The Silence of the Lambs... Is It Transphobic?

[Allie24]

So who here thinks The Silence of the Lambs is transphobic and who thinks it isn't?

Some people make the argument that because of Hannibal Lecter's offhand mention of Buffalo Bill not really being a transsexual, that that immediately makes the film immune from accusations of transphobia... I tend to disagree. For starters, the remark is so offhand as to be considered negligible. I doubt very many people who have seen the film even remember them saying it. Second, regardless of whether or not that line is taken into account, the film overall does not look to lightly on cross-gender behavior in regards to men. Bill and and Jodie Foster's character are inverts of each other: Foster is a woman entering into a "man's world", where Bill is a man entering into a "woman's world". Yet Foster's endeavors are treated as admirable while Bill's are treated as predatory. And this is not to say that one cannot have an antagonist who is also a crossdresser or homosexual or transgender or what have you, but Bill comes from a long line of other films with notably effeminate villains and killers (i.e. Psycho, Sleepaway Camp, Pocahontas, Dressed to Kill, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid [Ursula was modeled after a drag queen], Ace Ventura, etc.). His character is a trope. He is a cardboard stand-in and lacks any real depth or personality. What do we actually know about Bill? We know what Hannibal thinks he knows, and we know that Bill kills women and wears their skin... but what else? The movie would be less offensive if they did not have the gender-defying Bill as the antagonist to the equally gender-defying Foster, and also if they did more for Bill's character than just showing off how creepy he is.

No, Bill is not a transsexual, but to many he represents what a transsexual is in their minds and this is why the film is problematic.

There's my contribution. I'd love to hear what you all think!

[Charlie Nicki]

I don't think it is. Buffalo Bill is just a very interesting character with many layers, one of them being the fact that he was apparently obsessed with being a woman, so much that he would kill them and wear their skin. We don't need to know much about him, because the mystery makes him even more creepy.

I don't even think anyone would link someone like him to say...Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner or any famous trans woman.

The real question is...If he was actually transgender and they confirmed it, couldn't he be a killer psychopath as well? Does it make the movie transphobic to portray a transgender person as a criminal? I don't think so.

[Allie24]

You make an excellent point. But I think the concern for many of the people protesting the film when it came out was: "People are going to watch this and think that this is what a trans person is like." And it's not even them thinking trans people are killers, but just that in general we're weird, unstable and sexually perverted.

Perhaps these days it's less so, since there are plenty of examples of trans women in film and real life and contradict such an assumption.

Which begs the question, is it possible that Silence is less transphobic now than it was back in the day? At the time of its release what other examples of trans women in films did you have? Ace Ventura and The Crying Game, which are by no means shining examples... the majority of media depictions were less than positive so the accusation had more weight. Now, when you have movies like The Danish Girl, and Boy Meets Girl, and shows like Transparent and Orange Is The New Black, offering us a much more diverse cast of trans women characters, then Buffalo Bill is no longer really transphobic because he does not represent all trans people in media. Does that make sense? Silence was one of the few films at the time with a GNC character, so his depiction carried more meaning because it represented, to audiences, all trans people, but with more and more mainstream depictions of trans people, audiences are less impacted by a single depiction of a violent trans/GNC person.

[Charlie Nicki]

I see what you mean Allie, it does make sense.

[Roll]

Honestly, given when it was released I'd be very hard pressed to say it is transphobic. The line about him not being transsexual may seem offhand and easy to overlook, but for the early 90s the fact they brought it up at all is huge.

Though I should say that I apply cultural relativism to not just cultures spread across geographic distance, but also as a standard for judgments on a difference in a single cohesive culture over time. In the modern context, yes it could have done a better job and went into a bit more detail on the topic, but for 1991 it was pretty progressive to even have a casual mention. (Note that also hold that this does not apply to excusing intentionally offensive or derisive behavior in history, as ill intent is ill intent no matter the cultural atmosphere of the time. Ie: Minstrel shows. But the movie clearly had no ill intent on the subject.)

