With the suitcases practically at the doors of the Fox, Ryan Murphy has achieved another success for Netflix by revisiting facts that Justice ruled almost three decades ago. The first season of Monster focused on the figure of the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and for the second they have chosen another media crime. The title of this latest installment is plural (Monsters), perhaps to emphasize that here we have two murderers, or to include in the title the alleged sexual abuse of the head of the family. The choice of Javier Bardema specialist in dark characters, is a great success for the role of the father. It may not have achieved the audience of the first installment, but it is already one of the most viewed series on the platform and will probably remain at the top for several more weeks. For now, it has already been announced that the third season will focus on Ed Geina serial killer who has inspired other monstrous psychokillers in fiction such as Norman Bates in Psycho, Buffalo Bill in The silence of the lambsor Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

While other Ryan Murphy productions revisited crimes from the past with a critical sense and the perspective that time gives us, in the Menéndez case the script supports the official version of that crime that occurred in Beverly Hills in August 1989. It is quite curious that while some of the episodes of abuse and the toxic environment that existed in the family home do appear recreated in the scenes of the series, there is none in which sexual abuse is shown. These are facts that we only know through the mouths of the two murderers. This suggests to us that it is a version that we have to quarantine. One of the buts that must be put to the series is that, with this supposed objectivity, it is sometimes confusing when saying which point of view is being told at each moment, which makes it difficult to complete the puzzle.

In the first episode, when they had not yet been arrested and it seemed that the massacre was mafia workthe Menéndez brothers surprise all those attending a funeral ceremony in memory of his murdered parents choosing a song from the duo Mili Vanilly for what was supposed to be one of the most emotional moments of the tribute. The inappropriate musical selection leaves the audience completely bewildered. stunned looks while giving an awkward smile. Almost at the end of the series, when they have already been condemned, the brothers continue using songs from the same group to fantasize about the moment of their escape. The choice of this musical band is striking to me and I think its use goes a long way. beyond the mere nostalgic factor. Milli Vanilly fell into disgrace when it was discovered that they had not sung any of their songs and that they were limited to doing the play back and put his image on stage. The continuous allusions to the duo seem to be telling us that in reality the Menéndez brothers are fakes. True crime does well with those freedoms of style.

From the first episode, everything is designed to hate them. They seem to believe themselves unpunished while they squander the family fortune on whims and revelries when the will has not even been made public. Society sees them as two monsters, although it remains to be known if their psychopathy is born from the internal demons of their childhood experienced in the family home. Dressed in their tennis equipment, a sport for which their father prepared them very severely, they look like that uneasy couple that showed us Michael Haneke in his movie funny games. In the series, the two brothers go to the cinema to see batman the night of the crime to serve as an alibi. A curious choice, to say the least, because Bruce Wayne assumes the mantle of Batman following the murder of his parents. Other sources say that in reality, that night the movie they went to was License to kill, from the saga James Bond. In their own way, they aspire to be crime influencers of the time, who fantasize about which actors will play them when they take their story to film.

The fifth episode of the series makes a risky creative decision for a time in which the public follows the series with cell phone in hand and is used to short clips of Tik Tok. The entire chapter is a sequence shot that shows us Erik Menéndez’s interview in prison with his lawyer and in which he narrates the horrifying sexual abuse that he would have suffered. The facts as they told them, without any additives. The only camera movement is that, as he progresses in his story, The zoom is getting closer to Erik’s facewho is supposed to be the more vulnerable of the two brothers. An approach that allows us to see his gaze when he finishes telling his story and that does not seem like that of a victim. It is paradoxical that it is the testimony of Lyle, the most arrogant and unbearable of the two, that manages to move the jury during the trial. Erik’s statement, which was supposed to put the people’s court in his pocket, ends up being disastrous. Here I stop to point out that the note of social criticism that Murphy gives to his series is present, reflecting that among the members of the jury there was a certain misogyny. The male part of the popular court cannot stand the defense lawyer of the two accused, most likely due to the fact that she is a woman and they are uncomfortable with her talking to them about sexual abuse. The more feminist their speech is, the more rejection it generates.

The story of the Menéndez brothers could well have been the fourth season of American Crime Story, Murphy’s other series that, this time for Fox, reviews media court cases from recent American history. In fact, there are even crossovers with the first installment where we were told about the case of OJ Simpson and I’m sure that if this were a Fox series and not a Netflix series it would have had the same actors. The character of Robert Shapiro, The lawyer of the fallen soccer star initially assumes the defense of the Menéndez brothers, but as we were told in the other series, he is one of those who seek a quick agreement to reduce the sentence as much as possible and they wanted to play the card of sexual abuse. The Simpson case appears constantly throughout the series. OJ himself comes to share a cell with Erik Menéndez. But it is in the end of the series where it becomes more present than ever. It is not lost on anyone that the powerful have always liked to play the card of impunity. The series maintains that OJ Simpson used the racism card to get away with a sexist murder. In the same way that the Menéndez brothers tried to use the letter of sexual abuse to achieve exoneration of their crimes. But the other trial had cornered them from the media agenda and taken away the spotlight.

While Milli Vanilly confessed their sins and that they were fakes, The two prisoners continue to present themselves as the victims and not as the executioners. The prosecutor’s devastating final report in the last episode makes his story crumbles like jelly. The series does not want to trivialize an issue as serious as sexual abuse, but it makes it clear that they have not believed the Menéndezes. The murderers were not amused, but the objective of these titles should not be to please them.