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

I think you’re taking entirely too seriously how people are influenced by Mumsnet

The true crime aspect of this a huge draw for many. I doubt many of the audience have bought tickets to see her ‘comedy’ but more to see a real life ‘famous’ person who was involved in a huge crime. And no I don’t think Amanda should be given any further platform to profit from Meredith’s death. She’s told her story multiple times in many forms.

You're repeatedly asserting that an innocent woman is guilty.

Why?

I don’t agree with this. Meredith was what, 19/20 when she was imprisoned. An extremely serious miscarriage of justice. Years in a foreign prison, worldwide news, labelled a murder.

I remember thinking when she got out how will this woman ever support herself? Who will give Amanda Knox a job?!

all she has is her story and it’s her only way of supporting herself.
it was thrust upon her at a young age with it hanging over her head for the rest of her life. Imo she’s right to capitalise on it, and it’s all she has to capitalise.

I didn't say anything about influence, only readership levels. Its good for it to be clear to people who are already reading MN that conspiracy theorists get the piss ripped.

I asked you nicely to back off. We both have our own views. Not sure why some people can't accept that.

“Good to be clear” because people reading MN are obviously a bit thick and need to see you setting an example lest they fall down a rabbit hole of conspiracy?

Because your view is potentially libellous and not based on any facts.

I find it interesting that so many people are into true crime podcasts/documentaries etc, which multiple people who weren’t involved in the crimes will be profiting from financially (the producers/presenters etc). They aren’t making these programmes for free.
However people are outraged that Amanda Knox, who was imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit, who lost out on years of earnings, whose future career potential will have been significantly impacted, may profit financially from telling her story. It doesn’t make sense.

She has a right to make a show about being falsely accused and imprisoned. It makes sense that she would perform it at Edinburgh, partly because of the prestige, partly because she is well known in the UK after British tabloids did so much to propogage the absurd images of her as some sort of sex-crazed witch.

The title is obviously derived from that media nonsense - part of the point being that she didn't turn cartwheels but did some yoga moves in a cell.

It's good to hear that she is being respectful about Meredith Kercher. She is in no way responsible for the family's loss and pain. She should not be asked to self-censor or to put limits on her telling of her own story because she was falsely accused of being involved in the murder.

She is very used to this kind of criticism. The show is sold out for ten nights, according to posters above. The petition doesn't seem to call out any verified content of her show. I can't imagine it getting anywhere at all.

It would be absurd for anyone to think I'm talking about me correcting conspiracy theorists when my post is about the benefit of another poster doing it.

Yanbu. Quite appallingly tasteless.

Oh, it's attention seeking Knox again. This is really sad for Meredith's family.

I feel sorry for her, she had her sex life splashed across the media, was nicknamed Foxy Knoxy and from my memory was just an average female studying abroad having fun, drinking, taking drugs and had it splashed across the world’s papers. I just googled it to see the papers headlines but found reports that she’d been coerced into confessing, denied a lawyer by the Italians and denied an interpreter. If she can make comedy out of her experience, that doesn’t laugh at a terrible murder, then good for her.

Yes. She has no choice about being known as the (vindicated, but some people will never accept that) murder suspect. All her life that is with her. I'd imagine that standing up in public, owning that, speaking out and making people think and laugh is therapeutic for her. Why should she lick her wounds in private if that isn't helping her?

And if part of the comedy makes people think - about police credibility and corruption, about tabloid sensationalism, about misogyny and the excesses of the true crime genre - good. Because she is hardly the only person affected by these issues. People who assume she is innocent but should still shut up seem to assume she can't have anything important to say.

Amanda Knox’ statement on her Insta is worth reading.

You don’t have to like AK (or what you think you know if her from media / SM - the media accounts being at the heart of some of what she comments about) to recognise that she was a victim of miscarriage of justice.

Comedy can be a powerful medium through which to discuss painful issues. It doesn’t automatically mean that the issue is taken lightly, or mocked, or that victims are not honoured or respected.

On what I can see about this show - and more to the point what I can’t see because none of us have seen it - I am not prepared to sign.

I don't think this should be cancelled for two reasons. First, I don't really believe in cancelling anything thats not outright illegal. Art should be allowed to be tasteless and shocking.

And secondly, I don't think this show is particularly tasteless. It's not about Meridith, it's about the experiences of the performer in the aftermath of that. She should be allowed to tell her story, whether its through prose or comedy.

That is all true and it all happened because her room mate was brutally murdered.

Did Knox approach the Kercher family for their blessing with this show? Clearly not as they have condemned it.

However 'fringe' and small her show is, it would still make headline news and bring the whole awful event back into the spotlight. Knox knows this.

From everything I have read, Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher were not really close friends so I don't think any of this is coming from a place of friendship, loss and love. It's coming from an addiction to the spotlight.

Amanda Knox doesn't need to ask Meredith Kercher's family's permission to speak about the injustices done to her. When you are wrongly accused of a crime, that doesn't mean you owe the victim's family your silence.

As I understand it, the show isn't about Meredith. It doesn't matter whether the two girls were friends or not. There are lots of possible motivations for making the show apart from friendship for Meredith, whether Knox feels that or not. She isn't selling it as a tribute but as a reflection on her own experience

I understand that. I just find it very hard to understand why any decent human being would want to keep doing it to a family who have suffered so much.

I actually don't think it should be 'cancelled' as of course, freedom or speech, art, expression and all that.

I just feel sorry for the Kerchers and find it hard to understand why Knox can't just write (which I think she has done). A show just feels a lot more 'I need the spotlight on me.'

It's not a show about Meredith Kercher's murder though, it's a show about Amanda Knox's imprisonment.

Maybe she does feel she needs the spotlight on her and that it helps her recovery to perform? In any case, authors usually need a public persona to sell books these days.

No choices she makes about which media to use or where to appear are going to bring Meredith Kercher back. That is a sad fact and it is not her job to console the Kercher family. There would certainly be less publicity about this if people weren't objecting to her performance.

I think it's an important principle of justice that we don't try to restrict victims of miscarriages of justice from telling their stories, on any platform, in any medium.

I think that the police, and especially the prosecutor Mignini, have increased that poor family's suffering. Rudy Guede raped and murdered their daughter, and he was caught and convicted (although his sentence was pathetically low, he should have been locked up for life), and that should hopefully have given them a tiny bit of peace through all the loss and horror.

But no, that weirdo had to fabricate some bizarre, unlikely, and highly lurid motivation, drawing the world's media, making the whole thing hugely high profile, and making the family feel that justice wasn't properly served.
It's all in him - he's a filthy pervert with a really warped attitude to women and their sexuality imo.

I do not disagree with any of that but I do feel sorry for the Kercher family.

How do you feel about the movie, In the Name of the Father? About the Guilford Four, Giuseppe Conlon and the Maguire Seven. Do you think all those wrongfully convicted innocent people were indecent in cooperating with what happened to them being turned into a massively successful movie? Or do you think they should have opposed it out of respect for the bombing victims?

Amanda Knox had her life destroyed by a false, politically motivated conviction. Even on this thread you have posters insisting she's guilty for no other reason than she was accused or because she's 'strange.' Of course it's difficult for the Kerchers and they will have extremely complicated reactions to it. But Knox is still entitled to express herself because victims of miscarriages of justice speaking out might actually discourage police and the judiciary from falsely persecuting people in the future?