The Tiresome Tale of Amanda Knox

The Amanda Knox story has always stuck in my craw. She and her narrative of persecution annoy me.

Why am I writing about her now? Because Hulu has just come out with a series about the time she was convicted of murdering her roommate in 2007. In case you want to watch it, which I suggest you don’t, it’s called “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.”

I watched the first two episodes, and I have to say it’s exactly what I expected from Knox: a weepy, millennial saga of the poor American girl caught up in the draconian Italian legal system. Of course, Hulu being a streaming service where the standards for sexual content are fairly broad, there’s a lot of talk about that, too.

Knox was a young college student spending a term abroad in Perugia. When one of her roommates, a British girl named Meredith Kercher, was found brutally murdered, Knox became one of the prime suspects. She was put on trial, convicted and ultimately exonerated after spending about four years in prison.

To be clear, Knox was the victim of shoddy police work by the Italians, including the use of contaminated DNA to convict her. She was found guilty alongside the man who actually did commit the crime and spent 16 years in jail. She then had to fight to prove her innocence. That she fought, won and survived instead of becoming some drug-addled shell is a tribute to her fortitude and character.

And it should have ended there, with gratitude towards the Italian legal system, which ultimately set her free (something that our own system takes a lot longer than four years to do,) and a desire to avoid gelato and Perugina Baci for the rest of her life.

But for millennials, and particularly for millennial women, it never ends there.

Knox has decided to continue to act like the victim, and has enlisted the aid of another famous victim of circumstance, Monica Lewinsky. Bill Clinton’s Oval Office fling is executive producing this project, and it shows. Monica has spent the last 20 years “reclaiming” her name, which victims like to do. They want to become survivors, not “victims.” They want to express their power and their resilience, and not be the objects of pity (except, more about that in a minute.) They want to appear as if they have vanquished all of their demons.

Knox has gone on a lot of shows, written two memoirs, appeared on a Netflix documentary and given oodles of interviews and has never “gone gentle into that good night.” She has been a presence, and the people who glory in this sort of thing have celebrated her ability to bounce back; people as diverse as Megyn Kelly and the ladies on “The View.”

Even though it’s been almost 20 years since she was arrested, and even though it’s been over 15 years since she was released from prison, and even though it’s been a decade since she has been exonerated, she keeps talking as if she were the most aggrieved person in the world.

There is someone in this scenario who rarely gets attention, and that is Kercher, the young woman who was viciously murdered in Perugia.

In her attempt to “recapture” her name and redeem her reputation, Knox has basically ignored the much greater tragedy in this story: the brutal murder of her friend. Meredith always appears in this story as an afterthought, an asterisk against the larger narrative of the horribly aggrieved Amanda.

Yes, Knox spent four years in prison. That’s a terrible thing. And she has gotten an apology, and money, and now fame. Meredith lies in anonymity, robbed of her future and her own identity. Knox has turned her into a bit player in her own drama, and while there is the obligatory nod to her friend’s sad ending, you get the feeling that the only person Amanda Knox ever shed tears over was … Amanda Knox. There is a sterility in her sympathy, a forced tone to her sadness over the murder of a young woman.

Youth and trauma are no longer an excuse. Knox is moving into middle age and is two decades removed from the event. She is married, has children and is back home in the Pacific Northwest. It would be nice if she could have perhaps written a book about Meredith, seeking the collaboration of her family. She has not done that, and it seems the family didn’t want to be involved in any of the Knox, Inc. projects.

I’m not surprised. Their grief is quite real, over the greatest victim in this scenario. The one who doesn’t get to give self-aggrandizing interviews, or do anything, anymore.

The Patriot Post® · The Tiresome Tale of Amanda Knox