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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Deep Thoughts About Silence of the Lambs
I do wish we could chat longer, but... I'm having an old friend for dinner.
On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily revisits what is arguably the most influential film of our lifetime: The Silence of the Lambs. Although director Jonathan Demme and lead actor Jodie Foster illuminate the spectrum of misogyny women experience, from casual workplace putdowns to the violent treatment of women as objects, the film does this at the expense of our trans siblings.
To its credit, the movie attempts to differentiate the murderous Buffalo Bill from “real” trans women via exposition, but we can draw a straight line from the chilling depiction of the film's villain to current hysteria over trans women in bathrooms. And though Demme and Foster avoided the “men writing women” aspect of Thomas Harris’ novel that was the source material for the movie, our culture once again remembered the bad guy character of Hannibal Lecter and forgot the dynamic and fully human badass Clarice Starling.
Put some lotion on your skin and prepare to listen in…
Content warning: Discussion of gendered violence toward women, fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia, cannibalism, serial killers, rape, and other really really unpleasant stuff. Just…this movie is a lot, y’all, and we talk about it all.
Mentioned in this episode:
The line in the book that made Emily throw it across the room
Before we knew better: Silence of the Lambs is a win for women—but fails LGBTQ culture
The cultural impact of The Silence of the Lambs
Why The Silence of the Lambs is a feminist fable
The Loud Feminism Of The Silence Of The Lambs
This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls
It's a real mixed bag because, like this, did active and direct harm to trans folks, to our trans siblings, and at the same time it's an amazing film.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters.
Speaker 1:You know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come overthink episode. I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1991 film Silence of the Lambs with my sister, tracy Guy-Decker, and with you. Let's dive in. So, trace, I know you've seen this movie. I don't know if we watched it together the first time or no idea, but it was reading, and I think this is correct. People say this is the most influential movie of at least our lifetime, and I I think that is absolutely correct. So so I know you've seen it. Tell me, what's the furniture of your brain about silence of the lambs, such a?
Speaker 2:weird thing to say what is the most influential movie, but okay, I guess. Yeah, I've definitely seen it, but not more than once. We did not see it together because I was. I know I didn't see it in 91. I was 16, 15, 16 in 91.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was way too scary for me. Then I mean, frankly, it's still too scary for me, but yeah, I saw it as an adult. And there's too scary for me, but yeah, I saw it as an adult and there's, I have a lot. They're like little, like like so many of these things that are so much in the culture, like there are these little like vignettes that bubble up of the guy, that whose name is escaping me, the character's name, Actually.
Speaker 1:Elector yeah.
Speaker 2:Hannibal, like the way that he said her name, Clarice no-transcript. In terms of the storytelling piece of it, I think even on first viewing which was not in 91 for me it had to have been somewhere in the early 2000s I did not understand. There seems to be a core of attraction between Hannibal and Clarice that I just don't get. Like I have to take it on your word that there's something there. I don't see it and even the first time I saw it and so, like in storytelling wise, like I get why the storyteller wants me to believe that's there, I didn't get it, I didn't buy it and I know, just because you and I've spoken offline about it, some of the things that bother you about the actual specific details that I am curious to think about, about the actual villain or the you know the big bad that we're working to fight. That I haven't looked at closely but even side-eyeing I'm like, ooh, this isn't going to be fun. That's what I got.
Speaker 2:It's very disjointed, it's very disjointed which kind of frankly describes my life right now.
Speaker 1:So like oh yeah, I hear that my life, my brain, my thoughts, my emotions.
Speaker 2:I'm just disjointed Our country. Welcome to the club. Silence of the Lambs. Disjointed, but why are we talking about it today, Em?
Speaker 1:So this is a movie that is very much part of the furniture of my mind. I saw it around when it came out. I didn't see it in the theater. My mind, I saw it around when it came out, like I didn't see it in the theater. I can remember being on the bus stop when I was in middle school, because I was 12 when it came out the scene where one of the prisoners throws semen at her face, I had literally no idea what that was and I was asking another kid at the bus stop who had also seen it, who was a boy do you know what that was? And like he got really like and just wouldn't talk to me, like, like didn't want to answer and like I and I still completely no idea, no clue what was going on. So, like years later, when I saw it again in my late teens, I was like oh, no wonder. My poor friend was like oh, dear God, why did you ask me?
Speaker 2:that. That's really funny. That's your friend who's now like on Broadway, right? Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, just making sure I know who it was. Yeah, so the other thing like just to give you a sense of how deeply embedded in the furniture of my brain this is my eldest was speech delayed. Before his younger brother was born, we were getting speech therapy in the home through, like Head Start or something like that, and so he would do this thing where he would go ah, ah and like kind of grasp with his hand when he wanted something, and so I think it was like winter or something like that I got some lotion, was putting it on my hands, and he came over and went, ah, uh, and without consulting my brain, my mouth immediately went it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. Oy gevalt, emily To my child, oy gevalt, front of a mandated reporter. Now I actually come to think of it. I think I've stopped myself before the second half of the sentence. I just said it puts the lotion on its skin.
Speaker 2:Still still, hopefully, the mandated reporter. It was not furniture up her brain.
Speaker 1:So the mandated reporter at the time was like 23 years old, soaking wet. So I don't think she had any idea what I was referring to. Think she had any idea what I was referring to. So that just kind of gives you a sense of like how embedded this is. That's part of why I want to talk about it.
Speaker 1:I really enjoyed the movie as a teenager. I ended up reading the book that it's based on in college. It's the only time I've ever thrown a book across the room. It made me so angry. I'll tell that story at some point.
