Amanda Knox is a comedian now. She certainly has an interesting story to tell. In Cartwheel, she explores how the much-documented traumas of her life have changed her and how she plans to explain it all to her daughter. The show is being performed at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Teviot Ballroom (I used to work there!) As you can imagine, it’s inspired some pushback.
Knox was infamously charged with murder while she was living in Italy and spent four years in prison before she was acquitted on appeal. The murder of her friend and roommate, Meredith Kercher, became worldwide news and turned Knox into a strange femme fatale sort of figure. Since then, Knox has dedicated herself to activism for women and the wrongly accused. She’s written books and articles, produced a TV drama about her case, and supported groups like the Innocence Project. She’s also married and has two kids, and frequently has a dark sense of humour about her experiences. Can you blame her?
But it has elicited some controversy, with Kercher’s own family having accused her several times of cashing in on Meredith’s name. Kercher’s sister has said that she believes the comedy show will “normalise and trivialise” violence against women, and Meredith, in particular. She told the BBC, “What I would say [to Knox] is to think about the family here, think about her friends and to turn the tables if it was your sister that this had happened to, because I know you have a sister as well.” A petition against the show, set up by a friend of Meredith, has been signed by nearly 5,000 people.
Knox defended herself on BBC Scotland by saying, “I hope people will honestly engage in my work and recognise the deep heart and sensitivity that I bring to it as I tell a very personal story […] The interesting irony of that is that my daughter is a huge motivation for me doing this show. It’s about how the world is unsafe and unfair towards women and what it means to raise a daughter in that world, knowing how bad it can be. If they [Kercher’s family] saw my show, they would recognise that.”
I see the Kercher family’s perspective. The Italian police so thoroughly screwed up their investigation that it seemed as though Meredith became a side-character in her own death. It took too long to find a semblance of justice for her and that should be respected. But at the same time, hasn’t Knox been put through the wringer, and isn’t she allowed to talk about that as she sees fit? A comedy show may seem tasteless on its surface but the medium can be great for such narratives. A lot of garbage men who like to say slurs have hijacked the importance of black comedy as a coping mechanism or way to confront trauma, but for someone like Knox, it is 100% a thing she has a claim to. She clearly wants to do something more than recount the terrors. I haven’t seen the show but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I don’t think Knox will use it as a chance to sh*t on Kercher’s memory or make fun of her death. I think she’s more self-aware and caring than that.
This isn’t even the weirdest thing at the Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival. Hundreds of people climbed Calton Hill to watch a guy fold a fitted sheet. Edinburgh in August is a wild place.
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