30 years in, The Silence Of The Lambs’ Jame Gumb still deserves better
Image: Screenshot: The Silence Of The Lambs Film Features Jame Gumb
The Silence Of The Lambs is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and after three decades of unhappy marriage to this film, I will not miss an opportunity to gripe about the ol’ ball and chain. Wordplay aside, there is no film I hate more than The Silence Of The Lambs. Those feelings have evolved over the years, from not understanding the jokes about tucking that my family would make at the expense of a trans woman in my neighborhood, to not understanding the hype of how “terrifying” Buffalo Bill was in my teens, to my absolute disdain for the movie as a full-grown adult who has never known a world without its influence. Despite insistence from the film’s text that it isn’t transphobic, the countless experiences directly referencing this film I have had across the 11-plus years that I have been out as trans beg to differ.
Just like a booger-coated finger a centimeter from your face, The Silence Of The Lambs is impossible to ignore. Similar examples of trans exploitation—films as guilty of poor taste as Silence—are forgotten and buried away in niche film circles. This one was handed five Oscars and added to the Library of Congress. Whether it was one, 20, or now 30 years after its release, Silence remains heralded, despite every criticism against it. Yes, the directing is masterful, and the acting is damn near flawless. But these aspects come at the price of consistently elevating the worst piece of fiction to befall trans people. Maybe I am overreaching to condemn Buffalo Bill and The Silence Of The Lambs as being the single worst example of representation with which the trans community has ever been burdened and placing so much blame on it. Then again, it only took a single flawed and biased study by one man to spark the medical community to turn on the trans community for decades.
The entire argument that The Silence Of The Lambs isn’t transphobic rests on a single conversation between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, when the two meet to discuss the modus operandi of Jame Gumb, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, after a senator’s daughter is abducted. Clarice points out the lack of correlation between trans people and violence, to which Lecter retorts that “Billy is not a real transsexual.” He also mentions that “there are three major centers for transsexual surgery,” and the first on his list is Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the most influential and respected medical facilities on the planet. Not to try and beat Hannibal Lecter at his own game, but he should know that Johns Hopkins ceased gender-affirming care in 1979.
Since 1966, Johns Hopkins had spearheaded gender-affirming treatment and proudly touted itself as the home of the nation’s first “change-of-sex operations,” as they were known at the time. That all ended with a study conducted by Dr. Jon K. Meyers, head of the hospital’s Sexual Behavior Consultation Unit. Using his position, Meyers judged applicants for treatment on their quality of life based on social assimilation, employment and income status, stability of residency, any legal or psychological difficulties, and marital status. (Although there is no written proof of it due to discrimination, word of mouth by trans people through the years illustrates that patients were also denied based on their looks or ability to “pass.”) In the window of time between first being assessed for gender-affirming surgery and shortly after the operation, Meyers said he found “no significant improvement in any of these criteria.” He basically asked patients if they were living in a new personal utopia while they were still sore and recovering, and used this information to conclude that gender dysphoria was a problem that should be treated psychologically rather than physically via hormone-replacement therapy or surgery.
The study was criticized by Meyers’ medical peers for the small sample size, his interpretation of the information, and that a similar study with a larger number of patients over a wider period of time showed universally more positive improvements. However, this was enough to give Dr. Paul McHugh, Johns Hopkins’ chief of psychiatry from 1975 to 2001, the ammunition to shutter all trans-related care two months after the study’s publication, asserting that continuing treatment in light of this evidence was “facilitating mental illness.” To this day, McHugh continues to echo this stance within conservative circles, where he is often quoted in anti-gender discussions. With such a conclusive ruling from an esteemed institution like Johns Hopkins, most hospitals across the country ceased providing similar trans healthcare within the following decade. “Transsexualism” would get reclassified as a mental disorder in 1980 in the third version of the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders, and stayed that way until 2013.
In the same scene in The Silence Of The Lambs, Dr. Lecter claims that Billy only “thinks” they are trans (a bullshit concept referred to as “transtrender” these days), as if it is just the latest in a long line of fads they hope will remedy their self-disdain. But comparing the film to real-world events that Lector is referencing would show that Jame Gumb was attempting to transition for at least a decade before becoming Buffalo Bill. Since candidates for treatment were accepted at individual doctors’ discretion based on their mental well-being, financial status, or even physical attractiveness, Jame likely would have been rejected not for lack of being trans but because of the trauma and fiscal failings of their upbringing. They were not considered an upstanding enough citizen, and therefore were not worthy of help. Bye, don’t let the door hit your ass—or tucked genitals!—on the way out.
So if gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and Jame Gumb would have been considered a “guilt stricken homosexual man” and not a “real” trans person in the eyes of doctors, it’s bad luck that they happened to be alive in the 1980s, when every bigot’s dream daddy, Ronald Reagan, was elected president. After axing the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 within his first year in office, Reagan turned his attention, or lack thereof, to the AIDS epidemic. He almost managed to sneak through his whole first term without even acknowledging the crisis; it wasn’t until 1987 that a commission was appointed by the Reagan administration to investigate AIDS.
At first glance, this all might seem irrelevant to Jame Gumb’s story. But there was a very specific culture that was cultivated during the Reagan years, one of disdain toward those living with mental illness, and a particularly inflamed hostility toward the LGBTQ community. Public opinion toward the so-called “gay plague” was mostly heavy with apathy and mockery. Even with the Hippocratic oath in mind, a national survey of doctors conducted in 1990 showed that “only 24% believed that office-based practitioners should be legally required to provide care to individuals with HIV infection.” If three out of four doctors and most elected officials (you know, the people whose job is to care) couldn’t be bothered, then why wouldn’t someone, oh, let’s say, exploit that queer panic with a 1988 novel and subsequent film that went into a production the following year?
From the start, the LGBTQ community was critical of The Silence Of The Lambs—although mostly for its vague homophobia, rather than the very clear example of transphobia it’s seen as today. This culminated in a large, violent protest outside of the 1992 Academy Awards over the consistently poor portrayal of queer people by Hollywood, and the financial and critical rewards gained from it. The Silence Of The Lambs was far from the only offender of its era: Viewers were also treated to prolonged scenes of men vomiting at the thought of being attracted to trans women in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) and The Crying Game (1992), as well as an unnecessary last-minute trans reveal (and subsequent mockery) that ruins the snappy, Clue-esque comedy Soapdish (1991). But while The Silence Of The Lambs was not the only film exploiting trans people for drama or comedy, it was the most effective. And it did so the most savagely—through fear.
When questioned about the transphobia of his film, Jonathan Demme never even acknowledged it as a possibility. After more than two decades of criticism, he never really got it, and the olive branch he tried to extend to the queer community with his follow-up, Philadelphia (1993), means little when he was not able to understand the innate transphobia of The Silence Of The Lambs. Admitting his shortcomings in not making it clearer that “Gumb wasn’t gay” doesn’t dissolve the damage done by his film, in the same way Hannibal Lecter saying “Billy isn’t trans” while actually describing what gender dysphoria is doesn’t negate the portrayal in the film itself.
When interviewed in 2014 about the continued homophobic and transphobic theming of The Silence Of The Lambs, director Demme said:
Well, Jame Gumb isn’t gay. And this is my directorial failing in making The Silence Of The Lambs—that I didn’t find ways to emphasize the fact that Gumb wasn’t gay, but more importantly, that his whole thing is that Lecter’s profile on Gumb was that he was someone who was terribly abused as a child, and as a result of the abuse he suffered as a child, had extreme self-loathing, and whose life had become a series of efforts to not be himself anymore. The idea is that by turning himself into a female, then surely Gumb can feel like he has escaped himself. He’s not a traditional “cross-dresser,” “transvestite,” or “drag queen”—the various labels that respectfully come up for people who love to don the clothing of the opposite gender. So, Gumb is not gay, but there is a reference to a homosexual experience he had which is attributed to this quest. We were all banking a little too much on the metaphor of the Death’s-head moth—that Gumb is trying to achieve a metamorphosis through making his human suit.
Hannibal Lecter might be wrong about Billy not “really” being trans, but he was correct in saying that people like them are made. Within the film, Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb was created by a system that did everything it could to fail them. There is a reflection of this in the filmmakers, who seemingly took every measure to make Jame Gumb wholly unsympathetic in a film that is supposed to be about criminal profiling and the psychology of a killer. Gumb is based on real-life serial killers, and whether the powers that be knew it or would admit it, the circumstances that pushed the character to that point tracks with a real-life culture that is indifferent toward the suffering of people like Gumb.
And if the insistence is that the character was not trans or gay, then there is no reason to include those aspects, other than to sensationalize and exploit the “perversion” of queer people for the shock of cis, straight moviegoers. Essentially, this movie is hovering its finger over all of the things it is denying, while chanting, “I’m not touching you,” over and over.
But, after all of the history and context, what I hate the most is how I have to defend Jame Gumb despite everything in me not wanting to. My life and how I have been treated has been directly affected by this film, and I want nothing more than to flippantly write them off and move on—maybe make some jokes about tucking, laugh at the camp of “cheap shoes” and “fava beans,” and even try to reclaim the film like I have seen other queer people do. But I can’t. This is a character that doesn’t even get the dignity of their gender being acknowledged, at the time or in the years since. “Billy isn’t a real transsexual, but he thinks he is.” If Billy thinks they are trans, that means they are trans!
Having a cis doctor, one who is probably just like the ones who denied Jame more than 10 years earlier, misgender and dismiss the autonomy of someone who knows exactly who they are is absolute cruelty. Hannibal Lecter’s lack of compassion makes sense—he’s a cannibal serial killer!—but his outdated diagnosis is giving audiences a pass to make their own judgments on who is a “real” trans person, and who is worthy of sympathy. This doesn’t lend to the character profiling that the film proudly centers itself around. It makes this a cautionary tale that gets ignored, because we aren’t supposed to care. The “why” of Buffalo Bill isn’t as important as the “what.” They aren’t a person. They are a monster that needs to be hunted down because they weren’t helped sooner. Clarice wins. Lecter wins. The audience wins. Trans people lose.
427 Comments
Fantastic write up. Looking at the film now… yeah its hard to miss the very clear transphobia. Its not great. One thing to point out, Gumb is indeed based on a couple real serial killers. Mostly Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, and Ed Kemper. One important fact. None of them were trans. Ed Gein had a lot of sexual hangups, but that was mother related and not gender disphoria. Honestly far as I know, trans serial killers aren’t a thing. Stuff like this and Dressed to Kill has no real life basis, it’s just a cheap cliche.
And, while I probably shouldn’t bring JK Rowling into it, she trades in the same cliche in her new book–and acts like it’s a clever twist, to boot.
The Strike book? Oh yeah its positively ancient.
Yes, Bad or Troubled Blood I think it’s called? Something pretty generic. Full disclosure, I haven’t read it and have no plans to (Hell, I somehow never even read any Harry Potter—though in that case it was more because they became a thing just when I was at an inbetween teenage stage where I wouldn’t be caught dead with a book like that). But, Natalie Wynn on her terrific ContraPoints vlogs did read it and goes through the awfulness in some detail her excellent, most recent video (which actually at some length details her relationship with films about this, including Silence of the Lambs which she admits to still loving).
Natalie is brilliant. Love her videos.
Only recently discovered her, but am in full agreement.
Thanks for this- I have been watching a few different video essay sources lately and couldn’t remember who made that point.I’ve heard the “Silence does a bad job of rationalizing Buffalo Bill’s identity” for years now, but Natalie Wynn does a great job at outlining how much further the film goes with it’s dated rhetoric. The framing of Hannibal Lector in his childlike sophistication against Buffalo Bill’s social “decay” shows just how the conservative reframing has existed for a long time.
“The framing of Hannibal Lector in his childlike sophistication against
Buffalo Bill’s social “decay” shows just how the conservative reframing
has existed for a long time.”
Yes! I loved this point.
I think it’s incredibly important in viewing the film nowadays- with just the poor rationalisation of Gumb’s psychological profile, Silence looks like it’s trying to be forward thinking, and could be excused for being a dinosaur with its trans representation; the fact that it actually fits the consistent framing the film makes of class and how it ties to culture, it definitely feels intentional in its damnation of Gumb’s background, as if it’s a salve for the audience it’s intended for (I picture the audience more as the Armitage’s from Get Out).
Random tangent, but that still is pretty common. Several places, including AVClub, mentioned how in the new TV version of The Stand they reconcieve “New Vegas”, the center of evil at that part of the story essentially, as a place where everyone thrives on either huge orgies or death battles, or both. And the sex parties are largely filled with stereotypical queer sexual activity—the only place in the entire series that’s remotely gay, including the fact that they repeatedly cross cut this with the hetero-normative heroes in their make shift but traditional family.
Haha, I think that’s pretty fitting for Stephen King- I love his works but he’s really lacking in capturing a lot of minority or feminine perspectives. The Stand was the first novel I read as a tween, and has a special place in my heart, but damn if it’s religious connotations aren’t just the most white bread, Midwest evangelical bs.
I like King a lot too—as a person and writer (though, aside from most of his short fiction, I’ve mostly only read his “greatest hits”—as a tween/young teen I made a point of reading his first major novels up to, I think, It as well as some later ones if, say, a friend staying with me left their copy 😛 ). And at least he seems to try and mean well (Hell, he was the first straight public figure I saw write a piece deriding the Oscars for giving Crash best movie lol). Though even now he’s in some ways kinda endearingly clueless about it all…
Oh jeez, so now she’s so offended by people calling out her transphobia that she’s doubling down in her writing? FFS.
Yeah, if it wasn’t so offensive and sad it would be truly hilarious. I mean I know books are written a while before they’re published (and this is a big book) but surely there’s no coincidence here…
I thought Gein did have some dysphoria, even if it was also mother related.
Its really complicated, but to me it was more a deeply unsettled mother obsession. I could be wrong, I might check my books. But the two women he was confirmed to have killed weren’t killed to turn himself into a woman.
Gein robbed a bunch of graves to build himself a woman suit that he could wear around the house and pretend to be an old woman, probably specifically his mother. Guy wanted to literally be inside the skin of a woman, so there’s probably some dysphoria there. But if the exclusive requirement for being transgender is how the person sees themself, do people like Ed Gein and Buffalo Bill, who obviously have so much serious pathology going on, really get to be masters of their own reality? Once you start sewing human skin into a suit to wear around for sexual/emotional fulfillment, it’s hard to take your self-psychology at face value.
Part of the issue is the phrase “people like Ed Gein and Buffalo Bill” – one of those guys is a fictional character, and not a particularly well-written one.
“Stuff like this and Dressed to Kill has no real life basis, it’s just a cheap cliche.”
Jame Gumb wasn’t trans.
I can think of at least 2 or 3 trans or GNC serial killers, but that definitely isn’t a large percentage based on the number of cis men that make up the group. Hard to say for sure though.
While I would never argue that an absurd Grand Guignol character like Buffalo Bill was the representative of anything real, I don’t think it’s improbable that somewhere in the world there has been a psychotic murderer who was motivated at least in part by gender dysphoria. (The potential example I thought of was Hadden Clark, a schizophrenic multiple murderer I remember from my childhood in the early 1990s; he claimed, at least, that he killed women because he thought drinking their blood would turn him into a woman.) If part of the transphobia of Silence of the Lambs is the facile stereotyping of “Transsexuals are very passive,” surely the diversity of the trans experience would allow for there to be killers motivated by being trans just as there are killers motivated by being gay, straight, or what have you.I bring this up not to dismiss people’s objections to Buffalo Bill as a character, which I absolutely understand. But it reminds me of the way progressive causes I support sometimes set up overly broad failure conditions, which always makes me nervous. At some point somewhere, there’s going to be an edge case that makes your righteous cause look bad—a trans-identifying person who assaults someone in a women’s restroom, a person released from prison due to criminal justice reform who goes on to kill someone, a DREAMer who robs a bank, etc.—and the progressive tendency to insist that such bad outcomes will never, ever happen only ensures that these causes will take a greater hit when the universe rolls snake eyes and they do. Better to concede up front that even the most righteous cause will sometimes have unintended consequences, but that’s not a reason not to pursue them.
Ive never heard of Hadden Clark, I’m looking him up. This all vaguely reminds me of how lesbians were treated in the 1940s. I did a lot of research into the Black Dahlia murder and let’s just say the attitude at the time was that lesbians really wanted to murder men or women they were jealous of. Common theme, kinda disgusting.