Speaker 1:And I did not see the transphobia and transmisogyny in the story as a kid seeing this movie, because you know just, there was no, like it didn't exist in culture that I was consuming. And so as soon as I read criticism of it I was like oh, oh, yeah, oh. But I had to get the outside perspective to notice it. Thomas Harris who wrote the novel. He created a very strong feminist character in Clarice Starling, but I think he did it by accident in a lot of ways and I think it's Jonathan Demme and Jodie Foster so Demme being the director and Foster embodying her, playing her who made her the incredibly strong feminist role model that the character is. But that means this movie really does the give with one hand and take with the other and there's a very complicated legacy of this film I think is really worth examining.
Speaker 2:Cool, all right. Well, I'll look forward to that. In the meantime, like, remind me and our listeners like what happens in this movie, what's?
Speaker 1:the plot. So we meet Clarice Starling. She is a student at Quantico to become an FBI agent. There are some really excellent establishing shots where, like she is on the like ropes course thing at the beginning, like going through the whole course that you have to do like climbing ropes and you know running and all of that, and she's called into Agent Jack Crawford's office. Meanwhile, every time she passes you see people turning their heads to look at her. So like, it establishes that she's an attractive young woman without relying on the male gaze at all. And then there's another really amazing shot where she gets into the building and she gets into an elevator and Jodie Foster I don't know how tall she is, but she must not be a particularly tall woman and then they also intentionally have extras it's all men surrounding her who tower over her.
Speaker 1:So Jack Crawford was one of her professors at Quantico and she's basically his protege. She has not graduated yet and all of that. He knows that she's interested in the behavioral psychology unit of the FBI and so he asks her to go to a prison in Baltimore it's like it's an institution for criminally insane basically to interview the psychopath Dr Hannibal Lecter, because the belief is that he will have some insight into a new serial killer named Buffalo Bill who has at this point killed five women. Now Crawford doesn't tell her. That's why she's going, because he knows that if she goes in with an agenda, Lecter will understand it right away, because he's just that intelligent. So we meet the Dr Chilton who is the head of this prison, slash hospital, slash asylum. He hits on her immediately and he says and again I think this is goes to jonathan demi's like really excellent filmmaking, like how smart it is for crawford to send a young, attractive woman to interview lector because he's more likely to open up to her, because he hasn't seen a woman in eight ears.
Speaker 1:So we see the really creepy shot of her going to sit outside his cell. But she has to walk past five or six other cells beforehand and very, very disturbing individuals in each one of them. Right next door is multiple Migs is the name that Lecter calls him who shouts or who hisses at her I can smell your cunt. She and Lecter kind of spar back and forth a little bit and he basically says no, I'm not going to help you. So she's leaving. And that's when Miggs throws his semen at her and like all the rest of the inmates are also like hooting and hollering and like it's terrifying.
Speaker 1:And Hannibal is at the edge of his cell, which is glass or plexiglass instead of bars, and shouts come back, come back. And he says basically like that was very rude of Miggs, I would never have that happen to you. And so because of that, like I'm not going to answer your questions, but I'm going to tell you something that you want to know. And he basically tells her to look up his former patient, miss Moffett, m-o-f-e-t, and he says look in yourself. Something like that. So look in yourself. Yeah, it's a clue. Okay, he gives her basically One of the things that's great about Jodie Foster.
Speaker 1:We show her and this is apparently based on they spoke to several FBI agents who kind of suggested that this is something that happens.
Speaker 1:She goes to stand next to her car and she cries, and the FBI agent who suggested that said like it's a lot and you need to kind of let it out and then you can move on with your day. So the clue turns out to be like you know, there's no way to look up his former patients because he destroyed all the files he kept before he was apprehended. She finds a storage place called Yourself Storage. She had gotten the impression, like the way he said, it was weird and there's a storage facility in there, one unit in there that was leased to a Miss Hester Moffitt. No one has touched it for 10 years. It's very difficult to get in. She finally manages to get inside and she finds a whole bunch of different stuff, including a decapitated head in a jar. She realizes that Hester Moffitt is an anagram for the rest of me, so he never actually had a patient and so she goes back to Lecter. He basically suggests that he treated Buffalo Bill. The disembodied head was one of his first victims.
Speaker 2:Bills, bills or Lecter, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of Bill's first victims. So there's that suggestion. Okay, meanwhile they're talking about like victims, so there's, there's that suggestion OK.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile they're talking about like we think that there will be another victim. And we meet Catherine Martin, who is the daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, and we see her abducted. The, the Buffalo Bill, basically uses her kindness against her. She sees, sees him like struggling to get a couch into a truck and she's like can I give you a hand? And he's like, oh yeah, why don't you? You can go backwards and then I can push up. And so he forces her into the truck and takes her away.
Speaker 1:They also get a call that there is I think this is a sixth victim that came out of a river in West Virginia. So Crawford and Starling go to investigate. They get there the body, because it's in a very small town, the body is at a funeral home instead of like a coroner's office. That's where the coroner does the work and it's full of police and the police chief is already clearly like angry that the FBI is coming in on this turf. And so Crawford goes to the police chief right in front of Starling and says hey, with these kinds of sex crimes there are things I want to discuss. That isn't fit for a mixed company. So let's go talk. So and leave Starling there All of the rest of the police are now eyeing her.
