Did Ryan Murphy’s Monsters Need to Be So Sexy?
In the days after Kyle and Erik Menendez gruesomely murdered their own parents in 1989, the brothers temporarily moved out of the Beverly Hills mansion where they committed the crime and started racking up massive bills at local hotels. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the second installment in the Ryan Murphy-produced Netflix anthology series focused on famous American murderers, depicts their indulgence during a stay at L.A.’s Hotel Bel-Air, where Lyle talks his sibling into ordering a ridiculous amount of room service.
In the scene, both of the Menendezes are wearing skimpy Speedos that put their hairless, tanned and muscular upper bodies on titillating display. “Starting right now, we are going to demand more out of life,” Lyle (a Zac Efron-ian Nicholas Chavez), says while placing his hands around Erik’s neck in a way that’s simultaneously sensuous and intimidating. He puts a punctuation mark on the conversation by leaning in and kissing his brother on the mouth. It doesn’t seem like the first time he’s had that impulse and acted on it, and Monsters takes pleasure in pointing that out.
The real-life Menendez brothers, currently still serving life sentences in prison for murdering their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, have never said that they were involved in an incestuous relationship, though Lyle confessed during their murder trials that he abused his brother and apologized for it, an emotional moment recreated in Monsters. Yet this fictionalized work of “true crime” can’t resist leaning into the notion of a long-standing Cersei-Jamie situation between the two, teased out in scenes of them provocatively dancing at parties and getting caught showering together. The level of homoeroticism makes the volleyball scene in Top Gun seem subtle by comparison. Lyle characterized whatever went on between them as abuse that stemmed from being sexually molested by their father, so why would Murphy and series co-creator Ian Brennan feel compelled to frame it like a clandestine romance, even to the point of having Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane) nonsensically suggest that it was a motive for murdering their parents?
The easiest and most obvious answer to that question is that this is what Ryan Murphy shows generally do. They luxuriate in the unspeakable and add extra dollops of salaciousness to stories that are already pretty shocking. But when Murphy and his collaborators are at their best, they can offset those hyperbolic tendencies with careful, nuanced character work that opens our eyes to aspects of a narrative we hadn’t considered even though we’ve heard the same story before. The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story does that most effectively in its sixth episode, a 36-minute single take of Erik, played with great discipline by Cooper Koch, describing the years of emotional and sexual abuse his father inflicted upon him.
One could argue that the incest storyline was included with a higher purpose in mind. The first two episodes of Monsters paint a portrait of the brothers that matches the first impressions most people got of them from the media: They are entitled, rich, preppy, swole dudes tooling around Los Angeles in limousines. And yes, they are extremely fit, with extremely visible abs to prove it. Despite the savage crime they committed, the Netflix Original casts them in an aspirational light that can be seen as an indictment of our own fascination with cases like this. The Menendez trials — the first of the two ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury — became such a sensation in part because of the hideous nature of the crime, but also because of who Lyle and Erik were. They became famous as the 1980s were ending and looked like personifications of what that decade conditioned Americans to covet: wealth, physical attractiveness, obvious access to all the amenities the good life has to offer. That was the fascination: that two boys who looked like this, could possibly do that.
As the series points out, the Menendez brothers earned plenty of admirers who sent them loving letters and provocative photos while they were in prison awaiting trial. Those women — the series implies it was almost entirely women — didn’t fear these guys. They idolized them, and Monsters initially goads us into understanding those feelings. Then it tries to go a step further by adding an erotic layer to the nature of the relationship between the brothers. Murphy and co. are trying extra hard to make us horny for murderers, something they’ve done more than once on American Horror Story and in Dahmer. But they’ve trafficked in this territory so often that it’s difficult to see this as meaningful meta-commentary on the public’s perverse attraction to murder stories. You can’t insightfully criticize people for watching porn while giving them more pornography to watch.
As the episodes progress, The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story takes a more serious turn, focusing more on the horrendous nature of their father’s abuse and demonstrating genuine compassion for both of them. The drama never absolves them of murdering their parents, but it depicts a home life miserable enough to make it understandable, if not forgivable, that they wanted to get rid of their mom and dad. Particularly in the aforementioned sixth episode, “The Hurt Man,” the details of José’s mistreatment of Erik is handled with bluntness but also with obvious sensitivity. When Lyle admits on the stand that he penetrated his brother with a toothbrush, the same thing their father had done, repeatedly, to both of them, he sobs as he says, “I’m sorry,” repeatedly.
But Monsters also shows both brothers admitting to having lied about or embellished information they’ve shared with their attorneys and the public, which invites the audience to have reasonable doubts about whether their abuse stories could be fabricated as well, doubts echoed in the series by prosecutors and Dunne. Lyle’s toothbrush story, in particular, is at odds with the consensual, intimate moments between him and his brother that Monsters has previously, almost gleefully shown us. Having Lyle admit to molestation, especially so late in the series, makes it all the more strange and confusing that those sexually charged scenes exist in the first place, especially since they don’t seem to be rooted in fact and aren’t really necessary to the story.
At best, the steaminess between the brothers was an attempt to demonstrate how challenging it is for victims of child abuse to have normal relationships, an attempt that doesn’t land right tonally. But at worst, it undermines the seriousness of abuse and blurs the lines between what’s “hot” and what is absolutely inappropriate and wrong. If we choose to believe that the two were lovers on some level, that robs Lyle’s molestation confession of its meaning and impact. So does concluding that Lyle was lying about abusing his brother together. Monsters refuses to take a definitive stance on the nature of their relationship and with regard to the brothers’ guilt, it ultimately draws the same conclusion that Dunne does: “Regardless of what happened to them, Lyle and Erik aren’t entitled to our forgiveness.” That may be true. But viewers of this series should be entitled to a more nuanced, less exploitative depiction of the relationship between these two notorious, complicated men.
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