With it officially being the start of fall in the northern hemisphere I wanted to watch a horror movie, and when my roommate said that they had never seen Silence of the Lambs I knew we had to watch it. Silence of the Lambs is one of the most iconic horror movies of the 90s. But with it’s popularity, it brought along anti-trans messaging and I’m here to break it down. Before we get started I want to lead with that I love this film and this is a critical review coming from a place of love.
REview
Before we get into that lets just talk about the movie as a whole. The movie has this unsettling feel that never lets up from opening to Clarice running through a foggy forest, to the end credits that play over a very long wide angle of Hannibal Lecter being unleashed back out into the world. It’s 2 main leads are played by Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins and they delivered. Their scenes with one another are great and you can feel almost a mentor/student relationship on screen, as Hannibal guides Clairice through the investigation into Buffalo Bill. Usually it is how much emotion an actor can display on screen that get recognition and appreciation, but it was Hopkins ability to restrict his emotion on screen that made Hannibal so eerie. Jodie Foster similarly is able to play a cold, but caring, investigator in such a good way. Although I think the coldness is a little unnecessary, I think it is better than other portrayals of strong smart female characters I have seen in the past but still. In sociology there is this term or social trend called the emphatic sameness; where some women feel as though they have to completely distant themselves from femineity to succeed in society. This is often reinforced through characters in media, you have to be mean, cold, and rough as a woman to be a FBI operative. We see this in Clairice, she is soft in areas but she is still expected to be more straight lipped than her male peers. While guys joke and laugh she must stay stone cold. We see her not taken seriously from others until she bends to them like in the scene where she dismisses the room of local police. Her few feminine takes are also so on the nose that it feels performative.
But why does it matter what some girl is like in some 90s movie. Well Silence of the Lambs is one of the most quoted and referenced movies in American pop culture. I didn’t realize how often it is referenced in media, until about 2 years ago when my boyfriend played the movie for me. It has so many good one liners and iconic scenes. I mean as recent as Zootopia 2 we see the villain from the original Zootopia held in a prison cell very similar to that of Hannibal Lecter. The film is one of 3 films ever to win all of “the big 5” Oscar categories, that being Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay. It is also the only horror movie to win Best Picture. So a film with such high praise and ability to influence movies 35 years later is going to have an influence on how audiences view the communities represented within the film.
Buffalo Bill
Which brings me to my next point. Buffalo Bill(played by Ted Levine), is the main big bad within the movie. Bill is seen committing many terrible acts including, kidnapping, torture, murder, holding fascist values, and wearing the skin of many murdered women. Bill is such a monster that the FBI enlists the help of the next biggest monster Hannibal Lecter. But what could bring a person to be such a monster? Lecter’s professional psychological analysis states that bill is a man who is mistaking himself for a “transexual”. Clarice attempts to correct Lecter and says that trans folk have very low recorded rates of violence. So this creates a lot issues for me. First their is the obvious, how Buffalo Bill portrays trans people as violent and unstable. But that can’t be true cause like Lecter said bill isn’t actually trans, just confused. But this is just the text book definition of trans misogyny. This claims that trans people are not valid and truly trans people unless someone else can tell them that they are trans. This is a very common misunderstanding especially with trans women where they are often told that they aren’t trans they are just confused gay men, or they are just claiming to be women to sneak into women’s bathrooms and assault them. They are often seen as less from others and shot down for who they are. These are all beliefs still being pushed in media especially today. It makes me wonder just how much Silence of the Lambs has contributed to the attack on trans bodies we see today.
I’m not saying we need to boycott Silence of the Lambs and everything that pays ohmage to, I think that would be impossible. The truth of the matter is transphobia was unfortunately very uncommon up until the 2010s. The movie was made and directed with no queer influence so it is no wonder there was unintended harm caused by the movie. I love the movie, I just think that in the political climate we exist in it important to look at the context that came before us to see the best ways we can do better in the future.
Final review
Silence of the Lambs like I said before is an iconic film of the 90s and without it we would not have so many other pieces of media we do today. It’s portrayals make it apparent that it is a film of its time, however putting it in that context I would rate the movie a 3.5 on my -5/5 scale.
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