A footnote to the denseness of the critics: some have gone so far as to recommend Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill's inexcusably bad documentary Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer, now in a limited run in theaters. (See David Edelstein's double review in Slate, for instance.) Broomfield both narrates and appears in the work and his whole point is that Wuornos is clearly mad and should not be executed. I'm in favor of the death penalty, and if any of Wuornos's killings were not committed in self-defense as she claimed at trial then I could possibly vote to execute her. However, if the first murder were as Jenkins depicts it, and she had stopped after that, I would vote to let her walk. In any case, I think she should have had a new trial since, as Broomfield and Churchill show, her attorney was high on pot when he represented her.
But Broomfield as narrator is so set on his viewpoint that he doesn't convincingly analyze what he shows us. He doesn't smoke pot (that we see) but he doesn't make a more effective case for Wuornos than her attorney did. At one point in the documentary Wuornos admits to Broomfield that she was lying on the stand when she said the murders were in self-defense, that in reality she went out to rob the men and eliminate the witnesses. It is, in fact, the only time in the film when she sounds like she's neither confused nor lying. (She has the tone of a recovering alcoholic copping to past bad behavior.) Broomfield says to her on camera that he thought her trial testimony about the first killing was believable and she replies, "That's sad."
Very sad, involving as it did her claim that her attacker squirted rubbing alcohol from a Visine bottle into her rectum, then her vagina, then her nose, and threatened to squirt it in her eyes next. A portion of this testimony is quoted here by Phyllis Chesler who also finds it "credible." Chesler is an advocate so we can perhaps excuse her gullibility, but Broomfield is a documentarian--did it never occur to him to investigate or even think about this testimony.
How big was this Visine bottle? Ever since it was first sold over-the-counter in 1964 the bottles have never held more than 1 fluid ounce (currently it's sold in 1 and 0.5 fluid ounce sizes), and the little bottles of original Visine are not refillable. (This makes sense because you're not supposed to use it on a regular basis. This information comes from the Pfizer Consumer Products service at 1-800-223-0182, available Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST.) The cap comes off to expose the squirting hole but the bottle is otherwise a sealed unit, with the exception of one variety that comes in the same size bottle but with a dropper cap. Thus, the man would have to have refilled the bottle beforehand either by squeezing and suctioning the alcohol into the empty bottle or by using a syringe or a tiny funnel, and then to have sparingly squirted or splashed on the orifices of his writhing victim what was left after he'd used it to clean his own penis (according to Wuornos v. Florida, 644 So. 2d 1000, 1004 (22 September 1994)). Interestingly, Jenkins includes the rubbing alcohol in the first murder scene, but with her journalistic sense of detail she has him pour it from a normal-sized rubbing alcohol bottle.
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Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
Not to nitpick, as I haven't seen the film yet, but thought I'd fill in a little info on the Visine bottle you mentioned. You really could fill that yourself - since it functions by pressure, when empty you could point the tip into a fluid, squeeze the bottle so the air is pushed out, and upon releasing the pressure, the vacuum inside the bottle will suck the liquid back into it. It works just like an eye-dropper, actually.
2 - Alan Dale
I actually include that as a possibility in my review: "the man would have to have refilled the bottle beforehand either by squeezing and suctioning the alcohol into the empty bottle...". I'm aware that people fill empty Visine bottles with the drug G to sneak it into clubs. Even so, the attacker would have had no more than 1 fluid ounce of alcohol in a bottle, refilled by any means, and according to Wuornos's testimony he used the contents of the Visine bottle to wash his own penis, then squirt some on her rectum, in her vagina, and up her nose, and threatened to squirt some in her eyes.
Thanks for writing, Alan
3 - Mac Diva
Shorter, please.
4 - Eric Olsen
Is Alan too tall?
5 - Mac Diva
Less, please.
