Episode 59: Monster (2003) (Guest: Mara Malagodi)

Episode 59: Monster (2003) (Guest: Mara Malagodi)

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Description

This episode examines a case that sits at the uneasy boundary between criminal adjudication, media power, and moral authority: the prosecution and execution of Aileen Wuornos, labeled the “first female serial killer. We look at two documentaries by Nick Broomfield—Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992) and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)—alongside the feature film Monster (2003), written and directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Charlize Theron in an Oscar-winning role. Broomfield’s documentaries are less about guilt or innocence than about process: who controls the narrative, how legal representation operates, and what happens when a defendant’s life becomes an object of transaction, between lawyers, media, and the public. The films also penetrate the issues around the application of the death penalty in the United States, and the problems that arise when the state seeks to executive individuals who are themselves victims and suffer from severe mental illness. Monster  approaches the same facts through dramatization. It also raises important questions, including how far context should matter in judging criminal responsibility and construction of narratives around crimes.

Guest: Mara Malagodi

Mara Malagodi is a Reader at Warwick Law School, the co-founder and co-director of the Centre for Constitutions in Context, and the co-Editor-in-Chief of Constitutional Studies, the journal of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) co-published with the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP). Dr. Malagodi is the author of the monographs Constitutional Nationalism and Legal Exclusion in Nepal (2013) with OUP and The Constitutional System of Nepal – A Contextual Analysis (2026) with Hart. She has also co-edited a four-volume series on Asian Comparative Constitutional Law (2023-26) and a volume on Gender, Sexuality and Constitutionalism in Asia (2024). Dr Malagodi is a non-practising barrister, a scholar of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker (Raindance 2015 award for best doc) who trained at EICTV, the school founded by Gabriel García Márquez in Cuba.

Timestamps:

0:00   Introduction

2:58   Capturing law on film

5:24   The two Nick Broomfield documentaries

11:16   Addressing Aileen Wuornos’s murders

14:04  The flawed defense strategy

18:47  The depiction of Tyria Moore (Aileen Wuornos’s girlfriend

20:55  Selling the Aileen Wuornos story

23:09  The theme of the “monster”

28:29  Themes of betrayal and self-defense

31:53   Nick Broomfield and an outsider view of the American legal system

34:56  Mental illness and the death penalty

37:39  Media coverage of sensational murders

39:22  Failures of the legal process

44:26  A critique of the death penalty

47:00  Exoticization in the films

Further Reading: 

Cavanaugh, L. Sheila, “‘White Trash:’ Abject Skin in Film Reviews of ‘Monster’,” in Skin, Culture, and Pscyhoanalysis (Cavanaugh, L. Sheila et al. eds.) (2013)

Dargis, Manohla, “Life and Death Issues,” Los Angeles Times (Jan. 9. 2004)

Diamond, Suzanna, “‘A Flower in a Hard Rain’: Melodramatic Storytelling by, and About, Aileen Wuornos,” Anthurium, vol. 15(2) (2019)

Horeck, Tanya, “From Documentary to Drama: Capturing Aileen Wuornos,” Screen, vol. 48(2), pp. 141-59 (Summer 2007)

Pearson, Kyra, “The Trouble with Aileen Wuornos, Feminism’s ‘First Serial Killer,’” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 4(3), pp. 256-75 (Sept. 2007

Smith, Abbe, “The ‘Monster’ in All of Us: When Victims Become Perpetrators,” 38 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 367 (2005)

Publication Date

6-2-2026

Disciplines

Law

Episode 59: Monster (2003) (Guest: Mara Malagodi)

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