Ironically, Silence of the Lambs gets into trouble because it’s so well-made that the absurd trashiness gets overlooked. It’s about a cannibal helping the FBI profile a serial killer who kills women to make a woman-suit. Every part of that premise is too ridiculous to have any grounding in reality – as he appears in the film, Buffalo Bill is a collection of tics and weird enunciations, like a giallo villain. But the movie has indelible performances and a solid screenplay, which includes smart-sounding dialog between smart-looking characters about the psychology and profiling and the nature of “transsexuals.” Whatever the audience might think about Buffalo Bill, the idea that he’s “transsexual… but not really” is a topic the movie intentionally broaches, tries to grapple with, and then ostensibly leaves behind. The movie is completely detached from the reality, so tying Buffalo Bill’s behavior to anything in real life is totally unnecessary. But those stabs at psychological “realism” are exactly the reason a piece of fun, overheated pulp managed to sweep the Oscars. Unfortunately the movie backs into a really effective rhetorical strategy called “apophasis” (the “I’m not saying, I’m just saying…” strategy), where you raise an idea and then refute it, knowing that the idea will linger in the audience’s mind longer than the refutation.
I think it also gets a lot of praise for its strong heroine and Jodie Foster’s performance.I think in reality the film is grappling with the trans identity and intending to do it in the most progressive way you would see in a blockbuster from the 90s. It does it absolutely poorly in retrospect, and the whole movie clings to the topic in a voyeuristic “I’ll keep romanticizing my monsters conservatively”, with a cannibal protagonist that we empathize with because he’s proper, and ostracizing the serial killer that engages in violence in the name of foul counterculture.
I really believe some comments live in a parallel world. No, it doesn’t. It is a stylish exploitative movie, as explained. Extremely well done, but an exploit sleazy movie that is not far away from “Streets of Rage” or “Angel”
While you’re correct, that has little to do with what I was saying.
Yeah, replied the wrong person. But I take this opportunity to wish you a very good day.
No harm! Back at you too.
Oh God, I love Angel. “High school honor student by day. Hollywood hooker by night. Her two worlds are about to collide!”
The cover! The cover may have had half of the movie budget.
I feel like both the book and the movie do enough to make it clear that Jame Gumb only believes he’s trans and wouldn’t have met the psychological criteria for gender reassignment. That’s why he kills women and uses their skin to make a “woman suit” he could wear to meet that need. There is a bit of nuance there but the context tends to get removed when people are debating this – they just bring up the most sensational scenes from the movie to analyze on their own.At any rate, Jonathan Demme was a filmmaker who definitely had his finger on the pulse of what you might call “the alternative” way before other mainstream directors did. Be it the choice of music in his films, or just the variety of people who populate his scenes. I trust that he approached Silence of the Lambs with much of the same consideration for the humanity of the characters.
As the writer says, it is a damn shame that a film as well made as Silence has a giant elephant in the room that only gets more unpleasant every passing year. I’m always wondering if Thomas Harris was maybe just misinformed when he made the character. He did give us the wonderful Clarice Sterling, but then he also made her a mind controlled sexual lover of Hannibal as her bizarre ending. Not to mention Margot Verger being a relatively offensive lesbian depiction.
Harris is merely the most well known of a whole stable of crime/thriller writers of the era (that stretched back at least to the late 60’s and early 70’s and the first well known openly trans folks (Renee Richards, Wendy Carlos, et al, and even earlier than that) that used any alternate sexuality as a exotic ‘motivation’ for their respective boogeymen. The ‘queer killer’ trope goes back a long LONG ways in film and literature. Lawrence Sanders’ “The First Deadly Sin” in 1973 was hugely popular and influential and there’s a ‘shocking reveal’ of the killer’s homosexuality at one point, and the attitude is one of “Ah, so THAT explains it!” which probably seemed very normal at the time, just like the Commies were the bad guys in spy novels, just because that’s how it was done. In film, DePalma’s *Dressed to Kill* (1980) beat *Lambs* by more than a decade, and one could argue *Psycho* fits this category as well…Then there’s the camp horror classic ‘Sleepaway Camp’ which is a whole other… something.
Dressed to Kill (I admit it, it’s a film that due to its showy direction I love a lot about–I actually have more affection for it than Silence) briefly tries to have it both ways by showing an actual Donahue episode which was sympathetic towards trans people–the message being that this isn’t the same situation. But, really, that changes nothing with what the film still focuses on (including a ridiculous–obviously Psycho inspired–explanation by a shrink about how the killer hated women because they made them hard and reminded them that they had a penis or something). I can’t defend it.
Sleepaway Camp > SOTL
Fully agree. Also, I never thought of the killer in Sleepaway Camp as trans because that wasn’t by choice and just the whole backstory. I could be wrong in my take, just that I always thought of the killer as someone who was really disturbed due to their environment.
Ha!
Yeah, I thought about this a lot, and it seems like the common process of taboo subjects: from not talking about them a t all, they start appearing on films as shocking value, then as “well, it’s also human” to a mild condescension, to a tiny representation. Apply to your favourite minority.Sleepaway camp is surprisingly better at this I think.
First we’re the monsters, then we’re the comic relief, then, if we’re really lucky, we get to be boring.
And it’s continued more recently in Television with bisexuality, specifically. WaPo did a write up of it a few years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2016/11/17/tv-producers-stop-portraying-bisexuals-as-villains/
Slightly off-topic: I’ll give you a Buffalo nickel if you can sort out Angela’s family tree for me.
Ian Fleming also had an offensive, shocking I know, portrayal of lesbians in 1958’s “Goldfinger” as Pussy Galore was 1) a lesbian by “choice” because she was a misandrist after getting raped by her uncle 2) Galore was an evil seductress of one of Bond’s female allies who extorted sexual favors from the latter in order to protect her from Goldfinger 3) Bond was able to “convert” her to being straight just by giving her that dick. And this was viewed as the positive moral choice for her character, resulting in a betrayal of her previous evil/selfish vices that were associated with lesbianism (and stemming from Fleming’s views on the supposed link between women’s suffrage, hating men, and being a lesbian).
There was also a lot of racist stuff against Koreans. So, when they turned it into a film, while they did keep a lot of the inherent sexism (that is present in the majority of Bond films, definitely all the Connery ones) at least they cut out a lot of the anti-Asian/anti-lesbian sentiment. Something “SoTL” should have thought of when adapting the book into a film.
Silence of the Lambs the book has a whole chapter (that kind of reads like a disclaimer) that’s a long conversation between an FBI agent trying to get files on trans patients to track down Buffallo Bill and a doctor where the doctor gives a speech how trans people aren’t normally violent and Gumb shouldn’t be considered representative. As for the stuff in the Hannibal novel… yeah I don’t think he means much of anything in that one sincerely, most view it as this gross troll job he made in response to Lecture’s newfound pop culture status and that he made it basically as a self sabotage of the franchise.
With all due respect to Thomas Harris as a writer (he very much is one of my favorites), he always had problems with that very aspect: see long and tiring subplot about Margot Verger in Hannibal which has some misguided ideas on how people acquire certain sexual orientation through trauma. In his defense: while he uses themes in a misguided way they are never central to overall very researched plots which have PTSD and other mental health issues at its core emphasizing that, indeed, people like that are made by the system that is than genuinely puzzled where it went wrong (while it’s easier to say where it was right because instances are few and far between).Fortunately, Harris seems to be very much supporting of those mistakes being corrected in adaptations, as Verger’s backstory was altered with more understanding in the Hannibal TV series. I’m not sure what could they do in Clarice, though, because it is a direct sequel to Silence movie adaptation or at least that’s how they market it right now.
Margot was one of my favorite characters in the “Hannibal” TV series, both in her much more positive portrayal and exploration of her psyche and also cause I’m a fan of the actress they cast to be her (as well as the first guy they got to be her brother). Though that whole series of scenes where Graham and Margot keep saying “parts” with a super intense inflection, that one could have been changed, I thought it was cringy.
I think Harris’s novels glorify evil. I don’t know if this is Harris’s doing or incidental. They’re not to my taste—any longer, at least; I’ve read the all of the novels that include Lecter—and I lean toward the argument that this glorification makes them bad novels.
I have a very close trans friend and pretty soon after her coming out we were having a random conversation where she mentioned that she didn’t like movies like Lambs and Psycho — not even that they weren’t good movies, just that she finds a problem with their equation of psychopathy with gender non-conforming characters. And I reacted like of quickly back when she said that, trying to explain that those movies aren’t “really” transphobic for all these reasons and blah blah blah…And now all these years later I’m pretty embarrassed at that reaction because I know it’s like, “Hey, idiot — this isn’t your conversation. Just because you dig up reasons to not think something’s damaging doesn’t mean your argument is right. So just shut up and listen to someone else’s experience.”But thank god I never showed her Dressed to Kill either 😳
Silence at least is a classyish film with good writing, acting and technical aspects. Dressed to Kill is literally none of that and incredibly sleazy.
Do you even realise how hard I want to clap back on this but can’t since it’d betray the literal point of my original post — amazing shitpost scheme my man 😑
You got me…. seriously though I hate Dressed to Kill on so many levels. How it handles trans people is just the shit cherry.
For me I just get sucked into the pure cinema for cinema’s sake of DePalma with those erotic thrillers he made—Dressed to Kill being the quintessential one. That gallery cruising scene is just brilliant film making. But I’m not gonna even try to defend other aspects of the film…
(Random odd sorta related fact. At one point DePalma was attached to make a movie of Cruising and he has said that he worked out the gallery scene already as the centerpiece of Cruising—of course it would be between two guys… I’m sure I’d at least like the movie more than Friedkin’s version—though to be fair his odd take has not much of a connection to the novel which I found and read as a teen and has no S&M/leather scene connection, etc… But I digress)
Cruising is… well where to begin? From the fact its inspired by a real serial killer who was briefly in the Exorcist? The way it so fumbles sensitive topics? Lord what a film.
Oh I’ve been fascinated by Cruising ever since it aired as part of a gay film fest on a Canadian specialty channel when I was 14 in the mid 90s! There’s just so much to discuss about the film (in relation, the film itself is pretty disappointing aside from the view it gives to some genuine sleazier night clubs of the time and genuine WTF moments like the big black guy in the jockstrap the cops keep on hand—something that is 100% Friedkin as it’s not in any of the source novels). Even its basis is complex (I believe it was Friedkin who also incorporated elements from that real life killer).
Gerald Walker’s novel is a pretty run of the mill paperback thriller, aside from the gay angle. The killer narrates a lot of it and is a cliche closet case—he is a show tune queen, who is obsessed with the movie Laura and his mother. The book was optioned quickly and in turn around with a few directors, not just DePalma (cuz of course Hollywood, not known for gay movies of any sort, would love a gay killer movie).
However gay novelist and historian Felice Picano has repeatedly pointed out an interesting fact. At the time he was mostly known for writing best selling thrillers and the studio that owned Cruising bought his straight (but rather “queer” anyway) thriller Eyes, about a woman who leads a double life and becomes obsessed with a poor straight stud (it’s a fun, read—very trashy but it knows it’s trash with the cover showing a beefcake image of a shirtless 70s hunk through a window). With that they also got the rights to Picano’s The Lure, which was a surprising best seller and his first gay thriller—and is batshit insane, involving a straight cop who is hired to track down a gay serial killer who is working in the S&M scene and the straight cop, through the experience, essentially becomes gay (or realizes he was gay) all the time. It also has almost sci fi elements of mind control, extremely lurid descriptions of insane S&M sex, crazy twists, etc. It’s of its time but I also found it a fun read (unlike some more literary gay novels of the time like Larry Kramer’s ugly and mean spirited “satire”, Faggotts).
Picano has always maintained that the studio adapted Cruising in the end much more from the broad outlines of his The Lure, but simply didn’t want to give him any money (and he claims after seeing Cruising he wouldn’t want any anyway). Picano, who is sometimes brilliant and moved on to gay “literature” in the 80s, does ten to love to exaggerate to build up his own legend, but what he says rings true here, having read both books. And a straight adaptation of The Lure would have been a completely over the top film, but certainly a lot more fun than the mess of Cruising (even Friedkin has said he has no idea if Pacino is meant to be the killer or not). Controversial Canadian gay playwright Brad Fraser has told me that his dream would be to make a movie of The Lure…
And sorry that was a complete tangent with nothing to do about trans images in films, or The Silence of the Lambs, although I do think Cruising is another case where the filmmakers and studios all went on about how it wasn’t about gay people (just like Lambs isn’t about trans people) but about one small group, maybe, of gay people. Which you can say all you want, but when that’s the only representation of those groups you are seeing in any mainstream release–that’s when you have a problem.
Wow I didn’t know nearly as much as you did. I’m glad you told me.
Ha I edited a lot out of that 😉 But it’s definitely a fascinating making of story—and a lot of it isn’t even covered in the pretty good feature on the recent bluray. It’s further complicated by the fact that you can never really depend on anything Friedkin says in an interview being true. I’m not sure if he does it on purpose or just doesn’t remember but every interview with him on the film (and some others) contradicts things he said in other interviews.
I would say he is a serial liar, he has always done this since even the Exorcist.
It is totally irrelevant to a good point, but neither Psycho nor Silence of the Lambs really depict a psychopath (and whether this term is even adequate is another discussion). Norman Bates arguably has dissociative disorder with schizoid elements, while Jame Gumb is… Well, the way I see it (and I am, by no means a specialist) is a mixture of PTSD, borderline personality disorder and acquired sociopathic tendencies. That said… Yes, I can totally agree we can’t quite imagine what trans people experienced witnessing those portrayals, which easily could be deemed demonizing. And also I should note that Harris usually spends enough time with antagonist to draw one as a multidimensional character, something that is not always translated well enough when the work is distilled for adaptation. Hannibal TV series, Manhunter and The Red Dragon arguably do a much better job in this type of situation, although none of them adapts these specific plot points to compare.
I understand the Lambs criticism, but how on earth is Norman Bates a “gender non-conforming” character? The movie literally has a scene that (much to the detriment of the film IMO) explains everything in detail.
The point is not in Norman Bates as a character himself but in the historiographic landscape of the movie itself in erecting a clear gender binary and signalling that any crossing or blurring of that binary is a mark of psychopathy or evil — which is what Lambs does as well. Psycho coming out and saying “Norman Bates is not a transvestite” is immaterial, since the point of his cross dressing is shock value for a audience culturally disposed to being shocked by the idea of that image. So what I’m saying is if you’re a trans viewer and the majority of what you see in your approach to gender on screen is identified almost solely with psychopaths, killers, and villains, you’d have a hard time seeing beyond what is utterly devaluing to yourself; especially since the praising of these movies is to completely ignore that factor. And I fully understand that.
He’s not, he’s a cross-dresser. But most portrayals of cross-dressing, even for explicitly straight and cis characters, tend to use tropes most commonly used to demonize queer people.And given what we know about Hitchcock now, that doesn’t help things in the slightest.
Wish some of the commenters here would learn this lesson
Psycho for one actually goes to the trouble of bringing in a psychiatrist in the final scene to lay out the whole story in quite redundant detail which makes clear Norman’s actions should NOT be prescribed to any kind of gender dysphoria, and his wearing his mother’s clothes was all just about wanting to be her in particular, rather than a woman.
Your friend gives an opinion on a movie and you’re required to listen and not respond? A friend is someone with whom you argue about movies.
This is exactly my point — a “friendly movie argument” is not overpowering someone’s personal opinion, and definitely not trying to invalidate their obviously more personal viewpoint, since in this case the point of discussion is much, much larger than just movies
No one is being “overpowered” or “invalidated.” You’re allowed to have your own opinion about a movie.
You know it’s entirely possible that they are both trans and wrong.
Thank you for jumping in and making clear that the personal, subjective opinion of someone you don’t know is objectively wrong. Good take, very helpful to the discourse 👌
I said they could be, dummy.
Here’s a question for you buddy… Why is your comment at the top with 34 up votes when someone else has 100 is buried under it? Hmmm???
Literally the amount of replies to this post inadvertently backing up my point by reacting exactly as I did all those years ago — guys finding it absolutely unconscionable that they should have to consider a movie from a dimension they’ve never personally experiencedDudes, the point is not that you must stop liking SOTL because everything is too woke now. I still like SOTL, and a lot of other problematic movies too. The point is: listen to trans people because you might learn something
‘Dressed to Kill’ and ‘The Transexual Empire’ came out at pretty much the same time. It was a dark time.