When I teach journalism, this is one of the things I have to get on my students about. Some of them mistakenly thinking writing a long article means writing a better article. Not necessarily. And, it almost guarantees most people will not read the article. Studies show that most newspaper readers will not even follow a jump. So, one way to get read is to write concisely. For example, if I were working the desk, the first reference to a footnote in this piece would be slash and burn time. I tend to be even more merciless with my own work.
6 - Alan Dale
How do you know whether I'm read or not? I assume you're generalizing from your own response, but I'm not sure that's useful. I agree with you that writing should be edited down to eliminate redundancy. But I honestly think that telling me to write less in order to be read because most newspaper readers have short attention spans is not good advice, not for me at any rate.
I appreciate constructive criticism, but I am not one of your students (though you patronize me as if I were), this is not journalism, and in fact this isn't even a market. You paid nothing for access to my writing and I received nothing, so you don't have leverage as a consumer. Neither are you my editor, although your recommendation to chase after readers certainly sounds like what my friends who are professional movie critics complain about in their editors. (If you were my editor, I'd have to point out that the term "footnote" actually introduces a second review of a different movie about the same person, and thus is neither redundanct nor irrelevant.)
Pros face the constraints imposed by buzz-seeking editors and limited space and time. By contrast, I have no deadlines and thus more time to connect one thought with another. As for space, it may be virtual but I can have as much as I like. This allows me to write a lot about previous movies, which I do because people strike me as shockingly ill-informed about movie history although it's more available now than ever before. (If they only knew what to look for--the amazon.com links are thus more than illustrations to me.) And I also take up a lot of space tying a movie's genre to the literary history of narrative forms, because ideas about movie genres in this country is so pitifully underdeveloped. This last could almost be called a quest of mine, left over from my own days as an academic.
I also think of a blog review as a dossier on a movie, a collection of links to other websites and documents that set the movie in a broader, more entertaining, general-interest context. The links in the Monster review include the Metacritic list of all major-outlet reviews as well as two direct links to a couple that also deal with both the fiction film and the documentary; interviews with directors of both movies; a website about Aileen Wuornos that in itself includes so much material it would tax anybody's attention span; a feminist defense of Wuornos; the resume of the woman who wrote that defense; the Visine page on the Pfizer website; and a parody letter from President Bush to Governor Bush about Wuornos.
Some ideas can't be worked out in a shorter compass. I don't aim to write thumbs-up-thumbs-down guides to movie going--no star ratings, no Oscar predictions. The beauty of blogging is that it's a non-competitive open field. I'm not crowding anyone else out by writing long reviews (and on Blogcritics no one's work takes up any more space than anyone else's on the home page).
I don't expect everyone to read every word I publish. (I try to keep the paragraphs short and pepper them with bold highlights to facilitate skimming.) I don't expect anybody reads The New York Review of Books cover to cover, but neither do I feel the authors of those articles have failed if I skim them. I practice movie criticism as an amateur, which affords me the luxury of fully developing every idea I feel like developing. I'd like people to read what I write, but I eat well either way. I don't have to pander to readers.
I believe you meant your criticism to be helpful, but by telling me to cut back to the limit of the attention span of most newspaper readers you are in essence telling me to do run-of-the-mill work. (The next step on that path would be to tell me to praise the movies I think will be hits, like the critics quoted in ads.) Actually, I would be content to write the reviews for my own pleasure, as an intellectual exercise. But I also believe I am more idealistic than you seem to be judging from your advice. That is to say, I believe my only chance of finding a meaningful readership, even if only among a (patient) minority, is by making my writing more and more like mine and no one else's, even if that means writing at greater length than the mass audience is interested in reading.
There are bite-sized reviews everywhere else in the media if that's as much attention as you care to give to the subject. And if you get into one of my reviews and think it's too long, by all means stop reading and move on. They're reviews not homework. Sorry they don't engage you more.
7 - Mac Diva
That comment is needlessly long-winded too, so I only read the first two grafs.
