Exploring Queerness and Psychopathy: Insights From ‘Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy’

Victim-Centered Narrative Approach

Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy fundamentally reimagines true crime storytelling by positioning the 33 victims—rather than the perpetrator—as the narrative’s emotional and thematic center. Each of the eight episodes is named after one of Gacy’s victims, deliberately acknowledging their individual humanity and refusing to allow them to be subsumed into statistical anonymity. This decision reflects creator Patrick Macmanus’ stated mission: “We were determined to center the narrative on the victims, but we were uncertain about how to achieve that until we developed the individual stories. We wanted to highlight these victims’ lives, their aspirations, challenges, and the tragedies they faced that were unrelated to their murders.”

The series strategically avoids depicting murders onscreen—a deliberate creative decision that fundamentally distinguishes the production from the sensationalist approach favored by Netflix’s Monster franchise under Ryan Murphy. Instead of serving prurient audiences seeking shock value, Devil in Disguise explores the circumstances, relationships, and personal struggles that characterized each victim’s life. Through flashbacks depicting family dynamics, romantic encounters, employment aspirations, and social challenges, the series constructs psychological portraiture that transforms victims from abstract statistics into vividly rendered human beings.

The series also emphasizes how many victims were not legal adults when murdered—a crucial detail that the original investigation often minimized or ignored due to systemic homophobia and institutional indifference. By centering these young men’s vulnerabilities, aspirations, and potential futures stolen by Gacy, the series accomplishes what traditional true crime often fails to achieve: genuine emotional engagement with victimhood rather than voyeuristic fascination with criminality.

GLAAD’s Critical Partnership and Guidance

Recognizing that the narrative would necessarily address systemic homophobia and LGBTQ+ victimization, Macmanus made the deliberate choice early in development to invite GLAAD as a collaborative partner rather than merely a consultant providing token input. According to GLAAD representative Megan Levinson, the organization’s approach centered guidance rather than restriction: “Our stance is always: If you choose to tread on that sensitive ground, we want you to be aware of it.”

GLAAD reviewed outlines and scripts throughout development, eventually committing to formal advisory partnership upon reviewing the completed series. Macmanus acknowledged that the only anxiety he experienced throughout production involved awaiting GLAAD’s assessment of the finished cuts. “I distinctly remember the moment I received the call from GLAAD confirming their desire to become formal partners. That is what I am most proud of throughout this entire journey—having their guidance to ensure we told this story accurately and respectfully,” Macmanus reflected.

This partnership proved especially important because Macmanus’ writers’ room was substantially composed of queer writers who brought lived experience and authenticity to depicting queer characters, relationships, and vulnerabilities during an era characterized by profound institutional homophobia. The collaborative process allowed the series to avoid inadvertent stereotyping while authentically representing LGBTQ+ experiences, fears, and societal marginalization.

Authentic Queerness Without Exploitation

A critical distinction that Devil in Disguise successfully navigates involves depicting queer lives and relationships authentically while avoiding the exploitation of queerness for shock value. The series presents moments of genuine queer connection, romance, and tenderness alongside the surrounding horror—what GLAAD’s Levinson describes as deliberately centering “queer joy amidst the surrounding horror.” Levinson elaborated: “We need to continue to see our narratives during a time when, simply put, we are being erased from our own stories.”

The series intentionally includes complex depictions of sex work, balancing necessary destigmatization with authentic representation of the genuine dangers faced by sex workers—particularly young men and transgender individuals—during the 1970s. Rather than presenting sex work as an inexplicable moral failing, the series contextualizes economic desperation, family rejection, and societal marginalization that drove young queer people toward survival sex work.

One particularly poignant sequence features Rign (August Prew), one of Gacy’s few survivors, learning from his attorney that the legal system does not recognize male-on-male rape. Despite possessing medical documentation of his injuries, the lawyer explains the legal apparatus’ profound failure regarding same-sex sexual assault. This moment encapsulates systemic homophobia’s legal manifestation—not as abstract policy but as lived experience preventing survivors from seeking justice.

Exposing Systemic Homophobia as Facilitating Factor

Crucially, Devil in Disguise contextualizes Gacy’s six-year killing spree not merely as individual pathology but as occurring within systemic failure enabled by pervasive homophobia. Chicago police officers systematically dismissed missing-person reports when victims were queer, homeless, or engaged in sex work—categories that police trivially disregarded as “runaways” or “undesirables” rather than investigating legitimate disappearances.

The series depicts police interviewing Gacy multiple times during the investigation without recognizing the danger he posed, partially because homophobic assumptions led investigators to dismiss the concerns of victims’ families and friends. GLAAD’s Levinson noted: “Even though not all of Gacy’s victims were queer, they were often assumed to be gay by the authorities.” This reality—whereby systemic homophobia rendered entire categories of victims disposable in institutional consciousness—becomes the series’ central thematic focus.

Detectives depicted in the series, particularly Gabriel Luna’s character, are portrayed with moral complexity as officers who eventually confront their own complicity in enabling Gacy’s crimes through institutional indifference. The series examines how police failures to investigate thoroughly and social contempt for queer communities created conditions allowing a serial murderer to operate with impunity. Macmanus stated: “If we are choosing not to depict murders repeatedly—which was a deliberate decision—we are instead highlighting those who were complicit in enabling these acts to persist.”

Distinguishing Psychopathy from Queerness

Perhaps most significantly, Devil in Disguise accomplishes what problematic true crime narratives frequently fail to achieve: absolute distinction between Gacy’s queerness and his psychopathy. The series refuses the harmful conflation—frequently found in sensationalist media—that associates sexual orientation with predatory violence or moral depravity. Instead, Gacy’s queerness functions as one biographical element among many, while his psychopathic personality disorder, capacity for deception, and propensity for violence represent entirely separate psychological and behavioral pathologies.

Michael Chernus’ performance as Gacy eschews the theatrical “monster clown” imagery that dominates popular cultural representations. Rather, the series depicts Gacy as fundamentally ordinary in many respects—successful contractor, community volunteer, husband, father—making his capacity for calculated violence psychologically more disturbing precisely because it contradicts surface normality. This approach suggests that predatory psychopathy exists independently of sexual orientation, avoiding the dangerous insinuation that queerness correlates with criminality.

The series’ pivotal scene wherein Gacy applies clown makeup occurs only once, nearly six hours into the narrative, deliberately de-emphasizing the “Killer Clown” sensationalism that dominates cultural memory. By stripping away the theatrical framing and presenting Gacy primarily through the psychological mechanisms of his pathology rather than aesthetic spectacle, the series avoids centering the killer’s self-mythology while maintaining psychological authenticity regarding his actual criminality.

Macmanus reflects on this distinction: “The show ultimately does not excuse his behavior,” emphasizing that depicting psychological complexity regarding victim circumstances, institutional failures, and social marginalization does not constitute excuse-making for Gacy’s deliberate, calculated violence.