Wednesday, December 17

Mez: DARK LADY (2#) -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

An article by Flora Galaud appears in this week's issue of Paris Match about the controversy in Italy over The Last City. There are two points in it which I wish to address. We'll skip the title because I'm not comfortable with it for legal reasons.

Moving on, here's the lede - A film shot inside a prison has created a controversy in Italy because a member of its cast, Amanda Knox, stands accused as a suspected murderess.

The name Amanda Knox has become unforgettable in Italy where over the past year she has come to be known as The Dark Lady of Seattle. And this is the reason: she is accused of the savage murder of her roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, an English student enrolled in the Erasmus program.

On 2 November 2007, police found the corpse of Meredith in her bedroom in Perugia and blood everywhere. Meredith appeared to have been drugged, violated and brutalized.

Three suspects rapidly emerged: Amanda, a young woman with an extremely odd personality, adept in the vices of her generation; her boyfriend; and one of their pals.

The trio is suspected of murdering the English student because she refused to participate in a sexual romp. A sordid situation which has upset Italy. [ ... ]

The film is cancelled. In a particular scene in the film, Amanda recites the famous monologue from Hamlet, which is just too much for the Italians to tolerate, as they consider this display an affront to Meredith's memory. And they object to Amanda Knox being turned into a media icon.

First, the writer seems to report that Meredith was drugged. I am not aware of this from what I've read of the autopsy report. What kind of drug does the writer have in mind: chloroform, sleeping pills or date-rape drugs? I do not believe residues of such chemicals were found in the toxicology test results from the autopsy reports. On the contrary: it is the reconstruction polemic of the prosecutor that she was subdued only mechanically, not chemically, and that she continued struggling to free herself from the assault - which is precisely why there was" blood everywhere" and more than 40 wounds on her person.

Second, I did find the French reporter's take on the film controversy interesting. It seems to be her sense of the situation that the flashpoint for the fuss was the nature of the Hamlet monologue. The implication is that it evoked an illusion of competing victimhood with the murdered Meredith which was unpalatable to the Italians.

This brings up a sore point for many people: the seeming failure to distinguish between celebrity and notoriety in contemporary popular media where anyone at random who happens to be in the news, both famous and infamous, can become a media icon. It all becomes grist for the media machine.

In this more recent Italian news brief this issue of media icons is touched upon again: they don't want criminals to become "models" for the young and impressionable public. It is disturbing to many Italians that Knox could appear to be a movie star simply because she has appeared in the news media so much lately that her face is recognizable.

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