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’m sorry that Meredith’s family lost their daughter but - and two close family members of mine were murdered in a very horrible way, one a toddler, so I feel qualified to say this - I cannot get my head around the Kerchers’ perpetual hatred of Amanda Knox, they are egging this all on and on by constantly objecting to her existence after being provably wrongfully convicted. I would want the actual murderer to do the time not some poor woman in the wrong place at the wrong time who by all accounts was subjected to an appalling police fit-up job that led to the poor woman being convicted by media. Meredith’s death was awful. It’s Kafkaesque what happened to Amanda and of course she needs to be able to laugh. Both things can be true. I don’t know why a family who lost their daughter can’t see what they are doing to someone else’s daughter.
The Fringe is a great place for a comedian to launch a career or take it further and this is how Amanda is coping. This whole thing smacks of blaming a woman for a man’s crimes. If people don’t like the idea of the show, then don’t buy tickets and STFU about it. But to try and cancel someone in this way without even knowing what she is going to say, just because of who she is? That’s next level shitty and those people get the ire I usually reserve for TRAs who try to cancel women speaking biological facts.

As I recall it, the sentence was so appalingly low because the prosecution was hell-bent on its bizarre conspiracy theory, which kept it from mounting an effective strategy against Guede.

OP YABVVU. I recently listened to a longish interview Knox gave on American National Public Radio. She comes across as a thoughtful person who's using her own horrific experience to actively campaign against miscarriages of justice in general, besides dealing with her own no doubt intense trauma. I rather doubt she's getting rich on this. Even is she was, fair game - she lost years of her life, she'll always be impacted by the ludicrous accusations against her, and her family had to take on millions of dollars in debt to support her through the years of her ordeal.

I think it's the siblings who are complaining, not the parents. According to wikipedia, one parent died in a hit and run and the other of covid. Not sure if that's true or not but, if it is, the siblings have been through an unbelievable amount of loss and trauma so anybody presenting any kind of 'light side' to any of it must seem unbearable. Amanda Knox has the whole of the US to perform in. I know Edinburgh Fringe is special and she is within her rights to perform there but I think she is insensitive to choose to do so.

I get all of that but just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. Other's people's feelings ought to be considered.

British tabloids did Amanda Knox a huge amount of damage. It's right that she should be allowed to speak up about that damage in Britain.

Going away and only speaking where the crime had less impact means doing so where the misreporting and fantasizing was less intense. We need people speaking up against this sort of tabloid nonsense here in Britain

I think that she has drawn the right boundary by refusing to joke about Meredith and making the show about the aftermath. Others might make different choices, but I don't think we can conclude that she is without compassion and hasn't reflected.

I think it is misguided of the family to try to dictate to her, though I understand that they are in pain too.

My (American) high school theater group was selected to perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2003. I went to a Catholic school. While we were in Edinburgh, several people walked out of one show that made jokes about Jesus and Christianity, because they thought the jokes were offensive. But they never maintained that their own sensibilities should dictate what was and was not performed. They just didn’t want to keep watching that particular show.

If “other people’s feelings ought to be considered” is the rule that dictates what Fringe shows should be performed, you might as well not even have a Fringe Festival, because everything is offensive to someone, somewhere.

It is true, her poor parents. The dad lived locally, and it was thought to be a HAR but no one actually knows and no one was held accountable, he was found very near to his house with severe injuries so it was all very strange.

Poor family. To go through the murder of Meredith, being told someone had killed her who was actually innocent and then the parents dying too.

They're morally reprehensible.

A friend of DP's was the victim in a brutal attack where another person they were close to was murdered.

Every couple of years or so, they get contacted by production companies wanting to do a programme about it - they bombard DP's friend, their partner, ex partners, friends, people they went to school with, employers, offering money to give details of what they were like, what happened, what the friend did next, what they're doing now, whether they look like they're having a good time. Generally followed up with threatening them with exposure of their sex life and suggesting that perhaps they were actually involved in some way if they don't take part. I don't suppose for one moment that DP's friend would find it anything other a repeat of all the trauma of the original event, the press coverage, the continued harassment from utterly amoral production companies in the pursuit of money and maybe an award, appearances on podcasts to talk about how they 'investigated' without a single mention of the threats they made (things like 'We've found this - how would you like us sending it to your 84 year old grandmother? I hear she's not too well at the moment, shall we visit her in hospital?') if somebody had later appealed against their conviction and won to then go on tour with a comedy show about how amusing some of it was.

