moviesvice.com Why the Actor Who Played Buffalo Bill in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ Has a Problem With the Movie Today Tony Alpsen 2–3 minutes
35 years after The Silence of the Lambs premiered in theaters, the topic of Buffalo Bill’s sexual identity remains a contentious one. The deranged serial killer, played by Ted Levine in the film, was known for skinning his female victims in order to stitch together a “woman suit” for himself. This past February, Levine weighed in on the subject, and it turns out he’s got conflicting feelings about his performance.
“There are certain aspects of the movie that don’t hold up too well,” Levine, who’d never addressed the controversy before, told The Hollywood Reporter. “We all know more, and I’m a lot wiser about transgender issues,” he continued. “There are some lines in that script and movie that are unfortunate.” 35 Years Later, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ Star Says the Movie Got Something Important Wrong
Levine went on to say that he didn’t have those same concerns when he made the movie, but is more knowledgeable when it comes to the trans experience nowadays. “[It’s] just over time and having gotten aware and worked with trans folks, and understanding a bit more about the culture and the reality of the meaning of gender,” he explained. “It’s unfortunate that the film vilified that, and it’s f—king wrong. And you can quote me on that.”
The actor also said that he didn’t play Buffalo Bill as gay or trans and just saw him as a “f—ked-up heterosexual man.” Director Jonathan Demme shared a similar view of the character, saying that Bill only wanted to be a woman because it was his way of escaping. Producer Edward Saxon confirmed that the intent was never for Bill to be trans. “He was sick. To that extent, we missed it. From my point of view, we weren’t sensitive enough to the legacy of a lot of stereotypes and their ability to harm,” Saxon added.
Literally just watched this movie in a small private cinema like an hour ago! I'm trans, I've always loved the movie. It really has never felt to me like the movie or cast or anything was trying to be transphobic in fact quite the opposite. They explicitly say there is no correlation between being trans and being violent and that trans people are passive. They're very clear that they don't think Bill is trans. There could be something to be said about externally prescribing if someone is trans or not but that's more a general "they didn't understand psych well on a lot of fronts then". They put in decent effort to try and say trans people aren't inherently bad. I consider it to be relatively progressive in intent but they didn't know how to tell the story in a way that wouldn't be taken in the wrong way.
Also when I was first transitioning I'd periodically naked sideways shuffle through the house with a tuck and yell "would you fuck me" at my spouse which was fun.
Also when I was first transitioning I’d periodically naked sideways shuffle through the house with a tuck and yell “would you fuck me” at my spouse which was fun.
You're a better being than I AM, Gunga-Din!
Well done!
Hannibal Lecter straight up says in the movie that Buffalo Bill isn't trans, I thought it was actually kind of progressive considering it was 1991.
Not sure if I will catch heat for this, but…
Silence of the Lambs is in my top 5. I’ve always interpreted Bill as someone who is not trans, but rather part of his pathology is a misplaced identity issue. He wanted to become what he coveted; he did not feel that he was a woman, but that he wanted to transform into a woman. A point without distinction? Idk, it’s hard for me to verbalize it properly. He tried to get GCS, because that was what many trans folks aspire to, and when they turned him away, he pulled a “Fine, I’ll do it myself”. He sees killing as just another step in the process of constructing his own transformation. There does seem to be some sort of sexual gratification involved, but I think that is just a bonus for him.
This is just my interpretation of it. I could be off base, but it still remains in my top 5. I can definitely understand why others would think that my take is spicy at best. I think we all have some piece of media that we are willing to overlook problematic aspects of it.
The movie explicitly states your interpretation is exactly what's going on with Billy. The terminology they use could charitably called "dated at best", but here's the relevant dialogue:
Hannibal Lecter: Billy is not a real trans-sexual, but he thinks he is. He tries to be. He's tried to be a lot of things, I expect.
Clarice Starling: And you said that I was very close to the way we would catch him. What did you mean, doctor?
Hannibal Lecter: There are three major centers for trans-sexual surgery: Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota, and Columbus Medical Center. I wouldn't be surprised if Billy had applied for sex reassignment at one or all of them, and been rejected.
Clarice Starling: On what basis would they reject him?
Hannibal Lecter: Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence. Our Billy wasn't born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse. Billy hates his own identity, you see, and he thinks that makes him a trans-sexual. But his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying.
Billy knows he's a delusional, violent psychopath and predator. He hates it and desperately wants to be something else.
Billy probably settled on "woman" because in his mind "woman" is the exact polar opposite of what he is.
... But Billy is a delusional, violent psychopathic predator and therefore goes about that "transformation" in a completely expected way.
I agree with you. I just want to add that I think people put way too much thought into the id fuck me scene. He's fucked up and in a good mood. Course he's fuck himself. I never took it as he wants to be a woman (but it's awhile and I could be misremembering.)
I don’t think the film is hateful or a bad portrayal. It’s nuanced and adresses topics around gender that are worth discussing. Unfortunately the current discourse around trans people is rancid and we’re just not thoughtful enough as a society to be entrusted with nuance on this topic. It’s not a bad thing to like SotL, and it doesn’t make you anti-trans, but the overall effect of the movie on public discourse has been negative and I’d argue it was a little irresponsible of Thomas Harris and the filmmakers to release it as-is in the current context.
Hopefully it’s simply ahead of its time and we can eventually enjoy nice things like nuance when we someday pull our collective heads out of our asses.
most media/books from the 80s and 90s are full of sexism/misogyny, bigotry, racism, and everything else. there was progress from the horrors of previous decades, but they weren't there yet
to this day we have incel troglodytes whining about "wokeness" in media, which means if it's not casting straight white male christian type A characters as superior to everyone who isn't all of those things, then it's DEI and unamerican and communist
a lot of my favorite books/films from those years, it turns out, are deeply problematic, but no one realized it at the time. that's why i consume all the "wokest" things i possibly can now
I spent my childhood calling people gay and using the f slur, we all did. Same as the r slur. Hell the n-word didn’t have the same weight. This was the 80s and 90s.