Speaker 1:They go through the autopsy and they discover that this victim has skin missing off of her back in two like diamond patterns. They also find a like a cocoon, a chrysalis, in the throat cavity of the dead woman. So Starling takes it to some entomologists to find out what it is. Takes it to some entomologists to find out what it is. She also gives Crawford what for, although he does bring it up, he said that really burned you when I said that to the police chief and she said it matters. The cops look to you to know how to treat me. So the way that you treat me in front of other cops matters. And he's like you're right, it does. And he's her mentor, her boss, her teacher. So like she doesn't bring it up first, he does, but she doesn't back down, Nice. So the entomologists let her know that it's a death's head moth.
Speaker 1:It only lives in Asia, so someone had to have imported it. She goes back to Lecter At this point. Senator Ruth Martin knows that her daughter is gone and is probably another Buffalo Bill victim. They know that he keeps his victims for like three or four days before he kills them. They haven't figured out why, but they know the clock is ticking.
Speaker 1:Martin has said that she will make sure that you are transferred to another facility that has a view, because that's one thing that he wants. He's in this windowless room. He hates Chilton, the lead of this hospital, so he'd like get away from Chilton and then also, once a year he'll get to have a week on this island called Plum Island, where there's like research into animal disease and be able to like under guard but be able to walk on the beach for an hour a day. And so with all of that, will you please answer my questions to try to identify this man. So he says quid pro quo, I ask you one question, you ask me one question. So he asks about herself. He wants to know, like where she came from and her background.
Speaker 1:About herself, he wants to know where she came from and her background. And we learned that her father was a police officer who was shot in line of duty when she was 10 years old. Her mother had already died when she was a baby and so after she was orphaned, she was sent to live with her mother's cousin and husband on a ranch in Montana, but she was only there for two months and they, like he wants to know why, but she doesn't tell him and he shares several pieces of information with her about who Buffalo Bill is and must be and what she needs to know to find him. Chilton is listening in and then he comes and taunts Lecter telling him like there's no deal. Starling made it up. Senator Martin is not, has no idea that you think that you're going to be going on this island and this new facility and says but I will talk to Martin if you give us a name, because at this point it's clear that he has treated Buffalo Bill.
Speaker 2:Do we know if Chilton is telling the truth?
Speaker 1:Yes, we do know Chilton is telling the truth. We then get confirmation from Crawford later and Crawford's like I felt, like you know I gave the authorization for Starling to do that. That's also where Catherine was abducted was in Tennessee. Lecter agrees, but only you know, if they fly him there, chilton had been in his cell and had been like playing with his pen and forgot it there, and they made it clear early on, you know, don't nothing other than paper can go to him. And so Lecter steals it. They go to Tennessee. He tells Martin that Lewis Friend is the name of the perpetrator and has some descriptions for him. And Chilton is doing all of this so that he can take credit for solving the ongoing serial killer Buffalo Bill investigation. Starling shows up in Tennessee and goes to see Lecter and says Lewis Friend is an anagram of iron sulfide, which is fool's gold. So I know that that's not his name. I know that you're making that up. They talk some more. He says more quid pro quo and she realizes that everything else he told her was true, just not the name. And he asks her to explain why she left.
Speaker 1:She ran away from the ranch in Montana. It was because she woke up in the middle of the night one night to hear the lambs screaming because they were slaughtering them. It was a spring lamb slaughter and it horrified her, and so she ran to the barn to see what was happening and she opened the pens to try to get the lambs to run away, and they wouldn't. And she opened the pens to try to get the lambs to run away, and they wouldn't. And so she didn't know what to do. So she grabbed one lamb and ran, thinking if she could at least save one. But she only got four or five miles away because it was so heavy and the husband her mother's cousin's husband who owned the ranch, was so angry. He put her in an orphanage, basically, and that's where she grew up. So that's where the title comes from.
Speaker 1:Starling's interrupted in the midst of this, chilton has come and is dragging her away at when Lecter says you have everything you need and here's the case file. He's had it, and now he's in an octagon with bars rather than the place he was in Baltimore had it, and now he's in like an octagon with bars rather than the place he was in Baltimore, and so he passes it to her through the bars and he like brushes her finger with his. More on that later. So we then see Lecter escape. It's a long sequence. Basically there are two guards come in to bring him a meal. They have him handcuffed but he uses a piece of the pen to get out of the handcuffs. He manages to kill both of those men. He ends up taking the clothes of one of the men and his face and pretends to be him and puts his clothes on that police officer's body and hides it. The look my sister has given me.
Speaker 2:He cuts the man's face off. Yeah, that's really unpleasant. It's really unpleasant. No wonder I don't remember it, I compartmentalized it.
Speaker 1:And he ends up also like they call an ambulance because they think that this is Officer Pembrey, the ambulance is taking him away and he manages to kill hole in the ground. Buffalo Bill is keeping her in she is amazing.
Speaker 1:So he like lowers things to her. That's where it puts the lotion on the skin or else it puts its nose again. And so he like gives her a bucket with like the bare minimum of food because he's starving these women to make their skin looser. The bill has a dog, like a tiny little poodle he calls Precious, and so she uses a bone from her meal like a chicken bone that she ties to the string that the bucket comes down in and she throws the bone and the bucket up to the top and is like trying to lure Precious down, lure Precious to her, and we don't see it happen. Like we see her try once and fail. Next thing we know we see like we hear Precious really barking and Buffalo Bill comes in and is like furious at her and she's like I don't want to hurt this dog but I will. If you don't let me out, give me a phone.
