AIBU to think an Edinburgh festival show about Meredith Kercher's murder should be stopped?

[VivienneDelacroix]

Aibu to think that this show at the Edinburgh Festival should be cancelled? It mocks the circumstances around the murder of Meredith Kercher and serves it up as entertainment.

Not only is it horribly disrespectful of Meredith's family, but it also belittles the issue of violence against girls and women.

Meredith's siblings are calling for it to be pulled from the festival. There is also a petition calling for it to be stopped.

c.org/WXGTGJfpRh

wow I'd love to see this

A brilliant post

Meredith Kercher’s parent both passed away in 2020.

I haven't seen the clip you mean but my impression reading the reviews is that this is not laugh a minute stuff but a monologue performance with gallows humour. I have seen both, on the comedy circuit, though I am not a fan of the genre and maybe not the best judge.

I don't tend to take against people based on media and public appearances, unless they behave in a way that is actively cruel and malicious, which I haven't seen from Knox. We know so little about others really. In Knox's case I see a combination of introspection and extroversion, laced with some therapy speak, that would have fed into the stereotypes of loud, over sharing Americans at the time of her arrest.

But I have travelled a lot and worked with many people in many places, including America, and I often encounter people online who seem to have a much narrower view of what's within a normal and effectively harmless range of human characteristics than I do.

Anyway, likeability is certainly not a criterion for comedy work. And if people around the world tend to suspect you still and to dislike you for your demeanour and public appearances, I am sure it is healthy to reach a stage where you learn to ignore those voices and carry on expressing yourself as you see fit.

I think that a lot of the responses to Knox on this thread help to show why she might choose not to fall silent, and why she might use humour, whether effectively or not, to try to cope with the weight of judgement she is carrying

Guilty of what?

What do you think?

Apologies - my mistake. She still has some close family and friends living however whom we might expect to be upset by the TV show and the comedy show?

I do believe that Knox should have left out all references or mentions of her so called friendship with Meredith from her act. I don't think that's respectful to profit from that. I am led to believe they did not particularly even get along. She could have still told her story (again) how she wishes without using other names to make money. My opinion.

While I understand what you are saying about not judging people based on partial information, it seems to me that Knox is actively courting judgement of her personality through the TV dramatisation and the comedy show (admittedly based on the very short clip I have seen of the latter).

The TV series is certainly all about her "quirkiness" as she calls it - it reverts to this theme time and time again, the message seeming (to me) to be that other mere mortals - people who are not her - simply can't comprehend and handle how hilarious, out there and zany she is. Just as one example, there is a brief scene of her in a restaurant with Meredith Kercher and her English friends (all characterised as hysterical, up-tight fools) in which Knox picks up her plate and licks it clean, and the other young women look at her askance - as well they might, surely? I'd be irritated and a little revojted is somebody did this when I was out for a meal with them. But we are supposed to feel that they were judgemental twats for feeling like this.

There is also a later scene when Knox speaks quite cruelly to one of the young English women who is sobbing - again, it seems we are supposed to side with Knox, for being a hard talking realist brave enough to tell it as it is - to me she just seems unnecessarily nasty.

My point is, in this instance I make no apologies for making a judgement on Knox's character because that's what she's inviting us all to do! Mine just isn't the judgement I think she wants us to make.

And of courses I don't think she should have been vilified for having sex toys or an active sex life. I don't think she should be vilified at all - she hasn't done anything evil.

But much as I feel sorry for her, I also think she is an unpleasant, not very bright attention seeker, and that a comedy show linked to a brutal sex murder is massive error of judgement, and offensive not just to Kercher's family but potentially to all victims or sexually motivated violence, and those who love them.

I don't think she should be silenced. But I do think she should have exercised better judgement, and that if she believes it's important to have her story heard, she could have chosen more appropriate ways to achieve this.

I think she did all the other ways, books TV, films etc. she had to keep the interest up and this time and make it a little more risque. So just as people are free to say they loved it (weird to me).. others have the right in this format to think it's in bad taste.

I haven't watched the film, and I don't know if we are expected to admire those qualities in her; or if it is supposed to be a warts and all presentation explaining any tensions in that group. I accept that people well judge people who are thrust into the spotlight. I do wonder how much that judgement fuels the wish to own the narrative and to present it in a direct medium like stand-up.