Monster 
Starring Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci
2003

Review by MC31 and MC206

The film Monster --based on the life of confessed murderer Aileen 
Wournos--closes with Wournos mocking feel-good, Protestant clichés: they 
told me good things come to those who wait; god never closes a door without 
opening a window; hope springs eternal. They lied, she says, as we see her 
escorted to her prison cell.

That scene sums up the best and the worst of  Monster  from MIM's 
perspective. On the one hand,  Monster  shatters the complacent 
fantasy that this is the "best of all possible worlds" for all people--it 
certainly isn't for those like the Wournos character, who endures rape 
(both as a child and an adult) and a tenuous existence in the underground 
economy of prostitution and petty crime.

On the other hand, because it restricts itself to a description of Wournos' 
milieu,  Monster  gives viewers no alternative to her lumpen 
misanthropy. MIM prefers films that both expose oppression and show the 
possibilities for successful struggle. However, relative to mind-numbing 
pabulum like Along Came Polly  or Love Actually , we give 
Monster  a solid recommendation.

Monster  tells only part of the story of Aileen Wuornos, executed 
by Florida in 2002 after twelve years in prison. Wuornos confessed to 
murdering six men who picked her up as a prostitute along Florida's 
highways. Sensationalist media promptly dubbed her "America's first female 
serial killer," although her case is perhaps exceptional only because she 
used a gun and because her victims were not related to her.(1)

The movie is based on information in the public record and conversations 
with Wuornos but takes artistic license with some specifics. The movie 
portrays several months in Wuornos' life when she was desperate for money 
and a place to live. At the beginning of the movie, she contemplates 
suicide, but first goes into what turns out to be a gay bar to spend her 
last $5. There she meets Selby, a young womyn looking to escape her 
overbearing religious family (they're trying to "turn her straight"). 
Selby's also looking for some fun.

Lee has been a highway prostitute and, as far as we know, has never been in 
a romantic or sexual relationship with a womyn. She finds what she needs by 
way of companionship in taking care of Selby (played by Christina Ricci). 
Selby leaves her family and she and Lee live hand-to-mouth in cheap motels.

While Selby wants a sexual relationship with Lee, she also encourages her 
to continue prostituting herself to make some money for them to survive. 
Lee would prefer to get out of hooking altogether, but this proves very 
difficult. She spruces herself up as best she can and goes out looking for 
office jobs. She has no work history to speak of, no education and no 
office skills; she is humiliated at each interview. This sequence is a nice 
counter-argument to claims that the power of positive thinking can help the 
homeless get jobs and other such claptrap.

On one of Lee's first hooking jobs after she and Selby meet, the john 
brutally rapes and sodomizes her. In the midst of the attack she wakes up 
from being beaten and remembers she has a gun. She unties her hands and 
shoots the john. Lee then unleashes what appears like years of rage on his 
dead body, kicking and screaming and avenging all the times she's been 
mistreated by men and the world. During this murder the viewer has no doubt 
that this was righteous self-defense, but the later killings seem more 
cold-blooded and less justified. She kills and robs the men and then spends
the money on taking care of Selby.

Without glorifying these individual acts of retribution as blows against 
patriarchy, we point out that it is not reasonable for men to expect to 
have complete sexual access to and domination over womyn (in this case from 
age eight through adulthood) without some of them blowing a fuse and taking 
out a few men. MIM doesn't oppose the death penalty in the 
abstract--although we do oppose Amerika's death penalty--but in this case 
it is wrong to execute a womyn who never had a chance to see or do things 
differently. If she had insistently refused rehabilitation even when 
offered productive labor and a rape-free life, maybe then execution would 
have been justified.

Toward the  of the movie Lee is arrested but not immediately charged 
with the murders. Selby cooperates with police to entrap Lee into 
confessing to at least one of the murders during a telephone call taped by 
the cops. She calls Selby, and while trying to reassure Selby that both 
will be fine, and that Lee is only being charged with a minor offense, Lee 
realizes that Selby is setting her up. Ultimately Lee confesses to at least 
six murders but maintained that she killed each man in self-defense. Selby 
is the prosecution's star witness against Lee, even though Lee still tries 
to protect Selby.

In real life, after nearly twelve years on Florida's death row, Wournos 
suddenly fired her attorneys, changed her long-standing story of 
self-defense and stopped her appeals. Governor Jeb Bush signed her death 
warrant and had her executed on October 9, 2002. It is possible that by 
giving up her appeals Wournos intended to commit suicide. This should be 
seen as an indictment of the psychological torture on Florida's death row. 
Nick Broomfield, a documentary filmmaker who first interviewed Wournos in 
1993, concluded after a meeting just days before the execuation that she 
was "mad." "Here is somebody who totally lost her mind."(2)

The movie ends after the trial, and does not show Wuornos' years on death 
row or her execution. Monster is a challenging and at times perceptive 
movie, but does little to advance to the struggle against patriarchy or the 
criminal injustice system in Amerika. MIM plans to review Aileen: Life and 
Death of a Serial Killer in an upcoming issue of MIM notes--that 
documentary looks like it might do more to expose the brutality of the 
Amerikan injustice system and not just the crimes of one womyn.(3)

Notes:
1. www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/women/wuornos/1.html?sect=11
2. www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/women/wuornos/11.html?sect=11
3. www.aileenfilm.com/index.php