Murder Victim (Elizabeth Short, Black Dahlia, Jane Doe)

minded (“Short would not speak to him, but he was persistent and she eventually did get into his car”), and is indirectly made open to judgement⁸⁰.

In comparison to the corporeal representation of Short, the Black Dahlia is conceptualized in more abstract terms, as either the case or the murder⁸¹. Dahlia’s body parts (“The Dahlia’s arms”, “Dahlia’s mouth”) are only discussed in the context of her being a disturbing work of art (“sick attempt at art”). It is acknowledged that the Black Dahlia identity originates from and is constructed by the Press (“the papers called her ‘The Black Dahlia’”), “due to reports that she often wore sleek black clothing and had striking black hair”.

The Black Dahlia identity is very strongly associated to Elizabeth Short, almost like an explanation or title (“believed to be Elizabeth Short, The Black Dahlia”), but, unlike her, she is less temporally restricted (she doesn’t die, discursively speaking: she “riveted the nation and continues to fascinate sleuths today”, “the case is still open”).

In Sarian’s video, Elizabeth Short is primarily discussed in her real name (over 30 times), rather than the moniker “The Black Dahlia” (6 times). Basic biographic information (“she was born in July of 1924, in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, her parents were Cleo and Phoebe Short”), as well as details from her childhood (“at some point her parents had separated, and her father ended up moving…with her mother”), family relations⁸² and life prior to the murder⁸³ are provided, before the horrific details of her murder itself are discussed.

She is represented in sympathetic⁸⁴, active terms⁸⁵, even as her character flaws are being discussed (“She had no job, she didn’t know where she was going to stay, she didn’t really know

80 (“Short contacted Manley and asked him to come pick her up”, “he says he brought Short to the Biltmore Hotel”,

“that is the last place Short was seen alive”).

81 (“infamous unsolved murder, The Black Dahlia”, “Do you know the case at all, The Black Dahlia?”, “the Dahlia letters”, “the Black Dahlia murderer”, “Black Dahlia case”).

82 (“her father…is still in talks with his daughter”, “Elizabeth moves out to live with her father, but the stay really wouldn’t last that long”, “her father is the one who actually says, like, ‘Hey, this isn’t working out’”).

83 (“she’s, like, looking for a job, and she was able to find one, working at Camp Cooke on the military base”, “she meets a woman named Dorothy *…+ hit it off”, “Elizabeth would end up staying with Dorothy for about a month”,

“Elizabeth, she didn’t want to go back to Massachusetts”).

84 (“she was a bit of a wild child, A.K.A. teenager, you know?”, “you know, she didn’t want to impose”, “I mean, this poor Elizabeth”).

what she was doing, but she was doing it”). She is therefore respectfully portrayed as a youthful, adventurous and somewhat rebellious (“she wasn’t doing any cooking or cleaning like she had agreed”) woman who has agency over her relationships with the men in her life⁸⁶. Short is discursively introduced as a living woman in her coming-of-age phase⁸⁷, which signifies that discursive space for the introduction and existence of the victim outside of their identification as such, is prioritized in Sarian’s narrative. Rather than just being the story, Elizabeth has a story⁸⁸ (“Elizabeth’s story”). This representation allows for a more humanizing, personal depiction of the victim as a person first, a preference further emphasized by the decision to discuss the gory crime scene details by generally associating them to another constructed representation altogether (see Jane Doe).

The “Black Dahlia” is first mentioned as an alternative identity of Elizabeth Short (“Elizabeth Short, A.K.A. “The Black Dahlia”), and not brought up again until media sensationalization is explicitly condemned (“the media gave her the name ‘The Black Dahlia’…’Let’s talk about this murder, but make it sexy’…Stupid.”). This suggests a strong disapproval of sensationalized representations, and, subsequently, a preference for discussing victims in personal rather than sensational, projected upon by the media terms.

Moreover, when it is evoked, “The Black Dahlia” identity is discursively associated with the

“murder” of Elizabeth Short⁸⁹, suggesting that, like Jane Doe, it is an identity meant to “protect”

Elizabeth Short by the more dehumanizing and gruesome associations (note how it is

“Elizabeth’s story”, whereas The Black Dahlia is not even a “case”, but only a “murder”).

85 (“And so, Elizabeth did. She packed her stuff and she moved out”, “she decided to leave and head down to sunny San Diego”, “Elizabeth *…+ she told Dorothy that she was off to her next adventure”, “Elizabeth was briefly dating George”, “Elizabeth was able to break free”).

86 (“She packed her stuff and she moved out”, “Elizabeth hopped into the Studebaker Coupe”, “Elizabeth was briefly dating George”).

87 (“a bit of a wild child, A.K.A. teenager”, “she would be staying out all night and she wasn’t doing any cooking or cleaning as she had agreed upon with her father”, “she’s in California, she, you know, might as well, make the most out of it”, “she didn’t really know what she was doing, but he was doing it”).

88 Also note that 5 photographs of Elizabeth Short, who is always smiling, are shown at 4:17, 4:50, 6:54, 17:45, and 31:01, whereas only one photo of George Hodel, in which he looks ill at ease, is used in the video.

89 (“’The Black Dahlia…this murder”, “committed the Black Dahlia murder”, “confess to the Black Dahlia murder”,

“the Black Dahlia could have been his final murder”).

