But for me, there’s a lot more exciting programming where nostalgia is kept at arm’s reach. In fact, a slew of contemporary series set in the ‘90s — only one of which, incidentally, features a white male protagonist — have proved much better at scratching that scrunchies-and-flannel itch while recalling the Clinton era for what it was. Netflix’s teen dramedy Everything Sucks! initially feels like a ride in a time machine — no other show captures the clothes and lingo of the ’90s so precisely — but the show features a budding black filmmaker and a teenage lesbian as its dual protagonists. That’s also true of the most recent season of American Crime Story, which explores in part the anti-gay sentiment that enabled Gianni Versace killer Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree. The previous season of ACS, The People v. O.J. Simpson, similarly used hindsight to illuminate how race and gender dynamics warped “the trial of the century.” And the 2015 HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero, about an anti-desegregation effort in Yonkers and set between 1987 and 1994, evinces no nostalgia at all, and is all the more powerful for its firm unsentimentality.
BECAUSE TV IS MY LIFE … Finished The Assassination of Gianni Versace last night. I went into it thinking it’d be campy and stupid, left it believing it was 10 hours of toob time well spent. The series was more about Versace’s killer, the deadly narcissistic poseur Andrew Cunanan, than about Versace. Which was good, because Cunanan was a wickedly interesting dude.
In Greek mythology, Narcissus was the son of a river god who fell in love with his own reflection. Upon realising he couldn’t stop looking at the image of his own beauty, he lost the will to live – and stared at it until death.
I’ve been thinking about narcissism a lot while watching the deeply unsettling American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. The serial killer responsible for Versace’s murder, Andrew Cunanan, was – like Narcissus himself – the epitome of conceited.
But I’m less interested in this guy’s personality than how his brand of narcissism pervades current-day society.
In the book in which ACS: Versace was based on, author Maureen Orth believes that Cunanan exhibited the traits found in classic narcissists. “In effect, they cannot distinguish an image of who they imagine themselves to be and an image of who they really are…” she writes, quoting a psychiatrist. “Narcissists do not function in terms of actual self-image because it is unacceptable to them.”
That sounds all-too-much like everybody in 2018, not just an infamous serial killer from the 1990s.
I’ve begun to wonder how we all became so obsessed with our own image, and why actual self-image has become unacceptable to us. How is it that modern society has become so ashamed of reality that narcissistic fantasy has become the new norm?
We don’t shun narcissists anymore for puffing up their chests more than they should; we encourage them through social media.
The crucial societal change I think we’ve seen in recent years is how nobody gets accused of boasting anymore. I’ve always been a critic of Tall Poppy Syndrome yet what’s happened the world over is the other extreme. Rather than cut people down, we’ve started to let them grow higher than they ever should have.
I don’t post to Instagram myself because I don’t really like sharing personal photos – if you’re a reader of my columns, you’ll know I share enough about my own life as it is – but I have an account.
I’ve been shocked to learn that some of the people I see there (often my actual real-life friends or acquaintances) have followers above the 20,000-30,000 range.
These are software developers and engineers and lawyers from the public sector. People whose physical self-image should be completely irrelevant to their identity.
I look at their social media pages and ask myself how they have amassed such followers, and I’ve only one theory. Narcissism begets narcissism. Narcissists are caught in a vicious selfie-led cycle of upholding your own self-beauty whilst consuming and commenting on the beauty of others.
Such efforts have been packaged as “confidence”, though, not narcissism. This is why we applaud it. Confidence has positive connotations and when we see somebody showing us their “best self”; whether it’s our best friend or a celebrity model, we call them brave. We tell them how strong they are for rising up against the haters.
That latter part isn’t a bad thing – I think the most important thing in a culture of 21st Century, always-on connectivity is being unaffected by one’s cynics. Yet my issue is that the way society encourages rising up is with physical beauty. It’s a bit like that old saying when somebody goes through a relationship break-up: “the best revenge is looking hot”.
