Roll Over Reeva Steenkamp Today’s Sexy Corpse Is Monica Spear Mootz
WHEN Reeva Steenkamp was found dead, the Sun led with this picture:
The Guardian’s Marin Hyde noted that the Sun had done away with its Page 3 – “maybe because that particular itch had been scratched.”
Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted: “This is a simply despicable front page. It glories in domestic violence. @rupertmurdoch apologise.”
It does? In saving the swimwear model woman from being ogled as a sex object, Bryant reduced her to a symbol. He then added: “In the UK two women get killed every week in domestic violence incidents. This style of journalism helps it continue.”
No longer an individual, in death Reeva became a cause.
Should the Sun have shown Steenkamp working as a paralegal, as she did for a period? Would that have been better?
Former Deputy PM John Prescott’s tweeted: “I really hope every member of the shadow cabinet thinks twice before writing for the Sun after that front page.”
Suzanne Moore said it was “lechery over a corpse,.” She said: “A woman just murdered? I hope mass boycott.”
New York titles agreed with the Sun:
The Daily Mail went with this:
Try to imagine a man dying and the media running four billion pictures of them in swimwear.
Challenge accepted. The Mail reports on the murders of Londoner Thomas Berry, 39, and 2004’s Miss Venezuela, 29-year-old Monica Spear Mootz. They were travelling in a car on the Puerto-Cabello when gunmen held them up. The couple were shot dead. Their five-year-old daughter was in the car with them. She was wounded in the leg.
But get a load of the photos. Is the Mail’s report gratuitous? Titillating?
The Mail delivers three more photos of the beauty queen turned actress Mootz in her swimmers. Berry features in photos of the couple on their weeding day, with his daughter and canoodling with his wife. He is never pictured alone. She is. Twice. What does this tell us? El Universal says he worked as an travel consultant. But we only see her at work.
We managed to find this picture of Mootz at work. She is dressed in more clothes:
Should the tabloids be morally policed? No. Of course not. Are the dead women symbols of a male-dominated culture? Is it a bit sick to show a murdered woman posing in a bikini? Her life does seem reduced to either sex or violence. And it is her the Mail wants us to see – and thinks we want to see…
Posted: 7th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
