SCREENER TV
some may argue that television rots our brains, but it is my belief that we are truly living in the golden age of tv. discovering and analyzing new shows is one of my favorite ways to decompress and find inspiration (especially during the dark winter days of seattle).
in 2016 & 2017 i had the pleasure of writing about television for screener tv (part of zap2it) but sadly tribune media shut down the screener/editorial portion of the site in mid-2017.
you can still find my author page (with working links to all pieces) via the wayback machine here.
Any one of us could easily be Amanda Knox
10/1/16
On Nov. 2, 2007, I would have been 21 years old and a senior at the University of Washington, Amanda Knox’s school, from which she was on her study-abroad trip to Italy. That was the day they kicked in a door in a flat in Perugia, Italy, and found Meredith Kercher on the floor, a dirty comforter partially tossed over her body.
I was a Communications major who dreamed of being a blogger (shoot for the stars!), I worked at a sushi restaurant, and I loved scandalous college gossip as much any North Face-clad coed. So when I walked into class a day or two after the arrest, everyone thrilled and buzzing, I couldn’t help but throw myself into it:
Did you hear about the girl on the Italy study abroad program? She killed her roommate! Yeah, she went here! She was at UW! Did you guys hear it was some weird sex game gone wrong? My roommate’s friend’s TA said that one time he met her at a bar on the Ave and she was totally wild. I guess she was on a ton of drugs in Italy…
As part of an international communications unit in our Public Relations course, we had to pick a country and study its communications strategies. My friends and I weren’t stupid — we immediately claimed Italy and Milan’s 150-year-old paper of record, the “Corriere della Sera.” Our plan worked: Now we could obsess over the Amanda Knox case, in the name of scholastic pursuit, and feel great about it. Three birds. Like slowing down to gawk at a freeway accident — you can tell yourself it’s mainly to make sure the person’s okay.
Amanda Knox was a topic of constant conversation and endless entertainment for our group, and for the whole UW student body. Everyone had their dubious claims to fame, their experiences with the insta-notorious Foxy Knoxy. One of my friends told us stories about how Amanda would hang out at their frat house, always super crazy and wasted. Another acquaintance bragged he’d seen Amanda making out with one of his friends at a party. “She’d get totally messed up. She’d hook up with anybody, she just wanted the attention …”
We never knew how accurate these tidbits of super feminist gossip were — they certainly weren’t original — but we ate them up with gleeful abandon. Wasted at the frats?! So juicy! Who doesn’t love the idea of a girl so messed up she went to Italy and literally returned a full-on murderer?
Looking back, older and hopefully more compassionate, it’s clear how dumb and hypocritical this was. What insecure college girl isn’t looking for attention and validation? What inexperienced young drinker hasn’t gotten in over their head on Greek Row some weekend? I was in the same boat as Amanda (minus the international murder and sex scandal), just like the rest of my friends.
On this journey to discover ourselves — and the hard-deck limits of our livers — were we all just one ill-fated blackout away from a morning like that? Could any of us truly recover from waking up and finding our roommates murdered in cold blood? I don’t know about that one. Things this horrifying don’t happen so often that you need to think about it — like winning the lottery, or being struck by lightning — but they do happen often enough that you can’t help but wonder exactly how safe you really are.
Time passed, and so did the our school’s collective interest in the case. It might come up as an afterthought, or a joke; a cautionary tale without a clear moral. The case stuck with me, though. I regularly googled Amanda, sometimes letting myself drop into the deep black holes of crime forums, in the name of research.
I always kind of hoped she had done it. But here’s why: The alternative — that after an already senseless murder, an innocent college girl could be wrongfully accused of a heinous crime and railroaded into years of painful, humiliating trials, in front of a popcorn-popping callous world — was, and remains, a lot less fun.
In 2009, Amanda Knox was convicted of sexual violence and murder, among other charges, and sentenced to 26 years of imprisonment. Her appeal started trial in November of 2010 — that’s three years down.
In 2011, Lifetime made a movie starring Hayden Panettiere as Amanda — which I totally watched, obviously — called “Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy.” It’s not a great film — it’s the film you think it is — and the real-life Knox family was pissed, but Hayden is great on “Nashville,” so it worked out.
In October 2011, Amanda Knox was found not guilty and allowed to return to Seattle. In November 2011 — four years down — I was walking to the farmer’s market on Alki and noticed a big store marquee looming over me that simply stated, “Welcome Home Amanda.” It was kind of sweet and kind of creepy.
