In the six months since the fall of Harvey Weinstein birthed the #MeToo movement, the entertainment industry has grappled most publicly with the appalling way women are too often treated in their field. In addition to accusations that brought down some of the most powerful men in Hollywood, the way women are treated on-screen as well as off-screen has been a subject of scrutiny.
This weekend, actress and beloved 1980’s icon Molly Ringwald wrote a thoughtful piece re-examining the classic John Hughes films in which she starred, such as “The Breakfast Club,” all through the lens of the #MeToo era. Ringwald notes that though Hughes was groundbreaking for featuring a multidimensional young female protagonist, his films also make light of behavior toward women that today is considered obviously inappropriate or abusive. In Ringwald’s view, there is an obligation to revisit works that treat women poorly, because “the art we consume and sanction plays some part in reinforcing those same attitudes.”
If we are to revisit the art of the past in light of the current moment, then I would like to suggest another film that features women being treated especially horrifically but is especially worth watching today: the 1991 Oscar-winning horror film “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Due to my own personal aversion to gore and jump scares, I generally sit out horror films. Yet “The Silence of the Lambs” is fairly ubiquitous in pop culture, and on Easter Sunday of all days, I finally sat down to watch the film. For my fellow remaining uninitiated who have never seen the film, allow me a brief spoiler-free summary: Jodie Foster plays Clarice Starling, who is training to become an FBI agent specializing in behavioral analysis. In order to catch a serial killer nicknamed “Buffalo Bill” who is brutally murdering and skinning young women, Starling is assigned to get the help of the incarcerated Hannibal Lecter, who may have information key to catching the killer.
“The Silence of the Lambs” does not merely treat women badly. This is not the upskirt shots and crude jokes of a John Hughes film. This film involves a man abducting, murdering, and skinning young women, and the film does not shy away from showcasing the nauseating aftermath of these crimes. Betty Friedan, notable feminist and author of The Feminine Mystique, objected to “The Silence of the Lambs'” critical acclaim the time of its release, on the grounds that the film uses brutal violence against women as narrative fuel.
And yet, watching the film in 2018, I felt that I had just watched the most compelling portrayal I had ever seen of a woman making her way through the various indignities and offenses visited upon women working in male-dominated industries.
One of the first shots of the film features Foster’s Starling being called in from a run to see her boss in his office at FBI training academy in Quantico. She is seen boarding a nearly-full elevator, where every other person aboard is a tall, muscular male in a red polo shirt. Starling, standing out in her grey sweatshirt, soaked with sweat from her run, is almost a foot shorter than the men, who regard her curiously as she boards. The shot clearly signals to the audience right from the start that Starling’s status as a petite woman sets her apart from the rest of those in her profession, even as she wishes to be viewed simply as a peer, without gender playing a role. It wordlessly conveys a feeling that any woman in a mostly male profession will immediately recognize.
Throughout the film, Starling endures a variety of slights and abuses at the hands of the men she encounters professionally. During her first meeting with Dr. Chilton, the head of a psychiatric prison where Lecter is locked up, Chilton not-so-subtly propositions her. Starling is in a difficult position; she must rebuff Chilton’s advance without jeopardizing her access to Lecter. From the comfort of my couch, the entire scene made my skin crawl, and it is not hard to imagine a man in Chilton’s position, in 2018, being called out for his behavior and justifying it with a claim of I was just trying to be nice, how dare these women be so sensitive.
Later in the film, Starling and her male superior, Jack Crawford, are visiting a crime scene where they must persuade the local sheriff to grant them access to a victim’s corpse. Crawford tells the local sheriff that they ought to talk in private, suggesting that Starling, as a woman, should not be subjected to a discussion of the grotesque crime. After the FBI team examines the body and departs, Crawford acknowledges that his tactic had bothered her. Starling does not shy away from voicing her disappointment. “Cops look at you to see how to act. It matters,” she replies, calmly but firmly. Would that all well-intentioned male bosses got that message.
But perhaps the most critical scene with relevance for the #MeToo movement comes as Starling watches the mother of Catherine Martin, the latest presumed victim, implore the killer to release her daughter if she is alive. Unbeknownst to Starling or Catherine’s mother, Buffalo Bill, has insisted on calling the captive Catherine “it”. (Hence the infamous line, “it puts the lotion in the basket.”) In the televised plea to Buffalo Bill, the mother repeatedly calls her daughter by name. Starling, watching the plea, notes that the strategy is a strong one. “If he sees Catherine as a person and not as an object, it’s harder to tear her up.”
“The Silence of the Lambs” is a film that treats women horribly. And yet, watching the film today, I’m left with the feeling that I’ve never seen a movie more well-suited to illustrating challenges that women face in the modern workplace. In a film where women are butchered, the story also conveys a sense of horror about the everyday humiliations Clarice Starling is made to endure for the sole crime of being competent while female.
At its heart, the #MeToo movement is not about bringing down or destroying men. It is about women expecting to be viewed as people, not as objects. Not as an “it”, or an obstacle, not as an object of curiosity, or an object of desire, but as a person worthy of respect and dignity.
