#derf backderf

Punk Rock and Trailer Parks

Owned?: No, library Page count: 224 My summary: Derf Backderf was a teenager in the late 1970s, a perfectly normal schoolkid - except he had this friend, one of the weird kids in the class. A kid named Jeff Dahmer. Backderf explores the relationship he had with Dahmer, with added hindsight giving context to his actions and behaviours. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Okay, fine, I’ll admit it, I like true crime. It’s a weird thing to be into; I want to maintain a respectful distance from horrific things that have happened to real life people, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to know about it. So this book, I will admit, interested me. Backderf knew Jeffrey Dahmer when he was a teenager, and was even friends with him. How can he reconcile this with the things that Dahmer did later in life? It’s an interesting perspective, and I did like this telling of Dahmer’s tale, though it was not without its issues.

The thing I liked most about this graphic novel was how sympathetic it was to Dahmer. Backderf stresses in his narration that his sympathy for Dahmer extends only up until he killed his first person - after that, Dahmer crosses into territory you cannot come back from, and no amount of pain in his life excuses murder and torture. But still, it’s not hard to feel a bit for the teenage Dahmer. He had a tough home life, turned to serious alcoholism to cope with it, and didn’t receive the kind of help he desperately needed. It’s a complex situation, and while obviously Dahmer’s murdering people is inexcusable, it’s easier to understand why he might have turned out the way he did. Backderf’s narrative flows well, and gives well-researched insights into Dahmer’s teen life and mindset. He also doesn’t cross over into the gory or lurid - we see some dead animals, sparsely, but no dead bodies despite the last anecdote covering Dahmer’s first murder. It didn’t feel exploitative, which is important.

There were some negatives to this book, though. First, I really didn’t like the art style. It’s the kind of semi-realistic style that emphasises noses and elongates faces, I found it kind of ugly. Secondarily, and more importantly, I felt that some of Backderf’s focus was on how weird it was that he knew a serial killer as a kid. Like, there are a few times when Backderf’s narration emphasises that this really happened and he really did this or had this conversation, or whatever. That was what felt a bit exploitative, not the existence of the graphic novel generally. It kept me from fully engaging, this playing on the infamy of Dahmer’s name. But still, it was an interesting enough read, for something I got through in about 30 minutes it was worth it.

You can get it from your local library, or you can read about it and order a copy at the link.

https://bookshop.org/books/kent-state-four-dead-in-ohio/9781419734847

Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio by Derf Backderf

10 Favorite Lines:

The military draft is the fuse that lights the mass antiwar revolt of 1970. Vietnam is not a war fought by volunteers, as wars have been ever since. Nearly a third of combat troops are forcibly conscripted. Nearly 17,000 draftees die in the jungles.

Numerous rumors roar through the Guard ranks, becoming progressively more preposterous… The more the outlandish stories spread, the jumpier the exhausted guardsmen become.

The Weathermen are certainly communist revolutionaries, but to dismiss the entire antiwar movement as nothing more than reds is just political grandstanding.

The CIA is, by law, forbidden to operate within the U.S., and denies it is doing so in 1970. This is a lie. Operation Chaos is a massive special ops program directed at the antiwar movement and the student left.

It’s not even about the war and Cambodia anymore. It’s about these goons who have invaded our campus!

What th’ hell? Is that crazy general really gonna mount an armed charge against a bunch of chanting kids?

After the barrage… silence. Then come the screams.

The guardsman is hospitalized after having a panic attack. He is the lone Guard casualty on May 4. On the other side, four students are killed, and nine are shot and wounded, two of whom are crippled for life. Only eight of the 13 were protestors. Most were shot in the back or while diving for cover.

Nixon forms a presidential commission, known as the Scranton Commission, to examine the Kent State shootings and campus unrest. Its findings are surprisingly frank. “The indiscriminate firing into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”

Author: Derf Backderf.

Publication Date: 2012.

Genre: Graphic memoir.

Premise: Before he was a serial killer/cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer was an isolated, awkward teenager in 1970′s suburban Ohio. Undistinguished throughout most of his childhood, he gained a very limited kind of popularity in high school by entertaining his classmates with bizarre antics. John “Derf” Backderf, one of the geeks who made up the “Dahmer Fan Club,” chronicles how his amusement slowly turned to unease as Dahmer’s behavior grew stranger and stranger.

Thoughts: In the second season of the peerless true-crime parody American Vandal, primary suspect Kevin McClain denies that bullying drove him to spike his high school’s lemonade supply with laxatives. In fact, he claims that he isn’t bullied at all; sure, his classmates throw fruit at him and record it on their phones to make him strike a ninja pose for the camera, but he’s in on the joke. Late in the season, however, he admits: “No one wants to be the fruit ninja. I've just never been good at fitting in, so at some point I decided to do the opposite.” In high school, I wasn’t despised like poor, pretentious Kevin. I certainly wasn’t as disturbing as young Jeffrey Dahmer, whose “comedy” routine largely consisted of mimicking disabled people and faking seizures. But I was the weird, funny girl on the edges of my already fairly dorky high school friend group. Outside of amusing people, I didn’t feel like I had much to offer. On occasion, my friends actively contributed to this feeling (“You know, all of the freshmen think that you’re not that smart,” one said casually), but I often chose not to offer them much else. I was afraid of letting people know me, even though I hid nothing more than garden-variety insecurities. 

It’s hard to know what motivated teenage Dahmer, who had much more sinister secrets, to put on such an alienating act: an attempt to hide? A power play where he could charm people, however perversely, and not give much of himself? A gambit for any positive attention, a rarity in his dysfunctional home or overcrowded, anonymous school? My Friend Dahmer doesn’t look too hard for an explanation, although possibilities abound in Backderf’s reconstruction of Dahmer’s personal life. Although I sometimes wished for more reflection from the author, this was probably the best choice for nonfiction about such a sensitive topic; no one can say for sure, so it’s better not to favor any theory too much. What does come through is the palpable loneliness of such an existence.

Another thing the memoir is great at showing is the callous environment in which Dahmer alternately flourished and wilted. As an adult, Backderf is ashamed of having enjoyed and encouraged Dahmer’s ableist humor, but, as kids, he and his friends found it thrillingly chaotic,. The adults largely seem checked out, missing everything from hallway bullying to Dahmer’s on-campus daytime binge drinking. Most stories about serial killers are also stories about callousness on a systemic level--how far would some of them have gotten if sex workers weren’t widely considered disposable, for instance?--and My Friend Dahmer is an excellent miniature example.

(On a more negative note, I hate how Backderf draws women’s butts. It’s not that they’re too sexualized; it’s that they look like the kind of butts you’d draw if you wanted to emphasize that a fart was going to happen. The men’s butts are just flat.)