Here, we don’t get told that beauty is for the few, we’re told it’s accessible to the many. This is what’s driving our current brand of narcissism. It’s not acceptable to be ugly, or even average. Everybody can improve their own self-image, if not in real life than at least through a selfie lens.
Beauty is less about admiration and more about envy. We all want to be beautiful because everybody else seems to be beautiful. The result here cannot be anything but unachievable expectations and disappointment – the genetic gods simply weren’t that frivolous when it came to physicality.
I won’t kid myself – or you – I care about my physical appearance. Yet I put all my effort and pride into how I present myself in real life. I don’t see the point in creating photographs that make you look better than you really do, only to disappoint when seen in person.
Everyone has heard of Tinder date disasters where the troglodyte at the restaurant is not the babe they sold themselves as.
I’d rather look haggard on a 5.8-inch screen and positively glowing in the flesh. I take pride in looking presentable, but I’m able to distinguish what I have with what I don’t.
I only hope that this is enough to prevent me from falling into Narcissus’s ever-so-easy mythological trap.
Brett, Meredith and Alonso review the eighth episode of American Crime Stories second season about the assassination of Gianni Versace. | 28 March 2018
ACSFX: Twenty years later, the story still resonates. Our cast and crew discuss what they learned from the incredible and tragic events of #ACSVersace.
We’ve reached the end, friends. American Crime Story: Versace has finished its run. And what an episode to go out on.
We all knew how this was going to end from the very beginning. The opening scene in the first episode of Versace showed us how Andrew Cunanan killed Gianni Versace. Here, in the final episode, we’re shown the whole event again — this time at a quicker pace, all cut with some catchy music.
This time we actually get to see what happens next: the houseboat, the police stand-off and the unfortunate end that we know can’t be avoided.
After murdering Versace, Cunanan breaks into a Miami houseboat in which he plans to hide out in for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t look like he has an exact plan per-say, but he instead decides just to celebrate by popping some champagne and turning on the local news. He’s a celebrity now, after all, which is just what he’s always wanted. Everyone finally knows his name.
Then, in the smartest move Ryan Murphy could have possibly pulled off, we finally return to Marilyn — Lee Miglan’s wife, portrayed by the Emmy deserving Judith Light (I will never stop raving about how good she is in this show). The FBI show up at her door, telling her that her husband’s murderer has killed again. “When will this end?” she says. “How many more are going to die?”
It’s not the last time Marilyn comes back, thank God, but next, we return to Andrew’s former housemate Ronnie. Suddenly, in this final episode, it makes sense why every episode was so segmented — all the characters that we met are coming back in some way for this finale and the way Versace pulls that off is really kind of brilliant. It just makes us miss Jeff and David.
The FBI question Ronnie about Andrew’s whereabouts, and he gives retorts with an inspired speech about how the police didn’t care about a bunch of murdered gay people until one of them was a celebrity and they were forced to get involved. So good Max Greenfield, so good.
Andrew’s excitement, though, is quickly coming to an end. He realizes that there’s no way he can escape Miami, as there are now police barricades everywhere and he’s made it on to the FBI’s top ten most wanted list. All he can do is sit on this houseboat, eventually having to resort to eating canned dog food, watching all his friends and family appear on television to be questioned.
It’s when his mother is questioned that Andrew hits a breaking point. Scared and confused, he decides to call his father — who’s still hiding out in the Philippines, as we learned in the previous episode — to come bail him out. His dad promises he’ll be there in the next 24 hours, and that he’ll take him away from there.
My favorite moment of the episode comes shortly after this. We cut back to Marilyn, who refused to follow the FBI’s request to come into hiding, as Andrew could come for her next for all they know. Marilyn has never missed a broadcast, and she’s not going to start now.
So, with Andrew watching from home, Marilyn Miglin tells the world about a new perfume she’s designed — one in memory of her deceased mother. “Here is something I made for you,” she says. “The kind of perfume my father would give you for your birthday as a way of saying how special you are.” Andrew watches the whole thing, in awe. Marilyn, who’s just as capable of creating her own reality as Andrew is, has the fortune and fame that he’s always desired. What could have been if only he tried to create instead of destroy.
