This brings us to the complex and difficult issue of audience response. Susan Douglas has pointed out that scholars do not have much data to work with, regarding media audiences. There is more speculative than solid information. In her approach, she cites one of the central presuppositions for contemporary theory, which "dismisses any notion of the unified subject or self." Thus, it is possible for people to assume a number of subject positions, even contradictory ones, depending on the medium and message. Also, "media texts themselves, especially when viewed by subcultural groups, invite and incite oppositional, resistant readings that challenge the more hegemonic codes of popular culture" (130). From this standpoint, viewers of the film could take positions in a very wide spectrum. Writing specifically about body genres, Williams makes a similar point, that "identification is neither fixed nor entirely passive" (8). Rather than viewing fantasies as "wish-fulfilling linear narratives of mastery and control leading to closure and the attainment of desire," she suggests considering their "lack of fixed position with respect to the objects and events fantasized" (10).
If we track the camera in key scenes, we see shifts in point of view. In the murder flashback, the camera follows Lizzie, allowing us to see her, and then it becomes her eyes, so that spectators are drawn to join her in her gruesome acts. Can viewers identify with Lizzie? According to these critics above, the audience is diverse enough and identification open enough for this to be possible. The narrative presents a deeply troubled and frustrated woman who is a victim of patriarchal society. It seems likely that some would identify with her. But the film also takes pains to show her otherness. Her ominous and mysterious silences, her sinister expressions, create distance. This is characteristic of the ambivalence in the story. Lizzie killed her father, but loved him, too. We see her sneaking downstairs at night to kiss his corpse as it rests in the family home the night after the murders. Immediately after the trial, Emma once again asks Lizzie if she killed their father. Lizzie does not confess or protest innocence; she remains silent, and is caught in a freeze frame at film's end, while children in the background chant the famous rhyme. The ambivalence she embodies suggests not only our feelings about family, but also the tantalizing, almost childlike (and Lizzie is childlike) dream of getting away with murder.
So far we have only considered identification with Lizzie, but some might identify with Abby and Andrew. To assume that women will identify with female characters, and men with males is simplistic. In Clover's work questioning assumptions about gender and identification, she states that usually "angry displays of force" are gendered as male, and "abject terror" is female (51).
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Yet another way to think about the contradictory positions of both Lizzie and viewer is to consider Steven Shaviro's observation that cinematic pleasure "can be just as well linked to the destruction of identification and objectification, to the undermining of subjective stability" (42). In fact, "cinema's greatest power may be its ability to evacuate meanings and identities, to proliferate resemblances without sense or origin" (254). By now, even though the historical Lizzie once existed, the representations we see have been cut loose from the source. She is an unstable character in the film, both murderer and victim, ordinary and "special." That has interesting implications for the viewer. Her passion involves no closure. Looking at her silent face at the end, the viewer is left without resolution of the tensions created in the story. I think it corresponds to what Shaviro describes as "the ecstasy and terror of abjection" (155).
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The very lack of closure contributes to the success of the film in another sense. Uncertainty is the result of loopholes. There is the built-in generic loophole that says a movie is not reality, even though it may affect us in ways we do not fully realize. Several others open up in the film. Maybe Lizzie killed her parents, but she was strange and probably crazy, and not entirely responsible. She was declared innocent. At the end of the film, a statement appears on screen that to this day, the murders remain unsolved. Maybe she did not kill them at all, and only imagined those horrible death scenes. The concept of the loophole is fundamental to Bakhtin's thought, and useful for considering the Borden texts. He rejoices in the loophole, "the constant availability of a way out, with no dead end." Even though it is a source of "frustration, pain, and danger," it is "also the necessary precondition for any freedom we may know" (Clark 347). It lets us create, and lets us make choices. If Lizzie's story tells us anything, it is that there are no sure, absolute answers. We can examine the elements of the legend, and choose the narrative that satisfies us. For over a century, people have been drawn to the Borden legend. It seems to me that the loopholes, the unfinalizability of Lizzie, are keys to its appeal. The loopholes in the film are also part of its attraction. It entertains and teases us. It may also be a factor in shaping new fans. As fewer people read books (and more books go out of print), this TV movie may be the first and only portrayal of Lizzie that they encounter. If it continues to be broadcasted, it could be a significant vehicle for taking the legend into the twenty-first century. There will probably be new versions of her as well. Lizzie Borden did not make herself into a monstrous, creepy creature. We, as participants in our culture, have done that. But as contributions to the legend try to invoke closure, there is resistance, and we are left with the Lizzie who defies a final word. She does not look like a fiend, even though we enjoy the frisson of suspecting her. Lizzie is a discursive space where we face fears and fantasies, and escape to safety. She is not finished and neither are we.
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