In 2013 Amanda released a memoir, “Waiting to Be Heard.” Her boyfriend and codefendant Raffaele Sollecito also released a memoir, bearing the tastefully restrained title “Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell & Back with Amanda Knox.” I received copies of both, for my birthday that year, because I have good and caring friends who understand and nurture my passions. I read Amanda’s, skimmed Raffiele’s, and again — just like the Lifetime movie — they were exactly what you think. The profits from Amanda’s book went toward her Italian legal fees.
In 2014, Amanda and Raffaele were found guilty again, after the Italian courts reversed their acquittals. Then they were officially acquitted, again, in 2015. It’s all very complicated, but it also helps explain why we’re still so intrigued by her: She never really had the chance to disappear.
So then why are we dredging up Amanda Knox now? Can’t we just let her chill out in Seattle in peace? Can we not let her be? (I’ll give her this: I probably would have moved across the country, changed my name, and gotten some kind of ridiculous plastic surgery to alter my appearance. At least Amanda Knox is owning her bizarre life.)
With the recent surge of popular novels-into-movies featuring twisty, complicated female narrators — “Gone Girl,” “Girl on the Train,” “Luckiest Girl Alive”; so many girls! — the better question might be whether Netflix had any choice but to revisit the story — whether the algorithm that decides and designs their programs and output would have ever let it go.
Foxy Knoxy is the ultimate real-life unreliable narrator. She made out with her boyfriend at the crime scene. She did cartwheels at the police station. She said she was at the house that night, then said she wasn’t. She fingered an innocent man who had nothing to do with the murder! Gillian Flynn, maybe, could make this up, but that’s probably it.
So yes, Netflix’s “Amanda Knox” is the gripping, tightly-paced 90 minutes of television it was designed by robots to be. After a few minutes of introduction, it launches quickly into the meat of the story: The terrible death of Meredith Kercher, the media circus surrounding Knox and her supposed murder orgy, Amanda’s coerced confession, the conviction of Rudy Guede, the trials that dragged out for years.
“There are those who believe in my innocence and there are those who believe in my guilt, and there’s no in-between… If I’m innocent, it means that everyone is vulnerable. And that’s everyone’s nightmare,” Amanda explains, putting words to my college self’s need for her guilt.
If you’re looking for groundbreaking new information on the case, or a shocking admission by Amanda, you’ll be disappointed. Newcomers will find Amanda Knox fascinating, and those more familiar with the case will be entertained at least, even if there’s not much to learn.
Amanda herself feels a little rehearsed, her words fall a bit stale; she retells her experience with much of the same exact language from her memoir and previous interviews. She and Raffaele watched “Amelie” and read German Harry Potter books — could you be any more of a college girl the in mid-2000s? — at his house the night Meredith was killed. (They also “made love,” a phrase she uses multiple times in the documentary and which never loses its power to make you feel gross.) Amanda narrates life leading up to the murder, members of the press and the Italian courts take us through the trial itself. Nobody comes out of this documentary looking especially great.
In resuming the conversation around the case, thanks to this new documentary, I have remembered my strong reaction to one other aspect: Its common characterization as a cautionary tale. It’s the complete opposite!
Assume Amanda is innocent: What life lessons are we supposed to glean from this? Don’t try new things in college, don’t study abroad, don’t trust new people when traveling, don’t look for the best in people? I’d prefer to take my chances.
Assume Amanda is guilty, then: What do we learn now? Even less. “Don’t murder people and have orgies and do cartwheels at the police station, or you just might end up having a crappy term abroad” is not a lesson either.
But that’s ultimately the scariest thing about this case, or any of the salacious true crime stories flooding our screens and devices: We’re all one wrong place, wrong time, wrong piece of headline-bait away from being the next Amanda Knox or Adnan Syed — or even worse, their alleged victims — and there would be no meaning in that either.
We can’t assume the police and courts are going to treat everyone fairly, and can’t trust the media to tell our stories for us, but that’s not a real moral either. That’s just a gross true thing about the world in 2016, even — on some occasions — for pretty white girls from the University of Washington.
“Either I’m a psychopath in sheep’s clothing,” Amanda reminds us, “Or I’m you.”
Either way, it’s pretty terrifying. Either way we’ll never know.
“Amanda Knox” is currently streaming on Netflix US.