Norman Bates was only ever portrayed as extremely sympathetic, both to the viewer and the characters in the movie, even after he’s killed people. I think it’s abundantly clear that Norma is/was such a domineering, larger than life, narcissistic personality (and whatever else) that even after death her consciousness essentially goes on to devour her son’s, who she even named after herself, and the entire story has nothing to do with gender identity. While Silence of the Lambs might be confusing to audiences who know little about the subject despite the explicit conversation about Buffalo Bill not being trans, Psycho is from front to back a story about a fragile man and the relationship he had with his unbelievably toxic mother. Even Norman is so clearly sexually inexperienced that he reads more as a boy than a man. It’s so hyper specific on that one relationship, to the point where people are killed for threatening the incredibly narrow scope of who and what Norman knows, and to the exclusion of all else that I honestly don’t think your friends criticism of the movie really takes the content into consideration. It would be like arguing that a number of movies, including the Exorcist, are bad and problematic for the ways they present a man trapped in a woman’s body. The other movies might be valid, but in the case of the Exorcist, the entire fabric of the film revolves around the premise that it’s the actual Devil (or Pazuzu for all you Exorcist 2 fans out there). To discount that as though it’s a minor detail rather than the entire story is just bad analysis
I love The Silence of the Lambs, but I can’t really deny that the way it deals with Jame Gumb is clumsy and outdated.The best reading I can give is that this is a film about the way our demons and trauma overtake us. Jame Gumb is failed by a society that doesn’t want to understand them, and is punished for it—albeit more for the kidnapping and murdering, but still. Clarice Starling will always be looked down on for being a woman, she’ll always be haunted by her father’s death, and she’ll always be looking for people to put away to make things right. They’re both victims of a world that is indifferent to their pain. One is killed for it, and the other suffers the rest of their life. But even looking at things from that angle isn’t particularly satisfying. I do think the Blank Check episode of The Silence of the Lambs with Emily VanDerWerff touches on this topic and makes some good points, as well.
I think one of the really insightful things about this article is how it points out the contradiction at the heart of the movie. It isn’t “about” the character’s gender identity or sexuality, yet it harps relentlessly on those things.
*sighs* What a dumb article. Buffalo Bill isn’t any kind of trans, in fact I’d be surprised if he had a sexuality or gender identity at all, as those terms conventionally are defined. He is a psychotic killer who happened to find a narrative. If he were religious he’d have picked a religious narrative. If he’d played Dungeons and Dragons as a child he’d pick some kind of fantasy narrative and have an Inquisition-style dungeon in his basement instead of what he had.
Even if Lecter and Starling hadn’t had that conversation, the actor’s performance tells you all you should want to know.I really loathe the trend of attempting to read modern political morality into older movies. Not every movie is “Gone With the Wind” which tells you flat out, at the beginning, “this is a movie about its politics and it will hold nothing for you if you don’t agree with its politics.”I can’t wait until you people discover “The Maltese Falcon” and realize that its central character is psychotically homophobic even by the standards of the day! (When a gay dude waves a gun in his face and he retaliates with a vicious beating, and you can still tell that the beating wasn’t because of the gun, you have a homophobic character.)
You are speaking to Millennials – the most self-righteous generation since the original Puritans. There is no pleasing them. If they actually attain old age they will be the most insufferable seniors yet.
I think that’s bit rough. It’s an opinion piece by someone who’s life was directly and negatively affected by this film.
But was it? I mean, who really even thinks about this movie since 1992—much less regard it as an influence to someone’s feelings about trans people? I have never heard anyone cite “Silence of the Lambs” as being influential in how they perceive trans people. Or cannibals, for that matter.
I have a feeling that the writer might have been the person who kept bringing the subject up in conversation, far past the point when anyone cared about or remembered much about the movie. I, for one, didn’t even remember who “Jame Gumb” was when I saw the headline and I can’t even imagine the character coming up in a casual conversation (in 2021, or before even). There comes a point where a person should just move on and stop obsessing over perceived slights that are really meant to be slights. I mean, she won’t even give him credit for Philadelphia, FFS? That’s pretty strident.
BTW, that should have read “percieved slights that aren’t really meant to be slights.”
Gee, I wonder why someone whose life was made hell in association with this film might remember things differently than someone who only cares (if at all) as a casual observer? You’re arguing that the author here can’t rationally interpret their own life experiences as well as you can, or worse, that they “must” be straight up lying about them, all because you personally never heard or saw someone make a tucking joke based on this film before? That is FUCKED UP, bro. You even say “I, for one”, as if you at least pretend to realize that your experience isn’t universal, but then go on to pretend yours is the default POV we have to accept over the author’s, because apparently everything that is different than your own ADMITTEDLY DIFFERENT life experiences is necessarily false. What a shitty attitude.
“I mean, who really even thinks about this movie since 1992″? Well, A, you’re on a website devoted to discussing media and its history, so, clearly more than just trans people. But also, DOUBLY clearly, trans people. As the article says. If you cared to listen. And you are of course declaring, loudly, that you do not. Which, fine. But how can you possibly think this means we’re supposed to respect your opinion on what you’re saying on the subject of trans people and their lived experiences over an actual trans person? One who actually sourced and historically tracked the origins of their opinions and life experiences in this article, while we’re just supposed to take you at your clearly contemptuous word?
…Why?
Anyone who bullied or harassed this writer was already a bigot and an asshole—this movie didn’t persuade them to act that way or to hold hateful viewpoints.
No one deserves to be harassed or bullied because of who they are. Yet there are many transphobic, homophobic, racist, misogynist assholes in the world and they didn’t become that way based on a movie (you can blame religion for that). It seemed to me that to focus on a single character in a single movie as being the source of such enduring pain comes across as a bit obsessive.
I just wasn’t as moved by this particular piece as so many of you seem to have been. It doesn’t mean that I dislike the person who wrote this piece, or that I’m happy that they experienced pain. Doesn’t mean I hate trans people or that I want anyone to be bullied or intimidated. The piece just didn’t sound reasonable—TO ME. It’s a difference of opinion about this post, not about an entire community. So you can put your pitchforks back in the barn.
Also, many people have found it necessary to point out that this is a online discussion group about an old movie as a way to be dismissive (and derisive) about my comment people don’t really think or talk about this movie too often. Yeah, no shit—I was speaking more broadly about people in general. I didn’t think it necessary to explain that in detail, but my mistake. I’ll remember that I need to spell it out to avoid confusion going forward.
Just for the record, I’m pretty sure you won’t risk coming upon a cannibal in your life and having to concern yourself what your prejudice towards them based on fictional depictions, might be. So you can cross that off your list of concerns.
I really, really, don’t see how the author of this piece would even fit discussing Silence of the Lambs constantly into conversations as you suggest she must surely do. She is not writing in a vacuum—there has been a ton of writing about this subject in various books, blogs, journals, etc, over the past 25+ years. And the film is hardly forgotten—I still see stand up comics and hear random people quote or allude to “It puts the lotion on it’s skin, or else it gets the hose again.” If you never hear any reference to the film than… Good? Or too bad, depending on how much you like the film. But if you think this writer is making things up to make her own experience sound less unique and more common, why is your own personal experience of people never ever discussing or thinking about the movie, the one that is “right”?
It was a book I enjoyed a lot and was one of my favorite movies. For an extremely long time I defended it by saying that the “point” was that Gumb was not *actually* transgender. I also recall a point in my life where I heard trans women talk about how horrifically damaging a movie like Ace Ventura was for them, and I – stupidly – found that bizarre. Like, “it’s a comedy! come on!” (for the record: I completely rescind that one, as the last time I watched I realized just how completely fucking awful it must be to be a trans woman and THOSE are the jokes you got in the 90s. Good god).
But in a world with very little GOOD representation of transgender people, this stuff matters. And for a lot of people my age (upper edge of millennials – I think I JUST BARELY count as one, given how old I am?) it’s still a bit of a touchstone for them and accounted for a ton of transphobic jokes.
I guess I pick up on it even more myself now that I’m out as nonbinary/trans. A friend once mentioned that anytime she’s watching an older comedy of nearly any sort, she has to brace herself for the trans joke. There’s almost always one – dude in a dress, a woman with a “masculine” voice, a Crying Game reference… It’s inescapable. So again, even if you argue that that’s NOT what Silence of the Lambs was meant to be I’d still argue that Harris didn’t write the character well and that the film has caused wrinkles for the trans community. It’s complicated!
It would have been nice if Ace, who we know is a cool guy and a goddamn sex machine, had figured it out and then just sort of been “hell yeah” and high-fived himself or something.They could have even kept the Crying Game reference if they’d used the music and then shown him in the shower jacking it with a huge grin on his face.Maybe not.
you may be aware that silence of the lambs features the character hannibal lecter, one of the most famous film villains in history, who had a well-regarded spinoff show within the last 10 years, and another spinoff show being released as i type this. i assure you, people have thought about sotl since 1992.also, this is a film website, you utter dipshit, of course talking about a famous movie on its 30th anniversary would be topical, do you go on architecture blogs and complain when a handicapped person says she had negative experiences with spiral staircases?
As someone who has had “Buffalo Bill” tossed at them multiple times, let me assure you that you are wrong.
“who really even thinks about this movie since 1992″Are we both talking about The Silence of the Lambs with Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins? Or is there some other movie of the same name which is not totally famous and quoted all the damn time?You don’t remember it and therefore the author is lying?You are one lotion short of a basket my friend.
To answer your question, it gets brought up a ton- it’s one of the most recognized roles for both Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, it’s had two different adaptations in recent years, and it’s a significant moment in trans representation in film. It’s often critiqued for good reason.
When trans people are represented very rarely in media (which until recently they were), and those representations are regularly “mentally ill killers,” you don’t think that can have an unconscious effect on how trans people are viewed?
Perhaps so. Frankly I expected my post to be ignored, instead it may well be the most-read thing I’ve ever written anywhere. Not sure how I feel about that.
I feel ya. I always dread that little notifications thing.
That is a fair and succinct point.
generational warfare is dumb as fuck.
“generational warfare is dumb as fuck.”If you’re a Boomer, it sure is. You’ve got more to lose than to gain.The rest of us? Depends how badly we’ve been screwed over.
nah, even punching at boomers misses the forest for the trees. the attitudes you describe are accurate, but it misses the economic and racial elements at play.what you really mean to say, is that middle aged economically advantaged white men and women tend to be reactionary and selfish. the black and brown people of their cohort tended to die earlier or lack the money and power to make changes.
“nah, even punching at boomers misses the forest for the trees.”Which forest would that be? The one where Boomers have all the money and jobs?“what you really mean to say, is that middle aged economically advantaged white men and women tend to be reactionary and selfish”No, I can say that in addition to my earlier point. Doesn’t have to be either/or.
being mad at people born from Y to X date, lacks any nuance. there are plenty of kind, caring, good boomers. there is no intrinsic personality trait bestowed based on when you were born, to think otherwise is less accurate astrology.yes, they have the jobs and money, because the wealthy took and squandered them years ago. this has nothing to do with birthdate.
“there are plenty of kind, caring, good boomers”I’m sure there are. But as a generation, they suck. The numbers don’t lie.“there is no intrinsic personality trai”You’re determined to keep missing the point, aintcha? I’m not talking about their reverence for Eric Clapton, I’m talking about the fact that economically, they got given everything. And once they had that, they happily turned around and made sure no one following them would get the same chances they did.“because the wealthy took and squandered them years ago”They sure did!
yes. that is true, but it is due to how wealth is accumulated, and how our government has been controlled by the wealth aristocracy. again, it has nothing to do with someone’s birthdate, though. Jeff Bezos is, depending on who you ask, either Gen X or a boomer. How do you quantify how “bad” he is when working off stereotyped conceptions of generations? Is he a selfish boomer or a disaffected Gen X? (answer: doesn’t matter, because the real issue here is wealth)
“but it is due to how wealth is accumulated”Which, as we all know, is a completely natural process, and not at all affected by an entire generation falling hard for the tenets of trickle down economics.Oh well, guess there’s nothing we can do! Gruel for everyone!
not at all affected by an entire generation falling hard for the tenets of trickle down economics. this is classic survivorship bias. a select group of people in this arbitrarily selected length of time profited from and gained power from the above, therefore they are the people you notice. those who didn’t gain power, or who didn’t survive this time period due to their inequity, are not included as part of what you consider to be “boomer”.as a side-bar: generation naming originally derives from a consultant who profits off of seminars based on this theory so you are buying into a literal advertising scheme (backed by uh…Steve Bannon…). something to consider.
psssttt…..“Plastics”
Captain, I think you missed a lot here and are placing blame in the wrong buckets.First, Boomers have more wealth because America used to believe that growing the middle class was important. People didn’t generally live paycheck to paycheck. Credit Cards and Universities hadn’t figured out how to fleece the ordinary citizen just yet. Businesses believed in taking care of their employees (e.g. pensions, retirement matching, etc.) but through the 80s and 90s the government has de-regulated businesses as they have focused on their bottom line, profits and shareholders returns, seeing their workforces as disposable and therefore eliminating benefits as much as they can. In addition, during the past few economic crises (the 2007/2008 housing crisis in particular) the middle classes’ retirement benefits were decimated in the crash and then ordinary Americans had to pay so that the banks could give bonuses to their CEOs, while (not to get political here) but Obama and the Fed essentially let them off the hook. The result has been that middle class wealth has been shrinking significantly, not because of Boomers vs Xs/Ys or Boomers preventing it but because government and business (throw in the ultra rich) have been ringing every last penny they can from us.
Hey, Gen-X’er here! SUCK IT MILLENNIALS WE’RE BEATING YOU!!
Nah, see, there’s no such thing as scientific data tied to boomers, because once you use the word “boomers” you’re just…done, I guess. Because that’s how logic works. And math. And sociopolitical trends measured against age demographics.Fuck this dude for wasting my time.
Nah. They were offered a ladder, climbed up it, then turned around and set that fucker on fire. Some just have the sense to solemnly shake their heads about it.Also, conservative boomers are some of the most deranged, unhinged motherfuckers on the planet.
Who is “they”? Do you really believe that the impoverished boomer who has been on public assistance most of their life is responsible? How about the person of color who didn’t go to school because of institutional racism and structural inequality?Or, are you referring to the middle class white folk who were privileged by class and race?If so, your problem isn’t with boomers. It’s with middle class privilege and race inequality.
Or, are you referring to the middle class white folk who were privileged by class and race?If so, your problem isn’t with boomers. It’s with middle class privilege and race inequality.Okay. They were still offered a ladder, still climbed up it, then still turned around and set that fucker on fire. And – and this is important – the rise of middle class privilege and financial/sociopolitical race inequality are intertwined with the rise of the boomer generation. They ushered in the civil rights era, sure, but they also ensured that said era didn’t get *too* carried away.I have enough space in my head to handle granular thinking *and* observe broader trends. Ain’t terribly difficult.
The “broader trend” is a pseudoscientific one promoted by a consultancy firm that they use to sell books and seminars. Birthdate is not destiny, and it is farcical to pretend otherwise. You are literally buying into a simplistic advertising scheme.
Drives me nuts to see left of center folk buying into such reactionary nonsense.
Drives me nuts to see left of center folk buying into such reactionary nonsense. Then you need to take a breath and understand what is actually being said here.You’re assuming that I see people in silos, and that’s the only way I see them. That would be incorrect. I took great care to try to show you exactly how I’m explicitly *not* doing that. If you’d still like to believe that, I can’t stop ya.You’re saying that people who pay any attention to generational trends or data are stupid, basically.And I’m saying that to pay absolutely ZERO attention to generational trends is absolutely fucking stupid. Ask any anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist, etc.Not sure why you’re so hellbent on dying on the “any and all generational data is useless” hill, but weirder things have happened. ::shrug::
Generational data? Sure. There is undoubtedly cultural trends and mores that are unique to cohorts within a generation. Vague prophecies based on overly broad stereotypes from a pseudoscience book? No, I doubt any academic sociologist would take this seriously, and would probably recognize it as an attempt to cash in on inter-generational fighting. I’m not kidding when I say that anyone who finds value in this theory is sharing a bed with Steven Bannon https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/20/stephen-bannon-fourth-turning-generation-theory-215053/Again, ask yourself what value this theory can possibly have when Jeff Bezos can be considered a disaffected Gen X.
Vague prophecies based on overly broad stereotypes from a pseudoscience book? No, I doubt any academic sociologist would take this seriously, and would probably recognize it as an attempt to cash in on inter-generational fighting. Good thing I was talking about an actual, measurable demographic group and the actual, measurable data taken from the behavior of said group, in aggregate, then.
I have no idea what “pseudoscience book” you’re talking about, so I can’t speak to that. Again, ask yourself what value this theory can possibly have when Jeff Bezos can be considered a disaffected Gen X. This is the logic you’re presenting me with here: if there’s an exception to the rule, then the rule has no value.
Bezos is a Gen Xer or whatever. Ayup. The rest of his story has little to do with that assignation, as you’re no longer looking at the whole group. You’re looking at one dude.A generation as a whole, though? Look at the Boomers. Voting trends, trackable contributions to the economy, trackable evolving attitudes toward sociopolitical events, etc. It seems like you’re having a fight with a dude who’s saying, like, “Boomers r stoopid cuz they r boomers lulz.” If so, cool, but I ain’t him.
The terms “silent generation”, “boomers”, “millenials”, “gen X” come from a series of books written by Republican staffers William Strauss and Neil Howe. They offer broad prophecies and stereotypes, based on an unverifiable psuedoscience theory, that people with a birthdate from X to Y date believe specific things, and that because of their indelible attributes, contribute to a 90 year prophecy cycle. They wrote this book, and built a consultancy agency to spread this theory, so they could make money off dumbass HR departments struggling with the age-old question of “what to do with the youths???”