Speaker 1:Starling's investigation makes her realize that the first victim who they didn't discover until after two others had been discovered, was the only victim that had been weighted down in the water. The rest of them had just been thrown in the water and Starling and her friend Ardelia talking about it, and they realize you know that's the first victim and that Bill covets what he sees, so he must have known her, whereas the others were strangers. So they go to Belvedere, ohio, which is where or Starling goes Belvedere, ohio, which is where the first victim was from, and interviews people. Meanwhile Crawford has found the address of Jame Gumm, who they found based on the Deadhead Moths, and it's an address in Illinois, and so he's going with a SWAT team to take him down from the house.
Speaker 1:Starling offers to come and he's like no, no, no, there's not enough time for you to get here. We're going to need background information to be able to actually prosecute the sucker. So stay in Belvedere, do the interviews. You need to do Her interviews. Take her to the house of Mrs Lipman, who was a tailor, while in the first victim's home she sees like dolls and dressmaking dolls, sewing machines and stuff like that, and then a dress with darts in the back that had these like diamond shaped patterns, and she realizes that's when she realizes that buffalo bill is making a woman's suit for himself because the dart shape is the same as what?
Speaker 2:the skin that was missing from the first victim, that clarison, that starling and interacted with. Yes, okay.
Speaker 1:So she finds out that the first victim, frederica, was her, had worked for a tailor named Mrs Lipman. So she goes to Mrs Lipman's house and Bill James Gumm answers the door. Clarice doesn't know that's who it is, but when he gives his aliases he also calls himself John Grant and he calls himself Jack Gordon, so he always uses the same two initials. She's asking about the Lipmans and he's like oh, I think I have her son's number in here somewhere. Come on in. And she realizes that this is the guy, because she sees some moths and she pulls her gun on him. But he also has a gun and is able to get away from her. He goes down into the basement where the pit is, and all of that she sees. Catherine tells her to stay. I need to leave and get this guy.
Speaker 1:And at the end and this stuck with me for so long she is trying to figure out where he is. She's terrified. She gets into a room and this is subterranean and he turns off the lights and it is pitch black, but he has infrared goggles. And so the last few minutes we see from his point of view. We see her where she is and like has her gun at the ready, but has no idea he's right behind her. He cocks his gun and she immediately turns and shoots him, and and is able to shoot him dead. Just based on hearing the cocking of the gun, she knew where he was, and one of her bullets manages to shoot out like one of those high windows in a basement that had been blacked out so light comes in.
Speaker 2:Then, whoa she's a badass, that's intense. So katherine lives. Katherine lives. Whoa, she's a badass, that's intense, so Catherine lives.
Speaker 1:Catherine lives. Hooray, catherine's a badass. The final scene is Starling is graduating from Quantico. Crawford pulls her aside, saying like I'm no good at these kinds of things. I just wanted to say like we couldn't have caught him without you and like, really proud of you, blah, blah, blah. And then someone tells her you have a phone call. It's Lecter on the phone saying I won't come after you because the world's much more interesting with you in it. I hope you can say the same. And she said you know I can't make that promise. And he said well, I have to run. I'm having an old friend for dinner. And he hangs up the phone. We see he's in some kind of tropical island where Chilton is getting off the plane and we see him follow him and that's the end of the film.
Speaker 1:Let me start with what this movie does right. Okay, because there's a lot to love. Well, for one thing, it is a well-constructed, beautifully made, super creepy and I mean that in a good way movie Like Jonathan Demme is an amazing director. It is a very well-written screenplay and it is one of only three movies to get all five of the major Academy Awards Best film, best director, best adapted screenplay, best actor and best actress. Only two other films in the entire history of the Academy have done that and in a lot of ways it gets feminism right.
Speaker 1:So, as I mentioned, we do not ever see Clarice through the male gaze. We know that she's attractive, and partially because look at her, but also based on the way other people treat her and we see her handle both the casual misogyny and the like overt, violent misogyny in realistic, badass and yet still vulnerable ways. You know she's allowed to be fully human. She's allowed to be upset by these things, but she also is like I got a job to do and I will do it. It passes the Bechdel test really well. So Starling has a friend at the Academy named Ardelia, who is another cadet. She's a Black woman and they talk about the case. They talk about several different things. They do talk about Lecter and Buffalo Bill, but they're talking about the victims. It's a wide range of conversation multiple times. So Catherine and Starling talk to each other about getting out of the hole and all of that.
Speaker 1:Starling, when she interviews a friend of the first victim whose name we get, we see her like talk about the victim, talk about their lives, all of those sorts of things. Part of the reason why Starling was able to get somewhere in Belvedere Ohio because we see the first victim's father, who's like we've had the police over and, over and over again and they can't like I have nothing new to say is because she sees this woman as a full and complete person and she talks to her friend, including there's a scene where she's in the victim's bedroom and she's got a music box you know the kind you keep jewelry in that's got a little dancer in it that spins around and she sees that there's like the lining on the top is loose and she opens it and she finds some Polaroids of the victim in her underwear. And so these were, like you know, before you had cell phones, she was taking like boudoir photos of herself or someone took them for her and hid them away because she lived with her dad and she was a young woman. But it is very clear that Starling is seeing like this woman who was gone was a sexual being. All of the women are somewhat overweight because Buffalo Bill wants to make a suit that will fit him and so he needs to have looser skin. So Starling does not in any way fat shame or problematize these women's bodies and that moment I thought I was really glad to see when I watched it again last night, because it made it clear that Starling was like yeah, this is a full person, including sexuality, and you get the sense of like and it is such a shame that she is gone and can no longer explore that aspect of herself. It's a shame she is gone and will never finish this dress that she was sewing, that she was very talented at. So it centers the victim in a way that the franchise does not. Now, jodie Foster is a phenomenal talent, is was always, has been, always, will be. I mean, she's incredible and some of the most amazing scenes are just her talking, her telling the story about the lambs and in fact, apparently Demi had planned to do some location shots in Montana to like kind of cut to those Like flashback kind of thing yeah, flashback while she's talking. But they had gotten the footage of her telling this monologue and they're like we don't need that. I'm like, yeah, you don't, that's really cool, that's very cool. Yeah, you don't, that's really cool, that's very cool. Not for nothing.