24 hours later and Modesto isn’t on the houseboat. Instead, he’s on television, making his own name for himself off of Andrew’s fame. Modesto talks about how someday Andrew’s life will be turned into a movie (meaning everything has come full circle now, as American Crime Story has finally capitalized on that), right before Andrew takes out his gun and shoots the screen. Andrew has no one left.
So, he does the only thing left to do — takes a projector into the living room and throws a screening party for one of Versace’s funeral.
This was the moment that got me. Leading up to this, we saw Antonio and Donatella argue about what comes next for the two of them, Donatella telling her brother’s lover that he can’t stay in the house because it’s now owned by the company. But it’s the funeral itself — the difference in the way the two were treated by the priest — that really hit me with those emotions I’ve been waiting for all season.
To make it even better, there’s some real footage of Versace’s funeral thrown into the mix at this point, as we see the real Princess Diana and Elton John in attendance. Andrew watches the whole thing in amazement, then decides it’s about time to shave his head. He knows his days are numbered at this point.
The police learn where he’s staying shortly after the funeral, and the rest is pretty much history. They surround the houseboat, telling Andrew to come out at once, with no luck. They enter, only to find Andrew, lying in the bedroom, gun in his mouth. He’s killed himself.
Right before this, we see one final flashback to him and Versace. They’re on a stage, with Versace politely rejecting Andrew’s request — first for a job as a fashion designer, then as a lover. “It’s not about persuading people you’re going to do something great. It’s about doing it,” Versace tells him.
Andrew, who faced nothing but rejection and heart-ache all his life, now believes he’s done something great. Of course, the things Andrew did were terrible, but the point that American Crime Story: Versace has tried to make this entire season is that everything leading up to the murders was just as terrible. The way homosexuals get treated is terrible. The world, in general, is just a terrible place.
After showing Antonio also deciding to commit suicide, we end by contrasting the difference in cemeteries between Versace and Andrew. Versace has a lavish gravestone, surrounded by candles and decorations, while Andrew is just one of many inside a never-ending mausoleum. The fame he thought he achieved never really did live up to the fame he sought after in the end.
And that’s a wrap for this season of American Crime Story. While it didn’t dig quite as deep into the life of Versace as I may have liked — which I’m assuming is because Versace’s family is still alive and didn’t want Gianni’s life to be portrayed in a show like this — I found myself loving each and every episode. Yes, the whole narrative was a bit confusing, but when looking at the whole thing in retrospect it’s genius what they decided to do here.
Question: Now that Season 2 of FX’s American Crime Story has concluded, it is more than apparent that Ryan Murphy didn’t have enough material about Versace to cover the entire season, let alone one episode. If he was to delete the scenes about Andrew Cunanan and just focus on Versace’s life and tragic death. the show would be much less watchable to me. Most of the parts dealing with Gianni Versace, his sister and lover were auite dull. Conversely the parts (thankfully the vast majority of the series) dealing with Andrew Cunanan were spectacular and highly addictive. Overall, I grade the series an A- or 4 and a half out of 5. — Fred
Matt Roush: My magazine review (covering the first eight of nine episodes) gave the series four out of five stars, so we’re pretty much on the same page. (I’d give the remarkable Darren Criss as Cunanan five stars or more.) We’ve covered some of this ground before, but now that the entire series has aired, I feel I need to point out that the title aside (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story), the psychopathy of Andrew Cunanan was always the primary focus of this project, but it would never have been made—and Cunanan would have been a footnote in the annals of true crime—if he hadn’t selected this famous, unwitting target. Producing a biography of Gianni Versace was never this series’ intent, and while those scenes certainly lacked the drama and intensity of Cunanan’s delusional reign of terror, I appreciated the contrast between the openly gay man who earned his fame and was loved, and the twisted, tormented poseur who used his sexuality for the most debased purposes. I also was quite moved in the final episode by the tragedy of Ricky Martin’s character, the widowed Antonio, who even in a supposedly progressive industry like fashion was sidelined by the family (and, less surprisingly, shunned by a priest at the funeral).
ACS news 