Documenting Subjectivity in Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet

The murder of JonBenet Ramsey was one of the most widely-publicized crimes of the late 20th Century. Despite all of the media attention and evidence collected at the scene of the crime, the case remains open to this day with no new leads arising over the past decade. At the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Kitty Green premiered her documentary, Casting JonBenet, a wholly unique reexamining of the little girl’s death and its profound cultural effects. Rather than focusing on interviews and DNA samples that have been reviewed ad nauseam, Green took a very different approach with her film. In Casting JonBenet, various local actors are interviewed and cast to play the real-life people involved (or potentially involved) in the murder case. Particular emphasis is put on the casting of the parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, as well as JonBenet’s older brother, Burke, and the former Boulder Colorado police chief who led the investigation. By speaking to real actors, many of whom were alive at the time of the trial, and casting more than one actor for each role, Green highlights the subjectivity of personal accounts of sensationalized events, demonstrating the elusive nature of objective truth.

Even if a viewer begins Casting JonBenet with virtually no knowledge of the real-life events, the flow of the narrative provides a patchwork image of what took place. As locals are interviewed during the casting process, they provide their own reactions to the trial, their opinions on who actually committed the murder, and even a few personal experiences with the Ramsey family. Through these accounts, the viewer can piece together the basic facts of the case. In December of 1996, a six-year-old girl named JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in the basement of the Ramsey family home in Boulder, Colorado. After discovering a two-and-a-half-page ransom note left in the house, JonBenet’s mother, Patsy, called 9-1-1 to report the kidnapping of her daughter. Patsy was a former beauty pageant winner, and before her death, JonBenet had taken part in and won several child beauty pageants. The wounds found on the young girl’s lifeless body indicated that she was struck over the head and then strangled to death.

Beyond these facts, the accounts of the local actors vying for a role in the film begin to veer in different directions. Many of the actors put some or all of the blame on Patsy Ramsey and believe that the incompetence and possible corruption of the Boulder Police Department was to blame for the lack of a conviction. Based on what they remember from interviews and news reports, the handwriting of the ransom note matched Patsy’s handwriting closely enough to make her a prime suspect. Moreover, many of the participants in the film simply felt that Patsy displayed indifference toward the death of her daughter and generally erratic, suspicious behavior during the investigation. Most of the actors rule out the father, John, as a suspect with little or no justification.

As the casting process continues, the actors provide even more evidence of the bizarre and tragic nature of the case. JonBenet’s 9-year-old brother, Burke, could not be completely ruled out as a suspect. Some actors rule him out based on his age, but others believe that his guilt is still within the realm of possibility. Evidence of sexual abuse ignites a firestorm of accusations and conspiracy theories, pointing the collective blame on various figures, from a man dressed as Santa Claus to a secretive pedophile ring operating in Boulder, Colorado. A known pedophile and suspected child murderer, Alexis Valoran Reich, even confessed to the crime years after the initial investigation, only to be exonerated by DNA evidence. 

All of these loose ends lead many of the actors back to the original suspects: John and Patsy Ramsey. One actor even goes as far as to claim that Patsy’s ovarian cancer, which ultimately took her life in 2006, could have been a physical manifestation of the guilt she felt over killing her own daughter. Others cling to the theory that Burke killed his sister, perhaps out of a desire to get more attention from their mother, only to have the crime covered up by his parents. Still others believe that John may have been molesting JonBenet when Patsy discovered them. This may explain why Patsy could have murdered JonBenet out of rage and jealousy.

The murder of JonBenet Ramsey has been a cold case without any valuable leads for more than two decades. Journalists, politicians, investigators, and filmmakers from all over the world have weighed in on the case with different theories about what may or may not have happened. However, up until Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet premiered in 2017, these investigations and media profiles have focused solely on the real-life figures of the case, as well as all of the available evidence that has been made public. Despite the inordinate amount of media attention, these explorations have yet to uncover any new information. This is one of the primary reasons that Green takes a different approach in her film. Rather than interviewing experts or returning to old case files, Green points her camera at local Boulder actors, many of whom lived through the media frenzy and felt a personal connection to the case.