Good thing I was talking about an actual, measurable demographic group and the actual, measurable data taken from the behavior of said group, in aggregate, then.
The thing is, you ain’t. There is no “measurable data” on “boomers” because “boomers” come from are a made-up, non-scientific theory from a couple quacks. Fundamentally, what we consider “boomers”, only exist in the minds of those two reactionaries. The date ranges are completely arbitrary, and as I have pointed out repeatedly, lack validity the instant the consider “boomers” who are not white and middle-class.I only ask that you think more critically, and consider what is being sold to you as “science”.
There is no “measurable data” on “boomers” because “boomers” come from are a made-up, non-scientific theory from a couple quacks. ::sigh:: Okay. This was an absolute waste of time.
Like…dude is actually saying that generational trends and data are useless and stupid to think about. Where the fuck would you even start there?
Every generation blames their predecessors.
Funnily enough, no. Millenials and younger aren’t blaming Gen X, they’re blaming Boomers. Those crusty old fucks are so amazing they managed to break the cycle!
It’s one of about 5 things they’re able to say to everything. May as well let them have it.
Yes, as opposed to Baby Boomers and Baby Boomers Jr. (Formerly Gen X). Or you can see that ageism is stupid bullshit meant to pit people against each other for the reason of the powerful staying powerful.
“Generation X” could give two shits about your generational slap fights. Leave us the fuck out of it.“Baby Boomers Jr.”.. suck a dick.
Then why call us Baby Boomers Jr.?
That’s not helpful at all. It’s always worth listening to the experience of marginalized people, even if you ultimately don’t agree with everything they say. Harmony is speaking to her (?) own experience and it’s definitely valid.
You know many Millennials are nearing their 40s right? Maybe you’re actually thinking of Gen Z
I dunno. I was a Generation X young person, and let me tell you, Millennials have nothing on us in terms of obnoxiousness. It all happens online now, though. That’s one thing that really has changed.
Greatest Gen hated Boomers in the 60s and 70s. Older generations will constantly be at odds with newer generations.
You’re an X-er right? White, male, probably in a hard science or tech job? Just not getting social change is innate in your character and that’s cool but townhall and Breitbart are that way, old codger.
Not a white male, not nearly old. I’m an academic. Go back to your video games, maybe you’ll have a revelation.
You realize I’m also not a white male, i’m a millennial, and I have a PhD and work in academia. What’s your supposed field, I’m sure this is going to be hilarious.
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but your post reads like a bunch of clicks and pops, young whippersnapper.
I don’t hate boomers, I just get tired of the awkward pretentiousness of gen X and boomers for refusing to accept their casual bigotry for what it is.
We grew up hearing and seeing actual jaw-dropping bigotry. We’re getting better and making relative progress. Newer generations are never satisfied with how the previous generation acts/thinks/feels.
Just to be clear: Boomers were between not yet born and 13 when the civil rights act passed, they were no older than 19 when the VRA passed. I’m really not here to attack boomers but this idea that ‘they’re just not with it’ is weird. If you’re a boomer you were a CHILD when you were legally explained to that this is bad and you SHOULD NOT DO IT.I’m fully aware of the research and how really millennials made this huge leap forward because civil rights education started in the 1980s and became widespread by the early-2000s so that us and the Gen Z kids had it instilled at the school level in case home was awful but it’s a hard sell to somehow tell me a whole generation of people who watched buses burn, dogs bite, and fire hoses turned on people continued to tell themselves, it’s all ok. You made an active choice in that fight and you chose poorly.
“…how really millennials made this huge leap forward…”Oh damn. If you actually believe this you need some help. Try not to hurt yourself.
You suck at trolling. See yourself out the door, trash. ^_^
Most of those Boomer children were raised by racists parents. As the children saw the buses burning, dogs biting, and fire hoses turned on people, mom and dad told them those people were trash and deserved it. That systemic racist upbringing is a hard thing to get past – Boomers in my life tried to pass it on to me when I was a kid. Progress takes time.
And yeah, this kind of systemic racism is still present today.
I don’t see how my pretentiousness can be perceived as awkward.
If it makes you feel better I find you being self-aware pleasant as Gen X has become these insufferable pricks that think because they’re nearing retirement and struggled until about 30 to land corporate jobs things that they really struggled.
Looking at that real estate chart and doing adjustments for per capita, it’s bad for Gen X but STUNNING awful for millennials.
I’m Gen X. I’m also about 25-30 years away from retirement. Older Xers may be nearinf retirement age, but not all of us (many Xers are in their early- to mid-40s).
Oh I know, you’re basically a millennial if you’re 40 (I go 1980 to 1996/2000, not 1984-1996 like the shortest estimates go by). So really late X/Early millennials took it the worst but most of Gen X were adults in 1990-1995, basically if they went to college they were in pretty decent positions by their early 30s as much of the research shows, they were sort of underemployed until about 30 when the bulk of the greatest and then the silent generation started retiring and really opened up the corporate ladder, most of our early tech giants are Gen X, Woz and Gates are the Boomer outliers compared to their just-after compatriots who make up the bulk of the workforce in Web 1.0 and even into early Web 2.0. Web 3.0/Social Web is where millennials dominate. I’m an early millennial and I have a PhD and got into a land grant but I’m the exception, almost all my friends who have masters are just barely breaking 50-60K now and I have friends from HS that haven’t broken 40K.
Boomers sold out. Millennials will also; in fact they have already started. Who is snapping up all of those suburban McMansions now that the parents are moving into assisted living? Like everything else, the Mills are hyper-hypocritical.
Back when you were young, did you think you’d spend this much time of your finite old age whining about young people?
Of course. It’s the cycle of life you young whippersnapper.
Look at that, it took literally one comment to find the jackass Boomer/X’er.And you wonder why Millennials don’t like you.
Thanks for your reply, and your seeming to agree with my argument, though I must say that I disagree with your portrayal of Millennials. Well, mostly disagree anyway! There are, shall we say, elements. But mostly I disagree.
S’okay.
a bloo bloo bloo bloo wah wah bloo bloo bloo this article made me angry a blood bloo bloo
we won’t actually get to become old because of worthless cunts like you. chug bleach and film it
Most Millennials are now reaching middle-age so that’s sooner than you think. But I hope the beaches of Normandy were pleasant for you.
As a millenial, silly pettiness like this pleases the shit out of me. Cringey generational stereotypes are hilarious.
Speaking of insufferable seniors…
The “if they attain old age” from the generation that is busting its ass to be sure that the world will be an uninhabitable hellscape by then is cute.
It is precious how you think that only applies to millennials.
ok boomer
“I really loathe the trend of attempting to read modern political morality into older movies.”For sure this is a bit redundant sometimes, but the author says there were protests at the Oscars. So I think some people, who it actually affected, knew that it wasn’t cool at the time.I had no idea it was even controversial so I found the article very interesting.
A protest was threatened and a small group of people turned up to protest at homosexual bashing in films. Transgender issues were never mentioned at the time.
Oh there definitely were protests, and a sense even back at the time that Demme did Philadelphia partly as a sort of apology to the LGBTQ community (which I don’t think is true, but the theory was out there). Maybe not as advertised as the picketing of Cruising ten years earlier, or around the same time Basic Instinct (or to a far smaller degree Dressed to Kill, though the concern back when it came out was more about violence against women with the trans aspects largely ignored).
Still, I think it’s pretty ignorant to act like this is only a new “woke culture” take. It isn’t (although I admit that in our current era it is something that a lot more people might notice in the film).
Also, sure it’s true that the movie specifically goes out of its way to say Buffalo Bill is probably not trans or gay (AS THIS ARTICLE MENTIONS), I seem to recall that a lot of people sure took it that way and made a lot of jokes about it at the time.
“I seem to recall that a lot of people sure took it that way and made a lot of jokes about it at the time.”
So it’s The Silence of the Lambs’ fault that people made jokes?
I mention this in another post, but there’s a well-established rhetorical strategy where you raise a point and refute it, knowing that the point will still persist in people’s mind. That’s basically what the movie does by introducing Buffalo Bill, a stock villain with minimal depth, then saying “By the way, this guy isn’t trans.”
(I hate that I can’t edit my posts—obviously I meant that despite the film saying otherwise, the majority of audiences at the time did see BB as gay and/or trans.)
And yes, very well said. Already some people have argued in this thread that if audiences don’t realize that the character isn’t meant to be gay or trans, then it’s their own fault for not being smart enough to properly watch the movie, or something. Which is BS in this case. (As I say somewhere else in one of my too long posts here, Cruising did the same thing with gay people—placing a disclaimer at the start saying this was not representing the gay community, etc, etc. Of course part of the problem isn’t just due to these films, but due to the fact that this was virtually the only mainstream depiction of trans and gay people getting released…)
I love the idea that the early 1990s are such a distant era that we can’t apply “modern” standards to movies from that era. The early 1990s.
I love the idea that someone thinks there haven’t been large, tidal changes in the THIRTY FUCKING YEARS since the movie came out.
Thirty. Fucking. Years. You think change doesn’t happen in THIRTY. FUCKING. YEARS?
I mean, it’s 30 years ago now.
It’s all perspective though, isn’t it? I was 21 in 1991, and though 30 years have passed, it does still seem like yesterday to me. Of course to a 21 year old of today, 1991 may as well be the stone age, same as 1961 would have been to me back then. And for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t argue that 1961 and 1991 were practically the same.
The difference is that a hell of lot of social change happened between 1961 and 1991. Probably the fastest period of social change in history. Some change occurred certainly, but much less, between 1991 and now.
I mean— we’re all a bunch of anonymous people from all over the world discussing a 30 year-old movie that we can instantly reference or watch if we wish on what essentially is a newspaper editorial.The information age and the disinformation age at the same time.
I was already online in 1991 — the Internet was already there, just not the Web. And Usenet (kind of like today’s Reddit, with lots of forums on various topics including movies) was there since the mid 1980s. Streaming video certainly is convenient, although video rental places were common starting in the mid 1980s as well. Before that, I’ll admit seeing older movies was difficult — you’d often have to stay up (or get up early) to watch movies when they were broadcast on TV at 3 am or some absurd time.
“I was on the BBS internet pre-1991, and can also confirm that VHS video stores existed by then” is a funny way to negate your point about how little has changed in the last 30 years, lol.
That was more to respond to the secondary idea that chatting online about movies and then going to watch them was something that would have been unthinkable in 1991. There certainly have been technological improvements over the last thirty years (although not as many as people may think). But socially, 2021 is far more like 1991 than 1991 was like 1961, which still had Jim Crow laws in the South, homosexual acts were illegal in most of the US, it was legal to not serve (or hire) Blacks, Jews, or women if you didn’t want to, and so on. Legalized gay marriage is pretty much the only major social advance in the US over the last thirty years.
While that’s a good point— speed and ease of access are still very, very different today than they were back then. We talk about the internet as something that should be regulated the same as a utility at this point, moderated by the government like water, waste, gas, etc. It’s so fundamentally integral to modern society that it’s discussed the same as a basic necessity, like food, water, or shelter. That concept would have been laughable 30 years ago.
Time is a flat circle.
Between 1961 and 1991, there was huge social change, yes, but the fruits of the civil rights movement could not be born until the internet and reality TV made it possible for the way queer, trans and POC to be mediated by themselves, for themselves, and to themselves.
Before 1991 I would challenge you to find examples of ANY pop culture queer / POC characters NOT emerging from the mind of a straight white dude, presented back to a presumed audience with straight white dude sensibilities.Put another way: if a trans person says that Buffalo Bill was the most impactful example of a trans person in pop culture when they were growing up, and not in a positive way, perhaps ponder how vast a change it is that now you are reading a trans person write that opinion on a pop culture blog, and are able to directly comment on it.I mean… I can see how you would think that nothing much has changed in the last 30 years, based upon an assumption I have made that you are a grey haired straight dude used to a lifetime of your unexamined opinions reflected back to you through the dominant culture, and therefore are slightly disabled when it comes to the finer points of perceiving actual reality.(…and now I sit back, looking out at the arrow of time, the vastness of all human knowledge and the entirety of the know universe through my laptop screen, bathing in the quantum glow of if/how/why you might respond, while closing this tab because I am listening to folks playing dungeons and dragons, using gender neutral pronouns as a default, and I am going to watch them do it because that’s my jam.)
Some change occurred certainly, but much less, between 1991 and now.I couldn’t disagree more. I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s and remember them well. One of my kids is on the spectrum and another is trans, and holy shit am I glad they weren’t born when I was. We haven’t made as much progress on issues of race as we did during the Civil Rights era, but when it comes to representation and treatment of other traditionally marginalized people, it’s just night and day. Also, the Internet.Also, the fall of the USSR and the rise of China.Also, September 11 and the rise of non-state actors in global politics.Also, the resurgence of populism and nationalism in the US and elsewhere.Also, this whole pandemic thing.
I gotta agree. I was 11 in 1991. Growing up as a teen who knew he was gay but hid it (I had a girlfriend, etc, and admit I was lucky that I never got teased the way many gay teens do), the change I’ve seen since then has been dynamic. It’s still far from ideal, and I don’t even think every single change has been for the good, but there has been a large culture shift from my perspective alone.
I can only imagine. I attended a high school of ~1600 people (granted, it was in NW Florida) and not a single person in my school (or any other in my town, to my knowledge) was out. And for good reason — the mere suspicion of gayness, founded or not, was a social death sentence (at best). (Does anybody remember Heathers?) The notion that a person could be trans and not be a serial killer-in-the-making would probably have been unthinkable.Some people forget that when Barack Obama ran for President the first time, he didn’t support gay marriage.The social changes we’ve seen over the last 30 years haven’t been as convulsive as those between 1961 and 1961 (which itself is a change), but they sure seem real.If I had to guess I’d say that we haven’t seen the same degree of change in the economic ordering of our society since 1991, or maybe the change has been in the opposite direction.
Exactly! I mean I grew up in an upper middle class, very tolerant, Canadian neighbourhood. My parents’ best friend since high school was gay (of course he lived in Europe now, but…) and it wasn’t a big deal. And my school was well known for its drama program. Still, I can’t remember one openly gay kid there (and I was a part of that drama program). I didn’t see active homophobia, but at least partly cuz I was lucky, and there were some kids I knew who were basically as openly gay as you can be without ever saying it or showing it (if that makes any sense), but… Now I have a 11 and 13 year old niece and nephew and all that kind of thing is completely normal at their school. Again, I know it’s certainly not like that in many cities, countries, neighbourhoods, etc, but it *is* in a lot of places. Even when I was 18 I can remember the difficulty I had to go through to find someone on the internet who could make me NTSC, taped off Brit TV copies of this new TV show I’d heard about over there, Queer as Folk. Because there wasn’t really anything else like it (the odd movie, etc.) Again–things have changed in a big way in many respects, especially when it comes to sexuality (and issues of gender, although that is a much newer thing, at least in my experience). And relatively speaking, they changed *quickly*, again at least in my gay experience.
I think the Renaissance might have something to say about the claim that 1961-1991 was the fastest period of change in history.
As you shouldn’t— acting like 30 years isn’t a substantial amount of time for a societal shift is utterly idiotic, especially given the technological advancements in connectivity.“Pfft what could have possibly changed in the world from 1930 until now!” -Person in the 1960’s, making an equally invalid statement
I know, it’s crazy how no trans people existed in 1991 and there was literally no one the filmmakers could have asked for information. And I can’t believe a pop culture website would ever analyze a film to determine what negative influence it might have had on the culture and how badly sensitive issues it handled have aged!
Whoa, I see you’ve decided to insert your own false narrative into my comment that doesn’t mention anything you’re talking about, how shockingly unlike you!You’ll see how I totally take issue with the article… exactly nowhere in my comment, but have fun with your straw man.
Except that the conversation you entered was directly about whether it was relevant to criticize a 30 year old movie but awesome possum
I mean, shit, enough has changed in the last five years to put a lie to the notion that not much changes in thirty years.
I dunno, but I think it’s the opposite. Because of the general availability of media nowadays I think that a lot of Gen Z are able to watch Friends or shows from that era – unlike when we were growing up in the 80s or the 90s where you would need to have the interest (or be lucky to catch it on terrestrial television) to watch something that was made more than a couple of years ago (and no handy youtube compilations to show the offensive parts without context), and they find elements from these shows/movies unacceptable without processing that it was actually made 20 or 30 years ago.
