Books like The Silence of the Lambs

This is one of those movies which have such an impact that it’s surprising when they just fall apart on you. (The Maltese Falcon would be another example). It falls apart when you take a minute to consider what the movie is about, what it does, and what reality it’s reflecting, rather than what great performances, what cool cinematography, and so forth. This is a movie which pretends to be from the gritty end of American reality but which is as absurd and fantastical as Me Before You or La La Land. That doesn’t make it bad, but it does make it disingenuous. We’ll be right back after this short break. Lambs : Baa! Baa! Poor white trashhhhh! Baa! Trashhhhh! Baa!Daisy (a Quebecois cow with a slight French accent) : What are you all doing?Arthur (a helpful lamb): We’re implanting a primal memory! Baa! Poor white trashhhh! It’s fun!Daisy: Okay. Moo!Lambs : No, you have to go baaa! It’s for Silence of the Lambs, not Silence of the Cows. Daisy: Whose memory, anyway?Arthur: Clarice Starling up there in that bedroom. She’ll always remember us now!Daisy: Moo! Isn’t that rather mean? What did this Clarice ever do to you?Lambs : Baa! Baa! Poor white trashhhhh! Baa! Trashhhhh! Baa!Arthur: Well, she didn’t save us from being slaughtered and eaten so as far as we’re concerned she’s a token representative of the entire meat eating part of the human race and she shoulda tried harder. Baa! Baa! I mean, we were only little lambs and there they all were chewing on our corpses. We never got a chance to grow up, go to college and achieve something in life. Daisy: I see - when you put it like that – baa! Baa! Poor white trash!! Moo! I mean, baa!Clarice (wrapping a pillow round her tiny head) : Every night! Bloody hell, what a racket! I want to become an FBI agent!There never was a serial killer like Hannibal Lecter (they’re never educated people) nor yet one like Buffalo Bill. What’s that I hear? What about Ed Gein? Poor old Ed, he gets dragged out to justify the lurid fantasies of so much serial killer stuff, from Psycho to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to Silence of the Lambs. Okay, he did kill one person, and he did have unwholesome hobbies mostly concerning recently deceased citizens of Plainfield, Wisconsin. But leaving Ed aside, the thing about Buffalo Bill is that he’s not interested in killing females, he’s only after them for their skin. If they could just hand over their skin, he’d let them all go. So why is he doing this? Dr Hannibal Lecter : Hey Bill, don’t you think it’s rather amusing that no one ever minded me, the erudite cannibal, gourmet, aesthete, with a fridge stuffed with body parts and fava beans – in fact, frankly, they loved me, what a wow I would have been on the late night chat show circuit - whereas you got hung out to dry, so to speak. Do you think it’s because you’re vulgar and aren’t much of a conversationalist? Bill : Naw, it wasn’t a class thing. People got confused because I was so hopelessly confused that people thought I was gay or transgender because I was trying to make a woman suit. Really I'm a victim of misogynism. Dr Lecter : Well, that is a little confusing. Why didn’t you just get an operation? I know some people who would have chopped off and fried whatever you didn’t require anymore for free. I mean, you did kind of come across as a little bit transgender, you know. I mean, you look like you belong in a 1990s metal band. I don’t mean to offend. Bill: Well, I tried to get the op but they turned me down due to having a lot of mental issues and also due to if I’d had the operation none of this skinning business would ever have happened so none of this whole story would have happened. So that’s probably why. Anyhow, all those critics were confused about my confusion which was pretty confused. Of course it may be that it was Thomas Harris who was confused to begin with which is understandable because most people are and why should best selling authors be exempt, they’re just people right? I’m not sure if this is germane, but you may have noticed that the whole modern smorgasbord of sexual identity is a study in progressive complication – First B and T were added to the original L and G, but now we have LGBTQQIA+ - it’s hard to keep up, there’s a new letter being added every other month. Dr Lecter : Billy, where did you learn a word like smorgasbord?Bill : Reader’s Digest.Dr Lecter : Good digestion is essential.Bottom line : Silence of the Baa-Lambs is a nasty jumble of prurient cultural fantasy expertly smoothed and honed and pleated into an excellent movie made unmissable by two indelible performances, and this little BFI guide is rather stiff and humorless but not bad at all for those who like reading about movies as well as watching them.