I see there is Silence of the Lambs discourse among the transes.

I love that movie. Jonathan Demme is maybe my favorite American director of all time. I do not believe SotL is transphobic (especially for its era); I do believe it propped up transphobia, if that makes sense.

I may be reading too much of what I know and love about Demme into the scenes where Hannibal is, like, “Buffalo Bill is not a transsexual” (lol), but the film does seem to earnestly try to safeguard against us reading the character as trans.

Poorly! But its intent is clear!

Obviously, knowing the intent of a work doesn’t mean shit, because the intent is less important than the impact. And when people saw SotL, they didn’t hear “Buffalo Bill isn’t trans.” They saw a weirdo serial killer dancing around in women’s clothes.

This is what I mean when I say it propped up transphobia. The culture of the time was even MORE anti-trans than right now, which is how things like The Crying Game went largely unchallenged. So SotL ended up playing into that, no matter how little it “meant” to.

If the movie hadn’t been a monster hit that swept the Oscars, it likely would have been a curio, like a lot of Demme’s work. But because it was, it had a LOT of copycats. And those copycats often just perpetuated the surface level “trans people are weird and violent.”

Some of this is on the film. Some of it is on the book (which also defines Bill as not really trans). Some of it is on all of those copycats.

But just as much is on a culture that had spent over a century saying “man in dress” = “disgusting” or “funny,” with no room for nuance.

I think basically everybody involved in SotL, from Thomas Harris onward, took great pains to say “This character is not trans.” Poorly! But they tried!

But the second you pick up that trope, you play into pre-existing biases in the culture that we are STILL trying to erase.

Anyway, I loved this movie as a bb tran not because of Buffalo Bill, but because Clarice Starling, a woman trying to make sense of the codes of men, was the first time I felt like I saw myself on screen.

Also, it’s shatteringly well-made.

But you can’t talk about its legacy without talking about the way in which its legacy became intertwined with movies like The Crying Game or Ace Ventura or its copycats. It is one of the most influential movies ever made. Its influence includes transphobia.

EVERY TV crime procedural is borrowing from the SotL template. How many of them have turned trans women solely into malicious killers or voiceless corpses?

And you know who agrees with me on this? Demme himself, who went on to make (the really terrific, and you should rewatch it) Philadelphia as his next film, in an attempt to create a better, more earnest depiction of queerness on film.

Yes, “I guess cis gay men are basically the same as trans people???” is, uh, inaccurate, and its further evidence of Demme’s “You tried!” approach to telling queer stories. But the legacy of the movie really did haunt him in the end.

Anyway, I love this movie, but it’s a complicated thing to love, because of the world it existed in and the horrors it helped perpetuate, no matter how much it tried not to.

More of my take on this film can be found on @blankcheckpod! https://soundcloud.com/griffin-and-david-present/silence-of-the-lambs-with-emily-vanderwerff

Movies like Ace Ventura were FAR more difficult for me to watch as a tiny trans girl. I think I’m temperamentally more able to live with transphobia in horror than in, say, comedy.

Ideally, it wouldn’t be anywhere, but horror is at least about our worst selves.

Tl;dr: Meaning well doesn’t mean much when you accidentally prop up vile prejudice. But art is more than its worst qualities, and there are plenty of other reasons to recommend Silence of the Lambs, a legitimately great film. Just, you know, with caution.

OK, folks, looks like we’re done here. https://twitter.com/JuliaFtacek/status/1358881685568450562

(Also, it should go without saying, but I am but one tran, and my thinking on this film is not the be-all/end-all. I have my own blindspots! Lots of trans women hate this film, and their perspectives are just as valid!)

A somewhat important addendum: A lot of folks point out that Hannibal's “Buffalo Bill isn’t really trans” bit is, in and of itself, transphobic. It is! His whole speech is guided by the idea that there’s one way to be trans, which is an inherently transphobic idea. But...

My argument is that the film is doing its level best for the period in which it is made to bend over backward in the name of trying to say Bill isn’t trans (a plot point from the book). It’s transphobic, but its INTENT is the opposite. It fails, but the intent still exists.

I’m not arguing that the damaging ways this film impacted public perceptions of trans people don’t exist. They clearly do. I just think it’s interesting to observe how much this story tries to say “This guy isn’t trans” when, say, Dressed to Kill says, “TRANS THEREFORE MURDERER."

My argument isn’t about reality; it’s about the other movies Silence is in conversation with, which I could have made clearer!

I really should have just tweeted this: https://twitter.com/emilyvdw/status/1358890846486028290

One last thing, from a conversation with a friend: Movies like Psycho, Dressed to Kill, Silence/Lambs, etc. strike me as more of their time (and, thus, with easier to ignore gross shit) than contemporaries like Crying Game and Ace Ventura.

Some of this is genre -- horror ages exceptionally well.

But as trans identities become more mainstream, it's much more obvious that we're not all murderers.

Yet as trans identities become more mainstream, a cis guy feeling revolted by attraction to us becomes MORE likely.

In conclusion: I am very attractive, and I'm glad you all think so.