Speaker 1:Chris Carter of the X-Files part of the reason why he wanted to do what he did with the X-Files was, he was patterning Scully somewhat after Clarice Starling.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting, that is part of what got him interested in the idea of the FBI being who investigates this paranormal stuff. Some of the stuff that I've read talks about how so much of the tough woman law enforcement character that we see over and over and over and over and over again in the last 30 years can be traced back to of amazing. And yet I want to kind of save the transphobia and trans misogyny for last. So I want to first kind of go through my experience of reading Silence of the Lambs. Now, starling is not at all fat phobic and for the most part the victims appear to be treated with gentleness and respect by law enforcement. For the most part there Is, I think, some fat phobia inherent in the storyline in that and I might be like this is I like your way of putting it. This is my first draft thought. But there, like as I was watching last night, I felt like you know it's very easy to say, well, this wouldn't have happened if she lost a few pounds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just thinking that, like, is this story sort of blaming the victim for being fat, making herself a target of this psychopath?
Speaker 1:So and I'm not sure that that's true, in part because we see Katherine Martin, she's kind, which is why she ended up getting taken and like that kind of kindness and respect for other people is not a bad thing. It led to something awful, but you see that she's kind, she's smart, she's resourceful. She also the other thing that I thought was really interesting, because I completely forgotten this so when she gets to her apartment, it's right outside her apartment where she's grabbed. Her cat is in the window up above where she parks, and so she's like hey, they're a little cheaper, I'll be right up. And then, with the dog, she's holding the dog and she's like threatening the dog. When you see her being walked out of the house at the end with the shock blanket around her, she's carrying Precious and they're trying to take the dog away from her and she's like no.
Speaker 1:And so like there's this she clearly is an animal lover, taking responsibility, even just for that moment, or gaining comfort from this dog who. It's not the dog's fault that she was owned by a psychopath. She is a full human being. Catherine Martin is a complete human being and so there is no sense of like fat shaming her. I feel like by the movie, the details. All they see is her from her head down, I think she's naked, I think it's supposed to be from within the pit. And again, I don't remember the details or how it ended up here, but they said they were pretty sure that it was Catherine Martin because from the picture they could tell that 145 pound long body could be none other but her. Harris consistently describes Catherine as fat like zoftig pillowy breasts.
Speaker 2:What's? Long bottom, long body. What does that mean Meaning? She's tall, so she's 145 pounds and tall, that ain't fat.
Speaker 1:And that's when I threw the book across the room. Across the room, 125 pounds, that's all, but she's fat, oh man. All right, I was so angry when I read that and in part because, like this book is enormous, huge, like it is, like it led to you know, the most influential movie of our time. Not only did Harris get that so wrong, like where was the editing team? And like not that it would have been better if they had said like 185 pounds, like why put a number on it, but the impression that I got was that Harris is like oh, hot women are like 110 pounds.
Speaker 2:Totally yeah. I mean, that's the only thing it could be, because 145, if tall, is quite slender.
Speaker 1:The way I recall the book because I read it when I was a senior in college. This is literally 25 years ago, but the way I remember the book was before I had the words for this. It was men writing women. You know like she breasted Boobily down the stairs.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Because I remember the way even characters who are supposed to be like powerful and smart, like Ruth Martin, catherine's mother, like there was just something like infantilizing about the way they're described. They're described and you mentioned when you were talking about it like that there's supposed to be like this connection attraction thing between Lecter and Starling Harris in his further books. Has them become lovers? And so when they made and I don't remember what they're called, but there were follow-up movies where anthony hopkins reprised his role of lector, both jonathan demi and jodie foster were like absolutely not, I'm not gonna have anything to do with this because of that romantic connection, for good reason, because, ew, it's just out of character for this whole woman.
Speaker 2:She's har's Harley Quinn if she ends up in a romantic relationship with him and Harley Quinn is a real fun comic book character, but she's a fucking comic book character. She is literally a cartoon, and I think that's what you're telling me.
Speaker 2:that is so beautiful about Clarice Starling, as played by Jodie Foster, is that she's not a cartoon she's a real human being like that, real fbi agents kind of consulted on to make sure that the way that she responds is realistic and accurate. And I guarantee you those women are not falling in love with a psychopath who's eating people and like there is a bit.
Speaker 1:So I mentioned that. That moment where he like caresses her finger. Oh, it gave me the creeps and I feel like Jonathan Demme and Jodie Foster and probably even Anthony Hopkins at the time, wanted it to give you the creeps. And at some point Starling actually says to Lecter you're, you're just like Migs, the guy who threw semen at her, because he, every time he meets her, he brings up sexuality in a way that is like just very juvenile. So he does it in a much more socially acceptable and classier in some ways way, my brain is reminding me that he said I cannot in fact smell you.
Speaker 1:I smell that's right other things yeah, that's correct, and so he'll ask her things and she's like I'm really not interested in that, like I'm interested in solving this case and finding buffalo bill. So I have no problem imagining lector beinger being entranced and interested in her. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure he's a sapiosexual like, turned on by smarts, and she's very smart. Also, he hasn't seen a woman in eight years. So a very smart woman who's gorgeous, and that is not attraction on her part.
