The Silence of the Lambs by Yvonne Tasker

Author:Yvonne Tasker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Lecter as monstrous therapist – invasive and knowing

Although she sees through Lecter’s act to some extent, Starling struggles to understand Gumb’s motivation. She realises after seeing the dressmaker’s dummy and fabric cut to pattern in the Bimmel home that Gumb knows how to sew, that the patches of skin he has taken from his victims are pieces of an intricate pattern for the woman-suit he is constructing. Yet she never really expresses any desire to understand why Gumb does what he does, to get inside his head in other words. Ironic perhaps, since the film contrasts a dark analogy between the two, both figures yearning for transformation. Only Lecter offers any kind of explanation for Gumb’s crimes, speaking – albeit briefly – of the killer’s failure to understand his own identity: ‘Billy is not a real transsexual, but he thinks he is; he tries to be. He’s tried to be lots of things I expect.’ Lecter also touches on questions of the origins of violence – nature or nurture – suggesting that Buffalo Bill experienced a traumatic childhood: ‘Our Billy wasn’t born a criminal, Clarice, he was made one through years of systematic abuse.’ As Seltzer notes, ‘Child abuse – wounded as a child, wounding as an adult – is one of the foundational scripts in accounting for the serial killer.’48 In the absence of further words, as an audience we are left largely with images – and the monster of horror – on which to base our profile. Not insignificant perhaps, given the controversy that was to surround the film’s presentation of Buffalo Bill as a perversely feminised killer.

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