Crazy Bitches on Trial

“… Criminals are an exception among civilised people and women are the exception among criminals… As a double exception, then, the criminal woman is a monster.” – Cesare Lomroso, Italian Criminologist, 1893

The public’s fascination with women who murder is palpable, if not dangerously obscene. Apart from its statistical rarity, female killers (or those accused) fascinate us because we are shocked to see such beauty contort into the face of a monster. Simply put, stories of vicious vixens, blue-eyed butchers and crazy bitches on trial turn our cranks. In literary terms, they also stir up the power of myth, so elegantly explored by the late Joseph Campbell.

As American author Nancy Friday discovered in her research for Men in Love, straight male fantasies often weave together the love and hatred of women. In modern culture, this pathology can be greatly observed in the way that real life women accused of murder are spun as femme fatales by the media, the prosecution and the public.

Historically, in both mythology and religion, women are portrayed as having the potential to ruin men. A foray into the artistic archives can show us how many artists were moved to transform the femme fatale into irresistible creatures that basked in the glory of luring men to their death or destruction.

Across cultures, the femme fatale has taken on many guises through popular culture and art. Made tangible through their sensationalist play in the public forum, we are enthralled with female “monsters” who are both murderous and attractive. Like a modern-day Lilith or Medusa, these women are seducers of men or devourers of children—or occasionally, both. When angered, her exquisite face contorts and her supple body seethes as folding flesh turns into hissing coils of Medusa’s snakes.

Popular entertainment and the media play as much of a role in evoking these mythologies today as did the Greek plays and bourgeois paintings of yesterday. The question now is whether these age old mythologies — as told through true crime stories –are enlightened fantasy or reflect a more sinister pathology.

In a society saturated with media and reality TV, these ancient mythologies have slipped seamlessly into our national crime narratives. In fact, so much so, that our psyches may no longer be satiated by a mere “fantasy” of the femme fatale. We want blood. We want to feed on and devour these women who represent our ancient fears and desires.

The femme fatale is the monstrous version of stereotypical femininity. Her qualities? Attractive, sexual, supernatural and deadly. In ancient myths, she is the Siren, the Succubus or the Witch – and she is deadly precisely because she is both beautiful and strange. Her strangeness is something that all accused female killers share once pushed into the limelight. Such beauty rivals their “disturbed” side with an array of oddly reported behaviours that conveniently appear to justify guilt, but also fail to recognize other realities such as abuse, mental illness, noncomformity or no ill history at all.

Some investigators, prosecutors and media pundits like Nancy Grace froth wickedly at the mouth in their desire to control such deviant women once their “disturbed and beautiful” selves enter the spotlight – which, by the way, doesn’t end in the interrogation room or the courthouse.

To our voyeuristic delight, we become privy to hoards of sensational videos or photographs of silly string funerals, boob jobs, spending sprees, wild parties and kinky sex acts. Yet, it doesn’t stop there! The more beautiful the woman or evil the act, the bigger the feeding frenzy with tales of stalking, tell all books and the parodies slipped into TV shows like Law & Order: SVU. These newly minted myths, encrusted with scandalous gems, become laden with the blinding ‘bling bling’ of illusory glitter. To what point does the media create or imbue these women with the seductive songs of the siren?

The sexual and brutal tales of notorious women such as Jodi Arias, Casey Anthony, Amanda Knox, Susan Wright and the more recent “cliff pusher” Jordan Graham are set within the framework of popular TV shows like Deadly Women, Snapped and Lifetime’s made-for-TV movies. Here’s a snapshot of a few of these movies with a peek into the possibility of Jordan Graham hitting the future playlist. For some added dimension, I have bestowed each women with a femme fatale figure to help clarify my point.

Black Widow (aka Blue Beard) – Susan Wright – Blue-Eyed Butcher

It was no accident that Susan Wright, convicted of stabbing her husband 197 times, was coined the Blue-Eyed Butcher. Does it ring any fairy tale bells? You may recall the story of Blue Beard. It’s a rather grotesque tale with a pile of mutilated dead wives hidden behind a secret door as a warning to obey.

During her trial, the prosecution portrayed Wright as a cold-blooded conniver who got tired of her husband and killed him for a $200,000 insurance policy. However, she always claimed self-defence triggered by years of emotional and physical abuse. Ironically, years later when the truth about her husband’s abusive ways came to light, it respun her bloody chamber into quite a different tale.