Speaker 2:It's the like, in the same way that you could say there's hmm.
Speaker 1:Yes, and he is very interesting and engaging, but I truly believe that Clarice Starling, as played by Jodie Foster, is perfectly capable of recognizing the difference between you know, like I'm talking to this man, I'm giving him some access to who I am as a human being, in furtherance of my goal, which is saving lives, and I will be thinking about these conversations for the rest of my life, but not because I'm enjoying myself.
Speaker 2:And not because there's any kind of romance. I mean, even if something about the banter was dopamine inducing, that's not the same as romance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when Lecter escapes, Ardelia is worried. He's going to come after Starling and she says, like you know, I kind of trust that he's not going to because, like this is gonna sound weird, but he'd think it was rude. And she's right, she has the like, she understands his character. So, like between that and then what we see of Catherine, who is so very strong even though she is in this horrifying, impossible situation, you really get this amazing view of what feminine strength looks like. So let's bring, let's get to the transphobia and transmasodony.
Speaker 1:Now, to both Harris's credit and the film's credit, there is exposition where Starling and Lecter are discussing Buffalo Bill, and they are. This is when the term transsexual was the common parlance. They're saying that Bill is not a true transsexual because he just wants to transform. He is this damaged person who loathes himself and wants to transform into anything different, and becoming a woman is as different as he can think of being. And so one of the clues that Lecter gives Starling is to check with the only three hospitals in the country that do. They called it gender reassignment. Now you know, gender affirming care surgery. He'll have been turned down because he's not truly transsexual.
Speaker 2:He'll have been turned down for bottom surgery is what you're telling me, yes, or any surgery.
Speaker 1:So Okay, good. And Starling even says although it's one of those like damning with faint praise she says you know, transsexuals don't tend to be violent, they tend to be very passive, which I'm like 1991. Of this deviant psychopath coveting a woman's body for himself plays into so much of the horrors that trans folks put up with and there's like you can draw a straight line from there's this it's an amazing scene where Ted Levine, who plays James Gunn, is dancing and putting on makeup and it's creepy and sensual and like oddly sexy but also terrifying. It's like perfect storytelling in cinema. But you can kind of draw a straight line between that and like knowing what a psychopath he is and knowing how awful he is to the sort of people who are saying like men are trying to use women's restrooms.
Speaker 1:Ed, you know, doing research for this was talking about how like. I don't know if this was before the term was coined, but this is very much a trans-exclusionary, radical feminist film.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:Because it is very feminist in a lot of ways. But you know, trans women don't get to.
Speaker 2:Well, bill's not. Yeah, bill is not treated as a woman, mm, hmm, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know where to put that. Jonathan Demme got a lot of pushback at the time, even from LGBT communities and outreach and stuff like that. Saying like this is homophobic and at the time they were focusing on homophobia, in part because there wasn't as much discussion about transphobia In 91. There wasn't as much discussion about transphobia, sure, in 91. Bill is coded as queer, aside from the gender expression. He kept saying like well, but he's not really gay, he's not really this and like, and leaning on the exposition, but that's not what's remembered. You know, people don't remember that scene. They remember the dancing. They remember it puts the lotion on its skin.
Speaker 2:I think you're right, though, about the bathroom thing. Right, Because if, in your head, Buffalo Bill equals what a trans woman is instead of just you know the nice lady who's helping you at the, you know the IT desk or whatever like, because that's what we're actually talking about when we're talking about trans women. But if you don't know anybody and this is, as you say, one of the most influential films of the generation yeah, I think that's significant.
Speaker 1:And so I also think that it's significant. I don't know this for sure, but Demi went on to make Philadelphia, the Tom Hanks film about gay men dying of AIDS. And I personally have no doubt that that was intentional after getting all the pushback because of Silence of the Lambs.
Speaker 2:You think it was?
Speaker 1:penance. Yeah, he was like, okay, I'm hearing all this pushback. He was defensive about it, but I think he listened. Pushback, he was defensive about it, but I think he listened, considering how well he handled the issue of misogyny in the workplace in this and he is a cis man.
Speaker 1:I think he's capable of listening and, honestly, the storyline comes from Harris. So it's a real mixed bag, because this did active and direct harm To trans folks, to trans folks, to our trans siblings, and at the same time, it's an amazing film. So trying to hold both of those at the same time, you know realizing like how much I really did take from. So this is similar to Nightmare on Elm Street everyone remembers the bad guy and not the badass. But I remembered Starling. I remembered the long monologue where she talks about trying to save the lamb. I remembered that ending scene how terrifying it was when she couldn't see and Bill could, but she still bests him and so, like, I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 1:But why did it have to come at the expense of trans folks and their safety? It's a tough one and in 2011, it was selected for Library of Congress. You know, because of cultural significance, that sort of thing. It's my hope that when something is done, it is chosen for that, and I don't think that that's wrong.
Speaker 1:It is an important part of cultural significance also be a conversation about what it meant that this film was so beloved, so award-winning, so influential, and it hinges on the idea that trans is scary, yeah, and dangerous and dangerous. And we've talked before about, like, if you have representation, generally no one has a problem with the fact that Anthony Hopkins is a white man playing a psychopath, you know, because that's not the only white man we see. Like that's no problem, okay, because there's plenty of white characters out there. We make a big deal of the fact that Clarice Starling is not sexualized, because that's what happens with all of the women and like, even though there's always roles for white women, but we don't have any representation of trans characters other than as the butt of the joke through the 80s and 90s and 2000s or as this horrific villain in this case A monster, an actual monster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, as the movie says, he's not actually trans, but that also feels like gatekeeping in a way Totally Like who gets to decide who is trans and who is not?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, it's that. That doesn't feel good yeah.
