From Lambs to Dragons

"The penalty for rape, as you know, is death. Deuteronomy 22:23-29. I might add that this crime involved two of you and took place at gunpoint. It was also brutal. I will not offend your ears with any details, except to say that one woman was pregnant and the baby died."
   A sigh goes up from us; despite myself I feel my hands clench. It is too much, this violation. The baby too, after what we go through. It's true, there is a bloodlust; I want to tear, gouge, rend. - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

If you asked me what the most influential movie of the last 25 years is I can easily answer The Silence of the Lambs. Its shadow is not on filmmakers but our American culture. It forever elevated the serial killer as a ghost rising from the corners of our society to repeatedly murder us. He's become a kind of perverse hero, cleansing us of our sins (Seven), satirizing our consumerism (American Psycho), or being an example of invention (Saw). Where this genre has really flourished is television. From long running shows like Law and Order SVU to CSI and Dexter, there's been an endless string of sadistic killers week after week, year after year, in endless variation. We can't get enough.

What makes The Silence of the Lambs different from the slashers before it like Halloween and Psycho is that the narrative focuses on pursuit of the killer, usually specialists like FBI, instead of the killer knocking off victims one by one for the whole movie. What really separates these films are those in charge of catching them are women. Jodie Foster was a determined acolyte to her boss (Scott Glenn), trying to rise above her working class background, but more importantly, struggling with the discrimination of her gender. In a pivotal scene, Foster helps with an autopsy, but local police object to her presence. This is a man's job. Glenn convinces the skeptics privately that she's alright. Foster is irked she's not included in the argument because she's a woman. After, driving away in the car, Scott explains his actions for excluding her. Foster argues against him. "It matters," she says, "Cops look at you to see how to act. It matters." All Glenn can say is, "Point taken."

I'm attempting to write about this film not because I love the movie (it is well crafted), but I've discovered it has a personal influence on my life. Since getting married, I've realized my wife is addicted to these type of procedurals on TV. She watches Law and Order, Bones, and Criminal Minds on a regular diet. She's been doing this for years (she's watching Law and Order as I write this). I don't object. She can watch whatever she wants. She is a grown-up, but also someone who has a successful career in her field. And she faces ceilings like Foster. My theory is watching these shows is a relief from this specific stress at work. I'm not the only one who thinks or witnesses this. But it's more. We went out to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo this weekend which she was hesitant to watch because of the much heard rape scene. She didn't like it. What she did like was the revenge. She whispered to me she loved the punk Elisabeth Salander (Rooney Mara) - "so cool." But what made her jump out of her seat was at the end after Salander strikes the serial killer with a golf club and he's crawled out his dungeon to escape. She grabs a gun, cocks it, looks into the eyes of her investigative partner (Daniel Craig) she's just rescued and asks, "Can I kill him?" Craig nods and she's running out the door to finish him off. She squealed with delight.

The original Swedish title of Dragon Tattoo was "Men Who Hate Women". Are you connecting the dots? Is their a deep psychological pain being exorcised by these movies? A gender's religious purge of all the anger boiling underneath? The strangest curiosity of this genre is most of it is written or directed by men. In Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", the males controlled and centralized their direct power over women to second class status stripping them to cattle. The masters create a collective lynching (Particicution) where the women kill a convicted man of a brutal crime with the same cold-blooded punishment. Justice done. The masses satisfied. The authority keeps power.

It's not a surprise that Hannibal Lecter's emergence coincides with a generation of women entering the workforce and pushing to try and take the commanding heights of our society. The Silence of the Lambs runs long and deep into this century. But Foster has changed. She's gotten rid of the pant suit and perfume for a leather jacket, mohawk, and nose rings. Abused, her anger is a lot more fierce and focused. The killer is always caught. But at the end of the movie, Lecter calls Foster from a pay phone somewhere tropical. "Have the lambs stopped screaming?" he asks, then he floats away into the jungle to kill his next victim.

Comments

[Bobabernathy]

Rooney Mara is the only reason to see the movie - she's a great talent and I hope to see her in a lot more films. I don't know what it means that serial killers and this kind of lurid violence have become popular entertainment but I don't like it. I'd say it has something to do with consumer culture and marketing aimed at lowest common denominators turning into marketing aimed at lowest common instincts - but that probably isn't the whole answer. Maybe the movie's lackluster box office means the public doesn't have the stomach for it, either. I'd like to believe that.