Left Field Cinema

In 1991, The Silence of the Lambs was released in cinemas in the UK, based on Thomas Harris’s novel of the same title; it was a horror film of a different nature. What distinguished the film from other members of the horror genre for most viewers was the amount of positive critical reception it gained. The critical success of the film means that often the film is not considered a horror film, and is referred to as part of the crime genre, or as a thriller as Jancovich states in the 2002 book Rational Fears:

“While I remember The Silence of the Lambs as the first horror film to sweep the major awards at the Oscars, for most of my students the film’s status as an Oscar winner defines it as a ‘quality drama’ – a grouping frequently preferred by people who claim not to like ‘genre films’.”

The same is true of Se7en, which gained a similar critical reception and is often not referred to as a horror film. For many viewers there is an association with horror films and bad films, it is an association created by the low budgeted B-movies, hammer horror, and the slasher films. These subgenres of horror are all films where developed scripts and talented actors are often low down on the producer’s list of priorities. Most horror films promote themselves on their vicariously thrilling nature, or possibly titillation, not on masterful performances or original direction. Take this years Horror films for example, for every excellent character based horror film like Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage, we also have to endure a half dozen idiotic slasher movies like Nelson McCormick’s Prom Night remake, or Jessica Alba starring remake of The Eye, or the sequel to the spin off Alien Verses Predator, Alien Verses Predator 2: Requiem.

The crime genre is also a natural choice for both The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en to be categorised as, often the crime genre will feature a story of an antagonist committing evil deeds and a protagonist hunting him or her down to stop and punish them. The films are often pro law and order, and anti sin in their mentality. One of the distinctions between the crime genre and the horror genre is that in horror often it is the antagonist doing the punishment for sin and the antagonist is often, although not always, a supernatural being who is either extremely difficult to kill or impossible to kill. Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs do not fulfill this part of the horror genre, both the antagonists are human, and can be killed. R. Dryer states in his 1999 BFI companion to Se7en that:

“The notion of evil, rather than sin, is a common way of dealing with serial killers, often in a context where all other explanations seem to fall short. This is equally true of the coverage of famous cases and in fictions, as at the end of Halloween (1978) where the psychiatrist admits that there is no explanation for the remorseless killer Michael other than that he is evil incarnate. Somerset himself invokes the notion, when he says that, if, when they finally get the killer, he turns out to be ‘Satan himself’, that would be satisfying. However, he goes on to say that the sad fact is ‘he’s not the devil, he’s just a man’, not an embodiment of the otherness and exteriority of evil...”

Neither Buffalo Bill (played by Ted Levine) or Jon Doe (played by Kevin Spacey) are anything other than men, they have no special powers, they are not even mirages of difference, for example with a massive physical deformity, only Bill’s sexuality lends him to a perceived social abnormality.. They are what they represent, white, middle aged, men. This is an interesting point of statistical realism as most serial killers are part of this social and ethnic group. Bill and Doe are both part of the society they are attacking. Doe, especially, kills in the name of Christianity to demonstrate how people tolerate sin in the modern world, whilst himself being guilty of the sins he is attempting to expose. He takes Pride in his work; he is being Vengeful against the people who sin, as it offends him, and by his own admission is envious of David Mills (played by Brad Pitt) and his ‘ordinary life’.

Both the antagonists represent a specific anxiety in late 20th Century western society, the serial killer. Unlike many horror films the monsters in Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs are real within society, even if they are statistically rare. In both films the serial killer is acting out his own desires, however Doe’s desire is to teach the world a lesson, about apathy in society, but it is not only Doe who makes judgments on the subject. The protagonists, Mills and William Somerset (played by Morgan Freeman) bring the subject up in various dialogue sequences throughout the film, the endemic nature of apathy is what the film is centrally addressing. Doe is trying to change the world in the wrong way. Mills does not appear to care, or at least not understand the problem, and Somerset no longer believes he can change the world.

Se7en offers no clean answers to the questions it raises; it ends in the quote from Somerset: “'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for’, I agree with the second part.” But Doe was fighting for the world in his own way, it was an incorrect and violent way, but the film offers no alternative to this method. The ambiguity of its thematic exploration gives no clear moral message, other than that apathy is a negative aspect of society, but offers no solutions to the problem. This distinguishes the film from morality tales, as they usually reach clear conclusions to the moral problems they present. Ambiguity is rarely seen in morality tales.

Both films are generically confused, there are clearly horrific acts of violence within them, they centre around a killer punishing the sinners. However the antagonists of both films are law enforcement officers, who are usually supporting characters in horror films, and as stated earlier the killers are not soulless, or relentless, and they have personalities. Despite this confusion and ambiguity, aspects of morality tales can be extrapolated from the plotlines.

The Silence of the Lambs can be viewed as a tale warning about the dangers of even consulting evil. Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster), only catches Bill by taking advice from another killer, Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins). As a result of this, Lecter escapes and kills more innocent people. The message of the story can be interpreted as a demonstration of how working with evil, although it can yield good results can often end up perpetuating evil even further than it would have originally gone. Lecter is in many ways a Satan like figure, very precise, intelligent and fond of trickery and deception, and Starling taking advice from him to catch Buffalo Bill, is similar to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, being manipulated by the devil, the innocent and ill-informed taking advice from a confident and intelligent serpent.

Similarly in Se7en the protagonists Mills and Somerset both study the evil they are hunting. This is to the point where Mills becomes a killer himself in the last moments of the film, making the film likewise a parallel to the Adam and Eve story as Mills and Somerset embark on their dangerous quest for knowledge. If they had not been able to catch him, then his ‘masterpiece’ (the killing of seven people who overtly display one of the seven deadly sins) would not have been completed. But through their examinations of the crimes and reading the same literature as the killer, they become closer to the killer, this then distorts their sense of reason making them both borderline obsessed with finishing the case.

