Refuting Gender Roles: An Independent Female Lead in "Silence of the Lambs"

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Although Silence of the Lambs is profoundly disturbing in both its transphobic undertones and in its portrayal of a cannibalistic serial killer as a compelling, empathetic character, it’s innovation lies in its ability to transcend binary gender roles, allowing a female lead to possess agency, intelligence, and a completely bad-assed personality.

The film begins with the protagonist, Clarice Starling, hurtling through an obstacle course alone, climbing over nets, and jumping over logs. Before she is able to complete the course, Special Agent-in-Charge, Jack Crawford, summons her to his office, and she runs back, bolting passed a tree with the motto, “Hurt, Agony, Pain―Love it.…or die” nailed into the bark.

These words foreshadow the final scenes of the film, where Starling comes close to death in her encounter with the sinister Buffalo Bill. As she runs, the camera pans over the rest of her class training together. Already, the dichotomy between Clarice and her mostly male peers comes to the forefront of the film. Is she training alone because her peers exclude her? Do they not like her or take her seriously because she’s a woman? Are they merely intimidated by her because the special agents see her potential? These questions frame the rest of the film, as we see Clarice not only tackle, but singlehandedly dominate stereotypically-male roles.

Before Clarice meets Hannibal for the first time, she exudes complete confidence, especially in her immediate dismissal of Dr. Chilton, and in her decision to approach “Hannibal the Cannibal” alone. Although she is terrified to be left alone with a bunch of criminals, she “mans up” and approaches the last cell, being objectified along the way by prisoners who hiss that they “can smell (her) cunt,” yet she keeps her composure. The camera pans down what feels like an endless hall, and our anxieties catapult as we wait to see Hannibal. We see him at the same time that Clarice does, standing erect in the center of the room. Before Hannibal even says a word, he dominates the screen, and his almost robotic posture startles both Clarice and the audience.

 Hannibal greets Clarice with a simple “morning” and that, along with his unblinking stare, is chilling and uncomfortable. He immediately lives up to and surpasses everything he was built up to be by the doctors and FBI special agents. When he makes Clarice get closer to his glass cell, you can feel her hesitate―with good reason. Regardless, she looks Hannibal in the eye when she approaches him, showing him that she is not a scared, weak little girl, as he may have initially thought. When Hannibal looks directly into the camera, his eyes are cold, terrifying, and uninviting: it feels as though he is directly looking at us, examining us, learning our weaknesses.

Hannibal is deeply disturbed, cold, calculating, manipulative, intelligent, a master strategist, and dangerously unpredictable. Despite all of this, he connects with Clarice and respects her, perhaps because she shows him the same courtesy. He recognizes her intelligence, her capacity for greatness, and appreciates her wit. When Hannibal asks Clarice to enthrall her and tell her why she thinks Buffalo Bill skins his victims, she says “It excites him. Most serial killers keep some sort of trophies from their victims,” to which Hannibal responds, “I didn’t.” Clarice’s quick-witted reply, “No, no. You ate yours” fascinates Lector, and he allows Clarice to hand him the questionnaire he had initially rejected. Hannibal then, like the manipulative mastermind that he is, tries to play mind games on Clarice, reading her, ripping her apart, calling her “not more than one generation from poor white trash.” Instead of running off and showing weakness, Clarice challenges Lector to examine himself. Without flinching, her lips extend upward into an almost-smirk, and says, “Why don’t you look at yourself and write down what you see. Maybe you’re afraid to.”

Hannibal is caught off guard and resorts to talking about the victim’s he’s eaten, trying to instill fear in Clarice. Even though he recognizes that she’s unlike most FBI agents, he’s still Hannibal and he refuses to be vulnerable around anyone, so he dismisses her. When the prisoner in the cell adjacent to his expels bodily fluids onto Clarice’s face, Hannibal, showing sympathy, calls her back to his cell and tells her that he will help her achieve advancement if she does as he says. Maybe he is drawn to Clarice because of her youth and beauty, or maybe it is simply a respectful student-teacher relationship. Regardless, his motives for helping Clarice aren’t important: what’s important is that he recognizes that Clarice is strong and smart enough to capture Buffalo Bill.

After Clarice visits the sinister, physically disturbing Buffalo Bill’s home, and fails at arresting him, the camera pans toward the staircase, and Clarice, breathing heavily, slowly makes her way down, pistol extended forward. The background noise and music score amplify the viewer’s anxiety: the louder the noise gets, the more we are assured of Buffalo Bill’s presence. We grow anxious watching because we know that he may shoot Clarice, or worse kill her and skin her, at any given moment. Demme’s use of shadows and the constant shot-reverse shot camera angles are blatantly Hitchcockian, and as Hitchcock, he uses these tactics to not only create suspense but to make the viewer an anxious wreck.

Unlike Hannibal, who we identify with because his intelligence and cunning nature are intriguing, Buffalo Bill is demonized and we cannot stand the sight of him. We want Clarice to shoot and kill him, so when we’re neglected of this desire, at least immediately, we grow uneasy as we are forced to watch Clarice struggle to find Buffalo Bill in this unfamiliar home. When she bursts a door open, and a garment made of human skin is revealed, Clarice has the same reaction that the audience has: one of absolute repulsion. The sequence that continues in complete darkness only makes the viewer more nervous: we trust that Clarice will use everything she’s learned in training and be safe during this gut-wrenching situation, however, we cannot really be sure, and Clarice’s heavy breathing and temporary blindness stack the odds against her.

The shot reverse-shot sequence filmed through Buffalo-Bill’s night-vision googles further creates tension, as Clarice is completely unaware that he is standing behind her, pointing a gun in her direction. The almost-touch of her face with his dirty serial killer hands is frightening and when his gun clicks, a sense of desperation comes over the viewer. Clarice has a lightning-quick response to the sound of his gun, however, and her fatal shots aimed at Buffalo Bill prove her to be the independent, bad-assed woman she was trained to be.

Is it a coincidence that the repugnant serial killer is transgender? Why is it that the heterosexual cannibalistic killer, who murders the police and paramedics and escapes to an island where he insinuates he will eat Dr. Chilton, is portrayed as the “good” killer? Does sexuality have anything to do with it or is it merely Dr. Lector’s personality that makes him a compelling character? These are all questions that arise when viewing Silence of the Lambs. However, despite its suggestive transphobia, the film should be applauded for its attempt at deviating from traditional gender roles, allowing Clarice to not only do a male’s job, but kick ass while she does it.