In comparison to the Infotainment paradigm and Antphrodite’s narrative -which distinctively but exclusively use the “Elizabeth Short” and “Black Dahlia” representations-, Sarian introduces a third representation to refer to the victim; As a dead body at the crime scene, Elizabeth Short is presented as “Jane Doe” and discussed in corporeal terms⁹⁰. Jane Doe is discursively equated/connected to Elizabeth Short either on a different level of narration as a meta-comment (“So at the time they just referred to her as ‘Jane Doe’, but spoiler because we know now, but it was Elizabeth”), or once the gruesome details of her murder⁹¹ have all been discussed⁹²; This suggests that in the triple representation of Short as “Jane Doe”, “Elizabeth Short” and “the Black Dahlia”, Jane Doe is assigned the most impersonal role, discursively

“protecting” the post-mortem dignity of “Elizabeth Short”, who refers to the separate, well-rounded and neither discursively “dead” nor exclusively represented as a notorious murder case identity of the individual. The omission of any references to the Black Dahlia as far as the description of the body’s condition is concerned, suggests an ethical skepticism towards the sensationalized representation of a murder victim.

In general, Antphrodite’s video offers a very different approach in terms of victim representation, from the Infotainment paradigm or Sarian (who are more indifferent, and sympathetic, respectively).

There is one reference to “Black Dahlia” and none to Elizabeth Short. The Black Dahlia moniker also dominates the victim’s representation on the grounds that Elizabeth’s name is not simply absent, but actually forgotten (“I forget her name”). Nevertheless, the two identifications (Black Dahlia vs E. Short) connotatively merge, as personal pronouns are used to refer to the victim for the entirety of the video anyway⁹³.

90 (“what they see is a naked body, just laying on the grass”, “the body was found lying on their back”, “the body, it was cut in half”, “the lower half of her body was disconnected from the upper half of her body”).

91 (“there were crisscross cuts on her pubic region and on her hip”, “she was also cut from each side of her mouth”,

“her breast was also cut off”, “her body was cut about an inch above her belly button, just right in half, clean cut”).

92 (“now they also noted that Elizabeth’s body *…+”, “Once Jane Doe’s body got to the coroner’s they were able to get fingerprints and run the prints through their system, to see if they could get an ID, and luckily enough, they got a hit, and they were able to ID the body as Elizabeth Short”).

93 (“she was”, “her murderer”, “she knew”, “she doesn’t wanna give it”, “her not wanting to”, “she had”, “she started”, “tell her”, “she didn’t want to”, “she got”, “she tried”, etc.).

“She” is therefore introduced as a “22 years old” “young Hollywood hopeful” who “was brutally *…+ murdered”, immediately drawing attention to her young age, her ambition to succeed in a glamorous yet very competitive industry, and the reason for whom she became known. For the remainder of the video, she is not discussed in terms of facts (which can’t be provided - “I don’t know the full story, I know a little bit”) about who she was, but conjectures about her character, decisions and actions, instead. As such, she is presented as an opportunist⁹⁴, and generally disrespected, as the speculations about her moral character are quite disagreeable⁹⁵.

Discursively, she is treated sympathetically when attempts to “excuse” her assumed actions are made⁹⁶. This paradoxical portrayal -assuming that she adopted a negative behavior without proof but normalizing her choice- is perhaps more indicative of Antphrodite’s own self-representation, as someone who is thoughtful towards the victims in True Crime cases (especially when taking into consideration that “(he’s) always nervous now when (he) does True Crime cause (he) been getting hate”).

As far as her relationships with others are concerned, the Black Dahlia is represented as someone who is on the losing side of a power struggle⁹⁷ due to making the wrong choices⁹⁸. In fact, “she” is represented as someone ambitious enough to want to raise herself up in status

94 (“she had a bargaining chip and she bit off more than she could chew”, “I see her as overplaying her hand”, “she had some piece of information, she bit off more than she can chew *…+, she played her cards too early”).

95 (“like having an affair with someone, maybe her getting pregnant by someone”, “there had to have been some sort of like taboo relationship that she had *…+ it’s someone who is in a relationship, perhaps married”, “It reminds me of when, like, the Mafia would run, like secret stuff, or if a madame *…+ like worked at a brothel or something, and had like, you know, girls that were prostitutes or something like that, like something along the lines of that where there’s like a group of illegal activity, allegedly, that I think she was falling either adjacent to or directly in”).

96 (“I’m not saying that she’s like, a– a bad person, or anything like that, but to me she’s surrounded by cutthroat energy and I think that she started to adopt that as well.”, “every single person has blood on their hands”, “every single person has dirt on their hands”, “I’m not saying she wasn’t innocent, what I’m saying is that there’s more, there’s a cutthroat energy around here, there’s a- there’s a ‘I’m gonna get what I want’ energy”).

97 (“taboo relationship that she had…someone very powerful”, “she had something that was a bargaining chip and I see her overplaying her hand”, “she was the one that they just decided to use as a message *…+ that they’re not in power”).

98 (“self-sabotage”, “I just see her starting to get corrupted”, “like, you are being trained to be a certain type of way and then you, like, started doing stuff and then it, like backfired in your face, cause you shouldn’t be doing that stuff in the first place”).

(“she tried to find her jackpot or was too close to finding a jackpot”), but failing so hard that her murder is discursively rationalized and she is made an example of or scapegoated⁹⁹.

The Black Dahlia is negatively discussed not in terms of who she is factually, but in terms of who she is conjecturally, with an eye to explaining why she was murdered (note that despite the video’s title and description that exclusively focus on finding “who” the murderer is, Antphrodite states that “basically no one knows why, and no one knows how, and no one knows who committed this crime”, when summarizing the case). By presenting her murder as a response to/punishment about something she did¹⁰⁰, the victim is discursively made responsible for her murder.

Moreover, when Antphrodite sums up his opinion on the why-how-who of the murder at the end of the video (“it’s a group, it has to be a group, it’s not one person. And she was a message.”), the Black Dahlia (murder victim) is equated to the reason she was murdered (“she was a message”), which suggests an instrumentalization of the murder victim’s representation in order to explain the crime/murderer’s behavior.