Martha Mockus, the Jane Watson Irwin Chair and visiting assistant professor of women's studies, presented a paper at the Feminist Theory and Music conference at McGill University in Montreal, June 6-10. The paper was titled "Carla Lucero's Wuornos: Feminism, Violence, and Lesbian Redemption."
In October 2002, Aileen Wuornos, dubbed "the lesbian serial killer," was executed after spending eleven years on death row in Florida for killing seven men. Her story has attracted attention from feminists, prison activists, born-again Christians, sex worker advocates, biographers, documentary and feature filmmakers (notably Patty Jenkins's Monster in 2004), all of whom found in Wuornos a tragic heroine whose life thematized a number of politically charged social problems. Her life of violence and survival forms the center of San Francisco composer Carla Lucero's opera, Wuornos (2001), which posits the cycle of domestic abuse as crucial to understanding Wuornos's tragedy. This paper shows how Lucero's opera performs a feminist critique of violence against women (both domestic and state-administered) yet maintains an ambivalence about female violence itself.
In addition, the redemptive power of lesbian romance in Wuornos further complicates this opera's treatment of female violence. Specific musical features such as instrumentation, harmonic language, and casting two "Aileens"—one adolescent and one adult—who sing together during Wuornos's first "murder" all underscore the opera's fraught portrayal of violence.
In October 2002, Aileen Wuornos, dubbed "the lesbian serial killer," was executed after spending eleven years on death row in Florida for killing seven men. Her story has attracted attention from feminists, prison activists, born-again Christians, sex worker advocates, biographers, documentary and feature filmmakers (notably Patty Jenkins's Monster in 2004), all of whom found in Wuornos a tragic heroine whose life thematized a number of politically charged social problems. Her life of violence and survival forms the center of San Francisco composer Carla Lucero's opera, Wuornos (2001), which posits the cycle of domestic abuse as crucial to understanding Wuornos's tragedy. This paper shows how Lucero's opera performs a feminist critique of violence against women (both domestic and state-administered) yet maintains an ambivalence about female violence itself.
In addition, the redemptive power of lesbian romance in Wuornos further complicates this opera's treatment of female violence. Specific musical features such as instrumentation, harmonic language, and casting two "Aileens"—one adolescent and one adult—who sing together during Wuornos's first "murder" all underscore the opera's fraught portrayal of violence.
