'Seeing the female body differently': gender issues in The Silence of the Lambs

In this paper it is argued that the habitual representation of women in fil m has played a considerable part in constructing ideas of femininity, which contemporary filmmaking can deconstruct. The Silence of the Lambs deconstr ucts femininity as it has been constructed in four classic genres: the seri al killer movie, the horror or monster movie, the 'pupil and mentor' movie and the 'psychiatrist and patient' movie. The Silence of the Lambs can be s hown to deconstruct the generic amalgam of voyeurism, the 'male gaze' of th e camera, castration anxiety and the confused and reinstated gender identit ies typical of the serial killer movie. The empathy between Doctor Hannibal 'the cannibal' Lecter and young FBI agent Clarice Starling criticises the encoding strategies of the classic monster movie wherein both woman and mon ster are feared objects within patriarchal orders of seeing. Starling's app etite for success coincides with Lecter's more obviously worrying appetite; the film deconstructs those films wherein the ambition of the female pupil is personified by a demonic mentor. Starling, unlike most female pupils, i s not punished for her ambition and strength, qualities partially created t hrough the iconographic meanings of actor Jodie Foster. In psychiatrist and patient films, the heroine's behaviour is explainable when located within the patriarchal metanarrative of psychoanalysis, towards which The Silence of the Lambs is deeply ambivalent.