Is Amanda Knox a slut? Slut-like? Sluttish? A man-eating sexual predator who was shown, in court, to have actually bought condoms? Or, as they put it so much more simply in the Italian prosecutor's case and the British tabloid press, guilty? Because after four years of trials and appeals and testimony and evidence, eventually last week it all came down to which Sex and the City character she most resembled. Samantha (ie, sexually voracious – and possibly capable of killing)? Or Charlotte (sweet and demure and probably not)?
Because even in 2011, as the Amanda Knox trial has demonstrated, when it comes to female sexuality, those are still pretty much the only two options available. There hasn't been as graphic a depiction of the madonna/whore complex as this since the 1989 video of "Like a Prayer" in which Madonna put on a pointy bra top and made out with a priest. According to the prosecution, it was a "sex game gone wrong". According to the defence, it was a grievous miscarriage of justice. Amanda Knox was either a slut. Or innocent. But then even that was a bit complex for some people. These trial thingies are so tedious, after all. Really, it'd be so much more simple and straightforward to employ a witchfinder general, or, say, Amanda Platell.
"What is it about Amanda Knox that so chills the blood?" the spin doctor-turned-columnist asked in last week's Mail. Obviously, one could do a simple substitution here for the words "Knox" and "Platell", and say something like "gobsmacking hypocrisy allied to almost sociopathic levels of over-confidence" but, unfortunately, it's Knox who's under CSI levels of moral scrutiny here. "There is something disquieting about Amanda Knox," writes Platell.
Is it worth pointing out that this is after the appeal court had delivered its verdict? After Amanda Knox (and Raffaele Sollecito – but who cares about him?) had been cleared of any part in the murder of Meredith Kercher. Probably not, because why tarry over such piffling details? Or defer to the months of legal argument, or the eight appeal judges, when Platell's truth-finding skills include noting "those piercing blue eyes, as cold as the steel of the knife that slit Meredith Kercher's throat, have hardly flinched during her court appearances".
Oh, Amanda. When will they allow you to have a ducking stool all of your very own? But then there's been more than a touch of the medieval to the case. Not just the setting in an Umbrian hilltop town, which lacked only a demented hunchback and a cowled monk to be the backdrop from The Name of the Rose, but also for its vision of female sexuality as something demonic and uncontrolled. If the depiction of Amanda Knox in the prosecution case owed something to Samantha from Sex and the City, it perhaps owed even more to Lucrezia Borgia. According to one trial lawyer, Amanda Knox wasn't a college student from Seattle who may or may not have been involved in the murder of her flatmate; she was a "demonic, satanic, diabolical she-devil" who was "devoted to lust, drugs and alcohol".
Details of Knox's life were dissected with a mixture of titillation and prurience. The condoms. The rabbit vibrator. The spliffs she smoked with her boyfriend. The fact she may or may not have once had sex with a stranger on a train. We know how many lovers she's had because she was told, in prison, that she was HIV-positive and asked to list them, before being told a mistake had been made, and the list was leaked to a journalist. A 33-second video of Knox on YouTube, which shows her a little bit pissed, has been viewed 845,000 times (and features the brilliant final line, spoken by a friend of hers: "I know what you're going to do! You're going to put this on the internet!" Yep. Spot-on, chum). If the world is confused about Amanda Knox – and judging from the acres of the newsprint and the vicious spats still ongoing between those who believe she's guilty and those who insist she's innocent – it's perhaps because it's still confused, and threatened, by young women's sexuality.
But then whatever else there has been in this case – bloody footprints, contested DNA, faked or not break-ins, the terrible murder of a 21-year-old student and a family grappling to come to terms with her death – there's been not much of what might be called justice. Not for Knox and Sollecito, who've spent four years in jail, nor Meredith Kercher's family who still don't know if Rudy Guede had an accomplice or not, and if so, who it might have been. And all because one of the accused happened to be young, pretty, American and female.
The whole case, the prosecution's version of events, the media coverage, and the court of public opinion, has been viewed almost solely through the prism of Knox's looks and sexuality. It's been proof of either her innocence. Or her guilt. It's grossly distorted even the most basic facts of the case, has precluded the possibility of the Kercher family ever finding out the truth, and is evidence only of the fact that justice is not blind. But then, for women, it seems it rarely is. Or at least, you don't have to tell that to Joanne Lees. Remember her? The British woman whose boyfriend was murdered in the Australian outback a decade ago? Who failed to show sufficient emotion in court? Who was shown to have been having an affair? And who was regarded as guilty until proven innocent.
Or Lindy Chamberlain, whose daughter, it turned out, was actually taken by a dingo, regardless of what the world believed. Or Sally Clark, the woman the prosecution called "a lonely drunk", whose two children really did die of cot death. Or Rebecca Leighton, the nurse who, it turns out, wasn't Stockport's "angel of death" (the Star) or "the saline serial killer" (the Mirror)? And this despite the evidence: damning Facebook photos of her drinking a glass of wine. It turns out that you can be a committed nurse and have a social life. Who knew? Maybe Amanda Knox once did have sex with a stranger on a train. And maybe she didn't murder her flatmate. And just maybe these two facts are entirely related.