Actually, I do know whether overlong blog entries get read because I do research. They don't. The average time a reader spends at a blog is under two minutes. Chances that one of them would spend five minutes reading an endless entry about a movie are extremely low.
But, whatever. We can just ignore bloggers with verbal diarrhea. Fortunately, another Blogcritic wrote a shorter, better review of the same movie. Most people will choose to read it after taking a glance at this one.
Oh, BTW. Eric sent an email today asking BCs to pay more attention to the rules of writing. But, feel free to dis' it, too.
8 - Alan Dale
How do you know it's "needlessly long-winded" if you didn't read it?
Anyway, I'm not writing for "average" readers.
9 - Rick
I enjoyed the entire piece, especially the in-depth nature of it. What kept me glued to the piece was the subject matter, not the length or brevity thereof.
I believe the criticism outlined above was of a constructive nature, but applies more to other forms of media (specifically newspapers, magazines, etc.) than to blogs, etc.
What I feel we are witnessing, here, is an attempt by the "old media" to assert their rules on the "new media", as they feel the scope of their influence beginning to slip.
Congratulations on a fine piece.
10 - Avri
I am currently doing research on Monster for a conference. My academic area is not film, but cultural studies. One of the major problems I find when reading material, both academic and journalistic, is lack of contextualisation; that is, making the critical links. Especially in the puclic arena which has such an excess of intertextual flotsam as it is. It's like reducing the entirety of South Africa, all it's variegated cultures; competing histories and stories, to a few iconnic images of Nelson Mandela that circulate around the international press. I found your article on Monster critically aware of the need to narrativise the 'loose' connections in a comprehensive, well researched and insightful manner. Moving from the historical context of the 'true' story to the film itself, you dealt complexly with the issue of irony and laughter that I have not seen in any other site I have visited. Moreover, the depth of your questioning allows you to introduce your reader to other films, other characters, different concepts, thoughts and angles and thus not only tells, but more effectively, shows the reader conventions (language) from which we make sense of these specular things that flash before us on screens. A critical writer that actually cares about readers understanding things. For this I thank you. As for your length. Bravo! If more journalists wrote like you maybe we would be better equipped to understand our own complicity and necessity in constructing ourselves and others as monsters.
11 - Alan Dale
Thank you for your comment, not only on the review, but on the "controversy" with the other blogger. I expend a lot of time and effort on these reviews, probably a ridiculous amount, and it's heartening to hear that someone connected with something I wrote.
12 - ximena ramirez
i am from mexico city and i only want to say that i am very admired and excited with the great performance of charlize theron in monster, i want that everybody admit the great work she did. sorry if i use some ba woards in this few lines.
tnak you charlize for you excellent work
13 - rsbeck
Enjoyed your review. Mac Diva can tell you how to turn your steak into a big mac -- don't listen. The beauty of the internet is that it is extremely democratic. There are people who, in real life, enjoy positions of authority based on job title, like "teacher." On the internet, authority is only attained by demonstrating the quality of one's thought. Thus, some authority figureheads become extremely uncomfortable on the internet, trying ceaslessly to cite something or another to afford them the authority their position in life gives them, but which their thoughts cannot. Hope to read more of your reviews in the future.
14 - Alan Dale
Brilliant about the steak/big mac. Thanks for the props. The democracy of the internet has been miraculous: w/o squeezing anyone else out I can reach people who are interested in what I have to say, and the rest are free to surf on by. It's an amazing boost to get e-mails from the people who are interested b/c it gets the conversation out of my head, into the world.
15 - Rashad .a
pls.. list all songs tital that was on the (( monster movie))Charlize Theron (Christina Ricci ..... can any one do that for me ) tks
16 - Gaston
What exactly is your review measured against? You weren't there, you didn't know Aileen. Don't you know that a review of someone else's interpretation of a situation based on news stories, interviews, etc. is equally valid to your interpretation of that situation. Did you know something about the Wuornos case that these filmmakers did not?