I Swear I do like the movie

So, my first Insight into how trans identity and narrative are treated in pop culture is the hit film  Silence of the Lambs. It is a detective film following Clarice Starling investigating a serial Killer with the alias Buffalo Bill. I want to start off by saying I am not an expert. These are my observations and opinions. This will also not be a summary. I am going to assume that you, the reader, have watched the film or are at least aware of its existence. Spoiler warning for those who wish it.

As I said earlier in Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling is trying to find Buffalo Bill and interviews Hannibal Lecter to gain insights into her target. Hannibal points out that he believes that the killer is likely using the skin of his victims (all of whom are Women) to make a girl suit because they think that they want to be a woman. This is an instant flag for people who have harmful ideas about transgender women. They believe that transwomen are, just men who think that they want to be women and that they are actually crazy and violent and are a threat to women. These are frequently the arguments used by TERFs. To the credit of the film, they realize the comparison that they make, and in the movie, Clarice responds that the killer cannot be transgender because transgender people are statistically nonviolent, and the killer was rejected from medical clinics because they are not trans. This is a clear wish of the creators, who realize the comparison they are making will be harmful to Trans people to not have their work harm the community. The problem lies on three fronts: the screen time afforded to the bill, the misunderstanding of transgender people, and the failure of the medical community. I will address the in order. The film only affords us this one scene explaining that transgender people are a thing (which is uncommon for the time) and that they are not violent. It is a clear attempt to say that trans people are okay and not crazy. The issue is that we see the killer performing drag acting effeminate, and this is what he wants; thus, we are only given a few lines to say trans people are not crazy killers and entire scenes where we see what some would consider a crazy killer transperson. It does not help that the creator does not understand and did not consult anyone about how trans people know they are trans. Because the killer's whole purpose is that they think they want to be a woman but when they do bring up trans people, they do not argue how transpeople know or think about their gender identity but just state that transpeople are considerably non-violent. This is a nice notion but their argument is basically that the killer is violent thus they cannot be trans. Transgender people are people, and they contain within themselves the full capabilities of any cishet person, and that does, unfortunately, include being violent. This does not help the uninformed viewer to discern that transgender people are not evil because the only close enough example that the movie admits that they are closely linked is the killer. And finally, the failure of the medical community. The medical community has not always been pro-trans. And there are a number of stories about the failure of it to meet the needs of trans individuals and denying them the care that they need to live their lives because a number of trans people can and do commit suicide because of gender dysphoria. The killer is denied care several times because he ‘isn’t trans enough’ and goes crazy. Whether or not they would have killed with the treatment or not is unknown and frankly not helpful. But they did want it enough to kill.

In summary, the film had an idea for a killer and only thought about its relation to a real-life group when it was decided to keep them, so they made an attempt to disassociate the two and, in my opinion, failed. Silence of the lambs is a good movie but the killer is a harmful trans stereotype the launched a slew of problematic trans characters in fiction.

In my next post we’ll see the ripples from this depiction in Ace Ventura Pet Detective.