Netflix's Monster and the Cult of Authenticity: Why Serial-Killer Entertainment Reflects a Degraded Individualism
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "Netflix’s Monster and America’s Growing Obsession With Serial Killers | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." October 11, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author says Netflix's Monster series, and the wider craze for serial-killer stories, shows a culture that prizes 'being yourself' so much that it starts treating murderers as heroes of self-expression. He argues that being authentic only matters when it serves something bigger, like truth, art, or other people's good, and that we should insist on that instead of celebrating killers.
Conclusion
Because valuing authenticity for its own sake leads a culture to build shrines to killers and incurs real costs, we ought to anchor authenticity within some greater end (the arts and sciences, virtue, the good of others), rather than treating it as an end in itself.
Premises
- Netflix's Monster franchise is highly successful and keeps expanding (Dahmer topped a billion viewing hours, Gein hit number one in 60+ countries, true crime is now America's most popular podcast topic), so the audience for killer-centered content is large and reliable.
- The fascination extends beyond the screen into romanticization: people have 'favorite' serial killers, Dahmer costumes were sold in volume, and Borden is marketed as an action figure, a board game, and a B&B with ghost tours. Netflix's own synopsis frames the murders as liberation ('gloriously free').
- Decades of intensifying individualism have made authenticity the dominant cultural currency, and by that measure the most transgressive criminals, who most completely live out their private appetites with contempt for social norms, become idols.
- Following Charles Taylor, difference or self-expression is meaningless on its own and becomes significant only against a horizon the self did not invent (truth, art, tradition, the good of others). Monster inverts this horizon by elevating killers purely for their transgression.
- Treating killers as icons carries costs: it may hurt victims' families, may encourage the behavior itself, or may provoke a disproportionate backlash of draconian crackdowns on individuality.
- Tempered authenticity, anchored to a greater purpose, has real value (scientific breakthroughs, art, Western prosperity), so the problem lies in authenticity detached from any such purpose and not in authenticity as such.
Assumptions
- Commercial success of Monster and the popularity of true crime reflect admiration or romanticization of killers, not merely curiosity, horror, or enjoyment of a puzzle.
- Hyper-individualism and the cult of authenticity are the main cause of the killer-icon trend, rather than other factors such as the economics of media, sensationalism, or longstanding human fascination with crime.
- Netflix's marketing copy and the franchise's framing represent how audiences actually interpret the shows.
- Authors' stated intent to indict the culture is outweighed by the audience's tendency to remember the killer's name.
- Jung's shadow-projection theory explains audience envy of criminals, and that envy converts into admiration.
- Cultural norms and values can be shifted by social pressure or choice ('it is up to us'), without requiring state intervention.
- Taylor's 'horizon of significance' is a valid normative standard for judging which forms of authenticity are worthwhile.