The Silence of the Lambs & The Death of Horror (In The 90's)
Werewolves are for babies! Only cannibals for adults!
The Dawn of the True Crime Thriller: Hannibal the Cannibal
Note: Spoilers + mild descriptions of disturbing behavior, mentions of transphobia
“Writers begged their editors to market their books as thrillers instead of horror”
Before we get into how The Silence of the Lambs shifted the horror landscape:
Is The Silence of the Lambs a horror film?
It’s an argument horror fans have all the time, but I’m just going to say yes: it was prime 1991 horror. The Silence of the Lambs is an FBI procedural about serial killers with elements of gore, whodunnit, and paperwork films.
Head of the FBI serial killer division Jack Crawford enlists the help of Academy student Clarice Starling to extract information from famed cannibal and former psychologist Dr. Hannibal Lecter to catch the “Buffalo Bill” serial killer.
The novel, the second in Thomas Harris’ Hannibal series, dropped in 1988 and went into production one year later for the 1991 film release. It was the catalyst for the sexy, cool thrillers that defined the 1990’s and pushed out the supernatural.
The 90’s
According to Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell, it was Thomas Harris’ novels that ushered in the fall of the golden age of ‘80’s horror.
The 80’s are known for campy kills and supernatural thrills, and Hendrix argues audiences tired of the spectacle just as crime fiction writers started borrowing from classic horror; The Silence of the Lambs won the Bram Stoker Award for horror writing and launched a thousand copycats like Rosemary’s Baby once did.
Hendrix claims that “writers begged their editors to market their books as thrillers instead of horror” to compete with the Silence craze.
He notes the film’s Oscar Win for Best Picture1 as a turning point; suddenly, serial killers didn’t have to be semi-immortal brutes — Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th), Michael Myers (Halloween) — they were men of taste.
In the 1991 film, we see Hannibal drawing detailed architectural sketches and anatomically correct portraits (above); in the NBC series, Hannibal plays the theremin (another win for the theremin!) and is a highly skilled chef.
Serial killers in fiction became borderline inhuman in a different way - they were idiosyncratic geniuses with photographic memories, super senses of smell, the ability to read a rube like a Dr. Seuss book, and more than anything, an obsession (Se7en, Audition). And the detectives were just as obsessed.
Thrillers could be erotic or psychological, but they were all about The Tension. Just as there’s a tension between Dr. Lecter and Clarice, two intelligent behavioral experts with conflicting and coordinating desires, tension dominated over jump scares. Real sophisticated stuff.
The prominent ‘traditional’ American horror films of the 90s’s edged out adults for teenagers: Scream, The Blair Witch Project, The Craft, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Final Destination, The Faculty.
Another result of the decline in horror for adults? More for kids! Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, So Weird, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Tales from the Cryptkeeper are just some of the spooky media pieces that influenced the current wave of horror writers and directors.
Legacy
As trans horror writer Harmony Colangelo points out in an essay for A.V. Club, “Buffalo Bill”/Jame Gumb says she’s a woman. So, she’s a woman. Done.
In the novel, Thomas Harris’ characters’ insistence that Jame Gumb is not “a real transexual” reads as the author’s defense against accusations of transphobia.
In response to backlash from queer communities at the film’s release in 1991, director Jonathan Demme told Film Comment:
“We knew it was tremendously important to not have Gumb misinterpreted by the audience as being homosexual. That would be a complete betrayal of the themes of the movie. And a disservice to gay people. [Gumb is] someone who is so completely, completely horrified by who he is that his desperation to become someone completely other is manifested in his ill-guided attempts at transvestism, and behavior and mannerisms that can be interpreted as gay…..”
Sure.
As Colangelo notes, the quotes and themes from the film were used as weapons against trans people for years (and still are), as one of cinema’s few mainstream portrayals of non-cis experiences.
In 1991, a GLAAD leader and protester told the press,
“The killer in the movie is a walking, talking gay stereotype. He has a poodle named Precious, he sews, he wears a nipple ring, he has an affected feminine voice, and he cross-dresses. He completely promotes homophobia.”
Gumb is rejected from gender-affirming care for failing the medical field’s criteria, which includes drawing a tree incorrectly. There’s other criteria Gumb fails, but it’s all so silly, I can’t even bear to pick up the book next to me and check. That such a “grounded” film has what looks like such a dUMB plot point today erodes the film’s reputation as being in the realm of possibility. Even more so than the face-eating.
There are four tiers of reality for serial killers:
Serial killers outside our current realm of possibility (fantastical - literal demons): Child’s Play, Nightmare on Elm Street
Serial killers within our realm (grounded in reality - creepy guys): Peeping Tom, Maniac
Serial killers based on true crime cases: Monster, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Serial killer true crime case descriptions (Documentaries/podcasts on serial killers): My Favorite Murder, Snapped
I do love The Silence of the Lambs; it was one of the first horror films I remember. Is the film and its influence criminally cruel to trans and queer people? Yes. Do I enjoy watching the tennis match between Starling and Lecter? Seeing Clarice move amongst the hoards of men (tall men! men who just stare at her when she gives orders!) in a way that fills me with recognition and empathy? Yes!
I hope we can leave behind the willful misunderstandings of trans people’s motives as well as the obsession with true crime; a genre that swaps good ol’ jumpscares for paranoia of your neighbors.
Anthony Hopkins embodies all the intricacies of a deeply intelligent Dr. Hannibal Lecter, but it’s a fantasy I can’t get behind anymore. Most serial killers are not exceedingly brilliant; just lonely to the point of violence.
Recommended Watchlist
Maniac (1980)
A splattery depiction of a serial killer in gritty NYC. Features an epic Tom Savini kill (by and of) and the regular ol’ mommy issues.
Saw II (2005)
A serial killer assists the police in catching the victim before the time is up. And everything would’ve been fine if they’d just trusted him!
Spotlight (2015)
Not a horror movie, but a movie about uncovering the ultimate horrors; a mostly true journalism procedural about the sexual assault epidemic in the Catholic Church. Grounded ensemble performances and zero fluff make it incredibly engaging.
Thanks and see ya next week!
xo,
the crystal swan figurine in your neighbor’s cabinet you’ve always coveted, mesmerized by the smooth of the wings and the sharp of the beak that you finally pocketed, feeling its weight and warmth…and was that the fluttering of its wings? when you came by to deliver some mail to allie lembo
Resources:
Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) dir. Jonathan Demme
When Gays Decried Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme Became an Early Student of Modern Backlash by Jeffrey Bloomer. Slate, April 28, 2017.
30 years in, The Silence Of The Lambs’ Jame Gumb still deserves better by Harmony Colangelo. A.V. Club, February 15, 2021.
It swept the major awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay (Adapted).