Monster Making Too Close To Home.

Monster Making Too Close To Home

Where do monsters come from? Can they be people we come in contact with everyday of our lives? Sometimes, when little is known about that evening’s current event, the media tends to create their own resolution to unsolved mysteries in order to reach closure within the public. As seen in a Time magazine article, David Van Biema shows us how familiar a monster can be in our lives. He wrote the article titled “A crime in the clan” in which a 25-year-old murder case concerning the Kennedy clan is revived. The author’s depiction of the horrific crime scene and creation of the monster in a typical pulp fiction structure can be related to Ingebretsen’s article titled “Monster-Making: A politics of persuasion.” Like Ingebretsen, Biema uses scandal, pulp fiction metaphors, and classic movie monster making, such as the formulaic character creation, to exaggerate a crime scene placing Michael Skakel as a prime suspects in a case with no physical evidence.

What initially introduces us to the monster is the public scandal as in the case of the books published concerning the murder of Martha Moxley. Biema reports how “The latest edition of Mark Fuhrman’s Murder in Greenwhich boasts, ‘Read the book that spawned the … grand jury investigation’” (48). He acknowledges this book because he knows that he cannot create a monster without making him public first. As Ingebretsen agrees, “scandal, by definition, is never private, and so the political fantasies enacted in the name of a monster are quite public in intent” (para. 1). Precisely conforming to the idea of monster making, Biema titillates the reader by bringing forth defamatory gossip, which places Skakel in an evil position. Biema extends his imagination with the story-like narration he uses to describe the crime scene.

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The horrid narrative found in the article is magnified in order to further the reader’s imagination of how brutal the murder scene was. Biema describes how Martha’s body was found the next day: “She lay in a 3-ft. pool of blood; her head had been bludgeoned some 14 times with a blunt instrument, and the sharp, broken shaft of that instrument, a Toney Penna 6-iron golf club had been driven into her throat” (47). Instead of just briefly explaining how her body was found, Biema elaborates by exaggerating how she was in a 3-foot pool of blood when such a description would obviously be impossible. He uses words like bludgeoned to heighten the suspense and further enthrall the reader. Ingebretsen asserts the idea of how news contains the writer’s opinions by creating an entertaining story rather than an informative one: “News, of course, is narrative based and bound by point of view; thus it partakes of fictional devices as much as any strictly ‘made up’ novel” (para. 10). The key idea that Ingebretsen points out that is obvious in Biema’s article are the words “made up.” Since this story lacks physical evidence, he had to add his own interpretation of what happened by elaborating the story as something seen in a Stephen King novel. Not only does Biema ‘bend the truth,’ but he also invokes his opinion by connecting Michael Skakel, the suspect, with the murder weapon.

Connections are made between the crime scene and the suspect that are clear indications of a typical suspense/horror novel. Since Martha was killed with Tony Penna golf clubs, Biema connects the suspects to the crime by stating how “Tony Penna golf clubs where rare, but Tommy and Michael’s mother, who had recently died of cancer, had left behind a set” (47). Clearly, Biema believes that Michael and Thomas Skakel were guilty by the association he creates with the murder weapon and the suspect. Ingebretsen establishes that “by definition, a ‘story’ or narrative establishes conditions in which random or contingent events are given necessary and seemingly universal existence by the disarming ‘and then’” (para. 14). Although both pieces of evidence, the golf clubs their mother left behind and the ones found at the crime scene, had no real connection with each other than the brand of golf clubs, the author adds his own translation of the story to build suspense and, in the end, to entertain. To further trap the reader into his creation of the Skakel monster, Biema uses strong words to categories Skakel as a ‘killer.’

Strong and powerful words are used categorize the suspect and tell us how we must feel about the criminal even if we dare to form our own opinions. Biema further condemns this Kennedy cousin by using an extract of a proposed book about Skakel’s confinement in the drug and alcohol clinic for the rich: “Skakel describes being made to wear a sign around his neck… it read: I AM AN ARROGANT RICH BRAT. CONFRONT ME ON WHY I KILLED MY FRIEND MARTHA” (46). Not only does the sign validate Skakel’s guiltiness towards the crime, but it also categorizes him as an “arrogant rich brat.” Biema’s target audience seems to be the middle and lower class people. He separates Skakel from the norm by classifying him as ‘different than us.’ The same idea is maintained by Ingebretsen when he points out how “the most oppressive chains are those spells – words – by which we nominate and transfix people in categories of likeness and deviancy” (para. 28). He uses the word deviancy to emphasize how these words place the monster into a category that give him a different behavior and state when compared to that of the common folk. Generally, Biema’s entire article separates Skakel from the ‘norm,’ but what finalizes Ingebretsen’s formula for monster making is the expiation of the monster.

The article in Time magazine comes to a conclusion just as the typical monster would reach its end in death. Although Skakel does not literally ‘die,’ Biema has used the beginnings of classic story-telling techniques leaving the capturing of the monster as the only closure to this dramatic novella. As Ingebretsen proposes, “Monster’s provide variety to the civic repertoire… titillation, condemnation, and expiation” (para. 7). So far, Biema has mesmerized us with narratives that appeal to our senses and also pronounced Skakel as guilty regardless if proven innocent. The final blow is “expiation” where the monster reaches its final steps before being sacrificed in public view. In the case of the Time article, Biema ends with a testimony from the mother of Martha Moxley, the 15-year-old murder victim: “For years, she says, she thought Thomas Skakel killed her daughter… She has learned how to wait” (48). Using this as the final thoughts of the article shows how Biema has easily convinces us, using Ingebretsen’s formula on monster making, that Thomas Skakel was the monster that Killed Martha Moxley. He makes us think of sayings such as ‘good things come to those who wait’ to show how justice will finally be served for the unforgiving death of this young girl.

So in the end we find that monsters come from our imaginations. If the media ‘dresses up’ the suspect with enough pulp narrative and classic movie monster horror thrills, anybody can become a monster in the public’s eye. Even if the media is to blame, we accept what they tell us and in fact help some of us to succeed in life by showing us where the line between right and wrong stands. If we see how bad our lives can become, we feel better about ourselves. Monsters are created to discourage us from doing what they do because in time, monsters will always get caught.