“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
asserted
legend → become → legend
This newspaperman’s maxim from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance might well be the mission statement for Netflix‘s Monster, Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy’s anthology show about America’s most infamous murderers.
uncertain
Who → shoot → murderers
Its stories of Jeffrey Dahmer, Lyle and Erik Menendez, Ed Gein, and now Lizzie Borden use the facts of these cases as a skeleton, sure.
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stories → use → skeleton
But as the umbrella title indicates, the show is more concerned with the creation of monsters — both how these figures came to see themselves as monstrous and commit monstrous acts, and how they filled the role of monster in popular culture, reflecting the interests and prejudices of the culture that gave birth to them.
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that → indicate → them
Why else open the show with an old-fashioned iris out on a stage curtain, which parts to reveal a toy piano playing the “Lizzie Borden took an axe” schoolyard rhyme all on its own?
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Borden → open → own
The story of Lizzie Borden you are about to see is just that: a story about both a person and the idea of that person, one that calls attention to the artifice of its own construction.
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that → see → construction
It’s like Velvet Goldmine for murderesses.
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It → ’ → murderesses
A cold open sets the stakes.
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open → set → stakes
It depicts Lizzie Borden (Ella Beatty) doing what we all came here to see her do: whacking first her stepmother Abby (Rebecca Hall), then her father Andrew (Charlie Hunnam), with an axe, over and over and over, largely not seen but heard in what can only be described as a masterpiece of foley art.
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what → depict → art
After a new Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story logo treatment — it’s in studious handwritten cursive now — and some epigrams about whether or not a woman would be capable of murder, we see what life was like for Lizzie and her parents before murders.
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life → ’ → murders
Lizzie gets mommy-dommed into a corset by Abby, who watches with dismay as Lizzie’s severe menstrual flow ruins an already disastrous visit from a suitor.
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flow → domme → suitor
He recoiled from Lizzie’s “horse face” long before she bled all over Abby’s prize fainting couch.
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she → recoil → couch
(Actor Ella Beatty has the kind of freakish, alien beauty that could pass for unattractive to the very dull, I suppose.
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I → have → dull
While Abby emotionally abuses both Lizzie and the Irish help, Mr. Borden keeps busy as a woodworker and craftsman, whose primary business is the coffin trade.
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business → abuse → woodworker
He selects axes from his much beloved, ridiculously expansive collection (seriously, this would put Gimli the Dwarf to shame) to chop up corpses that don’t fit what he’s got on offer.
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he → select → offer
He’s not of much use to Lizzie, that’s for sure.
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that → ’ → Lizzie
(To her credit, however, Lizzie regards both her parents sympathetically.
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Lizzie → regard → parents
She seems to feel for Andrew for the loss of his beloved wife at a young age, and for Abby for taking on the task of raising his children and descending into alcoholic depression over her inability to do so.
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She → seem → inability
Enter Bridget (Vicky Krieps), or Maggie, as Mrs. Borden racistly insists on calling her.
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Borden → enter → her
This Irish-German free spirit has traveled the continent before arriving in America, and brings with her all kinds of interesting ideas.
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spirit → travel → ideas
She colors her hair.
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She → color → hair
She stands up for her right to be paid for her work and to maintain some semblance of independence.
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She → stand → independence
She’s saving money to buy a house and land of her own…and she’s earning extra by fucking Mr. Borden, as well as cleaning his axe collection.
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she → save → collection
But she has a far more instant, sincere, even primal connection with a different Borden: Lizzie.
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she → have → Borden
Bridget “meets” her when she hovers her face inches from the younger woman’s menstrual blood as she cleans it from Abby’s fainting couch.
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she → meet → couch
While the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” blasts, Lizzie watches this weirdly erotic ritual, eyes widening at the sight of Bridget’s exposed stockings and garters.
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eyes → blast → stockings
It’s gay as hell.
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It → ’ → hell
If you weren’t already getting that message, the episode (directed by Max Winkler from a script by creator and showrunner Brennan) indulges in a full-scale Heavenly Creatures homage, riffing on Peter Jackson’s surreal, sapphic tale of murderous folie à deux both visually and thematically.
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episode → get → deux
The blossoming friendship-love-obsession between the two women reaches its apotheosis among the literal blossoms of the cherry trees that are Lizzie’s pride and joy.
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that → blossom → trees
Winkler films them like a hybrid of Jackson’s rapturous camera in Heavenly Creatures and his fellow antipodean Peter Weir’s more stately, dreamy one in Picnic at Hanging Rock, another story of young women’s desires sublimated into horror.
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Winkler → film → horror
Bridget gives Lizzie two major gifts in this episode.
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Bridget → give → episode
The first is a proto-vibrator that works with a hand crank like a pepper grinder, which it resembles.
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it → work → which
The invention looks ludicrous, and its prescribed purpose — to ease Lizzie’s menstrual flow by inducing “hysterical paroxysm,” or orgasm — is a comically discredited theory that is largely a product of modern imaginations rather than the historical record anyway.
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that → look → imaginations
She tests the device out on Lizzie’s hand, allowing her imagination, and ours, to extrapolate from there.
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imagination → test → hand
But things tilt over to horror in a big way before long.
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things → tilt → way
Bridget’s other present for Lizzie is a book about Elizabeth Báthory (also played by Krieps), the so-called Countess of Blood.
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present → play → Blood
A proto–serial killer, an important touchstone for the modern vampire myth, and a rare example of a super-famous woman murderer, Elizabeth allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins abducted from the local peasantry to maintain her beauty.
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Elizabeth → bath → beauty
With makeup and costuming straight out of the Eiko Ishioka playbook, the Countess, her creepy trio of handmaidens, and their scary black-hooded executioners slaughter up a steaming tub of blood for which Lizzie is left pining.
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Lizzie → slaughter → which
So she recreates it as best she can, with cherry juice, in a bath in the middle of her dovecote, while Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love” blasts.
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Hounds → recreate → Love
In an image straight out of Heavenly Creatures, the two women bathe in it together.
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women → bathe → it
…and 11 more, not listed.
The Aporia