I have to disagree with the notion that children of the 70’s and 80’s, such as myself (born in 1970), had to go on some sort of pop cultural archeological dig to find anything that predated us. There is plenty of culture, pop or otherwise, that was well ingrained into my consciousness that I was either too young to experience firsthand, or was not around to experience at all. And that was because it was available to me. And while I am speaking primarily from my own experience, I assure you it is not unique. Not in the least. You used Friends as an example for today’s youth, I’ll counter with I Love Lucy for my generation of kids.. And I hardly had to go deep to find it back then. It was usually on at 5:00 PM every weeknight. Same with any # of shows. And while we do have infinitely more ways to access this stuff today, we still only have 24 hours in a day to do so. Same as we did then. So I don’t think more access necessarily makes anyone more informed. At least not in this matter.
I don’t know about that, in my experience the lack of entertainment options in years past meant that people were far more likely to watch older shows via syndication than they are to watch older shows now via streaming. In the 90s there basically wasn’t anything to watch a 5:00 on a Wednesday aside from whatever reruns the networks were running whereas now the same kid looking for something to do at 5:00 can watch whatever new show they want via streaming.
It feels like a weird thing now but it’s the equivalent it being 1980 and thinking the early 1950’s is a distant era, or applying the standards of 2000 to the early 1970’s.
What’s odd about “standards” is, they’re always Absolutely Sure of Themselves. What will they make of us, in 30 years? Because, right now, we’re a confused mess.
Yes, things were different 30 years ago. This article outlines that pretty clearly.
It’s true, this article basically needs a glossary to explain era-specific concepts like “AIDS” and “Ronald Reagan.” It was a totally different world!
A good chunk of the AV Club audience wasn’t born yet. It’s hard to have a clear view of the panic surrounding AIDS and the impact of Reagan-era homophobia just from reading about it.
I love the idea that we “can’t” do it for movies of certain eras, period. Calling “Birth of a Nation” racist or “Silence” transphobic hurts zero people.Don’t agree? Cool, go watch those movies. No one’s saying you can’t.If you said, “Boy, the film stock used in those old movies doesn’t look as good as what we have today.” you might get a handful of Scorsese wannabes defending the cinematography, but call out an old movie for racism, sexism, etc., and the anti-PC “intellectuals” come out of the woodwork to white knight for the klan. (Pun intended?)
You will find very few people denying that Birth of a Nation is racist. It’s not exactly a movie that anyone watches in 2021 with a big bowl of popcorn looking to be rapt with uncomplicated entertainment, it would take a very dense person not to recognize it’s many, many, many problematic aspects. The debate about that film has less to do with whether it is or isn’t racist but rather what you’re supposed to do with that knowledge, specifically whether its noxious politics negate any attempts to appreciate it for its filmmaking innovations or the appropriateness of trying to compartmentalize those two aspects.Silence of the Lambs is a little more complicated as it’s still a movie people do watch as more than a historical curio and whose political shortcoming probably do still require more explaining to mainstream audiences.
That was 30 years ago. Many of the people complaining about it were not born at the time. In 1991 the Selma Freedom Marches were more “recent” than 1991 is today.
*sighs* The best response to this is to suggest that you should read the entire post you’re responding to.
I mean other than all the multitude of things that have changed since 1990, social norms being one of the top ones, sure.
Yeah, things changed in 30 years, WTF amirite?
Ooh, I must’ve missed that about protests at the time. I guess I should read the piece I respond to more than once before I respond! Thanks for your reply.
“Some people protested” is now proof that they were right. We should let the “stop the steal” folks know that too
Fantastic point. Is that how you form all of your arguments?
““Some people protested” is now proof that they were right. We should let the “stop the steal” folks know that too”
No, it’s not proof they were right. But it does refute the opinion expressed by others that back in 1991 no one took offense to this film.
.
No. Everything that hurties feelies is reading modern politics into things, and you can’t get much more pre-modern, veritably ancient, than 1991. Can you believe we can even still find copies this far into the future and they haven’t all turned to dust? Also: Nobody protested Gone with the Wind at the time. That’s liberal propaganda.
First off – regardless of intent, yeah, the film has had that impact and Demme has admitted such (again, much as he had hoped otherwise.)
How an individual reads it at this point is, unfortunately, kind of secondary to how we as a society read it and what we did with that reading.
Second – that transformative idea is a lot more apparent when taken as the sequel to Red Dragon, where likewise Dolarhyde is a victim of abuse trying to escape who he is into another being (albeit one with a different sort of baggage.)
But as the movie for SotL is often treated as a standalone story…people are gonna work with just what it brings to the table, and as that particular transformation is gender focused, well…
For the record, I still think it’s a great movie just in terms of filmmaking and have seen it often, but even I can admit, yeah. That is kind of a fumble for it overall. Not done out of malice, but a dropped ball is still a dropped ball.
Thanks for your reply. Others have raised similar points: I knew that “trans” or something like it was a thing before I saw this movie. Would I have reacted the same way if this were the first time I was exposed to such a concept?I honestly don’t know and, frankly, that didn’t occur to me.I would like to think that anyone worthy of appreciating a great piece of art can appreciate the message it’s sending or not sending. For example I would like to think that anyone watching “The Maltese Falcon” would pick up on the movie’s homophobia because it’s a pretty clear and not time bound expression of that concept.I easily could be giving film viewers too much credit, though, and forgetting that there probably were people that watched “Silence of the Lambs” not as a great piece of art but just another trash grindhouse movie that happened to have better production values. (Not unlike its sequel “Hannibal!”)
It is one of the most faithful adaptations from book to movie I have ever seen. Of course a lot had to be changed for another medium, there was not one false note to me. Demme and screenwriter Ted Tally deserved all of their honors.
Also I remember some reviews of the time mentioning in passing that it was a sequel to Red Dragon but I think due to the films being different tonally, and that it was able to stand up well enough on its own, there was little interest in tying them together for the full story. The Thomas Harris fans were the only ones who really cared enough about that.
I really have a hard time imagining anyone looking at Buffalo Bill and thinking “this is an authentic portrayal of a typical trans person” but then again….I look around at the world and suddenly maybe I don’t have such a hard time imagining that.*sighs*
I’m not sure that either Harris or Demme were all that well-informed when it came to trans issues. I don’t think the younger generations really appreciate just how invisible trans people were at the time. It was just depictions like this and Dressed to Kill, unless you happened to have an out trans friend or family member. In the late 80s / early 90s lots of the materials available for Harris and Demme’s research would have treated being trans as a mental illness or deviant pathology, and as they likely didn’t personally know any out trans people, they went with what was in the text. I agree that trying to force a modern sensibility onto their work is a little bit silly, and very unfair. Harris wouldn’t have written the same novel 30 years later, and no major studio today would bankroll the shooting script. At the time it was made, the present discourse around the film would have been unthinkable to the creative team. In that respect, it’s misguided to debate the true psychology of the Buffalo Bill character, as though there were informed intention behind the writing.But I do kind of see where the author of the article is coming from. This movie features the basically only trans character I saw as a kid growing up in the 90s, and since the movie is so masterfully made, I assumed it was a pretty accurate representation. For example, I accepted at face value the film’s statement that there is a sizable community of “fake trans” people who are regularly rejected for medical transitioning (and also that these people *might* become dangerous serial killers who sew skin suits), and that informed my early 00’s opposition to things like allowing people to use different bathrooms without first having bottom surgery. In that respect, this is a very harmful movie, as it unintentionally worked as a transphobic disinformation campaign, and encouraged voters to support anti-LGBTQ policies. So, I think it’s worth acknowledging that part of Silence’s legacy, without full on canceling it.
“…this is a very harmful movie, as it unintentionally worked as a transphobic disinformation campaign, and encouraged voters to support anti-LGBTQ policies.”Citation very much needed there
Thanks for your reply. Yeah I guess I see what you mean, I guess somehow I never thought of the character as any kind of trans and not just because of that conversation. I knew, before the movie, that people existed who thought they were born in the wrong body. But something about the film, and in particular the guy’s performance, made me think not of those folks but of a crazed killer who stumbled onto this.Like given a different background he would’ve been that character “Machine” from “8mm.” Outwardly ‘normal’ who kills because he chooses.After Bill’s suit didn’t make him happy he’d have moved on to something else.Now, would I have thought that if I didn’t know that something sorta like trans existed in the real world, and that this wasn’t it?Now that I think about it….I have no fucking clue.Thanks for your reply!
Im into psychology and oh boy was it not good in this field at the time. Pretty sure gender disphoria was considered a mental disorder on par with schizophrenia. Wasn’t until DSM5 that nuance started to appear. Also true about representation, I honestly didn’t understand the concept well until Kaitlyn Jenner came out, think that was a watershed moment for some.
There is a problem with the younger generation of trying to erase anything that they do not agree with or outright do not like. One day this little hissy fit is going to bite them in the butt in a major way. I do not know what it’s going to take to get them to wake up, but this is a dangerous road to travel. Things like this should start conversations, not actively trying to shut it down. I don’t even think they understood the irony in that the aftermath of the tweet that supposedly got Gina Carano fired also proved her point.
Username/comment synergy
Thanks for your reply but I’m not sure what you mean….I don’t see anything about the number 11,135 in my reply. What are you talking about? I’m very curious.
I honestly never thought of Buffalo Bill as being trans—I thought of him as a killer with a particular fetish. So as far as I’m concerned, trans people can relax…the movie’s diabolical plan to make me fear trans people did not work.
I agree, but I still think it was unquestionably harmful, like many other things, because most people just aren’t going to rationalize it the way we did. I don’t know if that means we should stop making movies that challenge us, though. If trans people were fully accepted in society, we could make whatever movies we wanted featuring them because they’d be about that specific trans character. Instead, they feel like they’re about a marginalized group, and representation matters for such groups. I do dislike the dehumanization of individuals that can happen as an unintended side effect when lifting up marginalized groups as a whole, but I dislike people not examining why they tend to believe terrible things about certain kinds of people more.
This was closer to my read on it, and I just watched it yesterday because of all the people talking about it.Bill isn’t trans. Bill is using trans as an excuse to justify cutting up women to make a suit. It’s why they point out that that isn’t what trans generally isn’t like. And why so many doctors are noted as turning him away. That Bill was mentally unstable that had nothing to do with being trans.
But they’re wrong. They’re wrong about him not being trans, and they’re wrong about “what trans generally isn’t like.” That’s the whole point of the article.
Nor I.
“I honestly never thought of Buffalo Bill as being trans—I thought of him
as a killer with a particular fetish. So as far as I’m concerned, trans
people can relax…the movie’s diabolical plan to make me fear trans people did not work.”
They can relax around you, anyway. I don’t know if there was a raise in violence towards trans people due to the film (such violence is so disproportionately high anyway) or any specific cases that sited it. But there were some gay murders where the otherwise “normal” seeming people specifically gave seeing the gay killer in Cruising helped fuel their belief that they were people who deserved it (and yeah, yeah, these were messed up people already and I think we totally should have, now, well developed murderers in films who happen to be gay :P, the point is there was virtually no other depiction of gay characters at the time to counter that or balance it, just as was true of trans characters when Lambs came out).
oh thank god, the person who has never spoken to a trans person is here to tell us what is and isn’t harmful
Relax, CommentsCop…I’ve spoken to trans people and I didn’t “tell” you any such thing.
putting it as pithily as possible: does the OP have a point that giving lip-music that BB was not gay or trans was just a weaksauce excuse to indulge in harmful myths and misconceptions? Like “this villain happens to eat the blood of christian babies, lend money at usorious rates, and have a hooked nose, but we mentioned several times that he’s a unitarian!”
Thanks for your reply. For my part I guess it’s about the performance and the vehicle it’s in. To use your example I could totally buy that if it happened to be in “Silence of the Lambs.” I could buy that Bill read some books about Medieval European stereotypes of Jewish people and thought “this sounds cool” and affected that as the discourse of his horror.But if it were a crap exploitation movie, I could not.
You are talking about a written work, if Buffalo Bill did that I would have serious questions about why the writer decided to do that…which is what we’ve got here, see?Also, reconciling art/artist, art/contemporary morality isn’t just something it’s okay to do, it’s an academic discipline. In terms of recent art, you should check out Lovecraft Country which is very deliberately trying to reconcile a racist artist with his important art. “Your fave is problematic” isn’t the beginning or the end of the conversation, and interrogating works for their social positions (Aristophanes was a conservative warmonger, despite that Aeschylus was a general he was not) is not new and is not going anywhere.
Yeah, this is where I’m landing on it after reading the article. The line about “Billy” not being a REAL trans person is tacked on psychobabble that’s supposed to keep anyone from having any sympathy for or empathy with the killer. Which is kind of weird in a movie that expresses a LOT of sympathy for and empathy with a clinically insane genius who kills and eats people.
Just because The Maltese Falcon is an old famous movie doesn’t mean it’s not above critique. It also wouldn’t be even close to the only classic 40’s film that’s homophobic. There’ve been entire books written about this sort of thing; you’re a couple of decades behind the discussion if you think you’re dropping a bombshell here. Also, it’s cute that you think you’re the only person here who’s seen it given that it’s been consistently popular for 80 freaking years.
Thanks for your reply, though I’m not sure you actually read my post. Nothing implied that other people hadn’t seen Falcon, or that I was the first person to notice this. (It’s actually in Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” writeup about the movie.)My point was that Falcon represents homophobia that’s blatant even if it’s not directly stated. The film tells you what’s really going on.Same here: If Buffalo Bill were actually trans, instead of a psychotic killer who picked a narrative he liked and went with it like I’m saying he was, then the film would tell us so.It doesn’t.At least not to someone who, even at the time, knew “trans” or something like it was a thing.Now the question is, as other repliers have raised, would that be the case if I’d never heard of “trans?” Would it have shaped my view of an unfamiliar concept?No clue.
OK I see what you mean I guess, in terms of your thinking that I’m the only one to know about this movie…I guess I just didn’t anticipate someone being asinine enough to take my words that way! My bad!lol
> make their own judgments on who is a “real” trans person> Buffalo Bill isn’t any kind of transThe article isn’t what is dumb, here
Coherence and context are your friends. Short does not automatically equal focused or coherent.
He’s exploiting a number of vicious trans stereotypes which are harmful no matter how many throw away lines about “not really trans” you throw in. It’s like having a killer with every terrible jewish stereotype you can think of, and thinking a quick, “oh they’re not really jewish” will solve the problem. It doesn’t, it still reinforces the stereotype, especially in the absence of other trans representation onscreen. Given the number of people who have come out in favor of his portrayal in the comments, this analysis is very relevant and timely. And as someone who remembers this movies release, there absolutely was criticism at the time, so the whole “no one knew it was bad at the time is 100% bullshit.”
You have the same argument as another poster so I’ll copy and paste my reply.
Thanks for your reply. For my part I guess it’s about the
performance and the vehicle it’s in. To use your example I could totally
buy that if it happened to be in “Silence of the Lambs.” I could buy
that Bill read some books about Medieval European stereotypes of Jewish
people and thought “this sounds cool” and affected that as the discourse
of his horror.But if it were a crap exploitation movie, I could not.
But it’s still reinforcing that stereotype, especially in the absence of other representation. Plus, the author is pointing out a nuance of the portrayal that goes beyond the obvious trans=unstable (which is definitely there). By putting in the “not really trans” lines, they also reinforce the idea that trans folk are not capable of knowing their own gender. It’s the same misinformation that transphobes peddle today. So by trying to absolve themselves of transphobia by saying Buffalo Bill ins’t trans, they stumble right into another transphobic trope: that trans people aren’t really trans, they are just confused.
I dunno…Isn’t your logic a tad bit circular here? Is there a portrayal of a male psychotic killer who dressed up as (or in, in this case) a female that in your judgment cannot play into the stereotype just by existing?Isn’t the notion of wearing someone else’s skin, literally doing so, sort of putting us beyond any notion of gender or gender identity as those terms conventionally are understood? If so aren’t they right to say “he thinks he’s trans but he isn’t?” Without that having any further implications beyond that particular character?
But there is always a societal context. So “he thinks he’s trans but isn’t” is taking place in a society where trans people are consistently told they don’t know their own gender. It’s trope that transphobes have invested in deeply. You can’t play into a widely held stereotype and tell people their wrong for reacting to that stereotype, especially when you’ve done nothing to address or dispel it.
Even now, A LOT of people assume that trans people are lying or confused about their own self-concept, whereas we recognize that if a man tells you that he’s gay because he only enjoys sex with men, he’s gay. Only a fringe group will say that he’s too confused to define himself as gay.
No
Replace relevant and timely with petulant and whiny and you would be right.
It’s a coincidence you mention Maltese Falcon because I just finished reading the book a second time. I had missed in the movie and the first time I read the book that Cairo and the stooge were gay, but it clicked this time. I think if I were taking a literature class I could drag a mid-semester paper out of the entire book being a gay panic metaphor.
Joel, Wilmer and Kasper were all gay.( or as gay as characters in a film made in 1941 could be) But I don’t think Sam was panicked.