Also in general, I think that allowances must be made for fictional depictions based on relative frequency. By this I mean that Buffalo Bill was unique. If there had been a large scale disproportionate numbers of portrayals of trans people, or people who affected transgender behavior, as serial killers, then there is a problem. One or two (Sleepaway Camp), with at least one of those expressly given a caveat, are but a drop in the bucket to portrayals of serial killers as straight white males (the portrayal of which is disproportionate to the statistics on pretty much all counts). Though this is of course seperate of the issue of using something this nature for cheap shock value (again, Sleepaway Camp). (Also, I'm ignoring Ace Ventura on this since it was a very different movie in an entirely different genre, and no one developed a view of transgender people as killers based on it. The issue there was more simple mockery.)

[Roll]

You make an excellent point. But I think the concern for many of the people protesting the film when it came out was: "People are going to watch this and think that this is what a trans person is like." And it's not even them thinking trans people are killers, but just that in general we're weird, unstable and sexually perverted.

I always had an issue with that philosophy for one big reason: Even in the deep south, I never heard a single person equate Buffalo Bill with trans people. And I had many, many conversations about this particular film. I'm sure some people, some where conflated him with real world trans people, but I believe it was a largely overblown worry during an age of new budding forms of political correctness that I just never saw evidence of then or since(putting aside internet jackassery). (And this was shortly after the release of the film. I was too young to see it in theaters, but given the quality of the film and my love of the medium even when young I was allowed to watch it a few years later when I was 11 or 12. I think it was actually my first R. And this was when the theater to home video window was crazy long, so it was still very much being freshly watched and discussed by people at this time. Funny enough, I was allowed to see that but then was pulled out of Bio-dome mid movie a few years later still, but I think that was just because my dad couldn't take any more of Paulie Shore.)

[Lucy Ross]

I'd forgotten that Hannibal mentioned that he didn't consider Bill a per se TS. Just the other day I was watching Dressed to Kill and kept thinking how would it have killed them to point out that Bobbie was a considerable exception to the rule? Not that people would have paid attention.

The problem was that just about 100% of film depictions of TS people until the mid 90s were as depraved lunatics. John Lithgow was unique for films the general public saw. TVs came across slightly better, but only slightly.

[Julia1996]

I think the movie was kind of transphobic. Just because buffalo bill wasnt really explained much. The book had a lot more about buffalo Bill's past and how he had been refused medical treatment because he wasn't really trans. Like most movies the movie didn't follow the book very closely.  It's also really sad they ruined the song Goodbye Horses by playing it while he was tucking and wearing a woman's scalp. For such an old song it's really cool. But anyone who hears it now thinks of buffalo bill.

Another show that didn't help trans people was criminal minds. The had a serial killer transwoman who lured guys back to her room, talked them into letting her tie them to the bed and then violently raped them and tied a plastic bag over their head.

[Allie24]

Insidious Chapter 2 also had a trans killer as one of the ghosts. Again not a lot said about them except that they were forced into girls' clothes as a child and had tried castrating themselves once. Leatherface also was a crossdresser in the original Texas Chainsaw films. And there's William Castle's Homicidal. So I would say that Buffalo Bill was merely a new take on an old trope who's horror comes partly from his violent nature, and partly from the fact that he wants to be a woman, which is also what makes all the previously mentioned transsexual characters so creepy to people.

[Roll]

Insidious Chapter 2 also had a trans killer as one of the ghosts. Again not a lot said about them except that they were forced into girls' clothes as a child and had tried castrating themselves once. Leatherface also was a crossdresser in the original Texas Chainsaw films. And there's William Castle's Homicidal. So I would say that Buffalo Bill was merely a new take on an old trope who's horror comes partly from his violent nature, and partly from the fact that he wants to be a woman, which is also what makes all the previously mentioned transsexual characters so creepy to people.

I think that there was definitely a trend with cross dressing going back to Psycho for sure, but in all of these cases (with the possible exception of Homicidal, I'm not familiar with it) I feel as though there was a line, perhaps not drawn explicitly but should have been apparent to most viewers, between simply being a cross dresser or transgender (as per the modern term) and then cross dressing as simply a by product of mental illness. I don't feel that at any point these characters were conflated with being transgender, except for in the case of Buffalo Bill's misconceptions and the killer from Sleepaway Camp (who was definitively transgender). ie: Norman Bates crossdressed to "become" his mother, but he didn't indentify as a crossdresser and was not even aware of it. In the case of Leatherface and similar characters (I think the hills had eyes had a few examples too?), I don't believe it was ever intended to say that they were crossdressers in the sense it was understood even then, but rather that for these characters they existed outside the normal bounds of society. In some cases (insidious 2 for instance), it was used as an example of child abuse. (What may be affirming to us, isn't exactly affirming to someone who isn't transgender. There are a few examples of this one in anime I can think of too.)

