So who is Amanda Knox? Is she a hard-working college student caught in the wrong place at the epicenter of a horrible tragedy? Or is she a femme fatale, a sex-crazed woman who in a whirlwind of lust and drugs strangled one of her friends? Does it matter?
Here’s the original story: On Nov. 1, 2007 a British woman named Meredith Kercher was killed. She was found half naked and strangled with her throat slashed. Her death was a mystery but it was believed back then that she was killed after refusing to take part in a drug-fueled sex game with Knox, her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Ivory Coast native Rudy Guede. Knox and Sollecito were sentenced to 26 years in jail apiece, but on Monday both were freed, while Guede is still in jail for the next 16 years.
It shouldn’t matter, but Knox’s character was a focal point of the story. Even though someone’s personality is not the deciding factor over whether or not he or she committed a crime, many things about Knox’s personal life influenced how people decided if she was innocent or guilty, even without substantial evidence. We live in a media-saturated age and what picture the media paints of a person changes everything.
Think about it for a moment. Knox and Kercher were both 21, the same age as many of the people on campus. What do the pictures you have up on Facebook say about you? It’s almost unthinkable to believe that someone would use them against you, but in the case of Amanda Knox the unthinkable did happen. The pictures she had on MySpace were used to paint two very different pictures of her. The American media usually portrayed her as an innocent failed by the Italian judicial system. The British media made Knox to be more of a femme fatale with no morals, someone who liked to party all day and night. Knox referred to herself on her MySpace as “Foxy Knoxy,” probably as a joke, but the term was picked up and used in British newspapers to make her seem promiscuous.
But who cares? Why should it even matter what her underwear shopping habits were or if she was promiscuous? Just because she had a personality that some people did not agree with does not mean she was unequivocally guilty, but in our current age image is everything.
The most agitating part of the entire Amanda Knox case is that the most important issue hasn’t been resolved. This shouldn’t be a story about how Knox overcame all odds to become free after four years in prison – although that story will probably be in a theater near you within five years.
There has been an overwhelming amount of media attention for Knox, including over 12 books and a made-for-TV movie. But the story should be about Meredith Kercher and how the circumstances of her death are still undetermined. To the Kercher family the only thing to come out of this ruling is the knowledge that their daughter’s killer is still on the loose and they don’t have closure.