Aileen - Americas First Female Serial Killer

Q: “How does the representation of Aileen manipulate the audience?”

The audience are manipulated when watching Aileen because of the mix of two emotions, like and dislike, which is created by Aileen’s mixed personalities throughout the documentary.

In the opening scene the audience are in a bird’s eye view position looking over a crime scene, when they are told that it is a murder of 7 men, they straight away dislike whoever has committed the crime, when they learn that it was America’s first female serial killer, the audience start questioning why and believing there may have been a reason behind it.

When the audience are introduced to Aileen she comes across as a troubled woman who has had a bit of a rubbish life, the only way that she could get anywhere in life is by selling her body for money, this makes the audience think that she could have poisoned the men or they could have tried to attack her even more? Aileen claims that the 7 men either wanted to go round her rear end or were threatening towards her. The audience being to sympathies with her even though being a hooker was her choice in the first place.

Just as the audience feel comfortable with Aileen she switches her personality when things dong go her way and she even curses a member of courts wife and children. The audience begin disliking her again for what she has said, but then in another scene she is been taken into the back of a police car and she is adamant that she has been set up and she apologises for using such vile language but she is been looked down on and that she in the innocent one. This of course makes the audience look like idiots because they forgive her again and start to feel sorry for her.

Aileen ruins it again when she laughs in the middle of court and her attitude towards the 7 victims and their families is one that the audience finds repulsive. This makes the audience think that she was guilty all along. This makes the audience realise how gullible they are being and they don’t know what to believe.

To make things worse