In both The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, the protagonists and the antagonists are connected showing that there is potential to be evil within the protagonists. Lecter, although not technically the antagonist, is a secondary antagonist as he provides a greater amount of the menace within the film, and like Bill kills a number of innocent people. Lecter and Starling are both extremely intelligent and observant characters. Lecter has been classed as insane, and Starling is a trainee, but they are both alike in more ways than one, the 2001 sequel to the film Hannibal reinforces this, featuring Lecter returning from Italy to the USA just to see Starling again. The Silence of the Lambs can be classed as a romance film in many ways; Lecter can easily be seen as an anti-hero, who falls for Starling. In the last meeting between Lecter and Starling just before he escapes, Lecter gently coerces Starling’s finger as he hands her notes back to her through the bars of his cage, and later in his cell an intricate drawing of Starling can be seen on his table. Starling and Lecter are very alike, they both see the same things in the case, in many ways Lecter is the dark side of Starling, and she is his salvation, this is another interpretation, that the film is a warning about the dark side of society, and of individuals. In Se7en the protagonists and the antagonist also alike, but in different ways. Dryer again states:

“Somerset and Doe are alike: intellectual, painstaking, absorbed; and both have a consciousness of sin.”(Dyer, 8, 1999)

Somerset has Doe’s intellect, Mills has Doe’s aggression. In effect meaning that the two could easily be Doe if they had some of each others attributes. Mills acts like Doe in many scenes and Doe acts like Mills should act in other scenes. The antagonist is a composite of both the protagonists. Dryer again clarifies:

“…Mills tells Somerset that the first time he went out to arrest a suspect, he killed someone unnecessarily; in other words, the cop became the killer. In the Doe’s gun-at-Mills’s-head encounter, on the other hand, it is the killer who acts, as a cop should, who chooses not to kill unnecessarily. The moment also points forwards to the end of the film, where the situation is reversed – Mills has his gun to Doe’s head and chooses to kill, even though Doe poses no physical threat to him; Doe here goads the cop into becoming the killer where before Doe the killer acted the cop.”

Doe does the police’s work, but only two, or maybe three of the sinners he punishes were committing what would be considered crimes by the police. This is another problem with Doe, and what makes him similar to other horror movie antagonists, he attacks what he feels is wrong (A lack of Christian values in this case) not what the rest of western society feels is wrong, or any other society for that matter. Dryer again clarifies:

“In Victor’s flat, a cop leans over what he believes is a dead body and whispers, ‘You got what you deserved.’ Cops are supposed to administer what is deserved, but Doe has taken upon himself to do the work that they fail to do. He identifies with the moral code of society, a Christian society that is failing to be Christian – it is Doe who upholds the law (as he sees it) to which the society is supposed to be committed.”

He only kills because society is evil; society through its evil begets a greater evil, namely Doe. As with The Silence of the Lambs, the killers are darker reflections of the police officers hunting them. This presenting a warning about human nature, that everyone has the capacity to commit acts of evil if presented the right circumstances, the greatest enemy of the human race is in fact the human race.

The Silence of the Lambs is laden with a homophobic subtext surrounding Buffalo Bill who is attempting to become a woman by taking the skins of his victims. Often morality tales will use antagonists who fulfill what the authors would consider immoral personality traits. Homosexuality is often considered one of these traits. In the 1980 serial killer themed William Friedkin film Cruising, the killer, Stuart Richards (played by Richard Cox) is a homosexual. Although in Cruising he is praying on other homosexuals so it is not making as clear an anti-homosexual remark (as it does not intrude on the perceived normal heterosexual world) and it is not as clear that is his sexuality motivating him to kill. In The Silence of the Lambs, it is clearly Buffalo Bills desire to be a woman which motivates his choice to kill. To many, the story of the film was highly offensive and caused gay activist groups to picket and boycott the film. This does not make a good case for the film as a morality tale; if it were then the homosexual aspect would probably be disguised in a supernatural element of the text. For example, vampires are often read as metaphors for western society’s perceptions of homosexuals, preying on innocent (heterosexual victims) and killing them through their reproductive process, like contracting AIDS through sex, effectively making them the living dead. An interesting theory even if questionable as the first writings on vampirism predate 1980’s AIDS culture. Hill and Gibson clarify this in their 2000 book Film Studies: Critical Approaches:

“…some queer critics contend that many popular culture texts that do contain visible gay, lesbian, bisexual, or otherwise non-straight characters and content-like Silence of the Lambs (1991)-aren’t necessarily queer texts as they work to oppress and eliminate queerness rather than to express it.”

In The Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill can easily be seen as punishing gluttonous girls as well as having homosexual impulses. This is a very simple metaphorical transition, and does not have the same narrative backing as the other potential metaphors of the story, as the film does not concentrate on Buffalo Bill’s victims or why he picks them, so much as what he does to his victims and why. Both The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en are too grounded in reality, and too ambiguous in their message to be traditional morality tales. The possible messages are about consulting and studying evil, which are still based in the real world with real people. Every film to a greater or lesser extent has a moral or other kind of message to tell the audience whether the filmmakers intended it or not, but a moral message does not make a morality tale otherwise all films would be in this category. The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en remove the supernatural element from the narrative, and thus they are not morality tales.

In the next episode the examination is extended to slasher movies. In particular the Friday the 13th and Halloween series.

M.Dawson