MovieChat Forums > Monster (2004) Discussion > All of you saying that the movie went ou...

All of you saying that the movie went out of its way to victimize Aileen

posted 15 years ago by Popozao3141
31 replies | jump to latest

Regardless of what you think of her, she was the victim in some sense here. Is she still accountable for her actions? Of course. Did she deserve to die? Probably. But she was victimized too, just as am i'm sure many other children are too. But the abuse she endured, coupled with the fact that she most likely had a predisposition to her violence (her being a sociopath) made her into what she was. Of course she was a crazy bitch, of course you'de probably want to *beep* kill her if you had to deal with her, but that doesn't change the fact that she's a pretty tragic figure, as are most people in this situation. Do you have to feel bad for her? No, but that doesn't change the fact that she was a victim in that she never had a chance, which she obviously never did.

This is a pretty weak example, i guess, but one of my old friends is a very bossy, selfish person most of the time. She's greedy and outspoken and looks out for herself. As much as i don't want to be around of her because of this, and as much as i find her irritating, i understand why she is the way she is, and that's because she's had a very bad childhood. Her mother would often throw her out on the street from before she was even ten years old, and she'd have to find a place to stay, food, etc., so this basically explains why she feels the need to be that way.

If you don't like seeing these kinds of things happen, don't watch the movie. This is reality for a lot of people out there. I'm not just talking about abuse or about serial killers, but if you pay attention, it shows you all the factors that go into making Aileen and people like her what they are.

Plus, the acting was phenonmenal :D

[–] Freakishgibbon 15 years ago

I always thought Feminism was about equality, not praising or making excuses for all women.

There is this bizarre assumption that any woman must be, deep down, a decent person, no matter who or why or how she kills.

There is little empathy granted to male serial killers (nor should there be) simply because they may have had an abusive childhood. Women, it seems, kill for the same reason they shop or cheat or cook: it's really out of a desire for love.

Especially when her victims are male.

[–] tm6983 15 years ago

*Your post* was phenomenal :)

[–] nicotinequeen63 15 years ago

This woman was sick & I felt a lot of sympathy for her, but I can admit that I've also felt sorry for Jeffry Dahmer, Danny Rollins, & some others-not because their lives have been glamorized or glossed over, but because they're human & it's heart breaking for a human to turn out so wrong. I've watched some documentaries on Ailene Warnos, & let me ask you this. How did you expect her to turn out? She was the most unloved, unwanted child I've ever seen. She was alone, in every sense of the word. Did you epect her @ the age of 18, to go to college, get married, have a family, to see the error of her ways & just magically transform herself? No way. The real world doesn't work that way. Her only hope was to be taken away & raised by someone else-too bad she wasn't given that chance. Yes, technically, it was in her power to change, but in reality, her path was set @ birth. She turned out exactly like she was supposed to, & I'm just surprised more people don't wind up just like her. But with all this said, I think she's probably better off dead, because she really was a monster-but @ least I have enough compassion to understand why.

[–] lornamd-1 15 years ago

Myra Hindley - said in court to be less guilty than her boyfriend but is a more recognizable name than him, spent the rest of her life in prison while men who have committed equally terrible crimes were paroled and called the most hated person in the UK

Rose West - described as more evil than her husband in some newspapers

Martha Beck - Portrayed in 2 films as being the initiator of violence rather than her boyfriend even though her boyfriend murdered a woman before meeting her

Pamela Smart - portrayed as pure evil while the teenager she got to murder her husband is portrayed in 2 films as a nice kid who was manipulated

Bonnie Parker - considered equally evil to her boyfriend

There is no assumption of goodness in any of these women. If anything they are considered worse than the men who they helped commit murder when they should be considered just as bad (except in the Pamela Smart case where she was probably worse than him but he was still a murderer)

Compare the crimes and the punishments of Aileen Wuornos to the Green River Killer. Her gender did not lead to any lenient treatment for her.

The OP did not praise or make excuses for Wuornos he simply said that she was a child abuse victim as she is depicted as being in the film. Monster is not the 1st film to show empathy towards a serial killer. The Boston Strangler and Felicia's Journey are both sympathetic to male serial killers.

[–] Jane_Doe01 15 years ago

Lol, I'm actually reading this? You're really, honestly, non-facetiously trying to argue that male murderers get off easier and more sympathetically than female ones do? Oh man, I don't know if this is funny or terribly depressing, but it sure is a fu**ing obnoxious insult to common sense. There really is NO limit on how low feminists will sink.

