Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 45
The Silence of the Lambs:
A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?
The Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan Demme is a potently
ambiguous film, filled with its own symbolism of sexuality and
filmed with a camera as perverse as Dr. Lector himself. People are
not who they appear to be and strive to define themselves through
false images. Clarise Starling is the young FBI recruit who identifies
so completely with her father, a sheriff for a small West Virginia
town, tragically shot when Clarise was a child, that she seeks to
mold herself into a part of his world—a man's world of law
enforcement. Buffalo Bill, the serial killer, has been abused as a
child and now hates his own identity so much so that he seeks out
female victims through which he can transform himself into a "thing
of beauty."
Although on the surface this film appears to give Clarise a
voice, on a deeper level it portrays the complicity of the victim in
victimization by paralleling her struggle to gain acceptance in a
male-dominated world with Buffalo Bill's murderous search for
transformation. It is from this perspective that we see that the film
truly, belongs to Dr. Lector, the brilliant psychiatrist imprisoned for
cannibalism, in spirit as well as vision. Like Lector, the camera can
see what is undetected and undetectable by the ordinary person. The
camera can easily delve into the minds of the characters and then just
as easily leap outside to watch, uncover, and devour.
The camera does, of course, at times create a subjective
identification with Clarise, but never for very long. Often the camera
seems to wander away from Clarise, examining the surroundings to
suit its own ends, jumping ahead of her as she threads her way
throu gh the various mazes through which she must pass on her
journey of acceptance, or simply watching her, detailing the fear she
is experiencing.
The issues of camera identification and symbolism are
important in determining this film’s message about women in society
as well as sexual roles and their importance in general. Through
these the film asks visually: What does it mean to be to a woman in
this society? What does it mean to be a man? Are the differences