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