You tweeted earlier about how critics would react to The Silence of the Lambs today. As a gay horror buff, I have a queasy relationship with this movie. Jodie Foster is amazing. Hopkins is hammy, but amazing in his hamminess. This was about the extent of representation gay men had in mainstream cinema. He feels like a George Bush Sr. I dunno. How do you think film representation intersects with violence against minorities? Do you think it does at all?
I struggle with this question all the time as I attempt to be a wise movie geek. How many interpreted the tweet, including Ryan, was that the politically correct police would have protested its depiction of a gay character. But that said, back then it was routine to lampoon gay characters and if it took a major protest about Silence of the Lambs to bring awareness to that?
More power to the people and the movement. What I resent is people getting the film wrong and creating falsehoods. I have always felt it was a mischaracterization of both the character and the film. He hunts and kills women, for starters. What we do know about them though? They almost always kill the gender they are oriented towards. Jaime Gumb is based loosely on Ed Gein. Ed Gein killed middle aged women. He kept their body parts in jars in his home. No one knew much about his sexuality except that he liked to occasionally dress up in the skin from his victims.
Ed Gein was not gay. Neither is Jaime Gumb. The film shows two versions of Jaime Gumb. And it shows the scenes of Gumb dressing up as a woman. As everyone knows, trans does not equate with being gay but Gumb is not trans either β as Clarice Starling clarifies:. Hannibal: Billy is not a real transsexual.
But he thinks he is. He tries to be. Clarice: You said that I was very close to the way we would catch him. What did you mean? Clarice: On what basis would they reject him? Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence. He was made one through years of systematic abuse. Billy hates his own identity, you see, and he thinks that makes him a transsexual. But his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying.