You could but depending on the level of that lit course, your prof might argue that it’s useless at this point to write on something entire books have been written about unless you had something new to bring to the table 😉
This story also illuminates quite handily how language evolves.
In the book and the film, Cairo’s goon is referred to as a “gunsel”. While it apparently slipped past the book publishers — who had quite a few disagreements with Hammett over his language — it would have been a recognizable word to a not-insignificant number of readers. It comes to English from hobo slang, by way of Yiddish, and it unequivocally meant a young boy kept as a sexual companion by an older man. But since it has the word “gun” in it and makes reasonable sense in context as just another word for “henchman”, that is now an accepted definition, traced definitively back to Hammett’s prose, despite him never intending anything but the original connotation.
And if the insistence is that the character was not trans or gay, then there is no reason to include those aspects, other than to sensationalize and exploit the “perversion” of queer people for the shock of cis, straight moviegoers.The whole point of the book, and the whole point of the film, was to capitalize on pre-existing bigotry in society. The movie won so many awards because of that bigotry. They knew exactly what they were tapping into.We aren’t applying modern ideas to an old movie. Even using the ideas at the time, it was offensive. This movie made it less safe to be gay or any sort of gender/sexual minority.
“The whole point of the book, and the whole point of the film, was to capitalize on pre-existing bigotry in society. The movie won so many awards because of that bigotry. They knew exactly what they were tapping into.”The point of the book and film was to present a second wave feminist story about a female FBI agent who’s underestimated by her superiors proving to be the most competent agent on the case, partly because she’s willing to engage in a psychological chess match with a psychotic psychologist. The identity of the killer she’s chasing is something of a secondary element.
Do you really honestly think that was the “whole point” of this movie? Granted Thomas Harris is a bit of a moron but Demme doesn’t seem to be. Storytellers have relied on audience perceptions to create an effect since there were stories. Can any villain exist, in your judgment, without playing on stereotypes of whatever they are?There are no easy answers to any of this.
This is an objectively bad take.
Perhaps so.It’s strange what folks will choose to read. I expected to be ignored like normal. I think I understand why this site relies so much on clickbait. It works.
Your Maltese Falcon comparison fails miserably as the homosexual character would have to be the psychotic one for it to be comparable.
It’s not a trend. We generally reads political morality into almost any story we read, but it only stands out if there’s some dissociation—if you don’t identify with the baseline values or ideas of the artwork. This is old hat academia stuff. Literary theory.As someone else here said, even if you like the movie, I don’t know why your first response to someone saying they’ve experienced prejudice by others who associate trans people with psychotic serial killers is to be patronizing and dismissive.
As to your last point, why I treat the article in such a patronizing and dismissing way, in no small part it’s because I quite literally cannot imagine (or at least I’m having a hard time doing so) anyone looking at Buffalo Bill and thinking “this movie is clearly an authentic portrayal of a typical trans person” or even “this is a trans person,” period.As to reading current political morality into older stories…Well it’s an interesting question and a slippery slope. I’ve done it, yet other times it’s made me very uncomfortable. I have no formula for when I walk toward it and when I run away from it, sadly.In this case in particular….Well, again. “Gone With the Wind” tells us at the outset ‘this movie is about the racist politics we’re showing you.’ Even in the context of the 1930s/1940s the movie just has nothing for you if you don’t agree with that politics. “The Maltese Falcon” when it shows us a hero who’s plainly homophobic even to the point of pushing the boundaries of its time is trying to tell us something about the character — and, tellingly, using it to paint him in a less-than-sympathetic light.As to “Silence of the Lambs….” Well, for the most part I have a hard time seeing it. But, I admit freely, I also have a hard time imagining what the reaction might be of someone who saw this move and didn’t even know that “trans” was a thing.
i think you should kill yourself
If only it were that easy.
This isn’t reddit, you doofus. Keep that crap out of here.
tell the transphobes to keep their shit on parler first
I agree, this article is dumb. The “writer”of this article is looking to be offended. If the author says the character is not transgender, it’s not transgender. Period. Its not your work, you don’t get a say, regaurdless of the perceived wrong doings against you! Be offended all you want. That’s fine, but don’t be surprised when people laugh at you for being narcissistic. I can’t wait for the gimp community to riot over the misrepresentation of gimps in pulp fiction. But that would be silly right? Because its a movie! Grow up and stop throwing temper tantrums over 30 year old films because it hurts your feelings that creative people make things that you can’t! This is just Lazy writing plain and simple. No depth, no substance, little thought or effort. Click bait bullshit!
Thank you for reply but, to be clear to anyone reading this: While I appreciate Eamon’s agreement with my central point, I don’t go anywhere near as far as they do. Or, at least, I’m not trying to.
have you heard of subtext
Oh hey, it’s a dipshit doing exactly what the article said people defending the movie against criticism would do GG
*sighs* What a dumb response.
The article itself directly states there were protests in reaction to the film’s release. It was a deeply bigoted film even for the time it was made. It can be both beautifully made and deeply bigoted at the same time.
Protest based on the false premise of Gumb being gay aren’t worth anything in terms of valid criticism.
Arguing that you don’t accept this critique because you accept the narratives that the filmmaker establishes in-text and through performance, while the critique itself is referring to perameters outside of that, is an awfully dumb thing for you to have done. Film critiques don’t invalidate your experience as a viewer, and you’re fine to experience the film in any contravention that any op-ed may lay out.Also, nobody else should really care if you loathe political analyses on old films- just because you don’t want to have an understanding of how cultural trends change, doesn’t mean everyone should live in ignorance as well.
It’s hard when you first realize other people exist, huh?It’ll be ok. Just grab a seat, drink some orange juice, if you have any mellow music you like go ahead and pop that on. Everything’s gonna be ooooookaaaayyyy…
I kinda feel like this misses the point a bit. I don’t disagree that a character like Jame Gumb (if they existed in the real world) may not be “trans”, and could be using it as a narrative justification for their psychopathy; but in a way it feels like that’s not the problem the author is pointing to. The problem is that the authority figure of the film, the one whose opinion the audience is meant to take seriously, is incorrectly peddling all kinds of stuff that minimises the trans experience. Rightly or wrongly (in my opinion wrongly) a lot of people take their cues about the real world from fictional authority figures, and the problem here is Lecter spins a line of shit that seriously mischaracterises the lived in experiences of trans people.
It’s not in the movie, but in the book Gumb is obsessed with the mother who abandoned him. She was a runner-up for Miss Something-or-Other and may have gone on to be in Corman-esque nudie films. Harris draws a pretty straight line from this fixation to Gumb deciding “well, what if I was a woman”.I’ve been reading thinky pieces from, at first liberals and later trans activists, beating this particular dead horse for 2+ decades. On the one hand, I’m not comfortable telling people what they should or shouldn’t find offensive. On the other… Buffalo Bill wasn’t trans! It’s a literal line in the actual script!Also, Lecter had been in prison for years by the time Starling goes to see him, so maybe he didn’t know Johns Hopkins had gotten out of the gender reassignment surgery game?
I suspect that Demme and Harris had the intention of a character in line with your take here. Buffalo Bill seems to be a character, like Dolarhyde in Red Dragon, whose dissociation from behavioral norms expresses transition as a symptom and not an identity. What they are transitioning into doesn’t matter except as the framing device around how their crimes play out. It’s more about what they changing away from.
I’m so sorry this happened to you.
I agree that the movies haven’t aged well but I also think it’s a mistake to take anything Hannibal says at face value. He obviously has his own agenda and will say or do anything to manipulate people.This is made incredibly clear in the 3rd novel where (spoiler!) Hannibal grooms Clarice and proceeds to have his way with her. Somehow they never had the guts to go through with this in the movies even though it paints Hannibal as the epitome of an abusive psychologist.
With everything else they had him doing in the movies, I doubt we needed to see him grooming Clarice to make him look despicable.
A lot of the third novel feels like Harris clapping back at years of people reading Lecter as somehow less evil (which, again, is more on the film’s impact. The novel for Silence starts with a reminder of how Red Dragon ended with Lecter basically ruining Will Graham’s life, after all) and the reads of him and Starling as a couple. It feels like a narrative that really plays up the idea of Hannibal as a corrupting force and by the end you can almost hear Harris going “There! That’s how it’d go. Happy?”
But the movie never gives any indication that he’s not telling the truth about Gumb.
The television series did a much better job of showing Hannibal as a master manipulator in addition to the pot stirrer portrayed in the movies.
I actually prefer the Hannibal of the first movie to the one of the TV series, precisely because he’s not presented as preternaturally insightful. People tend to forget that when the Hannibal of Silence tries to intuit facts about Clarice, he’s wildly wrong as often as he’s right—about her being the daughter of a miner, or of being the victim of childhood sexual abuse. His insight comes not because he can actually see into people’s souls, but because he’s attuned to the ugliness and violence of which people are capable at their worst. Which seems like a better angle on a ghoul like Hannibal than the “Sure he’s a cannibal, but he’s also a genius who’s the only one who understands you!” perspective of the later works.
Oh, I agree with your take as well. That first version, and Anthony Hopkins’ performance, are my favourite Hannibal. But Mads Mikkelsen’s slick manipulator/incarnation of Satan is close behind.
I feel like whichever one I have seen more recently is my favorite incarnation, in the Mads/Hopkins debate. One made a huge impression with just like 15 minutes of screentime in SoTL and the other got to perfect his craft on a beautiful show that really got to flex in all directions (that they had the legal rights to, at least). Would be interesting to think of how Mikkelsen would have been in the film version and Hopkins (1991 version) would have fared in the show. ‘91 Hopkins had some moves in that escape scene.
Never mind.
I always saw Gumb as a mentally ill and broken pre-incel (because mental illness doesn’t make you a bad person, being a bad person makes you a bad person), rather than a transgender individual. He wasn’t trying to become a woman, he was trying to punish them. The extra feminine aspects, like keeping an infantized purse dog, were supposed to give him more power in his day to day life.While I picked up on that at 13, I sadly can also see how I may have been one of 6 people who did. Or that at least enough others missed a distinction that it became a moo point for those in society effected by the trope.Like a cow’s opinion, moo.Sorry that something I and so many enjoyed made life so mind numbingly more difficult for you. I do know how it is.
I was 18 when the film came out and that’s how i interpreted the BB character as well. It is not that difficult to do actually. I think it requires a fuctioning brain.
I think history has taught us that any system requiring a functioning brain is destined to fail.
I always just saw Bill as a take on Ed Gein. Is Ed Gein problematic too?
“his outdated diagnosis is giving audiences a pass”No the fictional cannibal serial killer’s diagnosis isn’t giving anyone a pass.
Yeah, why DON’T we like the serial killer Buffalo Bill more?! Great point!
This article doesn’t mention at any point the fact that Buffalo Bill murders women. It literally treats them as someone who wasn’t portrayed with enough sensitivity…a literal serial killer of women.
Congrats on the most bad faith reading of the article in the comments so far
This coming from the person who responds to everyone with bad faith arguments.Terrible username/comment synergy.
Please explain why you in particular think this article is defending a serial killer
you realize that Buffalo Bill is not a real person, right? Like, there were people who decided to create this character? It’s kind of integral to understanding the article you’re commenting on.
Disclaimer that I am a cis woman, but I am queer and know trans people. The line that has always bothered me in SotL is Clarice insisting that “transsexuals” are very gentle/passive which … anyone can be a violent asshole, gender has nothing to do with it! Now, I can see the argument that Jame is not trying to transition into a woman so much as into … their final form? so to speak? but you’re correct, Harmony, that if someone says they are trans we should believe them. You’ve given me food for thought, thank you.
“The line that has always bothered me in SotL is Clarice insisting that “transsexuals” are very gentle/passive which … anyone can be a violent asshole, gender has nothing to do with it!”
Yeah, I think that just shows that they awkwardly and half halfheartedly tried to be “responsible” about trans issues while still doing their story. A generation or so before that you’d often see the same thing said about gay men and how really, except maybe the gay bad guy being shown, gay men are really completely harmless and passive.
From what I’ve read, this isn’t so much a problem with the film as it’s a problem with old psych literature. There were a lot of weird stereotypes in it.
It’s definitely true that psychiatry/psychology was not kind to trans people in the 20th century, and this piece touches on that, but the movie/Demme still has its own responsibility!
100% that the movie has its own responsibility (I wrote more down thread, and should probably say that I have very complicated feelings about the movie). This specific line, though, has roots deeper than the film or even the book.
Slightly related: Both this line and the list of hospitals are, IIRC, pretty much straight from the book. Thomas Harris got the hospitals wrong, and Ted Tally didn’t think about it when he adapted it for the screenplay. Quite honestly if it had been any hospital other than Hopkins it might never have been noticed—but Hopkins had very specific reasons for discontinuing surgeries and so it jumps out at anyone who knows that. Unless Harris did it intentionally, like his fava beans and liver line. (The foods in that line are all ones that are forbidden on a low-tyramine diet like those required by people on MAOIs.)
Harris generally took a decade to write a book could have just been outdated research
So you’ve declared Clarice is a bastard we shouldn’t root for because you’re not going to be entertaining the “hot take” that “not all cops are bastards”? I think of cops as the biggest, most dominant gang in any city, and that’s just dumb. Bastard is as bastard does, so what specific things does the character do that you object to?That being said, I already thought it didn’t really make sense to declare that Jame isn’t “really” trans but merely thinks he is if it’s a matter of self-identification. The film seems to depend on Lecter having Word-of-God authority we’re just supposed to accept. But whether he’s right or not really just affects how we think of a character who was never as humanized as Dolarhyde, when the real meat of the film is the FBI trying to find him.
Are you fucking serious? I’m sorry that a film from 30 years ago isn’t progressive enough for you today.I can’t believe this article got published.
Were you bullied at school or something, or what drives you to attack minorities?
What minorities were the targets of an attack in that comment?
W e w l a d
Sorry, I don’t know what that means.
This could have been your first comment
Cute, but still doesn’t tell me what “w e w l a d” means.
The minority of people who complain about the politics of 30 year-old movies being outdated?
This is for all of you because I’m not going to spend any more time on this dumb topic: Those pearls you’re clutching? Grip ‘em tight enough to restrict airflow next time.Ffs. “It was a problem 30 years ago!!”. I KNOW.. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO DO ABOUT IT? Do you want a time machine so you can go back to 1988 and cancel Thomas Harris?I’m not disagreeing with the argument, I’m saying that having a discussion about ”problematic” fiction from 30 years ago is fucking stupid. ESPECIALLY when you know that “people had a problem with it when it came out too!”.The author of this article isn’t breaking any new ground or say anything we haven’t known since 1991. They just want their moment to bitch about a movie they weren’t old enough to protest when it was released.JFC
Do you have empathy for someone?
Buddy, cancellation =/= criticism. Things age poorly, and deserve criticism when you look back at them.
Between the author and you, you’re the only one talking about “canceling” anyone or anything.
you realize that at no point did the author, or anyone really, raise a call to “cancel” the movie? had you bothered to read the article, you might have discovered why this is still being discussed today, you might realize how this movie continues to impact the trans community to this day and why it’s still worth being discussed (discussion and criticism, btw, do not equal “cancel culture”, that’s entirely your obsession here).
Holy shit, calm down and log off until you can have a discussion about social justice without telling someone to kill themselves
Even if this article was just relegated to bitching about things that didn’t age well from “Silence of the Lambs” the author should be entitled to their opinion, especially since they have a personal relationship to the material. We all made the choice to read it and comment, and I don’t think anybody in their rational mind would cancel Harris over this, especially since it seems like Demme is more to blame.
“The author of this article isn’t breaking any new ground or say anything we haven’t known since 1991″ I agree, though this is the first time I’ve read a trans person’s take on the impact SoTL had on them, so even if the take isn’t particularly new or trailblazing, it is still interesting to get the opinions of people who had experiences with the movie that I was incapable of, as a cis guy. So I didn’t come here to try to “fix” SOTL, because that’d be impossible, just to enjoy a different perspective from someone with a different background.
The AV club tends to publish a lot of modern takes on movies from my childhood like this film and Mulan etc. I feel more inclined to agree with the critique of SoTL than this lukewarm take on Mulan. So when it comes to takes on “problematic” movies of the past, it could always be worse than the Lambs one, which at least was well researched and based on an understandable premise.
https://www.avclub.com/mulan-s-gender-politics-haven-t-aged-so-gracefully-1828367475
30 years! That was back before there were people!
There are tons of books written about engrained racism and other bigotry in works of art dating back to BC…what’s wrong with evaluating bigotry in something 30 years old on a pop-culture site? I can see your blurb on the front of the book “The Celluloid Closet”: “Some of these movies are 30 years old, get over it! I can’t believe this book got published!” Or your blurb on “Birth of a Nation”: “Sorry this isn’t progressive enough for the libs!” Or your blurb on the Jim Crow Laws: “They were simpler times, get over it!”
