Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 51
A Sheep in W olfs Clothing
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serve to show that he is trying to mask his true identity, there exists
the danger that these visual cues will merely reinforce negative
stereotypes which depict homosexuals as aberrant and dangerous.
The animal symbolism associated with his victims also has
the potential to reinforce negative stereotypes about women. Cats
represent Buffalo Bill’s victims. Both Frederica Bimmel and
Catherine Martin own cats. It is Frederica's cat which leads Clarise
to discover the sewing room. It is Catherine's cat which is held in
close-up as Catherine is driven off by Buffalo Bill. Cats are seen in
this culture as fickle, feminine. They are associated with intuitive
thinking. By and large, men in this culture do not like cats-they
don’t come when they are called. Dogs, however, are seen as loyal,
masculine. They are associated with determination and straight
forwardness. After the ten-year-old Clarise greets her father (in a
flashback), the camera pans away from them to follow a pick-up
truck with a hunting dog in the back. Clarise would not have seen
this from the angle chosen by Demme's camera, so it must be there to
indicate the course she will take in life. She will strive to be a
protector, a hunter of man. Women are also associated with sheep as
the title suggests. Clarise relates to Lector the childhood trauma of
the lambs in the slaughterhouse and her attempt to rescue them. The
lambs of her memory were as helpless to understand that the people
who had raised them were now going to kill them as the female
victims were to understand the violence visited upon them by men
who were supposed to protect them.
Through this animal imagery, Demme assigns codes by which
to judge sexual roles. What appears to be "socially correct" behavior
is exhibited in the traditional western reading of the animal symbols
chosen for the characters. When the characters align themselves
with the "socially incorrect" animal imagery they lose sight of their
true identities. Both Clarise and Buffalo Bill covet false images and
both will kill in the process of attaining them.
Clarise succeeds in killing Buffalo Bill and the final sequence
involving her shows her entering the male world she has coveted. In
a tight close-up we see Crawford shake Clarise’s hand while in
voice-over he states: "Your father would have been proud." Her
transformation has been somewhat more successful than that of
Buffalo Bill - "somewhat" because she achieved her success over
Buffalo Bill alone. Throughout the film the men are shown to array