Film Adaptation: Identity in "Silence of the Lambs"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how when Thomas Harris' 1988 novel "The Silence of the Lambs" was to be converted into film by director Jonathan Demme, there was an apparent theme of character identities and relationships as determined by gender which he interpreted from imaginative literature to visual cinema. It looks at how these characters, which were each inevitably altered in their own different ways by the artistic rendition of the novel, are therefore presented differently. The protagonist, a young female FBI trainee from rural West Virginia named Clarice Starling, is sent to interview the imprisoned serial killer psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter in order to better understand the mind of a mad man. But she instead finds herself in a race against time to save a young innocent girl and capture the fledgling serial killer known as Buffalo Bill. It looks at how though the story seems simple enough, the complexities of identity among these characters presents mysterious subtleties, as they try to stretch the boundaries of what defines their gender's role in society.

From the Paper:

"Buffalo Bill, though a small character in both the novel and the film, is an excellent tool for understanding Clarice, as he parallel's her own confusion of identity of gender. Both Clarice and Bill, in the novel and film, dislike their past identities and are trying to construct new one. Clarice strains to hide her pure West Virginian accent and the fact that people would consider her, if they knew her true identity, a "rube". Buffalo Bills confusion about his identity stems from the fact, as Hannibal explains to Clarice, that he was abused as a child, and because of that never formed an actual realization of who he was, or even what gender meant to him. "

More papers on Film Adaptation: Identity in "Silence of the Lambs":

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• Film Review # 147776 : "''The Silence of the Lambs'' - Sound Analysis"

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