Speaker 1:So like that was the attempt to be like oh no, no, you don't actually have to worry about trans folks, because it's not really not one of them yeah, that's very.
Speaker 2:No, that feels very problematic it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also feel like I'm not fully equipped to grapple with this movie. Sure, sure, but it is. I mean, it's a masterpiece of a film. And Foster, when she won the Oscar for portraying Starling, like, said she was so grateful to be able to play this strong woman.
Speaker 2:Mm.
Speaker 1:And like embody this, this what it means to be a good investigator, what it means to be both a team player and someone who knows when to strike out on her own, and all of that because that was the other thing they were talking about Prior to this. If you had a story about a police officer or someone in law enforcement, they were a rogue and she's by the book, and so that kind of led to police procedurals. You could claim this is propaganda as well. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this film.
Speaker 2:Yeah, any final original thoughts before I see if I can reflect back to what I heard?
Speaker 1:That's everything I brought. I wanted to bring to the table.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let me see if I can reflect back to you what I heard about this 1991 Silence of the Lambs. So I'll start with Clarice Starling, who I think you laid out in several reasons why this character is so powerful and so feminist character is so powerful and so feminist. One of the things that I really like that you brought is the way in which the filmmaker made clear that she is an attractive young woman, that she is an attractive woman without sort of relying on the male gaze. So we as the viewer do not see her in sexualized positions. Rather, the director shows other people reacting to her and that allows us to see the effect that she has, the fact that others are sexualizing her without the director being guilty of sexualizing her, which is pretty cool, and we don't see that very often.
Speaker 1:It was remarkable in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:Because it's important to the storyline. It's part of who she is and what she's contending with.
Speaker 2:And to show it to us without sort of forcing us to also be guilty of it, is really really powerful and in some ways makes us an ally, and I like that a lot. So thank you for sort of articulating that in that way and, on the feminist track, like this does pass the Bechdel test. So, per Alison Bechdel, there are at least two women with names and they talk to each other about something other than a man or a boy, and so and that happens in multiple ways Not only does Clarice talk to each other about something other than a man or a boy, and that happens in multiple ways. Not only does Clarice talk to her friend from the academy, she also talks to Catherine, who is the victim she saves. So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:We witness Starling kind of push back against her boss and mentor and teacher for casual misogyny in the workplace in a way that is strong, unqualified, unequivocal, but also respectful because, as you point out, she didn't bring it up. But also respectful because, as you point out, she didn't bring it up, she waited for him to bring it up, but then, once it was up, once it was in the conversation like once it was like conversation topic she gave him the what for she didn't pull any punches and that's pretty remarkable, like as a role model, like for us it gives a a like a script.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it gives a very clear script for, for how to push back about, against, against moments like that. Then the victim, the victim who gets saved. Katherine also gave us like like a whole human right. She was a whole person. So we saw that she was kind. We saw that she cared about animals. We saw that she cared about animals. We saw that she recognized the animal lover in her abuser, in her would-be killer, and used that to her advantage. She was resourceful, she just kept going, she did not lose hope and she kept doing what she needed to do in order to try and get out of the situation. So she also was a pretty remarkable character. So that was also really cool.
Speaker 2:The not so cool is there's a couple of things in that column. One is the suggestion of a romance between Clarice and Hannibal Lecter which, though it makes sense that Hannibal would be into her, the idea that Clarice would reciprocate feels anathema to the character that's been created. And at the time I had the reaction when I saw it which was not in 91, but I had the reaction. You just gave that sort of shudder and the fact that original author like wrote future and or was it the author or was it other people in the franchise?
Speaker 1:harris. Yeah, harris, actually, like that was his intention was to create this romance between these two people to create a romance between them yucky.
Speaker 2:So that's, that's really gross.
Speaker 1:The other he actually has, like clarice, also eat people in later books, which is just like why, did you create this character if you were going to abuse her in this way?
Speaker 2:That's not who she is. She's totally Harley Quinn. Yeah, so he wanted a not cartoon version of Harley Quinn. But sorry, harley's a cartoon.
Speaker 1:That's part of the reason why I say he's a man writing women. Yeah, is that that kind of thing?
Speaker 2:It's say he's a, he's a man writing women, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Is that that kind of thing, like it's like you're forcing your character into something?
Speaker 2:yeah, I want a really strong woman who defends her boundaries, who also, like, makes herself become the thing she hates. Yeah, because she thinks she loves him. What?
Speaker 1:no, anyway, and I I don't know if the age difference in the book is what it is between, between the character Between the characters, between the actors I should say Actors and Jodie Foster, but it's also like not that that's the most egregious difference between them, but just in so many ways it's like that's a no.
Speaker 2:Because she's in her 30s and he's in his, or she's in her 20s. She's in her late 20s, like she's, I think, jodie Foster was like 28 or 29.
Speaker 1:And he was in her 20s.
Speaker 2:She's in her late 20s like she's, I think he's in his foster was like 28 or 29 and he was in his 50s.
Speaker 1:now there is like again harris kind of sets this up where there is in the film you can definitely see there's a suggestion of not impropriety or anything like that, but the the hero worship of crawford and the fact that her father died young, like there is this suggestion that she is attracted to older men.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, and I know that Lecter is supposed to be older than her- yeah.
Speaker 2:But, it's okay. Another thing in the not so cool column came from the book. But you threw the book across the room when it said that that 145 pound long body could only be katherine. And katherine had been described as zoftig and round and fat throughout the whole book and and then she's identified as 145 pounds, which is just inaccurate, frankly, and sort of baked into like.
