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It’s not exactly out of place to say that modern society has a complex relationship with serial killers. On the one hand, they’re obviously guilty of committing one of the worst crimes known to man several times over – but then again, that’s what makes them so intriguing. We, as the general public, want to know why serial killers like Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy did what they did. There’s a certain amount of morbid curiosity involved in figuring out what makes a person like that tick, which means we end up with a lot of Netflix documentaries and thinkpieces with the serial killer as the centerpiece. That’s all well and good – but we need to stop treating them like the hero.
In the last decade or so, whenever modern media – mostly TV – touches on the topic of serial killers, there’s an unfortunate side effect that the killer in question ends up turning into a glamorous, larger-than-life figure who’s usually drop-dead gorgeous to boot. We saw this in 2019 with Zac Efron in a Netflix movie about Ted Bundy, and now Peacock has announced a miniseries centered around John Wayne Gacy, the Killer Clown. There’s only one question: is history about to repeat itself, or have we learned from our mistakes?
Zac Efron As Ted Bundy: The Problem With Celebrity Serial Killers
Back in 2019, the Sundance Film Festival saw the premiere of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, a biographical true crime-thriller documenting the crimes of Ted Bundy, one of America’s most infamous serial killers. The movie was picked up by Netflix within a few months, and the production team was faced with the challenge of casting someone to play a man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered dozens of young women in the 1970s. They chose Zac Efron, and the internet freaked out.
Zac Efron, while rightfully being a talented actor, is also one of those celebrities who’s known for being one of the most handsome men in Hollywood. No matter what role he’s put in, that won’t stop being true. You could argue that that’s what makes him perfect for the role of Ted Bundy, who was notably charming and handsome enough to lure women in. The problem is that when Netflix cast Efron in Shockingly Wicked, Evil and Vile, the trick worked a little too well, and people all over the world were falling head over heels for Ted Bundy’s baby blues – which, it’s important to note, is exactly what Bundy would have wanted.
The movie received mixed reviews, with many critics calling it out for over-emphasizing Bundy’s good looks, but no one had a negative thing to say about Efron’s performance. As soon as Zac Efron was cast as Ted Bundy, a good chunk of the audience stopped seeing Bundy as a monster responsible for over 30 deaths and started seeing him as a glamorous figure of mystery – a celebrity, in other words. Shockingly Wicked, Evil, and Vile irreversibly changed how the public sees Ted Bundy, and while his image has changed for the better, that’s not good.
Ted Bundy to John Wayne Gacy: Have We Learned Any Lessons?
In the five years since Ted Bundy and Zac Efron, you could hope that the world has learned something about how to handle serial killers in TV and movies. You could hope that, but it the writing’s on the walls for John Wayne Gacy this time, and thing’s aren’t looking great. Gacy, who was also known as the Killer Clown, was a serial killer active between 1972 and 1978. He was responsible for kidnapping and murdering 33 young men and burying their bodies in the crawl space beneath his house. By all accounts, he was also charming, handsome, a community leader who cheered up sick kids by dressing up as a clown.
The gap between “John Wayne Gacy, serial killer” and “John Wayne Gacy, tragically misunderstood” isn’t a far jump, when you look at it like that, but it’s one I sincerely hope Peacock doesn’t make. Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy was announced a few days ago, with Severance star Michael Chernus in the lead role. To his credit, Chernus has said Gacy isn’t going to be the main character of the new miniseries and that the point of the series is to prevent Gacy’s crimes from ever happening again – and while that’s fine in theory, will it hold up in practice? It’s impossible to say.
Ultimately, the only way to know if Peacock and John Wayne Gacy have learned any lessons from Netflix’s less-than-stellar handling of Ted Bundy is to wait and see. We won’t know where Peacock falls on the issue of serial killer glorification until Devil in Disguise comes out, but one this is for sure: they’re walking a fine line by adapting John Wayne Gacy’s crimes into a dramatization, and I only hope they’ve learned some lesson about turning serial killers into TV and movie celebrities.