In other words, it was always a small part of a bigger issue, though because showing crossdressing could be done visually perhaps did find a home as a common artistic means to show these issues to the viewers. And while it can feel insulting to have any sort of correlation drawn (and the "deviance" factor with leatherface and company is certainly not flattering in particular), I feel that to try to label such films as explicitly transphobic is in general a bit too defensive an approach that doesn't really lead anywhere. (I believe the phobic labels are thrown around too much to begin with though.)

[Roll]

Another show that didn't help trans people was criminal minds. The had a serial killer transwoman who lured guys back to her room, talked them into letting her tie them to the bed and then violently raped them and tied a plastic bag over their head.

Criminal Minds is actually an amazing case study in the media portrayal of killers, particularly serial killers as per most of the films brought up in this thread. The thing is, that was one episode and there are almost 300 episodes of the show. The overwhelming majority of them feature a straight, white, cis-male serial killer, and then most that don't are usually a straight, white, cis-female killer (and in that case, they are usually presented as hyper intelligent sexy assassin types or secret ringleaders). They go out of their way to avoid having killers that deviate from the norm, particularly with the season long and reoccurring villains, well beyond the actual statistics of killers. It plays heavily into the acceptable stereotype of the white male predator, and no one bats an eye. Yet a handful of episodes about Muslim extremists (which their real life equivalents deal with probably more than serial killers) caused cries of Islamophobia.

The sad truth is that there have been a number of real life killers who did engage in behavior that affected transgender traits. I don't know or believe that in any of these cases they were actually transgender (playing into the original issue of Buffalo Bill's depiction to begin with), but nonetheless crossdressing does show up on more than a few occasions. As long as that element does exist, we have to learn to accept a certain level of media portrayal in unflattering lights, particularly when that portrayal is somewhat tangential (the whole they simply affect some of the behavior but are not truly trangender aspect), simply by the laws of statistics. (The problem comes when the portrayal is disproportionate to the reality, such as with the excessive number of black men shown on television and in films as gang members.)

[Dani]

Unfortunately, some people believe that what is portrayed in a movie is factual in real life. Much of the transphobia we experience today can be traced back to the above mentioned movies that portrayed transexuals as psychotic murders. Those movies did not do us any favors in improving public relations for transgender people.

[Roll]

Unfortunately, some people believe that what is portrayed in a movie is factual in real life. Much of the transphobia we experience today can be traced back to the above mentioned movies that portrayed transexuals as psychotic murders. Those movies did not do us any favors in improving public relations for transgender people.

(I hope I don't seem like I'm harping on the subject with so many replies, I'm just bored while waiting around. )

Some yes, for sure. There's always some group of people that can't separate fact from fiction, but I just never saw any indication it was widespread in regards to the "transsexual killer" concept. I can't think of a single person I've ever interacted with in person or on the internet who legitimately believes that being transgender in any form means you are a serial killer. I'd look more towards the comedic depictions of the trans community as punch lines in doing more damage, as in contrast to the killer cliche, ridicule was(is?) certainly commonplace. Though that does get into chicken and egg territory, and it's hard to say if it was art imitating life or life imitating art. Not that Ace Venture or Hangover 2 are exactly art.

[Allie24]

(I hope I don't seem like I'm harping on the subject with so many replies, I'm just bored while waiting around. )

Some yes, for sure. There's always some group of people that can't separate fact from fiction, but I just never saw any indication it was widespread in regards to the "transsexual killer" concept. I can't think of a single person I've ever interacted with in person or on the internet who legitimately believes that being transgender in any form means you are a serial killer. I'd look more towards the comedic depictions of the trans community as punch lines in doing more damage, as in contrast to the killer cliche, ridicule was(is?) certainly commonplace. Though that does get into chicken and egg territory, and it's hard to say if it was art imitating life or life imitating art. Not that Ace Venture or Hangover 2 are exactly art.