[–] oddwo892 14 years ago

first off, don't use the word "feminist" like an insult. secondly, they gave plenty of evidence to back up their honest, non-facetious argument. Where's yours?

[–] byteM3 14 years ago

...

Killing people is easy...if you can forget the taste of sugar.

[–] ChefC 14 years ago

Win (@odd)

----------
Shouldn't have been cancelled..
-Firefly
-New Amsterdam
-Journeyman
-terriers

[–] LukeLovesFilm28 10 years ago

Being a feminist nowadays should be an insult. The fact that you people can't see how one-sided it is to have a movement for male and female equality called "FEMINIST" says everything.

[–] Foxbarking 9 years ago

This is by far the absolute best post EVER made about this woman. I have never been more disturbed or sickened than I am by reading the posts here about how people feel sorry for this woman and try to justify her deplorable actions because she had a hard life. It's beyond revolting.

But you are absolutely correct. Jeffrey Dahmer had a difficult life. Ed Gein had a life that was simply one of the most disturbing ever.

Charles Manson had a life that was completely and utterly horrible. But you don't see people defending them the way they defend this piece of excrement.

Wonderful post.

[–] rascal67 9 years ago

I have never been more disturbed or sickened than I am by reading the posts here about how people feel sorry for this woman and try to justify her deplorable actions because she had a hard life. It's beyond revolting....... Jeffrey Dahmer....Ed Gein......Charles Manson.....you don't see people defending them the way they defend this piece of excrement.
____________
You defend other serial killers for having disturbing and completely utterly horrible lives; but Wuronos is a piece of excrement, why? Did Aileen Wuronos, not have an absolutely abhorrent upbringing to your eyes compared to the others, so she doesn't deserve any form of empathy? I am disturbed and sickned by people that have absolutley NO compassion or understanding of what life could have been possibly like for Wuronos and we live in a society of denial, ignorance and avoidance, that creates these killers and then sweeps it under the rug. If you had been born into Aileen's shoes, then how do you know you wouldn't end up acting in the same manner she did?

This woman had PURE ABSOLUTE HATE coursing through her veins and this was 'conditioned' onto her, due to what appears to be an almost empty void of care and love of any form in her life and a lack of decent role models she could look up to. She wasn't a bright child either and excuse me for sounding so blunt; but she was a dumb f<>k, so extra attention needed to have been afforded her. Where was this to be found? If she had been loved and nurtured in a decent and appropriate manner that is fitting for most children, then I would say even her low IQ would have only likely hindered her academic acheivements and she would have been given a more positive and respectful attitude and outlook on life. A Serial Killer like Dahmer, had a very high IQ and I don't think Gacy and Gein were that dumb either. Being smart, gives someone a headstart in life, at the very least.

Dahmer and Gacy contrived their crimes and coveted their victims, Wuronos killed at random and arbitrarily and I doubt she would have gained any form of sadistc pleasure out of her murders. Hers, was more about survival, a quick fix for cash and a hatred of men, due to the way she had been treated by them in her horrendous life. Dahmer and Gacy, killed for their own perverse pleasure and self-satifaction. The empathy I reserve for these guys, is only because they ended up being damaged goods, not because they couldn't help themselves—which I think they probably could—and they were also able to hide behind their guy next door personas. They were devious and knew what they were doing. Wuronos, was just hated and loathed and hated and loathed and had nothing to hide behind and her pain and suffering, was as plain and transparent as day. No one cared and no one wanted to know. Her first victim was a convicted rapist, so care factor by the police would have pretty much zero and even Wuronos claims they could have nabbed her earlier for this. They didn't!!! Check through this thread and read the I_Love_Hutch posts. He will put it all into perspective for you. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340855/board/flat/199042122

[–] smokehill retrievers 15 years ago

A rough childhood is no excuse for this piece of human garbage. Lots of others have had far worse childhoods than this and not turned out to be a vicious, sadistic, predatory sociopath.

Did I feel sorry for her as a kid? Sure.

Did I feel sorry for her as an adult? Nope. Not a bit.

The filmmakers twisted the truth beyond belief, which is why they said this was "based" on a true story. Otherwise the victims' families would have gotten millions in damages for the lies about the victims being "johns" or even rapists, when there is actually no evidence whatsoever for rape, and in many cases the victims were clearly just trying to help this undeserving sack of ... well, you get the picture.

There is plenty of REAL information about Wuornos on the web, and at least one good book.