Speaker 2:So as a result of the book and that source material, though the film in general seems to avoid fat phobia mostly, there is at least like a suggestion or a hint that maybe some of these victims it wouldn't happen to them if they'd been thinner, because Bill was looking for women with greater surface area of skin. So that was another sort of thing in the not so great column. But the biggest thing in the not so great column is this elephant in the room which is transphobia and transmisogyny in this film, which, though through exposition would sort of suggest is not accurate because Bill wasn't trans insofar as he had gender dysphoria we weren't using that phrase in common parlance in 1991, but the suggestion is that this person did not in fact have gender dysphoria and was a different gender than their biological sex, but rather just wanted to be someone completely different than who they were, and the opposite gender, opposite sex was as different as he could imagine. And so there's this exposition to suggest that he is not quote unquote, really trans.
Speaker 1:That also is exhibiting the binary thinking, like the most different thing you can think of is to be a woman.
Speaker 2:I'm like really, and then that's the binary and sort of not make this into a weapon with which culture would bludgeon trans people. But he wasn't actually capable of doing that, because it has become a weapon with which to bludgeon trans people.
Speaker 1:Well, there was not a single trans person in the room Right right For any part of making this movie.
Speaker 2:There's so clearly a straight line between Buffalo Bill and the freak out over bathrooms that we see, today it's a straight line. We don't need to kind of like carefully trace the circuitous route we can see it.
Speaker 2:This movie helped to sort of define transgenderism as monstrosity and something to be not only feared but but protected against, because they're going to kill you and steal your skin. So that's like the really big thing. That like is true, it's there, we can see it. And also, this is a brilliant piece of storytelling, a brilliant piece of media, like the use of the medium of film in beautiful ways. We have amazing performances from some of the key actors, notably Jodie Foster, whose monologue about the lambs being slaughtered made the on-location flashback completely unnecessary because she's so fucking compelling. And also, like all of these things are true, which is a hard thing for our brains to hold I'm including you and me, and like listener, maybe you too, but like we've been expected to sort of say like this is a good one, this is a bad one, and like not the same film, same film, same film.
Speaker 2:So I think those are the big things that I heard. Is there anything that I forgot that you want to lift back up?
Speaker 1:just one like notable thing. So brooke smith, who played katherine martin, and ted levine, who played jame gum, were actually became friendly off camera and, and you know, enjoyed spending time together like just just as friends. And so there were points where, because of how Levine had to treat her character when he was acting like he had it to separate himself, part of the reason why I bring this up is this is not where we we started our like obsession with serial killers, right, no, but, and in a lot of ways that there is the attempt to make this about like the victims, like they really do humanize the victims, but what we remember, the serial killers we have like this long line of movies and tv and true crime and stuff like that it's not just that I I feel like this goes back from the obsession with Jack the Ripper and maybe even before, but certainly that's a pre-20th century.
Speaker 1:The idea of the really intelligent serial killer, I think came from this Sherlock.
Speaker 2:What about Moriarty?
Speaker 1:He only actually appears in the story in which he's destroyed. So it's not like he's battling him, the story in which he's destroyed. Oh, so it's not like, you know, he's battling him the whole time, like he is in the BBC version. And so the reason like one of the things that I read was Mandy Patinkin, who was in that TV show, criminal Minds, quit after two seasons because of the psychic damage it was causing him to be. He's like it's the biggest mistake I ever made was to be on this show because it was about, you know, profilers trying to to catch serial killers, and every night it's women being raped from being abused. And so mandy patinkin quit, ted levine, having to to separate from a friend because of how he had to treat her on camera Like is this like that psychic damage of like engaging with this ugliness?
Speaker 1:That, yes, that's human, it's very human to be interested in this sort of thing. But I think that we can be, I don't know like. I don't have an answer for it, because I feel like Demi, in a lot of ways, did the best he could, and better than Harris did, to make this about the human element of the victims, the humanity of Starling, and comparing it to the inhumanity of both Lecter and Bill. But there is psychic damage from playing these characters and there's psychic damage from like bathing our brains in them and I'm not sure how we deal with that, that real human impulse to be interested, because I feel it, like I.
Speaker 1:I saw this when I was like 13. They considered a horror movie, which I never did because at that 13 I wouldn't have watched something that I thought of as a horror movie. I thought of it as a psychological mystery. Yeah, yeah, I am very interested in like these kinds of puzzles but at the same time, like recognizing that there is staring into the face of this kind of ugliness not only allows us to push it off onto a marginalized group, you know, and decide that the ugliness belongs over there because it was a trans person in this story, but it also, like causes long-term psychic damage to us, I think, and I don't know how you solve that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, this was a deep one. This is a movie I think I could talk about for even longer.
Speaker 2:We have been talking for actually quite a long while, so I'm going to actually wrap us up.
Speaker 1:So I'm not saying I want to, but I'm saying yes, it's deep because there's a lot to it and there's a lot of like bigger issues that come up as a result of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So next time, em for something completely different. I'm going to bring you my deep thoughts about SpongeBob SquarePants Completely different.
Speaker 1:I'm going to bring you my deep thoughts about.
Speaker 2:SpongeBob SquarePants I'm ready.
Speaker 1:I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready. I'm just thinking like Hannibal Lecter and SpongeBob SquarePants. Who kills in a pineapple under the sea, hannibal Lecter and a pineapple under the sea, hannibal Lecter.
Speaker 2:Well, if that happens, we'll talk to you about it next time. Yes, look forward to it. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us and, of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?