All for profit and entertainment.

You don’t know she’s innocent - courts generally rule people guilty or not guilty. Not guilty is not the same as innocent.

Whatever she did though, I don’t like Amanda Knox for the way she reacted through the trial and investigation, or how she’s profited from it afterwards - but it is her life too and she is fully entitled to do what she wants with her story.

So while she won’t get my money, and I think the show is disrespecting and tasteless, I will defend her right to do the show because that’s how free speech works, and we should protect that at all costs.

In this case the court didn't just say not guilty. They said she was innocent of the crime.

Rather than merely declaring that there were errors in the earlier court cases or that there was not enough evidence to convict, the court ruled that Knox and Sollecito were innocent of involvement in the murder

I admit I don't know all the details, but Knox is innocent, someone else was convicted and she was subject to what must have been a truly awful experience from the start.

I think it's a strange thing to make a comedy show about and I alsonthinknit's werod she wants to be in the limelight about it all, but it would hardly be surprising if her mental health was a bit off.

I also find it odd that that family seem to have no sympathy for what she went through whatsoever.

On this occasion, the court ruled her as innocent.

"Rather than merely declaring that there were errors in the earlier court cases or that there was not enough evidence to convict, the court ruled that Knox and Sollecito were innocent of involvement in the murder."

From Amanda Knox's Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Knox

She's not profiting form Meredith's death though, she's "profiting" from the awful things that happened to her.

No, she was actually entirely exonerated. She was declared to be innocent.

YABU. Amanda Knox is entitled to conduct her life as she sees fit.

The media was (is!) obsessed with Amanda Knox, there was a great deal written and said about her, thus it's entirely understandable that she'd want to use whatever avenue she feels comfortable with to tell her own story. If anyone is to blame for the victim largely being forgotten, it's the media. Not Knox herself.

I also think that any 'encouragement' of regurgitated gossip about Amanda Knox is entirely out of order - she was aquitted by the highest court.

Yeah and the real murderer Rudy Guede did a 16 year sentence for Meredith's murder.

He remains in Italy and faced new court action following accusations by a former girlfriend.He stands trial for alleged sexual assault, personal injury, and mistreatment.

Doesn't look like his jail time reformed him.

The problem in this case has always been that Knox places herself as the biggest victim in the whole thing, and continues to create such a circus about it all that I truly don’t think anything written by her about it will be funny.

In order to be funny about such an awful topic you need to be able to write - and deliver - the piece with an extraordinary amount of sensitivity and empathy to people who loved the person who was brutally sexually assaulted and murdered in a time of her life when she should have been having the absolute best time ever. The way Knox carries on, and the way she answered the question about whether Meredith Kercher would have found it funny, is just so oblivious and insensitive and unempathetic I just truly don’t think she has the skill. That was partly why she got sent to prison! She leaves people cold.

I think what happened to Knox is dreadful, and she is a victim. I just think what happened to Meredith was worse.

How does she place herself as the biggest victim?

A friend of mine went to school with Meredith. It's affecting many more people than her family. The fact that Amanda Knox has so much spotlight on her and Meredith is almost seen as secondary to Amanda is what hurts those who knew Meredith.
She's told her personal story many times, something Meredith will never get to do. To turn it into entertainment and comedy is highly inappropriate and is causing more pain to the people who are already living with the most awful circumstances of their sister's death.

The problem in this case has always been that Knox places herself as the biggest victim in the whole thing, and continues to create such a circus about it all...

That's simply not true. The media created the 'circus' around Amanda Knox - largely because she was attractive, the media went all out on the femme fatale angle.

How many years ago?

The media would have faded away if she had lived a private life. The ‘media’ didn’t write two books, a tv show and a fringe show…. Amanda did. It’s tiresome.

I don’t think it should be banned. But I also don’t think she’s clever, empathetic or sensitive enough to write a genuinely funny show about this. Comedy needs a very ‘human’ side to be able to make the aftermath of a young woman being brutally sexually assaulted and having her throat cut actually funny. I am not sure Amanda actually has those skills.

Indeed and I think he only served thirteen.

I am so, so sorry for what you suffered.

What I found powerful about the SC drama was that it gave shape and clarity to a nightmarish, horrific story that before had been hard to imagine, and focused my energy towards the people he targeted rather than on hating him. I hope that makes sense.