Before someone starts playing violins for her, they should shut up and do some research.

This movie was as phony as Birdman of Alcatraz.

[–] lornamd-1 15 years ago

I agree a rough childhood is not excuse for murder but I don't agree that lots of others have had far worse childhoods.

Aileen was raped by her father and grandfather, her mother abandoned her, her father beat her viciously on a regular basis, she had a baby taken off her, she was made homeless at a young age and forced into prostitution, she had permanent scars from a fire, she had permanent scars from being forced to sleep in the snow, kids in her neighborhood threw stones at her and spit on her. Not to mention as an adult she was hospitalized numerous times from beatings and rapes including having her pelvis broken and her brother died of cancer. All of these things are proven by records, witnesses or confessions.

Again I'm not saying these excuse her actions - although I believe she was mentally ill - but I don't think lots of people had it worse than that.

[–] lmclean11 15 years ago

All good points except about the father. Aileen never met her father, who left before she was born and later died in prison. She thought her grandfather was her father until about age 10 or 11. Grandfather/father did beat her but the rape by him is doubtful.

[–] lornamd-1 15 years ago

I saw her talking about her father in an interview but I suppose she probably meant her grandfather. According to what I read there are witnesses to her being raped by her grandfather.

[–] millsyooksy 9 years ago

I agree, she lived the kind of hellacious life that few have ever experienced. And there have been male serial killers that were sold to tricks by their own mother and they turned out just as totally and completely screwed up as Aileen.

[–] mel_anie_98 14 years ago

I felt sorry for her as an adult. People don't have 2 incarnations, one as a child and then magically turn out differently as an adult. Who you are as a child shapes how you are as an adult. It's even now known that a child's personality at the age of 6 is going to be their personality for the rest of their life, excluding obvious things like extreme life events of course.

Think about Aileen at the age of 6. How else could she be expected to turn out if she didn't have any extreme life event, like someone helping her?

And it's very very VERY likely that since she was a prostitute then her victims would most likely be her Johns.

[–] danish_dynamite101 14 years ago

your post is load of hypocritical bs.

you say there is no evidence of her being raped by any of the men she killed but then you spin it around and say there is somehow proof that some of them were CLEARLY trying to help her. Mind telling me my future next?

For Aileen a rough childhood would have been heaven compared to the hell she had to endure all her life. She was abandoned by her mother, raped/beaten mercilessly by her father, raped/abused by her grandfather, molested and allegedly impregnated by the town pedophile, abandoned by the ones who were supposed to take care of her, abused and tortured by the rest of the town and was forced to live in the woods like an outcast.

Every turn was worse than the last in her life and it is heartbreaking to imagine the pain she lived through every day of her broken life.

I have no sympathy for the rapist she killed and it will never be known if exactly how many men were actually innocent victims or if they were killed by Aileen in self defense.

[–] SeisCinemaSeis 14 years ago

Well, this is a complex issue. Aileen was both, a victim first, and a victimiser later. However the atrocities that she had to endure during her childhood and the rest of her life doesn't justify at all what she did later. It just help to understand "Why" she did what she did.
I think the point of the movie is to show the human side of a serial killer, because whether we like it or not, serial killers are human beings, not "monsters". We shouldn't reduce people to simplistic clichès because then we are eliminating any possibility of understanding why and how some human beings are capable of commiting such despicable acts. If we aspire to avoid more of those crimes, what we gotta do is to understand better the people who commits those crimes and what caused such abhorrent behaviour instead of simply reducing them to meaningless and useless epithets.
Just my 2 cents.

[–] mel_anie_98 14 years ago

I've been reading the responses to these posts and many of them make me want to cringe.

What hypocrisy to not show any sympathy for someone with Aileen's background and life, yet condemn her for not showing her victims any sympathy!

Like a couple of people here have said, how do you expect her to turn out after all she went through since childhood? It's not like parts of her life were normal and other parts horrible...her entire childhood and adolescence were horrible! Not a single person tried to help her in any real way.

PLUS, she had a mental disorder; she was probably a sociopath, or something very similar, and an untreated one at that. Not to mention her genetic predisposition to mental health problems, seeing as her father was a psychopath/sociopath, and a child molester at that.

Combine that with social issues like molestation by her brother, rape by other men, abandonment by her mother, prostitution at a young age, teenage pregnancy, etc. and you have a recipe for hell on wheels. How would she even have the knowledge to get out of her situation? How was she supposed to know what to do to fix her life when she had no examples of that in her own life?

