Clarice Starling first appeared on the screen in 1991 The Silence of the Lambs; the 2001 feature cannibal followed, and the CBS series Clarice premieres this week. The immediate association of the lead has always been the killers she chases for the FBI but watch again Lambs offers a reminder of a different formidable antagonist.
The Silence of the Lambs, which swept across the top five Oscar categories and is the only horror film to win Best Picture, still stands as a skillfully directed, acted and edited film – with one weakness being the characterization of Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) , as problematic 30 years ago as it is today. Overall, however, the big moments are still highly effective. Even when you know it’s coming, Hannibal Lecter’s (Anthony Hopkins) escape plan involving a freshly harvested human face mask – an impressive demonstration of what he really is the “monster” everyone says he is – is shocking. all the time.
These are the little details that cannot be left out of your mind: the introduction of “American Girl” by the alleged victim of Buffalo Bill, Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith); the moment when Catherine’s mother, Senator Ruth Martin (Diane Baker), sighs “Take this thing back to Baltimore! ”When Lecter, strapped to a stretcher in his now iconic face mask, crudely crosses a tag line.
But there is a subtext that runs through the entire film that totally involves Clarice (Jodie Foster). If you are looking for it, you can’t miss it. She is still just an FBI intern when tasked with interrogating an imprisoned Lecter as a means of helping to capture the furious Buffalo Bill, but despite her youth and inexperience, we see how smart and capable she is. She maintains her composure even in the most disgusting and terrifying circumstances (and yet she doesn’t mind having a well-deserved parking lot crying over it later, if the situation calls for it).
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But Clarice is a woman. AND The Silence of the Lambs, which is about a serial killer who targets women so he can make a suit out of their skin, is very careful to establish that Clarice exists in a world where men—all men, not just those who are maniacs – unequivocally have the advantage.
Given the scenario (law enforcement, early 1990s), part of this is only due to circumstances. But The Silence of the Lambs finds so many ways to remind the viewer, both subtly and incredibly openly, that Clarice’s instincts are even more remarkable because she’s in a realm where the male gaze is often used as a weapon – and just as often is beaming directly at she. We have seen this since the beginning of the film; in the opening scene, Clarice is summoned to meet with her FBI mentor, Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), and her journey to her office sees her squeezed into an elevator full of men approaching her. She looks up at an improved display of forced indifference, and the implication is clear: Clarice has become accustomed to making her way through spaces full of men and behaving accordingly.
Ignoring casual sexism is just part of your day right now. There is another time at the FBI headquarters, later in the film, when Clarice and her best friend Ardelia (Candyman’s Kasi Lemmons) are running and a whole bunch of guys turn around to look at them with their eyes. Women, who are throwing study questions at each other while exercising, don’t even notice. It is when misogyny compromises her ability to do her job that Clarice cares enough to be irritated. Even Crawford, who apparently respects her, is not immune to the impulse, excluding Clarice from a private conversation with a West Virginia policeman about one of Buffalo Bill’s victims.
“Starling, when I told that sheriff that we shouldn’t speak in front of a woman, it really burned you, didn’t it?” he says later as an apology. “It was just smoke, Starling. I had to get rid of him. “
“It is important, Mr. Crawford. The policemen look at you to see how to act ”, she replies, mentally reliving the uncomfortable consequences of her actions: in a small room full of uniformed policemen with identical hats, the camera turns around and we can see the men measuring her with a mixture of curiosity and hostility. And she doesn’t just have to deal with glares and glares. Despite being an FBI intern working on an extremely delicate case, she is hit in a variety of professional settings, either by Dr. Lecter’s prison sycophant, Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald), or one of the insect specialists she consults. about Buffalo Bill’s moth fetish. She gracefully deflects both offers, and you have a feeling that it has happened before and will happen again.
The most frustrating part of all of this is that Clarice is so suited to tracking Buffalo Bill – and, eventually, who catches him in the end – precisely Why she is a woman. She is about the same age as Bill’s victims and comes from a small town, of working-class origin, like them, and identifies details that a male agent can miss. During the West Virginia autopsy, she notices the shiny nail polish and triple holes in the victim’s ears, deducing that the girl does not look like a local. Later, she explores the room once occupied by Buffalo Bill’s first victim – left untouched since his murder – and instinctively discovers a treasure trove of sassy polaroids tucked into the girl’s jewelry box. Perhaps it is implied that Clarice once had her own private hiding place.
After seeing the pattern of dress that makes her realize the reason for Buffalo Bill’s “female suit”, her intuition takes her to the home where he starves and skinned his victims – while the rest of the FBI follows a false trail to hundreds miles away. The reason Clarice was in the right city in the first place is because she pulled one of the strands Lecter hung before her. With Ardelia, she talks about it, and the two women realize that Buffalo Bill really knew his first victim: “What does this guy do? He covets. How do we start coveting? We want what we see every day. “
The male eye does not always lead to murder, of course. But it does in The Silence of the Lambs-and, eventually, a woman who is so used to being examined by him takes advantage of that experience to catch a murderer. We all remember Lecter’s speech about the enumerator and Buffalo Bill dancing “Goodbye Horses”, but the most insidious terror in the entire film may be one that doesn’t jump off the screen at first.
It will be interesting to see if Clarice, which begins one year after the events of Silence of the innocents, continues to explore this theme and delve into this very identifiable aspect of Clarice’s world. The new series opens on February 11 on CBS.
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