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DiscussionMini-rant about Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story on Netflix
Posted December 13, 2024 by notsofreshfeeling in Television

Has anyone else been watching this? We just watched the episode where the father confesses to the wife that his mother supposedly fondled him as a toddler... I just wanted to rant that I found this bit the least believable and annoying that they felt the need to, as usual, displace the blame for male predation and male violence on to a mother figure. In this same episode, Jose Menendez, the rapist father, is shown calling his mother late at night to accuse her of abusing him. Of course, we have absolutely no evidence that this part of the story is rooted in anything real and it's a complete confabulation on the part of the writers. It's just so odd to me the anxiety society has with "naming the problem" and the hysteria to displace the blame on to women. The show also tries to paint Kitty Menendez as almost entirely deserving of her fate.

22 comments

hellamomzillaDecember 13, 2024

The fate of Kitty is why I don’t believe the brothers.

pennygadgetDecember 13, 2024

Same

ToNorthDecember 13, 2024

I don't know why this case is so controversial, they killed their parents and did time for it. Point blank. Rarely do women ever get leeway for defending themselves against proven abusers. All these dudes had was their word, even less evidence then women have and yet everyone believes them. Not to say I don't believe the father abused them but the double standards are too much for me. I hope they heal when they're out of prison but yeah, this isn't the miscast of justice people make it out to be.

And as for the mother, I don't care what anyone says. She can't tell her story and I will not believe anyone point blank over some truly muddled words about her.

JACKANDJILLDecember 14, 2024

Refuse to watch it.

Couldn't care less whether their dad was or wasn't abusive.

They murdered their mother in cold blood to try to get the inheritance. Period. The rest is irrelevant. May they rot in hell.

pennygadgetDecember 19, 2024

Yep. If the dad was abusing his sons, he was likely abusing his wife as well. So the excuse of "she let the abuse happen" doesn't fly.

OneStarWolfDecember 13, 2024

Yep I stopped watching 4 episodes in or so because I really disliked the direction they were pushing and trying to rationalize that the mother somehow deserved to die too. Netflix keeps making these sympathetic psycho killer shows and it’s really gross the lies they peddle under the guise that it’s a fictional retelling.

ProxyMusicDecember 13, 2024(Edited December 14, 2024)

I stopped midway for the same reasons as you. But a few days ago I watched the rest of the episodes and I thought the script and whole approach become a lot more skeptical. In fact, I'd say the series takes a turn that's really damning of the brothers. As the series unfolded, more layers of their personalities were revealed - none of them good.

The final episodes also feature a lot more of Dominick Dunne, Leslie Abramson and the other female lawyer representing one of the killers. I thought the actors who portrayed those three characters did a great job, especially the woman who plays Leslie Abramson. Some of her scenes were hilarious.

There's also a great scene showing the jury during the penality phase where a middle-aged woman is yelling her head off telling the other jurors that the Menendez brothers are total fucking liars and fucking scumbags and no one should be taken in. She and her spiel was great. Also, she kept making the excellent point that if the Menendez brothers were being abused by their father/both parents as they said, then the obvious option for them would be to leave home/run away. Which is something that they easily could have done instead of buying shotguns and committing bloody, brutal murder given that at the time they decided to kill their parents, the Menendez brothers were big strong physically fit, able-bodied young men over age 18 who had driver's licenses, passports, a car, access to spending money, and many friends, relatives and other people (such as teachers and coaches and a shrink) they could have turned to to help them out and give them places to stay.

I ended the series having no idea what, if any, part of the backstory of abuse the brothers told is true or not, but without feeling bad at all that the brothers are in the slammer for life. So in the final analysis, I came away with a much more positive impression of the series than the really negative, annoyed, put-off view I developed midway through.

OneStarWolfDecember 13, 2024

Good to know! I may have to finish it one day then. I just know one of the brothers himself came out and put down the series for implying he was both gay and incestual with his own brother. Pretty weird that the series did that, but apparently the creator of these killer series loves to insert queer nonsense plots that are completely untrue.

SamhainDecember 13, 2024

Ryan Murphy loves the sympathetic serial killer. In AHS 1984 he tried to make Richard Ramirez sexy.

SpinstaaDecember 13, 2024

Yeah he seems to do it alot. I watched the first season of Monsters about Jeffrey Dahmer and I found he tried to show him in a sympathetic light.