I'm almost ashamed to say that the Hangover 2 gag actually did get a laugh out of me. But what exactly makes a joke transphobic or not is a discussion for another board.

In regards to the idea of trans women as killers, while the majority of people do not think that transsexualism equals homicidal tendencies, there are very many who do see trans women as predators. Buffalo Bill is a cross-dressing trans-wannabe who preys on women, assaults them and murders them. This is why you see so many people protesting about trans women in bathrooms and locker rooms. They see characters like Buffalo Bill and they think, "That person is going to be in the bathroom with me/my daughter/wife/etc." With depictions like that, it makes sense why people would equate a trans-identity with a predator-mentality. Throw in a few bad apples who actually were sexual predators/murderers with trans tendencies, and you've got yourself a nasty backlash that can and will hurt the entire community. Bill becomes an icon, a symbol for this perception of trans women that sticks in people's heads subconsciously and then trickles out in their biased analyses of cases of trans felons convicted of violent crimes (I mean biased in that they use these cases to judge THOUSANDS of people, rather than the guilty few).

It's remarkable how much of an effect media has on our minds. People's perceptions of what love and relationships are come from romantic comedies, which, as we all know, are exaggerated and unrealistic and completely based in fantasy, but we see them so often that we become inundated to their messages and soak them in subconsciously. The same goes for depictions of trans women back in the early 90s. You had Bill, Dil from The Crying Game, and Einhorn for Ace Ventura, and the long line of killers/punchlines preceding them. People were exposed to this over and over and, without any other depictions there to contradict them, the predator/punchline perception became the norm.

So, by itself, Silence is not inherently transphobic, inasmuch that it goes out of its way to demean trans people, but it is a classic case of "wrong place, wrong time." Nowadays we can go from Silence to Orange is the New Black and know that Bill is a case completely separate from individuals like Laverne Cox. Not so, then.

It's complicated... it's soooooooo incredibly complicated.

[Roll]

i admit, I am probably overly forgiving of entertainment media in general. There are few situations where I will take a film, book, game, or whatever to task for this sort of thing, and really only do so when it is intended to be malicious. I read an article recently about Ellen Page saying she regretted a line in Juno she viewed as homophobic, and I just rolled my eyes because it just seemed like such a pointless regret to hold over a single off hand line in the movie (a line that did accurately reflect real world dialogue). I imagine a lot of this has to do with growing up at the height of the violent video game panic, and being forced to the defensive against unjust accusations. (Even on the comedy side, I don't actually have a negative view of movies like Ace Ventura, issues of quality aside, and only brought it up as something that I felt was a more commonplace approach to the transgender issue.)

I'm almost ashamed to say that the Hangover 2 gag actually did get a laugh out of me. But what exactly makes a joke transphobic or not is a discussion for another board.

That joke in Hangover 2 actually created an amusing situation for me in retrospect, even though it was so many years before I was remotely honest with myself. I saw it coming on account of the whole being in Thailand thing, and said as much to friends. Their confusion caught me off guard, as they had no idea what Thailand had to do with anything. So I said sort of talking down to them, "Well, they are known for their high rate of transgender women, called Kathoey...", as if I was saying something totally obvious everyone should know as common knowledge. Apparently, it was not obvious, and absolutely not common knowledge. So then it was turned back around on me as a "So why exactly do you know that?" thing. Fun.

[Allie24]

i admit, I am probably overly forgiving of entertainment media in general. There are few situations where I will take a film, book, game, or whatever to task for this sort of thing, and really only do so when it is intended to be malicious. I read an article recently about Ellen Page saying she regretted a line in Juno she viewed as homophobic, and I just rolled my eyes because it just seemed like such a pointless regret to hold over a single off hand line in the movie (a line that did accurately reflect real world dialogue). I imagine a lot of this has to do with growing up at the height of the violent video game panic, and being forced to the defensive against unjust accusations. (Even on the comedy side, I don't actually have a negative view of movies like Ace Ventura, issues of quality aside, and only brought it up as something that I felt was a more commonplace approach to the transgender issue.)

