What Is The Phantom Prince My Life With Ted Bundy

1500 Words3 Pages

Netflix’s biographical true crime drama, “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile”, tells the story of the infamous Ted Bundy and his heinous actions on his victims. Directed by Joe Berlinger and released in the year 2019, the film is authentically based on the memoir, “The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy”, written by Bundy’s girlfriend, Elizabeth Kendall “Liz”. Through the narrative perspective of Liz, cinematography, and production techniques of the film, there is a seemingly “glamorized” portrayal of the well-known killer. Furthermore, the marginalization or exclusion of some perspectives underscores the historically accurate and moral complexities of representing real tragedies for the purpose of entertainment. By potentially …show more content…

Although Liz describes how she tackled emotions of loving Ted and feeling shame after hearing women’s stories, she describes the romanticism in her early years with Ted. Finding a duplex in Green Lake, the couple fell into a routine of eating outside in the warm weather where “Ted would pick flowers for the table and light candles in the dusk” (Page 26). While gradually realizing that Bundy was the killer, the film doesn't exactly capture the essence of Ted’s evilness from the perspective of his victims. Described in the recorded statements during Bundy’s death sentence, Judge Cowart stated “It’s a tragedy to see such a total waste of humanity” (Dekle, 2011, Page 158) and after this breath says "... I've experienced this in this courtroom. I don’t have any animosity toward you” (19:41). While this statement was included in the movie, the film does not include victims’ testimonies in the traditional sense and only offers oblique glimpses of Bundy’s horrific crimes. Subsequently, the perspectives of devastated victims and their loved

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