Forget The Ed Gein Story, these are the times Ryan Murphy REALLY took things too far

Ryan Murphy may my spirit never know truly how it feels about you and your creations. You have entertained me endlessly, for the best part of two decades. Right now the work produced by Ryan Murphy is so centred on the disgust people feel for how he approaches true crime so salaciously in his Monster series on Netflix – currently deep in its The Ed Gein Story era. But even before  The Ed Gein Story was getting one star reviews from perturbed journalists, Ryan Murphy took things too far. Here is a roundup of some of his most controversial projects to date, when Ryan Murphy took things too far and made us wince, cringe and think “how did he get away with this?”

American Horror Story

Ryan Murphy often took it too far in AHS. So much so that I’m going to break it down season to season, because nearly all of them caused massive backlash.

Murder House

Season one of American Horror Story had huge drama regarding Tate Langdon – the character played by Evan Peters. This is because Tate was revealed to be a school shooter in some truly horrific scenes. Obviously, school shootings are a real life horror that are no figment of any imagination – but the issue here was the romanticisation of Peters as Tate. Tate and Violet and their love story in the show dominated Tumblr, and it was in bad taste.

Even Ryan Murphy agreed he felt a lot of discomfort how that character went down with fans.

Asylum

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The most controversial plot point in Asylum was that the show included Anne Frank. Or a woman who thought she was Anne Frank. There is a Nazi doctor character in Asylum and the woman who believes she is Anne Frank correctly identifies him as such – but it’s revealed that she’s just a delusional housewife and isn’t Anne Frank at all. Many critics and Holocaust educators thought using Anne Frank, a real teenage victim and global symbol of the Holocaust, as a twist in a horror show was exploitative and trivialised her suffering.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY I Am Anne Frank, Pt. 1 — Episode 204 (Airs Wednesday, November 7, 10:00 pm e/p) — Pictured: Franka Potente as Kassie — CR: Byron Cohen/FX

Cult

American Horror Story: Cult really got political – so much so that it used real footage of the election of Donald Trump and clips of real life gun violence and big news events. People called Ryan Murphy out for taking it too close to real horrors and eventually FX toned it down on reruns.

Even Glee took it too far

Don’t actually know why I said “even” Glee when one of the episodes saw Rachel Berry send an innocent girl to a crack den. But still, most people thought Glee and Ryan Murphy took things too far when he did the episode Shooting Star which centred on a school shooting. The episode only aired four months after the Sandy Hook shooting and families complained that neither Murphy nor the network reached out to pre-warn of the dark content explored in the episode.

Whilst no shooting actually happens in the episode and it’s all a misunderstanding in the end – the traumatic event is very real for those going through it as far as they know and it’s emotionally jarring in a show like Glee.

The huge backlash to Dahmer

The original Monster before Ryan Murphy did The Ed Gein Story saw Netflix take on Jeffrey Dahmer. Whilst the show and Ryan Murphy claimed to be bringing awareness to the victims of Dahmer, many spoke out against the show and said they were not consulted about the creation and that the show’s immense popularity re-traumatised them.

There was also big controversy after Netflix tagged the show under the LGBTQ+ category. As if it was some kind of representation and queer programming – when really it was a serial killer show that just happened to have its perpetrator be a member of that community.

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