 Jezebel – Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secrets

Jezebel was a Phoenician princess in the 9th century who married Ahab, the prince of Israel. Ruling as king and queen, Jezebel was eventually reviled for engaging in idolatry — or rather “playing the harlot” or “whoring herself” to other deities. Preparing herself to be murdered, she applied make-up and dressed in her finery before being thrown to the dogs.

Jodi Arias made herself famous by “whoring” herself in a mug shot and to a Mormon man now depicted as a saint. Like Jezebel, she was tossed to the media dogs and a rabid public. In a Lifetime movie, Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret, Arias is portrayed as a cunning seductress who typifies evil. The actor prances around in skimpy underwear, slashes tires and then attacks Travis Alexander in a shower scene mirroring Psycho. In another bizarre scene, Arias announces her conversion to Mormonism, “goes down” on Alexander in a hot tub before re-emerging in a baptismal pool. Need I say more?

Witch – Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy

Continually referred to as “Foxy Knoxy,” Amanda Knox was portrayed in the media as the vicious vixen or witch. This archetype appears in many cultures and is linked to witchcraft or satanism. Modern examples include Cleopatra or the dancer/spy Mata Hari. As a beautiful, sexually open and outspoken young American who was not afraid to stand up or out, the “witch” persona was perfectly exploited by a public who delights in persecuting women who don’t conform.

Her antics were abused to an absurd extreme in both the media and a Lifetime movie, Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy. In it she is falsely portrayed hanging out at a drug-fueled party with the real killer Rudy Guede and in a sex/murder scene that has no basis in fact or evidence. During the trial, she is shown waving and smiling to crowds in low cut shirts as she makes her entrance on an opulent, red carpeted staircase. A modern day witch trial with all the glamour and glitz of Hollywood?

Vampire – Lizzie Borden

Released in January of 2014, the new Lizzie Borden played by Christina Ricci, personifies how Lifetime loves to glamorize females accused of murder. The poster shows a very sexy Lizzie carrying a gory axe with blood spattering on the lace at the bottom a long, off the shoulder, nightgown. Ridiculous. Borden was a Sunday school teacher accused (and acquitted) of killing her parents in 1892.

The movie depicts a woman who presents herself cunningly as an virginal maiden as she secretly disposes of a bloody axe in the basement. As the case raged on at the time, the courtroom proceedings fuelled an enormous amount of sensationalized stories in newspapers that left her in murderous infamy. Her suggestive newly casted image recalls the vampiric femme fatale who made her early appearance in Christian and pagan folklore as a deity associated with death and rebirth, but with an excessive sexual appetite. Lizzie’s been vamped!

The Siren – Jordan Graham

The Sirens are portrayed as dangerously seductive bird-women who lure sailors to their death with enchanting music and voices. Newlywed bride, Jordan Graham, was initially charged with first-degree murder for luring her husband, Cody Johnson, to a cliff in Glacier National Park and intentionally pushing him to his death eight days after their wedding. As the trial moved forward both the prosecution and the media presented an image of Graham as a cold, dispassionate woman who wanted to rid herself of Johnson.

Ultimately, Graham took a plea of second-degree murder for unintentionally pushing Johnson to his death. However, in a bizarre twist, the judge allowed the prosecution to present evidence of premeditation at her sentencing trial desipte the fact that premedition is not an element of a second-degree murder charge. So, did the state get to have “its cake and eat it too?” A movie is not yet in the works, but if it makes the list, I imagine that Graham will be singing Glee-fully with glowing red eyes as she pushes her sweet husband off the cliff.

As we can see, the media and public get off on the twisted re-telling of these true crime stories with femme fatale leads. These trashier-than-life TV crime movies permeate our screens with familiar star images that blur the lines between fact and fiction. The producers bring these true crimes falsely to life by making the women appear as conniving, outrageous and sexually deviant as possible with over-the-top scenes, seductive costumes and a specious portrayal of the “facts.” As humans we do thrive on fantasy–in fact we need it. We have a long history of exploring our own dark psyches through fairy tales and art. But do we buy into these tawdry tales because they fuel our need for fantasy or is there a more sordid pathology for our fascination with these “crazy bitches” on trial?

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