Nobody needs a Luigi Mangione series

Earlier this week, feeling a little inundated with memes and social media posts about Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I sent an email to Simone Driessen. Driessen is a professor of media and popular culture at Erasmus University Rotterdam and often has smart ideas about how online comments and real-world issues intersect. Above all, I wanted to know: What was happening? Why had the internet anointed Mangione a popular hero?

Collective frustration

Driessen’s response was the same one many people have come to: people in the US are frustrated with the health insurance industryand posting responses about Thompson’s murder is a way to vent that frustration. Interest in the person responsible for that death, even before a suspect was arrested or named, did not necessarily reflect support for the suspect or the act, but rather the idea of ​​”someone trying to take on (or take down) the system.” sanitary,” he wrote. “Memes help people make sense of that feeling.”

However, Dreissen added that that didn’t necessarily explain all of Mangione’s thirsty people once he had been identified as the alleged shooter. That, he wrote, “somewhat fits with a social trend or a media entertainment trend where we have this general romanticized portrayal of criminals” thanks to the recent popularity of true crime series.

It is not surprising, then, that more than a person online has suggested that the Mangione case could be material for Ryan Murphy’s upcoming Netflix series, as Dahmer either Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menéndez. Some also suggest that Dave Franco, who bears a strong resemblance to the suspect, could play Mangione.

Yes, that makes sense, but does anyone need it? Fascination with the case, and with Mangione as a person, has reached a fever pitch, and while that may make a Hollywood dramatization an interesting prospect, it’s an idea that is better leave alone.

Although there are already those who have reservations about turning the stories of Jeffrey Dahmer or the Menéndez brothers into miniseries, there is also the fact that some time has passed since those cases shocked the United States. Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1992 in connection with the deaths of 15 people in Wisconsin; He was later extradited to Ohio, where he was convicted of another murder. a jury condemned Lyle and Erik Menéndez for the murder of their parents in 1996. The Netflix series about the two came decades after those cases were practically closed. Bonnie & Clyde It premiered in 1967; The duo began their criminal careers in the 1930s.

There is still a lot to know in Mangione’s case, but either way, any movie or television show about him would have to do a lot of hindsight. Unlike so many other themes from shows, movies and podcasts on true crime, the online reaction to Thompson’s murder is happening in real time. Internet forums have long existed for past tragedies, but there was no Twitter/X during the Menendez trial, even though it dominated the news at the time.

What is happening in response to Mangione’s arrest, and what will happen to him in the future, will be determined, at least in part, by social media. Making a movie or show about him, rather than something focused on the public response to the death of a health insurance CEO, makes no sense. First of all, it’s not like anyone needs another true crime article. Or, like said a message in X: “Ryan Murphy…please don’t do it.”

Article originally published in WIRED. Adapted by Mauricio Serfatty Godoy.