#74 ‘The Silence of the Lambs’
Serial Killers, Staring Contests, and the Female Gaze Held Hostage
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is a psychological thriller disguised as a feminist triumph, a horror film that slathers its misogyny in prestige and calls it subtext. It’s a masterclass in tension, performance, and camera work—and also a case study in how Hollywood pats itself on the back for “strong female characters” as long as they’re surrounded by men explaining how they’d skin them.
Jodie Foster plays Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee with more emotional intelligence than her superiors and better instincts than the entire Bureau. She’s young, brilliant, and constantly surrounded by men who speak over her, leer at her, or metaphorically pat her on the head before asking her to walk into the basement of the American psyche. She’s the closest the genre gets to a female hero who isn’t supernatural, suicidal, or screaming. But to get there, she has to earn the approval of not one, but two paternal monsters.
Enter Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), the cannibal psychiatrist with exquisite taste and a creepy affection for fava beans and boundaries violations. He’s terrifying, yes—but refined. The film fetishizes him. His intellect, his manners, his monstrous discipline. He isn’t just the villain; he’s the brand. Lecter doesn’t murder—he curates. And he becomes Clarice’s greatest mentor, because apparently the fastest path to female empowerment is through a man who could filet you like a trout.
Their relationship is framed as one of mutual respect—but make no mistake: he’s always in control. Even caged, masked, and strapped to a dolly, he’s the one calling the shots, peeling back Clarice’s trauma like it’s foie gras. And the film lets him. It romanticizes their twisted dynamic, selling us the idea that emotional vulnerability with a serial killer is a mark of strength.
Then there’s Buffalo Bill—a killer who butchers women to make a suit out of their skin, and whose identity is a grab bag of transphobic tropes wrapped in Norman Bates leftovers. The film tries to separate Bill’s violence from trans identity (“he’s not really trans,” the script insists), but it’s too late. The damage is done. Audiences leave with one more reason to fear gender nonconformity and another pop culture boogeyman to hang it on.
Director Jonathan Demme shoots the film in tight, head-on close-ups, forcing the viewer into Clarice’s perspective—and it works. You feel her discomfort. Her claustrophobia. Her quiet defiance. Foster’s performance is astonishing: restrained, intelligent, endlessly human. She makes Starling real in a world that wants her reduced to prey.
And yet, the film gives her so little space to be anything but strong. No softness. No pleasure. No rest. Her reward for surviving the male gaze, the literal monster, and the bureaucratic swamp of the FBI? A handshake from a boss and a phone call from her nightmare. “The lambs have stopped screaming,” she says—but the audience never gets to know what she’ll do without them.
4 out of 5 censored autopsies
(One for Foster’s quiet brilliance. One for the oppressive, perfect cinematography. One for the cold thrill of Hopkins. One for the rare attempt at a female-centered thriller that doesn’t end in a refrigerator. The missing star? Left in a pit with the truth about how much power the film still gives to the man who wants to devour her.)
