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Between Victim and Offender: Aileen Wuornos and the Representation of Self-Defense
I say it's the principle, they say it's the number. Self-defense is self-defense, I don't care how many times it is. I still have to say that it was in self-defense because most of em either were gonna start to beat me up or were gonna screw me in the ass and they'd get rough with me so I'd fight em.... I am sorry that my acts of self-defense ended up in court like this but it was them or me. I never provoked those guys. Never. There was no need for them to look for the closest weapon in the vehicle and try to use it on me. Two did. Five tried.
--Aileen Wuornos
Aileen Wuornos, labeled and convicted a serial killer, admitted to killing seven men during the act of prostitution. She also, as her echoed words above suggest, claimed she killed these men in self-defense, while they were trying to rape, injure, or kill her. The repetitiveness of her actions has heralded her a serial murderer; killing seven times has suggested to the media and the courts that Wuornos had premeditated murder. Yet, as she claims above, self-defense was necessary seven times in order to protect herself from being a rape or murder victim herself. 1 Aileen Wuornos's self-defense plea thus faces the problem of legitimacy, and raises the troubling issue of how to reconcile, as she describes, the principle of the self-defense plea with what has been seen as the repetition of an aggressive and violent act. The predicament is exacerbated when we consider how Wuornos's self-defense plea might fairly be represented in court and on film. This article will analyze the legal and filmic representations of Wuornos's rape and self-defense pleas, arguing that, though their intentions were quite different, the court and Nick Broomfield's documentary, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992), effectively framed Wuornos similarly in terms of her character, and thereby undermined the shift away from Wuornos necessary for establishing a legitimate self-defense plea. Ultimately, while both representations center their focus on Wuornos, at the same time, any notion of a clear center is soon displaced upon considering her case. This paper strategically delves into...