GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE January 30, 2004 ·

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Nature or nurture?

'Monster' asks: Did circumstances and homophobia make Aileen Wuornos a killer?

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Think back to Robert DeNiro in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull. Remember Hilary Swank as murdered transgender Teena Brandon in Boys Don't Cry? Think back to Dustin Hoffman's doozie of a cross-dressing-out-of-work-actor turned soap opera diva in Tootsie. Or recollect Daniel Day Lewis' heart-rending work in My Left Foot.

After Monster, audiences will add Charlize Theron to this list of great actors, ones who have transformed themselves physically and emotionally for their art.

with another film about a gay serial killer. But life, and great cinema, are seldom that simple.

Because of legal issues with real people involved in the telling of Wuornos' story, the filmmakers had to change names and create composite characters based on real ones. This is controversial because the

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'She was always looking for the silver lining on the clouds, for that ray of light'

In Monster, Theron plays the real-life Aileen Wuornos, infamous for being America's first female serial killer. Add to that her hatred for men, her emotional vulnerability and her grizzly looks, and you have someone that is easy to hate and demonize. Wuornos was executed in 2002 in Florida but her name, her shame, and her dubious fame live on.

Aileen Wuornos was a prostitute who hitchhiked for her johns and eventually

killed them. She was a drifter who found the seamiest side of the American Dream, a privilege she yearned to attain but a fantasy that eluded her till her last, dying breath.

The film, directed and written by Patty Jenkins, also provides the filmgoer with a love story between Wuornos and fellow misfit Selby Wall (Christina Ricci).

Wall was banished by her parents to an aunt's house in Florida. They hoped that this exile would provide her with a cure for her homosexuality. Struggling with the demons of suicide, Wuornos meets Wall in a bar and they begin a love affair. Wuornos struts between soft love with Wall and the brutal degradation of “love” bought by her johns.

Wuornos was convicted of killing six men, but to the end she always maintained that she had only killed in self-defense to protect herself from bad johns in her grind as a highway prostitute.

The film was made on many of the Florida locations where the crimes by and against Wuornos were committed.

In the press notes for the film, Theron says of Wuornos, "She's the most hopeful person I've ever encountered. She never dwelled on the negativity; she was always looking for the silver lining on the clouds, for that ray of light. I admired that she never asked for sympathy."

The film in its unbending search for veracity, verisimilitude and psychological dissection, finds a portrait of an anti-hero that begs for empathy, and that for many could pose an ethical, philosophical and humanistic dilemma. Is there any way to truly have empathy for a monstrous criminal like Wuornos? Can one truly under· stand the mind and motives of such a barbaric victim and victimizer? Is it a blatant disregard for basic human values and dignity to try and understand that what led Wuornos to commit her crimes was the blatant disregard that others had for her human values and dignity? Or is it heinous to even ask such questions?

The film will force audiences to think about these questions, and more dangerously even try and answer them. There are those in GLBT camps who will be upset

Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos

lines between fact and fiction begin to get blurred and even what may be completely factual can be questioned. This is, unfortunately, the Janus-faced nature of films based on fact, which have to fictionalize certain things for legal or artistic reasons.

Nevertheless, Wuornos's tale is compelling every step of the way. As she sat on death row, she began corresponding with her best friend from childhood. Jenkins befriended Wuornos and Wall, gained their trust and set about to create the film. Wuornos didn't go kicking and screaming to her death. She had accepted her fate, the terrible mishap that was her life, and knew that it was time to go.

The film does force one to indulge in some tough questions and seek out some not so pretty answers. Did Wuornos become a monster because of her environment and her upbringing? Or did she simply act out on the monstrosity that was innate to her genetic and human makeup?

Did the first john she killed, the one who tied her up, raped and beat her and planned to kill her, set her irrevocably on the path to destruction?

Theron has come up with the performance of a lifetime and her transformation, physically and emotionally, is mindboggling. It is truly deserving of her Golden Globe win for Best Actress in a Movie Drama and her nomination for Best Actress Academy Award.

Theron, who also produced the film, had amazing help from makeup artist Toni G. and Cinovation Studio's Art Sakamoto, who handled her prosthetics.

Christina Ricci as Selby Wall plays off of Theron's flashier role with subtlety and more non-verbal angst.

Jenkins is a filmmaker to watch in the

future. Like Boys Don't Cry before it, Monster is a gritty film about living on the edges of society. Sometimes that edge becomes too sharp and scars and cuts up everything that comes in its way. That Wuornos was a monster, at least in her acts, is undeniable. But what of the monsters who may have made her what she was?