”Real evil; not high school evil”: Amanda Knox, Sex and Celebrity Crime

In November 2007, the media around the globe were transfixed by US student Amanda Knox, an alleged participant in the sexual assault and murder of her flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. Her celebrity status was established within days of the murder, and at the end of 2008 she was voted Woman of the Year by an Italian TV station, ahead of Carla Bruni and Sarah Palin. The focus of this study is the representation of Amanda Knox in the UK media, particularly the coverage offered by the Daily Mail. The Mail has shown a detailed and sustained interest in the case throughout, its focus on her character and personal life helping to secure Knox's status as a celebrity murderess (and, in the wake of her acquittal in October 2011, as an apparent celebrity victim of injustice). Focusing on the Mail’s narratological strategies, as well as its rhetorical ones, this study explores connections between celebrity, sex and violence in order to assess what the Knox phenomenon reveals about contemporary attitudes towards transgressive female sexuality. Under scrutiny are the ways in which the celebrity crime figure Amanda Knox has been represented, and how these representations conform to dominant ideological constructions of the violent female.