I feel terribly for Aileen Wuornos. She lived a life no one can imagine, and had to live with an untreated mental disorder.

Are her actions justified by her life and disorder? HELL NO! I'm SO glad that she got arrested and if I believed in capital punishment then I would believe that she deserved it.

Having sympathy for someone doesn't mean that you in any way excuse their actions. You just feel badly for the life that led them to those actions.

[–] Nearvana 14 years ago

calling her a sociopath, even if it may have been she was diagnosed as such, is the problem of people understanding her & her motives. sociopaths do not have a conscience. she did. she may not have had remorse towards her violent abusers, but any normal person within their faculties, would most likely feel the same. she just had the drive to go through with her actions, no matter how much others may have wished the same fate on their attackers. from what i have read, most of her victims, were the sociopaths & the scum of the earth. did they deserve to die? who knows. maybe that's for God to decide, or a collective group of sane peers to determine, hence the death penalty. personally, i feel we are far too lenient on sex offenders in this country. it obvious she was capable of love. sociopaths, generally, only love themselves, if even that.

serva me, serva bote

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] Nearvana 14 years ago

nice use of the term 'b!tch'. so, i wonder, if it had been aileen who had been murdered by one of her attackers, if you would wish the same fate on them. a side note & not an excuse, however, contributing factors of someone's state of mind, i am willing to bet, none of her victims endured what she did in her lifetime. with the exception of one man, they all were criminals themselves. i wouldn't compare any part of her life to 'sugar'.

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Nearvana 14 years ago

can you read? in my second sentence i said this was not an excuse. i was asking if you or whoever it was that called her a 'b!tch', & said she deserved to go to hell if they or you would wish the same fate on any of her attackers. perhaps before she was sent to death she forgave any & all who had abused her in her lifetime, key word here being 'lifetime'. i think she should have been sent to a mental hospital for observation. if you watch her court scenes it is obvious she is not sane. having been the first female serial killer (as she was called) in america we could have learned many things by observing her.

[–] unknown_soul278 14 years ago

I don't really believe in hell in the conventional sense, but she did deserve the death sentence, not a hospital. I don't think she was insane; screwed up, yes, but it isn't the same. Highly manipulative and without conscience, yes; but sane.

The wild, cruel animal is not behind the bars of a cage. He is in front of it.

[–] Nearvana 14 years ago

obviously she had a conscience or else she would have felt no remorse for the innocent. i do believe she developed a major mental health diagnosis as a product of her prior environments. as for people feeling less remorse for her because she married a man with money & leaving him, i feel she was too broken at this point to have a healthy relationship with anyone. she should have been in therapy instead of a marriage. if you go through life being told you are worthless without any example of real love, how does one react should they receive it as an adult. it's like with feral children who are incapable of even learning speech as early or late as the age of 13 because they were never taught. this was a very broken person. i do not believe she was a sociopath, as she did have a conscience, sociopaths do not. however, it is said 1 in 4 people are sociopaths, usually these people are highly successful, as they will do anything to succeed at any cost. if she had been a sociopath, i think she may have very well stayed in her marriage simply for the monetary gain. she couldn't even do that, although she certainly tried. as for her being manipulative, manipulative people are patient, calm, cool & collective, qualities she certainly did not possess.

[–] unknown_soul278 13 years ago

She did not leave her husband; she was physically abusive towards him and his family talked him into divorcing her.

She didn't seem to be sorry for the murders, just for getting caught.

The wild, cruel animal is not behind the bars of a cage. He is in front of it.

[–] lornamd-1 13 years ago

Nearvana not all sociopaths are cool and calm. Sociopaths have a variety of personalities. Some are clever at manipulation and some aren't. Some are calm while others are fiery.

However Aileen did help homeless people which is hardly typical behavior for a sociopath.

[–] unknown_soul278 14 years ago

At one point in her life she did have a choice that negates a lot of excuses later on. She was married to a wealthy, older man, and by all accounts he loved her and wanted to give her a good life. They divorced because she was very abusive to him. That was a choice, and that was a ticket to a much better life. That marriage would have given her the means to get counseling and any other care docs could use to help her. It does not make her childhood irrelevant, but it does make her much less sympathetic.

The wild, cruel animal is not behind the bars of a cage. He is in front of it.

[–] hodie 11 years ago

Many male serial killers came from as bad a background as Wuornos, if not worse. I would think that the feminist stance is that Lee should be treated no differently from any other serial killer, male or female.

Get me a bromide! And put some gin in it!