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I am not a woman, but I consider Silence of the Lambs to be in my top five favorite films, and a large part of the reason I love it so much is because of how it

I am not a woman, but I consider Silence of the Lambs to be in my top five favorite films, and a large part of the reason I love it so much is because of how it actually talks about sexism in more subtle ways. The male characters aren’t overtly sexist to Clarice, but there’s tons of little microagresssions (e.g. multiple male characters making a pass at her when she’s just trying to do a job, the Crawford subtly trying to talk to the police chief without her because he thinks woman can’t handle gruesome details, etc.). None of the characters are really doing anything reportable, and they’re not “bad” people, and they’re not cartoonish stereotypes of sexists. It was something I noticed even as a teenager watching the movie the first time. I would like to think I am a tiny bit more aware of institutional sexism than I would have been without the movie. It’s too bad that everything else in the Hannibal universe has blown chunks.

liampulles 2y ago
Not sure if you are including Manhunter in the blowing chunks category, but consider checking it out. Quality Michael Mann movie.
- tombert 2y ago
  I didn’t really like that one either, though I think that has more to do that I’ve never been able to vibe with Michael Mann’s style.
sdwr 2y ago
It's interesting that your memory focuses on what the men were doing, and hers on the woman's hero story. I liked the Hannibal TV show (at the time). Is it worse than I remember?
- tombert 2y ago
  I think about Clarice's character growth a lot as well, I was just bringing up the sexism stuff because I thought it was relevant to the article. Clarice's character growth is (brilliantly) almost spoiled by the movie's title; the lambs screaming in her head symbolize a sense of failure and guilt that she's carried for her entire life; stopping Buffalo Bill, if only for a moment, made the metaphorical lambs silent. I got pretty bored with the TV show, it just kind of kept going. It also felt like they kept acting Will Graham like had a superpower just because he had empathy for serial killers? My wife and I got almost exactly halfway through the series, and eventually I asked her "do we really want to keep watching this?" and she said "nope" and we turned on something else. Also, I'm pretty annoyed that they decided to double-down on Hannibal's samurai origin story from Hannibal Rising, which I thought was pretty dumb.

liampulles 2y ago

Not sure if you are including Manhunter in the blowing chunks category, but consider checking it out. Quality Michael Mann movie.

tombert 2y ago
I didn’t really like that one either, though I think that has more to do that I’ve never been able to vibe with Michael Mann’s style.

sdwr 2y ago

It's interesting that your memory focuses on what the men were doing, and hers on the woman's hero story. I liked the Hannibal TV show (at the time). Is it worse than I remember?

tombert 2y ago
I think about Clarice's character growth a lot as well, I was just bringing up the sexism stuff because I thought it was relevant to the article. Clarice's character growth is (brilliantly) almost spoiled by the movie's title; the lambs screaming in her head symbolize a sense of failure and guilt that she's carried for her entire life; stopping Buffalo Bill, if only for a moment, made the metaphorical lambs silent. I got pretty bored with the TV show, it just kind of kept going. It also felt like they kept acting Will Graham like had a superpower just because he had empathy for serial killers? My wife and I got almost exactly halfway through the series, and eventually I asked her "do we really want to keep watching this?" and she said "nope" and we turned on something else. Also, I'm pretty annoyed that they decided to double-down on Hannibal's samurai origin story from Hannibal Rising, which I thought was pretty dumb.