That joke in Hangover 2 actually created an amusing situation for me in retrospect, even though it was so many years before I was remotely honest with myself. I saw it coming on account of the whole being in Thailand thing, and said as much to friends. Their confusion caught me off guard, as they had no idea what Thailand had to do with anything. So I said sort of talking down to them, "Well, they are known for their high rate of transgender women, called Kathoey...", as if I was saying something totally obvious everyone should know as common knowledge. Apparently, it was not obvious, and absolutely not common knowledge. So then it was turned back around on me as a "So why exactly do you know that?" thing. Fun.

I actually laughed at that scene as a trans person. It helped, I think, that they had a trans actress involved (Yasmin Lee). I like to approach my situation with a sense of humor, so I'm not afraid to make a few jokes at my expense. Just recently I was telling some friends about how I was catcalled and made the joke that, if I still sounded like a man, I should've said to the guy, "The f**k you just say to me?" But that's just my sense of humor in general. Life is awful sometimes and it helps to be able to laugh at the situations that bring us suffering.

[Lucy Ross]

You guys know about the film Some Like It Hot from 1959, right?  If not, well, the core concept is crossdressing as comic relief - and this wasn't new by any means back then.

Also the notion of TG people being pervy deviants goes back into the mists of time too.  The whole reason the term "transvestite" was abandoned wasn't so much due to people being put off by its original definition having sexual connotations - it was because the public firmly equated "transvestite" with "slobbering pervert."  "Crossdressing" was not only more accurate, but gave people a fresh start.

I swear I remember watching reruns of 50s/60s television shows like Dragnet and Adam-12 showing the hard boiled cops hauling in transvestites from time to time, from the back alleys they invariably were found in, distributing pornography.  This is why Tri-Ess, the first TG society of any note, had its heterosexual CDs only policy too; apart from wanting to maintain focus on their mission, they wanted to depict CDs as wholesome normal upstanding citizens, which was wholly novel in the 1960s. 

[Allie24]

You guys know about the film Some Like It Hot from 1959, right?  If not, well, the core concept is crossdressing as comic relief - and this wasn't new by any means back then.

Also the notion of TG people being pervy deviants goes back into the mists of time too.  The whole reason the term "transvestite" was abandoned wasn't so much due to people being put off by its original definition having sexual connotations - it was because the public firmly equated "transvestite" with "slobbering pervert."  "Crossdressing" was not only more accurate, but gave people a fresh start.

I swear I remember watching reruns of 50s/60s television shows like Dragnet and Adam-12 showing the hard boiled cops hauling in transvestites from time to time, from the back alleys they invariably were found in, distributing pornography.  This is why Tri-Ess, the first TG society of any note, had its heterosexual CDs only policy too; apart from wanting to maintain focus on their mission, they wanted to depict CDs as wholesome normal upstanding citizens, which was wholly novel in the 1960s.

Very interesting. I watched Some Like It Hot recently and actually quite enjoyed it.

It's amazing how old these perceptions are and how we still see them even today. However, the trope you are describing has evolved into the sad crossdressing prostitute type now, rather than simply being a creep or pervert.

[Lucy Ross]

Watched Psycho last night - I'm on a TG film binge!  It has exactly what we want for at its end - the expert witness explaining firmly that Norman isn't a transvestite, and what one is, in precise detail.  I wonder if Silence or Dressed didn't have similar scenes which were cut out in editing.

[MaryT]

You have all made good points but I think that we should be as careful of making accusations of transphobia as we should be in making accusations of racism.  Film makers and writers shouldn't have to tiptoe around social issues while in fear of people looking for reasons to take offence.  I know that Allie is asking a valid question, not looking for an excuse to take offence, but I don't  think that there is a definitive answer in this case.

In Cassadaga, a little trans girl, obsessed with turning dolls into marionettes, emasculates herself with scissors and goes on to become a masculine-looking serial killer.  I think that there is more justification in thinking that Cassadaga is transphobic but intention is nearly everything.

I think that in neither Silence of the Lambs nor Cassadaga is there evidence that the stories were INTENDED to prejudice cis people against trans people.