From what I’ve seen of queer writing about Silence from the 90’s, the movie was considered pretty backwards then, too. It’s more like the rest of the world is finally starting to catch up to what trans people have been saying for 30 years. “Oh, but most people were fine with it 30 years ago!” Cool, but it’s not 30 years ago, and opinions of every other movie made in the 90’s have evolved since then, so why should this one be the exception?
I agree with you, if Demme had done more than just slap a one sentence “Billy isn’t trans” bandaid from Doctor Lector on the issue, maybe consulted actual trans people on if the portrayal could be deemed offensive or dangerous, then maybe we wouldn’t be here. While I love “Silence” and it never made me think that trans people routinely made skin suits out of people, the portrayal obviously affected the protestors at the film’s premiere as well as the author of this piece. Given that there wasn’t a lot of trans ubiquity in media 30 years ago, let alone positive portrayals, having such a well-regarded film as SoTL feature these sorts of negative trans stereotypes is harmful because, as the article mentioned, other films like “Ace Ventura” were also spreading ideas that trans people were supposed to be either feared or mocked. While one could say that nobody would take advice from Ventura or Lector, even if they were real people, if that’s the only media that most people were seeing on transgender folks back in the day then it would likely give them a negative perception of people who identify that way as a whole. It isn’t like today when the internet is full of information (that goes way beyond the deeply flawed Johns Hopkins study mentioned) and there are many shows available that display trans people, and use trans actors, in a positive light.
“Dallas Buyers Club” has a lot of problems with it, like casting a (pretty reprehensible) cis guy as a trans woman even though I have to admit Leto was incredible in the role of Rayon despite the disappointing casting decision. However, at least the writers and actors conducted interviews with actual trans AIDS patients and did their best to show AIDS patients as three dimensional people and also highlight the struggles that trans people went through in the 80’s and how that hasn’t really changed today. SoTL could have benefited from doing that type of personal engagement with a group that could have been affected by their film (and was).
We can look at fiction from the past and call it bigoted. Nobody is shocked that Birth of a Nation is called racist. And based on the comments here, plenty of people still aren’t willing to admit that their favorite movie has a deeply transphobic center. So I’m really glad this article was published, because it means those people actually have to think about the way this movie treats trans people.
This isn’t a case of applying new ideas to an old film. It was offensive when it came out. I was close to coming out when this film won awards, and I changed my mind because of it. Damn, you’re ignorant. Even with the decades in between, you’ve learned absolutely nothing.
Look at how eagerly you jumped to howl at it.This shit gets published because of people like you and I, not because of *stimulating intelligent discussions*
the film is literally younger than me, jesus christ have some standards
Again, the article goes into detail about how even when the film was released there was a huge backlash to it. This is not a new development at all.
What’s going on in your life to make you act like this?
You are surprised that a piece of culture is viewed in a modern lens? Welcome to film studies, pal, it’s always been this way- we review films like Birth of a Nation from our current views, why would we do it any other way with any other film?
I can’t believe the movie about a guy who skins women didn’t portray transgender people in a more positive light.
get over it already.
kill yourself
Jesus Christ, I miss the days when identity politics didn’t infest literally everything.
Please tell me when that was – or was that when only one identity really ‘mattered’?
there’s only one infestation here, please drink a can of raid
You’re saying the concept of “other people” is infesting everything.That’s…weird.
Sorry bud, art and culture is always political, your problem is obviously that this is challenging your politics too much.Also- ‘identity politics’ is a meaningless buzzword to mean “politics contrary to my worldview”. Those days you miss was just days when you were less exposed to the homogeneity you associate with.
lol you guys are adorable
i miss the days when everyone didn’t jump up to proudly jump up to advertise what an asshole they wereoh wait, that too was never a time
*deeper sigh*
When someone on the right sighs about “Identity politics” they are literally upset because their identity isn’t the center of the conversation.
The term “identity politics” is one of the most ridiculous examples of RW media successfully using language to paint its opponents with its own problems.
In America, it is not “Identity politics” if you:
1. Refuse an abortion because YOU identify as a Christian Conservative
2. Refuse to teach sex Ed because YOU identify as a Christian Conservative
3. Refuse to use a person’s preferred pronouns or deadname them because YOU identify as a Christian Conservative
4. Support gay conversion therapy (which is considered a form of serious harm by multiple agencies) because YOU identify as Christian.
5. Support the reduction of voting access for minority groups through restrictive voting laws because YOU identify as Conservative
6. Support the ARMED INSURRECTION at the Capitol because YOU identify as Conservative.
Right wing Identity is the cornerstone of the GOP platform, and the great terror of “Left Wing Identity Politics” is really just “people who don’t share my conservative identity”
TL;DR Whenever I read someone saying “I hate identity politics” all I can hear is, “I hate (insert identity being discussed) because I am incapable of empathy and I’m not about to learn how.”
You seem fun.
It sounds to me like the diagnosis in the film was based on the poor science of the time the films was made. I don’t want to sound like I am throwing LGBT people under the bus, but as a black man we also need more films that counter the standard narrative that cops, other officials always get things right. This layover from the Hays Code days still skews the way people view real policing abd courts systems ( those who are curious can research the CSI Effect for more info). Additionally, as a film historian I agrue we need to show that the police and medical fields were so messed up in the past (and even today in some cases). I can’t speak for the LBGT community but by way of offering some unsolicited advice I suggest that one course is to do as you just have, to speak out and inform people where the film (and book) got things wrong, but more importantly, as you have also done, how they got it wrong. I get the larger point and, like you, it will be hard for people to properly gender a serial killer even if they should. Human beings just aren’t good at extending empathy to the worst examples of humanity, fictional or not (Though some sadly develop cults of personality). We also have to deal with the awful truth that in the context of the story what what was refer to as Gumb’s “condition,” was done to play into their otherness and make the character less sympathetic to viewers (and readers) of the tine. The best I can do is refer to a subject I do have a connection to and that is the many awful portrayals of black people that pervades cinema. We are shown as noble savages, buffoons, slatterns, criminals, violent subhumands, or if we are “lucky,” a magical being that sets white folks of the right path. Many of these film are similarly lauded and beloved as Silence of the Lambs and the best we can do is to educate people about where these films are wrong and how these portrayals impact marginalized people. It’s part of why I became an educator, to offer students other views that will hopefully allow their perspectives to widen.
So, this is a guy (yes, guy, as he presented himself) that literally made a suit of a woman skin (!) and you want me to feel sorry for him? Saying he’s a monster is not transphobic or TERFian, it’s reality. I’m truly sorry this movie was used to disparage your own gender identity but your take is dumb and SoTL is brilliant.
You clearly aren’t sorry since you made this stupid fucking comment
it’s not reality it’s a moviethat someone wrotein which a trans character is a psychotic murderer who wants to kill cis women and take their skin
Among the many bizarre lines of thought that these articles provoke, the in-universe reasoning is always one of the most interesting. There’s a segment of people that seem… unaware that the villains in movies aren’t actual people but representations of whatever their creators found scary.
Part of the tragedy of these films is what we did to ourselves and each other over them, quoting “put the lotion in the basket” in a demonic exaggerated lisp and cackling at it…not being funny: how must that feel to the men who own toy poodles and speak with a lisp and who were already being demonized as likely pedophiles (by fake religious demons who were probably actually abusing their children)? I was just having a similar conversation on another thread about girls who heard men singing along to Weezer’s “I want a girl who will laugh for no one else”…like…what were we thinking?This article is best at identifying the “fake-trans” problem: yes, people who believe they were not born their true-gender should speak to experts, receive counseling, and be absolutely sure before having gender-affirming surgery…but to this day there are tons of people (including doctors) who, even if not doubting that there are true cases, believe the vast majority are one more symptom of other mental illnesses…this movie completely fake-validates that misconception. (It also encourages people to play “fake-trans detective” like “I don’t think you are actually trans because ____ [insert something dumb like “you like girls” or “you like football” here])And yes, looking at this problem for a character that is a serial killer is entirely appropriate, it’s not like he is just another baddie, there’s a reason he is the serial killer instead of just another FBI agent. Hey, I look forward to Eve Lindley playing the most evil monster ever to appear in cinema…but not if she’s that evil monster because she’s trans. The only thing I will say on the other side is that one reason that Buffalo Bill is engrained in the cultural psyche is also that…Buffalo Bill is pretty metal. Like, the character is effectively terrifying. Now, that owes quite a bit to these prejudices, but there’s also something empowering about it. Whenever people are like “Jews run the world” I’m like “that’s bigoted and how nice that you think I could be running the world, thank you.”
Can anything be more 2021 than ‘Silence of the Lambs is bad and you should feel bad’
I don’t know, I think “I refuse to listen to a trans person telling me about their experience of this depiction of transness” is pretty representative of this awful year as well.
No one is refusing to listen. You can listen to someone and disagree.
Nobody is even saying it’s a bad film, just that one aspect of it, even when it was made, was considered deeply reductive at best, to the point where even the filmmakers apologized for how poorly they handled it.
apparently you can be extra 2021 with such a crappy reductionist take on the article
Yes, this reductive bullshit take of yours is peak 2021.
I love Silence of the Lambs and this critique, and I don’t feel bad at all. The choice is yours.
What, exactly, is a ‘“real” trans person’?
I’m not sure if you’re serious in asking this question, or what kind of answer you’re looking for.
Not everything’s about you… It’s a piece of fiction, JFC.
Demme’s movie is based on the Thomas Harris novel. A book that spends a lot more time with Jame Gumb’s backstory. His abandonment by his mother. His abuse as a child. Killing his grandparents at the age of 12. It portrays him not as transsexual but a man who so loathes himself that he seeks to be something else. That something else manifests itself to becoming a woman. His desire for wanting this is part of that backstory. He is so psychologically damaged his actual sexuality is neither straight, gay or bi. He is too broken to have any sexual identity at all. Demme and the movie script focused on telling Starling’s story and limited a lot of Gumb’s backstory to her interactions with Lecter. Given the time constraints of a movie unfortunately Demme focused on the more salacious and shocking elements of the character and Gumb ended up being more two dimensional than the book portrays him. Demme didn’t think he was creating a transexual character with a transphobic narrative. Like a lot of people I never saw Gumb as trans but I can certainly understand why he is perceived as one.
I agree with your first paragraph that Gumb was, similar to Dolarhyde in “Red Dragon” though not quite the same, too damaged by abuse and loathing to really understand the complexities of sex, sexuality, and gender. Dolarhyde was made more sympathetic, and was nearly able to control the Red Dragon due to love, but his past trauma became too much for him and his reliance on the Dragon persona for empowerment consumed him.
I think Gumb also sought an external escape from his current identity through his attempted “transformation” but that Lector was right in that he wasn’t actually trans, in fact he wasn’t really capable of understanding what that meant. I’m definitely not equating trans identity with mental illness, and I don’t think Harris meant to, just that Demme cut some scenes where, as you mentioned, they explain more of Gumb’s motivations and how they would differ from that of an actual trans person.
His identity crises and desire for change were based in fear and self-loathing, which seems the opposite of the awareness of identity acceptance and feeling like you’re finally being true to yourself that comes when people go through the process of gender-affirmation. Though my opinion is definitely flawed as I’m a cis guy, so I’ll defer to the author of this piece, that’s just my interpretation of what Harris meant, and Demme failed to articulate.
Cheap shoes and fava beans!
It’s not just this movie, it’s how every single piece of mainstream media that included trans-coded characters back then, made them villains or freaks. There were no positive mainstream portrayals, period. I can only imagine how damaging that cultural context was to young trans people who were just finding themselves, when such an essential part of their identity only existed onscreen when hack writers needed a quick and lazy way to portray a villain as weird and unsettling.
How many trans kids in this era were taught to hate themselves, I have to wonder, when mainstream media kept telling them that cheap stereotypes like Buffalo Bill were all they could ever be?
I thought The Crying Game was a weird one to cite though—it’s basically a love story. Yeah, the guy has a visceral reaction upon finding out his partner is trans, but it seems totally realistic for a conservative Irish dude in the 90s.
I agree, I liked The Crying Game a lot and while it took Fergus a while to come around to understanding his attraction to Dil, he does eventually, and also at the start of the movie she was mentioned as in a relationship with Jody that seemed steady enough that he wanted her taken care of after his death (though he was willing to cheat on her, but that is shown more as Jody’s moral failing and lust as his downfall, rather than a critique on Dil as a partner).
Its not really a stretch to note the lack of any positive representation and the high suicide rate of trans people. Its all very cruel looking back.
I’m curious about what you (not just you, but other people in this discussion) think of Roberta Muldoon from The World According to Garp (novel, 1978; film, 1982). I know how I feel, but I’m a cis woman and would rather sit back from the discussion.
I think the closest to a positive portrayal of a trans character back then was probably Denise in Twin Peaks.
Good call for the most part, though they still went for the not so great or at all humorous chestnut of a trans character dressing up to seductively distract people who don’t know she’s trans, mining the situation for the “comedy” of straight dudes being attracted to her. But on the other hand, outside of that one scene I described, Denise is portrayed in a very positive light, even more so in Season 3/The Return. I was a fan of her friendships with Cooper and Cole, wish they could have given Denise a bigger part before Duchovny went off to play another awesome special agent.
Denise is great. I wasn’t sure due to her small role in the show whether she was a cis drag queen or a trans woman, but I’m glad the third season confirmed she was the latter (and even gave her a promotion, to boot).
While I agree (re: the article) that being trans and being self loathing to the point where you want to be a whole new person with a different past and personality aren’t the same thing, there’s nothing stopping both personality traits from existing in the same person.
Has everyone here forgotten about THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP Spectacular performance by Lithgow and 8 years prior to Silence Terrence Stamp in Priscilla Queen of the DesertLady Chablis in Eastwood’s Garden of Good and EvilJaye Davidson maybe in Crying GameTilda Swinton OrlandoThese are just off the top of my head.
I loved the book “The World According to Garp” but I have yet to see the movie. Though with your recommendation (and the fact that I love me some Lithgow and Robin Williams) I’ll have to find it.
While “Orlando” does have a lot of thought provoking commentary on gender, sexuality, and social norms, I don’t know if you could classify the eponymous character as trans because their transformation was more of a spontaneous magical event they had no control over rather than a realization about identity. The film and novel sort of differ over the exact cause, and it may have provoked a decent amount of conversation about gender transformation in more fantastical fiction vs. transgender people in more realistic fiction, but I think it is more of the former than latter. Great movie though, Tilda Swinton was wonderful as usual.
Lithgow was also nominated for his performance in Garp. He is that good.
Because talking about those characters won’t generate hot takes and discussions over twitter.
Dog Day Afternoon had a trans character who was portrayed pretty fairly back in 1975, although that might have been easier because the character was based on a real person.
All in the Family had a sympathetic portrayal of a recurring crossdressing character as early as 1975.
I did not know that, and it’s good to hear (yeah, today we know that crossdressing doesn’t equal trans but the terminology was less clear back then.) Though it’s telling that we have to go back an entire generation from Silence of the Lambs to find a positive portrayal like that.
I have a slightly different take on the transphobia of the movie. There’s a few ways to analyze it. One is that the movie is straightforwardly mocking a trans person and saying trans = serial killer. That’s disproven by the conversation between Lecter and Starling. The second is that the movie denies that Gumb is trans, but he is. I don’t think that the possibility that someone might misidentify their feelings of self-loathing and alienation is per se transphobic, but the movie does handle it badly by cutting all of Gumb’s backstory so it’s not at all understood.
The third interpretation, which is what I offer, is that Gumb is not trans, but the movie is nonetheless problematic. The issue here is that even if the movie isn’t overtly transphobic, it uses transphobic imagery and tropes. How can you view the dance scene? Even if Gumb isn’t trans, he’s acting out a gender transformation.
The issue with the dance scene is mainly the audience. Why are people so repulsed by it? It says more about the viewer than it says about the film.
Just a slightly tangential question (because the author mentioned it), is The Crying Game to be cancelled too? Because yes, everyone mentions the barf scene, and yes that went on to be spoofed on Ace Ventura and memed to death. But The Crying Game itself, if I remember correctly, is that the guy shows character growth and yes while the narrative doesn’t place Dil’s point of view front and centre, it is a love story in the end, right?I do like the work of Neil Jordan (in general) and I feel that Breakfast on Pluto delighted my non-binary camp heart, so I do want The Discourse to just not discover him just yet. Is that too much to ask?
Having seen The Crying Game when it came out, I felt deeply affected by the trans plotline. I found Dil to have heart and dignity and complexity. It may have made a difference in how I viewed trans people.
At the same time…there certainly were jokes, including lots of quipping along the lines of “She’s a man, baby!” I laughed at them. I made them. I didn’t think I was making them at the expense of trans people. But things really were different back then, and whether you see the culture as more nuanced or more brutal than this one might depend in part on age.