Though most would agree that amateur and professional actors should not serve as expert witnesses in a high-profile murder case, the people gathered for the casting process offer surprisingly unique perspectives on what transpired in the Ramsey home in 1996. Many of the actors subscribe to long-standing theories and conspiracy theories about the case, but collectively, the actors inadvertently show the complexity of JonBenet’s death and the search for her killer. It also shows how much of an effect the murder and subsequent trial have had on pop culture. Decades later, people still hold strong opinions on the case, shaped by a combination of facts, media portrayals, and, perhaps most importantly, their own personal biases. 

It is also important to consider the intentions of the actors participating in Green’s film. Each of these actors wants to get a role in a film about JonBenet’s death, and many of them have worked hard to understand the mindset of the principal figures in the case, particularly John and Patsy Ramsey. Some of the actors studied the televised interviews with the Ramsey parents, noting the difficulty of reading these interviews with any clarity. On the one hand, neither of the elder Ramseys appeared heartbroken about the death of their daughter. At the same time, they don’t necessarily appear guilty of her murder, either. These observations segue into various connections between the events of the case and the way that the actors feel about Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey. Several female actors sympathize with Patsy as a mother losing her child, while others refuse to sympathize with her on the very same grounds. Similarly, a few of the actors (both male and female) empathize with John and Patsy Ramsey from their own experiences with abuse and the death of loved ones. 

By the final act of the film, the actors finally transition from interviewees to more traditional performers. These performances portray many of the theories put forward by the actors themselves, with a strong emphasis on the emotions of the grieving, and possibly complicit, John and Patsy Ramsey. These images are transposed using double exposure and a montage of fleeting images, all partially improvised by the actors themselves. During this sequence, the viewer only gets glimpses of conversations and events, much like the people who originally viewed the murder trial through the lens of the national and international media. The film never offers any answers to the case; technically, it doesn’t even shed new light on the events that occurred in 1996. Instead, it showcases the inability of onlookers to make sense of the murder, despite the very human need to find meaning and satisfying conclusions to such important questions. 

Casting JonBenet flirts with different styles of documentaries, particularly reflexive and performative documentary filmmaking. The film is reflexive insofar as it makes no attempt to hide its underlying cinematic qualities. In fact, the entire film hinges on the process of casting actors to play real-life figures. It shifts to more performative elements whenever the actors are given scripts and asked to reenact events. At first glance, this combination of reflexive and performative documentary filmmaking is nothing new. Many documentary filmmakers utilize self-awareness while also implementing performative elements. However, Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet diverges from most other documentaries by turning the camera on the process of pre-production (specifically the casting process). In doing so, Green makes the film a portrait of the people of Boulder, Colorado, with an emphasis on the local impact of the JonBenet murder trial. This collection of interviews works as a microcosm of the national and global reactions, theories, and ongoing investigations into the case.

In addition to its exploration of JonBenet Ramsey, Boulder, and the difficulties of portraying public figures accurately, Casting JonBenet turns its attention to viewers of crime documentaries. With criminal cases like the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, people’s views are strongly shaped by their personal experiences. Despite looking at all of the same basic facts, each person can walk away with hundreds of different theories. The film makes it clear that subjectivity can easily overrule objectivity, preventing any kind of final truth from emerging. The inclusion of intentionally fabricated moments reminds viewers that it is a film; a recreation and reimaging of what happened, or what may have happened. Thus, viewers are reminded that their conclusions, just like the conclusions of the actors in the documentary, will be shaped by more than just the facts.

In creating Casting JonBenet from real audition tapes and partially improved reenactments, Kitty Green exposes the audience to visceral and highly personal reactions to a sensationalized crime story. Facts are intermingled with conspiracies, anecdotes, doubts, memories, and strongly-held beliefs. None of it points to an objective truth because, in this case, there is no objective truth to be found. After years of investigation, no one really knows what happened to JonBenet Ramsey in December of 1996. People are just left to speculate and draw their own conclusions. And even though there is a mountain of evidence to draw from, these conclusions almost always have a foundation in subjective “truths.” Green shows viewers that, when it comes to sensational stories, particularly in the realm of true crime, subjective experiences shape the beliefs of individuals, communities, and even entire societies.