Amanda Knox - The Celebrity

HERE is an article John Kercher wrote about the impact of Knox's celebrity on his grieving process, with an excerpt below.

Amanda Knox has started her appeal in Italy. She's been sentenced to 26 years in jail for the rape and murder of Meredith Kercher. She's also become a celebrity in the three years since being arrested for the heinous crime. Hayden Panatierre is playing Amanda in a film that is coming out soon. Michael Winterbottom is also directing a film (starring Colin Firth).



To me, it is clear why she has garnered so much attention - though I agree it is disgusting. She's a beautiful, upper middle-class girl who is convicted of murder. Basically, these two things do not seem to go hand in hand, and when something seems perplexing - when there is cognitive dissonance - it continues to be talked about in the media. Take the case of Brithey Spears - marketed as a virgin at the height of her fame, despite prancing around naked. It's these impossibilities that keep us interested in a topic, even when we look at Britney Spears and can reason that she's not a virgin, or we look at the ample DNA and circumstantial evidence around the Knox conviction yet mentally cannot reconcile it with our view of what a killer should be.

This case makes light of murder - putting a cute, goofy girl at the face of it. A girl who wears stupid printed tee shirts to court. Whose parents attend court on the way to sightseeing in Italy, clad in shorts, tank tops and cameras.

Much has been made of the PR campaign by the Knox-Mellas family, but these days it seems like there is no separation between entertainment and real life. The media pounces on the story, because it resembles a compelling book or movie (blood, murder, two beautiful girls, sex). The Knox family spins the story to the press. The media is too lazy/uninterested in digging up real facts and works off of press releases. And we, as the public, consume these stories as though they were entertainment. Perhaps most jarring is the way in which Amanda Knox and her family members behaved during the first trial - as though in an out of body experience, in which Knox is the star of a movie, rather than on trial for murder.

I can't help but wonder if the state of the media has deconditioned us to the extent that it seems appropriate for a murder suspect to behave in such a fashion - her quirks are interesting. She does cartwheels at a police station. They would make for an interesting character in a movie. But this is a girl who was convicted of murder.


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From Meredith's Father: (see link at top)

It's utterly despicable that the girl jailed for killing my daughter
has become a celebrity
From Meredith Kercher’s father, a passionate attack on the cult of 'Foxy Knoxy'
By JOHN KERCHER
Last updated at 1:01 AM on 2nd December 2010
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Last week, I switched on my television to see the parents of the young woman convicted of taking my daughter’s life proclaiming her innocence. And, once again, I felt the pain and the anger and the raw grief resurface.
Amanda Knox was found guilty of killing my daughter Meredith at the house they shared in Italy three years ago. Yet since that act of horrific violence, Knox, it seems, has been accorded the status of a minor celebrity.
Sometimes it seems that there is no escape from her or her jaunty nickname, ‘Foxy Knoxy’ (doubly hurtful, for the way it trivialises the awfulness of her offence).


Cherished memories: John Kercher misses daughter Meredith every day
Last week, Knox’s parents were given star billing on the ITV breakfast show Daybreak, where they had free rein to profess their conviction that their daughter is not guilty.
Kurt Knox and his ex-wife Edda Mellas have never expressed their condolences to our family for our grievous loss. There has been no letter of sympathy; no word of regret. Instead, I have watched them repeatedly reiterate the mantra of their daughter’s innocence.
Alas, I fear there is more yet to come. Their TV appearance last week, trailed for two days as if it were some exclusive media coup, coincided with the resumption of Knox’s appeal against her conviction.
This appeal, like the initial court case, will drag on for months, while the dark tunnel between my family and our ability to grieve for Meredith in peace becomes ever longer.
If Knox doesn’t get the result she wants, our agony will be even more protracted: she may then take her case to Italy’s Supreme Court in Rome. Put simply, our ordeal could go on for years.

'To many, Knox seems an unlikely killer. Yet to my family she is, unequivocally, culpable'
Knox is one of three people convicted of killing my beautiful and talented daughter. It was a brutal murder. Meredith’s throat was slit, and she was stabbed to death.
Knox and her former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, are serving jail sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively for their heinous crime. A third person, drifter Rudy Guede, convicted with them, is also in prison.
Yet it is Knox who still exerts such a hold over the media. As a journalist myself, I know the reason why. Knox is young, attractive and female. To many, she seems an unlikely killer.
Yet to my family she is, unequivocally, culpable. As far as we are concerned, she has been convicted of taking our precious Meredith’s life in the most hideous and bloody way.
And the sadness is, the nature of that death too often prevents us from celebrating her life. She has become ‘Meredith Kercher, murder victim’, not Meredith Kercher, our lovely, intellectually curious daughter.