pinky and the brain do 'silence of the lambs'
Just like a booger-coated finger a centimeter from your face, The Silence Of The Lambs is impossible to ignore. Similar examples of trans exploitation—films as guilty of poor taste as Silence—are forgotten and buried away in niche film circles. This one was handed five Oscars and added to the Library of Congress. Whether it was one, 20, or now 30 years after its release, Silence remains heralded, despite every criticism against it. Yes, the directing is masterful, and the acting is damn near flawless. But these aspects come at the price of consistently elevating the worst piece of fiction to befall trans people. Maybe I am overreaching to condemn Buffalo Bill and The Silence Of The Lambs as being the single worst example of representation with which the trans community has ever been burdened and placing so much blame on it. Then again, it only took a single flawed and biased study by one man to spark the medical community to turn on the trans community for decades.
Clarice Starling was a revelation while the portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" became a bane for many trans people coming of age. The impeccably constructed film is the gold standard of copaganda. We unpack The Silence of the Lambs' complicated legacy with Harmony Colangelo!
We made a playlist to accompany this episode! It's comprised of songs that come to mind when we all think about this movie.
You can Harmony's essay A Reluctant Defense of Silence of the Lambs' James Gumb here. You can find Harmony on Twitter here. You can find A Year of Queer Cocktails here. You can find This Ends at Prom here!
Why Are Dads is a show in which hosts Sarah Marshall and Alex Steed attempt to understand what the hell it means to be the grown children of dads and other dad-like figures. And, as they do with all difficult subject matter, they do so by looking through a pop culture lens.
You can find producer and music director Carolyn Kendrick's music here. She's also on Twitter.
Fresh Lesh produces the beats for our episodes.
Abigail Swartz of Gray Day Studio designed our logo!
Sarah tells Mike how Ed Gein became one of America’s most famous serial killers despite not actually being one. Plus, the cinematic villains Gein inspired and what the slasher movies of the 1980s were really about. Digressions include Freud, summer camp logistics and the T-1000. Mike continues to awkwardly insert his teenage crushes into every conversation. https://rottenindenmark.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/slashers.mp3