... Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

[redqueen]

Trigger warning

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/5555/the_harlot_shall_be_burned_with_fire:_biblical_literalism_in_the_girl_with_the_dragon_tattoo/

The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

(snip)


The passages from Leviticus aren’t in the movie to raise much-needed questions about what happens to women’s bodies in the Bible. The passages are in the movie because they make the killer seem weird and spooky, because they add an aura of mystery, of the occult. We’re running out of creative ways to kill women in movies and books, it seems, and the biblical passages trope hasn’t been used too often.

(snip)

But it’s her naked body on which Fincher’s camera focuses. The backside of her naked body. For a long time. During some moments of this terrible scene, the camera asks us to look at her the same way the rapist looks at her.

(snip)

And what are we to do with Lisbeth’s naked body when it continues to show up? The rapist violently rips Lisbeth’s clothes off, but Lisbeth also takes her own clothes off several times during the course of the movie, and everything depends on this careful distinction between agency and victimization, between consent and refusal, between sex and rape.

(snip)

The violent images weren’t necessary. The rapes could have happened behind closed doors; or with Lisbeth’s clothes on; or the camera could have been kept on her face rather than on her lifted backside. To communicate the terror of the rape scenes all you need is a good actor, and the director surely had confidence in Rooney Mara, whom he’d worked with a year earlier on The Social Network. Every frame, every camera angle, every scene in a feature film is intentional, which leads me to wonder what Fincher wanted us to make of these scenes.

...

Another review of the movie which I found interesting. I wish the author had said more regarding the 'dead sexy women' trope. We're desensitized to many violent images but it seems like it's mostly (only?) one type that is routinely sexualized.

[seabeyond]

1. i am now hearing, porn with a story. the generals daughter.

same thing. a horrendous gang rape. they did the flashback of it leaving the impression of what happened.

yet when she reenacted it for her father, they sexualized all of it for stimulation as she gave her impassioned speech on the horrors of her experience.

[seabeyond]

2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo isn’t a feminist film

Judith Butler argues in Precarious Life that whose dead bodies we are allowed to see, and whose remain hidden, tell us something about which lives are understood to be grievable, mournable; about which lives count as lives. At one point in Dragon Tattoo a cat is killed, its mutilated body left on the front steps. Almost everyone in the theater gasped when the cat’s body was on screen. People turned away, horrified. I did, too. I’m trained. But when the screen was filled with photographs of a woman—raped, naked, her mutilated face unrecognizable—no one made a sound.

*

The main character, Lisbeth Salander, is raped twice in the film. In the first, Lisbeth is forced to engage in oral sex, which, according to the Department of Justice’s new definition, counts as rape. During the second, which is even more brutal, the discomfort in the theater was palpable. I was uncomfortable, not only because I was terrified by watching someone raped, but because it was unclear what I was supposed to make of the violence. It was unclear what kind of gaze the camera was asking me to assume.

*

He knows how to create tension with clothed characters, which is apparent not only in the films already mentioned, but also in Seven, Alien 3, and Panic Room, among others. For example, when Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is captured by the serial killer and hung in the torture basement, he isn’t naked. He gets to keep his pants on, and he’s rescued the minute the knife-wielding killer starts to unbutton them.

*

Earlier this week, just days after seeing the movie, I walked by the magazine rack of my local grocery and saw Rooney Mara on the cover of Allure magazine. The caption: “The Girl with the Pierced Nipple.” Granted, fashion magazines are seldom known for their courageous stands, but the caption could have said any number of things. The Woman Against Rape or The Woman Who Kicks Ass or The Woman Who Fights Back—I’d even settle for A Girl Who Fights Back. But nipple piercing? Really? When there’s all that other material?

_________________________

also, if you look at the pictures advertising this movie, she is unclothed. the male character, clothed. she is sexualized in all the art.

[backtoblue]

4. Absolutely not a feminist movie

I rented the Swedish version with subtitles last year. I wish I would've known the history of the book because I was sick and pissed off almost as soon as the film started.

The entire movie was a hodgepodge of rape scenes and I finally just walked out of the living room refusing to finish it. In my opinion, it does not bring awareness to the rape society- it only enables the sick fetishes of potential rapists to be able to visualize something they fantasize about.

Disgusting movie!

[seabeyond]

5. futher it desensitizes all of s to rape of women for entertainment purposes.

this was the first adn only book ever recommended to husband. had me curious. not moments after hearing this, i hear an interview about it on NPR. from there i did research. i see it along the lines of passion of christ. telling all of us that it is to honor christ, though in my view is no more than violent porn getting across exactly the opposite message than what christ was saying.

and people bought into it.

everything about this movie, the promotion, how the book was made and suggestions from editor, everything.... tells us it is anti woman and promoting the worst of who we are.

while saying it is female empowerment.

kinda like saying stripping is female empowerment as a dollar is waved in front of her for performance, for her to eat and pay bills. it is what it is

[Sera_Bellum]

3. A couple of days ago

I watched the Swedish version of TGWDT. Have yet to see the American released version.

My only disappointment with the way Lizbeth's character is shown in book and flick is why couldn't the male author keep her character a lesbian? Would that not have been sexay for the viewers and readers? In the book, Blomkvist has a few sexual trysts who is not Lizbeth. The Swedish version, he only has sex with Lizbeth. The heteronormative in everything is maddening.