Like he’s a man that sexually abused young boys, and killed and ate them too. We don’t need to feel bad for him.

lady_terfingtonDecember 13, 2024

Yeah, although I liked AHS Murder House back in the day, I feel like there's always something unsettling in Murphy's works that pushes me away from anything the guy makes. It's usually something to do with the weird sexualization of certain things I guess. I didn't watch the Monsters show, but I've seen videos about it and he apparently insinuated an incestuous relationship between the brothers (?) while trying to making them sexy too of course. Idk man, this guy gives me weird vibes.

norman_batesDecember 14, 2024

My girlfriend is having me watch AHS because I completely missed it and she needed to show me the uwu school shooter boyfriend after I told her, "isn't Ryan Murphy behind the Menendez show too?"

BehindtheCurtainDecember 14, 2024

They keep these shows going and cancel anything good

HotDogsAreDogsDecember 13, 2024(Edited December 13, 2024)

Yes, that bothered me a lot. It seemed like they were trying hard to humanize Jose, the serial pedo incest rapist, and completely demonize Kitty, who never really got a moment where her own background was explored in much depth.

It also almost seemed like she was played for laughs in some ways, and they definitely tried to equate knowing there was abuse (if she even really did know) with actually carrying out the abuse itself.

As per usual, women are held to the higher standard.

TheChaliceIsMightierDecember 13, 2024

they definitely tried to equate knowing there was abuse (if she even really did know) with actually carrying out the abuse itself

Whenever this is the narrative I think it's interesting that there is no consideration for the possibility that the woman is likely living in fear and being abused as well.

SpinstaaDecember 13, 2024

I liked the series. But I’m not 100% sure if the bothers were sexually abused by their father. There’s some stuff that happens later that makes you question it. So I’m also not sure the father was abused by his mother. We’ll never know now.

I really don’t like how whenever a man does something bad, it’s his mother’s fault OR it’s because he can’t get a gf and women don’t want him. It’s always a woman’s fault one way or another.

pennygadgetDecember 13, 2024

Or, if a father abuses his kids, its the wife's fault for not stopping it or leaving. As if she isn't constrained by financial dependence, fear of getting murdered, a justice system that will accuse her of parental alienation if she sues for full custody on the basis of abuse, etc

puppy_catDecember 14, 2024

I watched it in full and then I read about the actual case itself online, saw parts of the actual trial, read about what was true and what wasn't from how the series was made. I have mixed feelings. The show itself takes a lot of creative liberties and the director does a lot of weird stuff with sexualizing the brothers, which was really gross, especially with trying to push a narrative that the brothers were having an incestual adult relationship with one another. It's very gross. The director is a gay man who likes to do this in many other shows he has done, just having young fit male actors shirtless and he has sexualized serial killers and other murderers in his shows, too.

The case happened before I was born, and I had not heard about it before I watched the series. I read online that there is indeed some evidence that the boys were sexually abused. Family members on the mother's side and the father's side have said it was "an unspoken secret". One of the brothers shared about it to some other family members when he was a kid, who were also kids at the time and told him that what was happening to them wasn't normal, but nothing was ever done about it. Also, one of the brothers did have abrasions on the back of his throat as a child at apparently multiple points, which were not from anything like having a Popsicle slip down his throat (like they showed in the series, and they showed him as an adult at that point, when the abrasions happened as a kid. These types of abrasions are apparently almost always or at least very often from only oral rape; this is just from what I was reading.)

The part with the father saying his mother touched him - I read online that his sister or someone else endorses that this actually did happen to him as a child and she witnessed it. But in the show they do this whole phone call and they try to make it sound like it was also the catalyst for his sexual abuse of children. The phone call didn't happen.

I struggle with the boys killing their mother. She was not abusing them physically or sexually (she was apparently just psychologically/emotionally abusive), but was "allowing" the abuse from the father to happen.

Anyways, I don't know. As a woman who was abused in multiple ways by my father as a child, with a mother who knew about most of what he did to me, I never had any feelings about murdering either of my parents. I instead was just very suicidal from a young age, and developed many mental health problems which also significantly plague me as an adult. But the only one I wanted to take out of this world was myself. It really messed me up what he did and I hate that I just feel like I let it happen (even though I was a child and could not prevent it) for so many years and it ruined my life. But again, I never got homicidal towards my parents.

VegancatDecember 13, 2024

There's a good article in Unherd about this by Gurwinder Bhogal. The Menendoz Brothers Prey on Empathy. Their defence reminds me also of how nearly every single pedo nowadays says they were abused as children, often by the mothers. I don't buy it. It's as if the goal of Equality stretches even into SA.

TheChaliceIsMightierDecember 13, 2024

Predators know that claiming to have been a victim themselves will give them a lot of mileage. I think this is talked about in Why Does He Do That? and when put through a lie detector most of them drop that story. Bundy also points out that knowing that pain and shame should make someone LESS likely to do it to someone else.

notsofreshfeeling [OP]December 13, 2024

Yes, exactly.

IggyanaDecember 13, 2024

They killed their mom. Guilty.