What “Monsters” and Ryan Murphy get wrong with the Menendez brothers

The Menendez brothers Lyle, now 56, and Erik, now 53, probably never had an incestuous relationship. No evidence of this was presented anywhere and in court both vehemently denied a sexual relationship.

None of this stops Monsterthe new Ryan Murphy-directed Netflix drama about the brothers – who were convicted of murdering their powerful Hollywood parents José and Kitty Menendez in 1989 – by suggesting as much.

The show is a spin-off of MonsterMurphy’s hugely popular series about Jeffrey Dahmer, another notorious murderer whose trial outraged Americans in the 1990s.

This series received significant backlash from survivors because it heavily fictionalized the crimes committed by Dahmer. And all the true crime fans who wanted Monster To emerge from this controversy, one has to recoil in disbelief at the direction Murphy has taken instead – not just fictionalizing details but almost certainly fabricating a relationship between the brothers.

This portrait rests on a portrayal of the couple as greedy, demanding fortune hunters who are after the $14 million estate of their father, a producer at RCA Records. Along the way, the drama suggests not only that Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) was a sociopath who used his brother’s affections to manipulate him, but also that Erik (Cooper Koch) was a confused, closeted gay man – although that is not the case either. There is no evidence anywhere to suggest this.

The show gains some complexity as Murphy and his long-time collaborator Ian Brennan (who also co-wrote) Monster) begin to shake off years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse the brothers say they suffered at the hands of their father and mother. The brothers have claimed for more than three decades that abuse was the basis of their crime.

But MonsterWith its slick, oversaturated ’80s filter, seedy tone and obsession with wealth, it undermines the nuances of the infamous case on almost every page. Ultimately, this suggests that the couple made the whole thing up out of sympathy – although compelling evidence was recently uncovered that they were telling the truth all along.

At the time of their conviction, the brothers and their defense were completely culturally excluded; In the ’90s and early 2000s, it would have been hard to find anyone who didn’t believe the Menendez brothers were guilty.

Rather than upending these assumptions, Murphy applies his approach Monster is to give them a new platform. It is a tremendous, infuriating shame because this case and the way Americans understand and treat victims of abuse, particularly male victims of abuse, in court have been slow to receive public attention. Numerous other documentaries and articles offered a different, extremely belated and revealing perspective: What if they had told the truth?

To understand how much Monster Although it misses something and how much it distorts, it is helpful to examine the facts of the Menendez brothers’ story.

Media representatives called Monster “irresponsible” and suggested that steamy scenes between the brothers “blur the lines between what is ‘hot’ and what is completely inappropriate.” It was also heavily criticized by both brothers and condemned by almost every member of the main cast Defense pushed. In a statement shared by his wife on X, Erik Menendez called Monster a “vile and appalling character portrayal of Lyle and me” – particularly Lyle, who was the target of a “caricature” that was “rooted in blatant lies.”

Murphy, for his part, refuted this in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, arguing that Erik “made a statement without having seen the show” and that “60 to 65 percent of our show in the scripts and the film… revolves around that.” Abuse and what they claim happened to them.”

Many of the series’ depictions of the brothers have their origins in actual reporting of the case in the 1990s. For example, in a famous 1996 interview with both brothers, Barbara Walters downplayed the couple’s allegations of abuse and instead questioned Erik about whether he was gay. Erik firmly denied it.

“The prosecutor brought it up because I was sexually abused,” Erik replied, “and he felt that I must have enjoyed being sodomized by my father, and therefore I must be gay, and the People who do that. “People who are gay out there must be sexually abused or they wouldn’t be (gay).”

It was an apt encapsulation of the prevailing cultural assumptions of the largely anti-LGBTQ decade.

In fact, the allegation that abuse occurred in the Menendez home was confirmed by at least three family members, all of whom took the stand in the brothers’ initial trials. One of them, a cousin, witnessed José repeatedly physically abusing the brothers and claimed that he saw José showering with the boys; Two others claimed that Erik and Lyle separately told them about the abuse as children. They all stand by these claims to this day and still believe the brothers today. In 2023, the brothers’ lawyers announced the recent discovery of a letter written by Erik Menendez eight months before the murders – a letter to a cousin in which he describes harrowing details about the ongoing abuse:

“I tried to avoid Dad,” Erik writes in the letter. “It still happens, Andy, but now it’s worse for me. … Every night I stay awake thinking he might come in. …I’m afraid…He’s crazy. He warned me hundreds of times not to tell anyone, especially Lyle.”

In their mid-1990s interview, Walters, apparently barely suppressing an eye roll, called out the brothers using the “abuse excuse,” a phrase that attorney Alan Dershowitz coined in a 1994 book and that prosecutors applied to this case in 1994 applied The second trial against the Menendez brothers. When she asked Erik why he didn’t mind confessing to his therapist about the murders but not about the alleged years of sexual abuse, Erik explained, “Unless you’ve been molested, you don’t realize how hard it is to say. “

“Out of shame?” Walters asked skeptically.

“Out of shame,” Erik confirmed.

Probably because of the convincing nature of the brothers’ allegations of abuse, their first trials – the two were initially tried separately – each ended in deadlocked juries.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in the first round of negotiations was the question of whether or not the two should be convicted of manslaughter or murder; In Lyle’s trial, the decision was split along gender lines, with female jurors voting for the lesser charge and male jurors voting for murder.

However, things changed during the second trial, in which the brothers were tried together. Judge Stanley Weisberg rejected nearly all of the defense’s evidence related to the brothers’ abuse allegations, including mental health and medical experts, as well as the “minutes” of evidence proving the abuse the brothers suffered in their daily lives and who wiped out a large number of victims. The majority of the testimony referred to José’s controlling, temperamental and physically violent behavior.

Both of the duo’s defense attorneys have since stated that given what we now know about the effects of long-term abuse on children, a manslaughter conviction, which would have carried a much lighter sentence, would have been more appropriate for both Lyle and Erik.

Instead, the brothers were sentenced to life in prison without parole for first-degree murder.

Now the duo’s lawyers hope to use the new facts in the case to win a retrial for their clients.

Monster could well bring about a further turn against the brothers and their quest for a cultural realignment.

Murphy traced the Menendez brothers’ narrative to “an era in which prosecutors built a narrative on the belief that men were not sexually assaulted and that men experienced rape trauma differently than women,” Erik Menendez wrote in the report shared on X Explanation. “How demoralizing to know that a man with power can reverse decades of progress in understanding childhood trauma.”

Erik Menendez is right. Ryan Murphy convincingly portrayed the trauma and oppression of the queer closet in his musical film The prom as well as in Dahmer and a American crime story Rate, The assassination of Gianni Versaceof which he was executive producer. There is no doubt about his ability to accurately depict the impact of lifelong abusive situations on the innocent and even the guilty.

Murphy said so Monster tried a “Rashomon Art Approach,” referring to Akira Kurosawa’s famous film in which the story of a sexual assault is presented from multiple contradictory perspectives. He further argued that he had an obligation to the “storytellers” to include their perspectives.

This is an incredibly disingenuous portrayal of the show Murphy made. The film decides to further victimize the Menendez brothers with a shocking and unfounded accusation, building up the sibling incest narrative over the course of nine episodes despite compelling evidence of extreme abuse by a parent.

It’s not just an extremely irresponsible approach to an extremely complicated case – it’s the most backwards, regressive and confusing approach Murphy could have possibly taken.

“(Violence against a child) creates a hundred horrific and silent crime scenes, hidden darkly behind glitter and glamour,” Erik wrote.

He could have easily described it Monster himself.