The name Aileen Wuornos conjures to most the image of a wild eyed, crazed woman who shouted profanities in court after being condemned to death for the killing of several men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Others more sympathetic to the plight of women, and particularly women in the sex trade, understand Aileen differently—as a sex worker who was viciously raped and later spiralled into a frantic murder spree.
In 2003, Patty Jenkins wrote and directed Monster, which told the story of Wuornos (played to chilling perfection by Charlize Theron) and the murders she committed from a different perspective. More specifically, Jenkins’s screenplay does what men and the justice system seem incapable of doing: believing a victim. While there’s no doubt Wuornos killed the men she was convicted of killing, her story isn’t one that requires much suspension of disbelief considering the way in which society disregards women and victims, and even less when those victims are female sex workers.
The story brings to life a full characterisation of Wuornos. This isn’t a snapshot of documentary footage focused on her mental health issues, and neither is it an exploitative look at her victimisation. Jenkins delivers an unflinching look at how Aileen’s story is a worse-case scenario for when a society warped by patriarchy refuses to understand the many complex ways women are forced to either take the relentless abuse of men or become a monster in the process of defending themselves.
Men are always offered the benefit of the doubt in terms of character. Just like in real life, in fiction women are too frequently presented as characters who need to uphold an air of appearing perfect.This is a major problem for men in general when it comes to sexual assault and rape: Accepting there are no perfect victims. In reality, women are human beings, and human beings are never perfect. Neither do they need to be, as it doesn’t have anything to do with why somebody would assault them or how they react to their assault. The screenplay by Jenkins gives the audience a taste of sweet and sour, both showing the violence in Aileen’s life as well as the tender moments with Selby Wall (played by Christina Ricci; fictional counterpart of the real Tyria Moore). As a result, the woman that most pass off as merely insane and murderous is presented as a three-dimensional character.
Above all, the lesbian relationship between Selby and Aileen speaks to the relationships Wuornos had with men all her life, as a woman near constantly abused in one way or another from the time she was a girl to the day she died. The audience gets to see an emotional side to Aileen. The two women start off tenuously, eventually moving in together, and later going on the run together, too. It’s a beautiful, if not rocky, romance. Mostly we see how far driven from men Aileen was, spending her days and evenings doing sex work just to pay the bills so she could go home to her girlfriend. Aileen’s narration during some of these scenes also alludes to earlier abuse she suffered as a younger woman and a girl, furthering the idea that she was, at the very least, fed up with men. Selby became a turning point, not only in terms of sexual orientation. Selby was a way out for Aileen, one she never pictured with men. She was affirmation that sex could be beautiful rather than a violent business transaction, and Aileen realized she was able to love somebody. It’s grimly fitting, then, that the sweetness of Aileen’s relationship with Selby is juxtaposed with the horror of the sexual assault precipitating her trail of murder.
Being graphic for the sake of being graphic has its time and place. Normally, when dealing with real life cases of horror and tragedy, explicit, graphic detail isn’t always a good choice, even more so when such cases involve sexual assault and rape. However, Jenkins opts to include a scene of brutal violence, and this is interesting from a storytelling perspective. As a woman, she no doubt knows all too well how women and the victimization of women have been exploited in the media, from news to movies. Although it’s compelling because, despite how it may look on the surface, this scene is all but the crux on which the entire film rests.
The whole purpose of Monster, even in its loaded title, is to reevaluate how people see Aileen Wuornos, both as a person and as a perceived monster. So Jenkins including a scene where a John (played by Lee Tergesen) rapes Aileen—something she always claimed as being the reason for the initial killing—is not an innocuous decision. This is surely seen as exploitation through certain eyes. The whole scene is pure terror and the nastiest details are vivid. However, this scene serves as a mission statement by Jenkins, effectively saying: I believe you, Aileen. This is done without necessarily meaning that Jenkins condones everything this woman did during her murder spree.
It’s absolutely significant that Aileen’s rape is addressed, as a way of affirming the film isn’t attempting to make the same old judgements about her crimes. It’s just as significant how Jenkins refuses to make her into any more of a victim than she was to begin. Yes, the story shows Wuornos falling into unlikely love with Selby. Yes, the rapist gets what most of us surely believe he deserved. Yet the rest of the murders still occur, and Jenkins doesn’t lead her audience into believing otherwise. Still, the rape and Aileen’s revenge preceding all this allows the audience to assume a perspective the courts, the judge, and the lawyers fighting to secure a conviction denied her initially— the belief that a woman who lives on the streets working in the sex trade can be raped, regardless of whether she chooses to commodify her body.
In a sense, Monster is an anthem for all women who are victims of sexual assault and rape, in how it refuses to accept patriarchal views about women and sex. These views, in turn, affect women like Aileen by using their lifestyle, usually one they did not choose (Although even if they did, it’s their choice to make) against them in saying that they are unable to be raped. Jenkins, and Theron fearlessly engage the audience in this act of brutality in order to hammer home what many of us already know: anybody can be raped, and it’s never the fault of the victim, always the fault of the one doing the raping. The audience can’t excuse Aileen for the rest of the murders, but the film presents her story in a way the audience is able to see why she wound up on such a destructive path after experiencing that level of trauma. In this light, the title Monster takes on new meaning, as in the film becomes an illustration of how a patriarchal society can turn a woman into a monster.
Jenkins’s Monster tells the story of victimisation and re-victimisation through Aileen Wuornos. In the beginning, Aileen was made a victim of a predatory rapist. Patriarchal society wouldn’t accept a sex worker trying to find a new line of work, let alone one claiming a prospective customer raped her. And so, with a lack of options, she first sought revenge on her rapist, then fell into a downward spiral of killing men who weren’t actually being violent with her, and making them into her own victims. We also get brief glimpses into Aileen’s life throughout the screenplay, offering more suggestions that perhaps she was assaulted and turned into a victim long before she ever began working in the sex trade. Jenkins does what the best directors do when focusing their lens on a subject by refusing to judge. Instead, Monster tries levelling the playing field, asserting that any woman who’s been raped or sexually assaulted deserves to be listened to, and as a society we go against morality if we try to claim a woman’s lifestyle dictates her humanity or her ability to be a victim.
 is able to lend compassion and understanding to the story of Aileen Wuornos.){kind=link}