I never thought I was making jokes at the expense of trans people, because I thought I was poking fun at the reductive simplicity of this phrase (which I hear in my head in an Austin Powers voice) and, by extension, at the idiocy of said speaker. We weren’t so quick, back then, to think of the effect of jokes on the least empowered person who might have some connection to the joke. (Yeah, I’m a woman who’s laughed at some misogynistic jokes as well—generally because of the stupidity of the joker.)
I’m glad we’re in a more compassionate and thoughtful time, but…. I don’t know what comes after that “but.” That’s why I try to keep listening.
The only times I’ve seen The Crying Game come up recently have been in discussions of cis actors playing trans characters, and usually just as an example rather than a main point. That movie’s cultural moment was very brief, in contrast to Silence of the Lambs which was a massive critical and commercial hit from a major studio that swept the Academy Awards and gets a deluxe rerelease every few years.
Yeah, it annoys me when people say a movie is homophobic/transphobic because the characters are. That’s not how storytelling works.
I completely forgot that the first Austin Powers movie has an entire subplot making fun of that film.
Always the movie was hugely overrated, if it wasn’t for Lecter and his play the whole story is boring as fuck.TV Series is infinitely better btw
People are down on Dressed to Kill in the comments, but man oh man, is that film so silly. Is it transphobic? Yes. Is it stupidly and gleefully transphobic? Yes. Sleepaway Camp is another one that is over the top silly.
True or false? SOTL is to transgenderism as Rain Man is the autism spectrum.
I would argue that Rain Man is much, much worse – it doesn’t pretend to be about something else, and it isn’t a grimy-ass slasher movie at heart.
Hmm. I’ll say False. Not only because in Rain Man its front and center rather than interpretive, but also because Rain Man was at least trying to do right by the trope. If anything, the conclusion I’m getting from critiquing Silence of the Lambs with this lens, is that its a lot like the Simpsons/Apu situation
I honestly had never considered whether Jame Gumb was gay or trans. I guess I thought he was just a murderer who wanted to make himself a ladyskin suit. This movie made a difference in my life in that I never help anyone- ANYONE- in a parking lot no sirree Bob. Also every guy my age has a kickass Jame Gumb impression. But I appreciate the insight. And I’m sorry that art would affect anyone in such a negative way.
Holy fucking shit how BORED are you that you pushed your little onanistic contrarian bent THIS far that you end up, for a lark, defending a fictional serial killerWRITE ABOUT NEW SHIT. STOP FIXATING. This isn’t political or intelligent or interesting, it’s narcissistic completionism. Damn you for making people pretend to care about this shit.
Some of you need to realize that sometimes you can just shut up and respect someone’s opinion, especially if they are much closer to the experience. I might have quibbles with this and I might love Silence to death, but maybe respect a trans person’s views on trans issues and just shut up.
Jesus, they are not, to the point of invalidating the article as “clickbait”.
Ok, how about you lead by example and shut up and respect the opinions of the people who disagree with you?
certain people don’t want a discussion, they just want to read things that make them feel more righteous in their anger
the prevailing attitude in the comments seems to be:I don’t see anything wrong with it, therefore, nothing is wrong with it.
Colangelo published this piece on a major entertainment and pop culture review website. Her goal was entering/shaping the cultural conversation.
Wait, is it a great, big fat person?
Indictment of our culture that people could be so cruel to someone else because of a fucking movie. I love SotL, but Bill’s trans identity or lack thereof is meaningless to the plot – honestly it barely registered with me when I first saw it, and the “transformation” theme could’ve been pretty much anything. It’s definitely there just to be shocking, and no reason not to reevaluate the film when it still has so much hold over pop culture that new versions of it are coming out all the time.
A. Stopped reading after: “Just like a booger-coated finger a centimeter from your face,”B. In the freakin’ book, Lecter tells Starling that Buffalo Bill is not transgender.
“The serial killer is a victim ACKtually”
I am still amused that Stottlemeyer was Buffalo Bill.
I’m heartbroken that no episode I’ve seen has included Stottlemeyer asking Monk “Was she a great big fat person?”
I don’t even want to admit how many seasons it took for me to catch on to that.
Oh, I never noticed myself. I had to be told by someone else and even then I doubted them until I went back and rewatched SotL.
Wow. An entire article about Jame Gumb, and you don’t bring up the fact that his whole skin harvesting shtick was based on real life killer Ed Gein? Are we now to label Gein as Trans, or can we accept that these people/characters were monsters, and you’re projecting your own issues onto them?
prolonged scenes of men vomiting at the thought of being attracted to trans women (in Crying Game)…as well as an unnecessary last-minute trans reveal…that ruins Soapdish
You know, you had me nodding in sympathy with a lot of your points until I looked up your own Twitter profile, Ms. Veloci_trap_tor. When I combine that name and some of the stuff you’ve posted with your perspective on these two films, it sounds an awful lot like you’re ok with sexual assault.And that’s far, far from ok.What you rather notably omit from the Soapdish analysis is that Robert Downey’s David was (a) put off for PIV sex by Cathy Moriarty’s Montana repeatedly (b) at best lied to by her over and over by omission and (c) was used by Montana for oral unwillingly as he’d never have consented had he not been lied to.Crying Game at least has a thin subcontext of Jaye Davison’s Dil claiming she didn’t know that Forest Whitaker’s Fergus wasn’t aware she was pre-op trans, and does do a better job with dealing with the subtlety involved especially for that time period.
But both are prime examples of traps, and despite what your profile implies consent is consent and trapping is not ok.Does it deserve risking someone’s life as many trans folk experience when they reveal? Absolutely not. But does the interest of their affection have the same right to consent that someone who is trans has? Absolutely. It’d be nice if genitalia weren’t as significant to as many people as they are, but you have no right to decide for someone else that they’re not.I’m sorry you’ve gone through so much trauma with Silence of the Lambs, but I’d venture that you’ve probably dealt a bit of it yourself if the only thing you got from those two movies was that disclosure was optional.
eat a hand grenade
Jesus, the lack of empathy in these comments is ridiculous.Look, I love Silence of the Lambs. I can appreciate it as entertainment while acknowledging that it’s politics haven’t aged particularly well. I’m able to do that because I have very little experience with transphobia, however, this author clearly does.And like every human being on this earth their perception of art is colored by their life experiences. So put away your pitchforks and try to gain some perspective.
I’m a bit surprised to see The Crying Game called out. Why should it be a surprise that a straight man may feel some revulsion upon learning that his partner is actually a man physically? Especially 30 years ago, when people were much less educated about LGBT. While using the reveal as a punchline in Ace Ventura was distasteful (and odd, since I doubt the audiences for the two films overlapped), The Crying Game was respectful of the situation and probably pretty true-to-life in the manner that things progressed in the film.
Plus, Dil was a real character, not just a plot point, even if that’s what the film became known for. For me, at 17, it was the first movie I’d ever seen that opened my eyes up to the reality of trans people and showed that they are real people and not just punchlines or weirdos. Dil is one of the most unique characters created for film. Just my $.02.
He murdered a bunch of women and skinned them, so… pretty sure he doesn’t deserve better?
These articles….
Is this what happens when Hollywood stops releasing movies to critique? I thought the thinkpiece about Bo Burnham in Promising Young Woman was proof enough that film critics were short on material (his performance bordered on caricature), but this is all kinds of asinine. Buffalo Bill’s derangement had nothing to do with his gender identity and everything to do with him killing women and wearing their skin. He’s a serial killer. Full stop.
Garbage piece. While everyone is trying to cancel everything. Cancel this fuckers job. Trying to look for shit that’s not there. Making mountains out of ant hills. Trolling is not journalism. There are still 3 genders: male, female, and hermaphrodite. That will never change.
Buffalo Bill was also a racist -he only killed white women for the skin suit. Also, he was real progressive with his affinity toward the “plus-sized.”🙄
This might be a bit of a hot take, but why and when did we start giving pieces of fiction so much power? A movie is a type of art after all and it’s just strange to me that people believe an artist should be responsible for how their art is digested by the general public. A piece of fiction has no responsibility to accurately encapsulate an era or to delicately traverse any particularly sensitive subjects. A fiction movie exists purely as entertainment (and while of course educational movies exist and works of fiction can hold their own truths) and are meant to be taken as such. So that being said, if you’re allowing a work of fiction to inform your world view isn’t that your problem? I really think a more revealing discourse around this subject would be something dissecting how and why people seem to be garnering their moral and societal beliefs from entrainment media. And again if you’re reading into a movie and using it to support your own beliefs, what responsibility does the creator of that work really have? I don’t know, maybe I’m the odd one out here, but I go to movies to enjoy a story not to be taught a lesson about current or past moral and societal ideology. Now, all that being said, I absolutely understand how a movie like this would not be enjoyable to someone who is trans and has experienced transphobia based around opinions people drew from the movie; I would never tell someone their experience isn’t valid. But I think it’s odd to drag the directors and the authors of these more controversial works. That’s just my opinion of course though, just another piece of the discussion.
Can’t believe Ted Levine was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. He was way more deserving than Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley (both for Bugsy).
Heh, Bugsy’s on my que. Is it any good?
It’s okay but it’s no Godfather or Goodfellas. The Academy certainly loved it, it was nominated for just about every major award.
To be clear here: I have no idea how I would’ve reacted to this film if I didn’t know that “trans” was a thing at the time. And quite honestly I would have been way, way more restrained had I realized anyone would so much as notice my reply.I guess this is why people like to court controversy and write clickbait articles.That isn’t my style though (I look at my post and don’t like that it has the word “dumb” in the first line) so I guess I’ll just be more careful in the future. And if I get a lower audience, so be it.
I’m sorry but this does feel like it is part of the current trend of taking things from the past and finding reasons to be offended by them in the present. As a trans individual you are of course entitled to see it as you will. As the father of a trans son I am not oblivious to what you are trying to say, but don’t see it. My son and I watched this before (we make a point of watching films together on Friday nights that are either “classic” or “renowned” from the past) and as I watched it with him, some of your thoughts came to me as well. But he pretty much agreed with Lecter: “This guy is not even close to trans. He is trying to escape his self loathing, and he is choosing to do it with women’s skins. He could just as well be doing it with goat skins to be less human, or adorning himself with metal parts to become some grotesque version of a robot. It is not about the gender, it is about becoming unrecognizable.”But hey, we all bring our own perceptions and baggage with us.
“When questioned about the transphobia of his film, Jonathan Demme never even acknowledged it as a possibility. After more than two decades of criticism, he never really got it,”- Him and me, both. “They aren’t a person. They are a monster that needs to be hunted down because they weren’t helped sooner.”-No, he’s a monster that needs to be hunted down because he’s KILLING PEOPLE and it’s authorities’ job to catch him. He could turn himself in any time and get the help he needs. I understand sympathy for the villain, but this is pretty black and white to me.There’s enough projecting in this article that I get the sense if the movie had explained Jame in more detail, it would only make things worse. Because the moral of the story is someone is always going to have a problem with something. So. What happens now? Should the awards be revoked? Should the film be removed from the Library of Congress? Obviously the actors involved should apologize on social media. Maybe Buffalo Bill’s scenes should be edited out completely? Or better yet, he should get an origin movie that addresses all these issues. A Disney-style remake that ‘fixes’ its problematic elements. Here, 30 years later, what is it you want from this film? (Don’t tell me I just read a “I Hate This Movie And You Should Too” article for nothing)
Ideally, at the end of reading this article, you would understand another viewpoint a little better. If you qualify that as “for nothing,” then I don’t know what to tell you. Grow up, I guess?
Yes to all of that. Those are good ideas thanks
Why do assholes like you think that offering a critique on a 30 year old movie means that we want to erase it from history? No one is saying “Cancel the movie!!!” they are just saying “in retrospect, that was pretty fucked up and I can see how it would have hurt trans people”. I know, I know, empathy is hard.
As a trans woman, I’ve had people I thought were my friends ‘jokingly’ refer to me as “Buffalo Bill” when they thought I was out of earshot. So yeah, the cultural influence of that film as regards trans people is obvious and damaging.
I’ve seen TSOTL a few times when i was in my late teens and early 20s and the last time might have been some 25 years ago give or take . I’ve never viewed BB as a trans or gay character. Reading Demme’s remarks now, i see that i wasn’t wrong. Besides, the thought of him being a mentally deranged straight man who would go to such lengths is much scarier than the idea of a trans or gay serial killer.
Shame on the director for not knowing what is offensive today but was pretty mainstream 30 years ago. Shame on him. He should have known!
I don’t buy your thesis that audiences put absolute faith in Lecter’s diagnosis of Gumb. The fact that he is, himself, faithless makes Gumb’s possible motives that much more dynamic. I have seen too many personal-trauma readings like this in academia. It’s important to be able to step back from the work or one risks solipsism.
Oh fuck off you pathetic child.
Nice write up, I particularly appreciate the history, including of the sadly predictable actions of the medical community. I personally find it easy to take a “two things” tact in watching Silence. That ease is a mark of my own privilege and it’s completely understandable someone whose life has been negatively impacted wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. I struggle with the whole dynamic: should we disengage with (“cancel?”) a text that reflects the destructive moral biases of its time (in Silence’s case, a willingness to exploit fear and ignorance in service of a thriller/horror movie) given the real damage it has done, or should we go all objective and anthropological and accept that whatever we watch contains some form of bias? And why would we chose the latter? Just because we want to be entertained? I kind of think of it in terms of empathy. Empathy for the biases, and vulnerability to bias, of one time might make it easier to recognize our own vulnerability. Unless we’re just using it as an excuse to not care. I guess everyone has a different line.
What’s most unfortunate is that the book gives a much clearer portrait of Jame- one that is very different than that of the movie. He lives in an impeccably clean home, watching a video clip of his beauty queen mother on a loop. In the desire to conure up a big screen monster, a lot of the character in the source material is left behind.
The comments to this are just as dispiriting as I would’ve predicted. Anyway when this movie came out I was a teenager and I didn’t even see it until I was college age and still young too dumb and conservative and understanding of trans issues was still so bad in the early 90s that I don’t even think this controversy penetrated mainstream discourse. But I do very specifically remember one film critic and one only making this same critique: the leftist film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader. He was way ahead of his time and his pointing out that the whole Buffalo Bill thing was simply exploiting society’s hatred and fear of gay and trans people
There was a lot of talk about it. I remember sitting in an orthodontist’s office and reading an article/think piece about how fucked up the representation of queer/trans people was in like Time magazine or something. This would have been in like 91-92. This specific critique of the movie is as old as the movie is.
I’m sure that’s true. Like I said I was very young and unsophisticated at the time and raised in a conservative household. But also what I meant to say was Rosenbaum was the only time I saw such concerns raised in a review of the film as opposed to in some separate think piece. I could be wrong but I don’t think Siskel and Ebert were raising these issues and the film was hugely critically acclaimed.
Philadelphia did seem like Jonathan Demme’s attempt to make up for this. Wasn’t that the first big movie to tackle the issue of AIDS? I can’t recall Hollywood being more positive and realistic towards the LGBT community before it. That’s a pretty big deal that should count for something, right?
Sorry, just gotta throw this in here, as an absolute idiot has decided that ::checks notes:: “actual demographic research, across multiple sectors” does not count if you use shorthand for generational demographic groups:
There is no “measurable data” on “boomers” because “boomers” come from are a made-up, non-scientific theory from a couple quacks.Yes, there is. There is, and there will be tomorrow, and there will continue to be the next day. Because, again, actual demographic research exists. Even data tied to *GASP* different age groups.Gotta fucking love it when someone who clearly isn’t a researcher pretends that they do, in fact, know the first fucking thing about actual research (HINT: they don’t, really).
Ted Levine was excellent in the movie and went on to greatness in Monk!
I didn’t understand the hollowness of the “don’t worry, he’s not trans and Lecter said so explicitly” until relatively recently. I do think that Thomas Harris and Jonathan Demme earnestly believed this logic that the character wasn’t trans, but it’s also obvious that the source of horror in this film is the idea of a pervert who transgresses the categories of gender, and it links the idea of gender transgression with violence. With everything we know about people’s right to self-determine their own gender without expert gatekeeping, it’s just so obvious that Lecter’s statement is nonsense. Doctors’ decision of who would be allowed to transition was (and still is in many places) entirely arbitrary. You could be trans if you conformed to a narrow margin of gender expression, if the doctor thought you would be able to ‘pass’ as cis, if the doctor thought you’d make an attractive woman, if you weren’t already married (allowing you to transition would create a gay marriage). If Jame Gumb had gone to a clinic run according to WPATH standards, she would have been assisted along in her transition instead of being turned away. The authorities were never in the position to tell her than she didn’t qualify as trans.