Watching movies with my son from the 90s/00s and he cringes so often and throws out “yo they can’t say that!”
Very few of us clocked it, because it was the norm.
I hope we all remember the fucked up norms from when we were growing up when we cast judgement on others.
HOWEVER: we all learned, we all keep learning, cast the most insane judgement on anyone who doesn’t learn and doesn’t do better
We didn’t all do that. There were those of us who were gay or had gay loved ones
Not everyone used the n-word back in the 1800s either, but to pretend it wasn’t a common term is misguided.
You’re not wrong with your sentiment, but it doesn’t negate what I’m saying.
I distinctly remember a bi friend of mine yelling "FAGGOTS!" over a LAN hall in the 2000s. It depended on the culture you were in - not just whether you were exposed to that language, but also whether you felt safe enough that words which saw use as homophobic slurs might also be used in a different way.
Same. Back then it was normal basically. As an adult you just sounds dumb and ignorant talking like that.
(Non-native English speaker here—used AI to help clean up my grammar and phrasing!)
Honestly, I kind of view this the same way as the disclaimers on old Looney Tunes cartoons or the intros Whoopi Goldberg does for classic media. They basically explain that the content features harmful stereotypes of the past, but keeping it available is important so we don't erase history or pretend those attitudes didn't exist.
It’s great to see people look back with a mature perspective and realize how problematic certain portrayals are. But at the same time, it is very much a product of its time, and acknowledging past mistakes is part of growing up as a culture.
If you read the piece about The Silence of the Lambs, both the director and the actor explain that they were trying to portray a deeply disturbed heterosexual man who was looking for an escape—they genuinely didn't intend to vilify trans people back then. But what matters most is that they're now much more aware of the real-world harm, they own up to it, and they've actively grown and started speaking out against it.
I still love the film, it will always be a masterpiece in my eyes.
It’s unfortunate that the film vilified that...
I'm not sure I understand that thought. In that sense it's just about one fucked-up individual, not any kind of systemic thing, right?
The short of it is that (in my eyes) it could have been fine if there were a lot more movies with good trans rep to balance it out
You're right. And that part's disappointing. There weren't many, but I guess to the movie industry's credit, from around that time we did have...
"Wong Foo"
"Priscilla"
"Crying Game"
"Birdcage"
"Ed Wood"
Anything else?
What they're saying is that, at that time, when they created a "fucked up heterosexual man" character, they did so by giving him trans attributes.
But why is that something that couldn't have been possible for that particular character? People are complex, and gender equally so, and we're all on a kind of spectrum of various attributes.
Also, "heterosexual man" is something that we don't really know about Buffalo Bill. Just because Levine had that image in his head doesn't mean it was supposed to be definitive.
But why is that something that couldn’t have been possible for that particular character?
I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. In the process of creating the character they already had a brutal fucked up murderer, but that wasn't fucked up enough so to make him extra fucked up they added trans attributes. If you don't see how that's a problem I dunno what to tell you.
That, for example, a person could nominally be of some commonly-labelled gender, but have trans attributes as you say. What's wrong with that?
a fictional character is not a real person. a real person can have certain traits because that's just how they are. a fictional character's traits are chosen by a writer for a reason. if a writer intentionally makes a character gender-queer in order to emphasize that they're scary and mentally unstable, that's bigotry
a fictional character is not a real person.
Yes, but they can and do routinely REPRESENT a real person, or at least a highly-likely person.
if a writer intentionally makes a character gender-queer in order to emphasize that they’re scary and mentally unstable, that’s bigotry
Not only do we have zero evidence for that here, but that's not how Hollywood works, anyway. In reality, the pass-off from book-writer to studio to screenwriter to producers to director to actors is a multi-step process in which characters are commonly distorted from their original versions in to something completely different.
That would be a discussion for a thread that's not specifically about a character specifically designed to represent fucked-up-ness by having trans attributes added to them.
I'm starting to doubt your participation is in good faith here.
specifically about a character specifically designed to represent fucked-up-ness by having trans attributes added to them.
That's just your personal take, though. "First we create a fucked character, then we attach some trans attributes." You imagine it happening in that specific order, but I'd argue just as much that "BB" is a pastiche of dark characters that Thomas Harris found interesting in his research. BB could have been formed out of any combination of traits and known people, really, but it sounds like you're saying as a personally trans person (correct?) that you object to the fact that one of those traits seems to trans-ish? The reality is that any combination whatsoever is liable to upset someone who shares a commonality. And that's just the reality of life, like it or not.
I've watched the film like 2-3x over the years and never got the sense that they tried to lean too hard in to the trans angles (assuming they're really there in the first place) or tried to paint an overall picture about trans people in general. I guess it's understandable in our F'd-up society that you would be sensitive to that, so I guess I can understand your reaction. And credit to Levine's statement, which I do appreciate. I don't fully agree, but I like the idea of sticking up for trans rights.
I’m starting to doubt your participation is in good faith here.
Sorry you feel that way, Sarah. I feel that all people should be accepted for being who they are, as long as they participate in civilisation benignly. Something along those lines, anyway. With respect to nature and sustainability, of course.
The bullshit of Western Religion and power structures has done a number on all of us of course, including when it comes to the topic of "gender." So-called "conservatives" and power-structures always hate the idea of gender being a spectrum, for some pretty obvious reasons.
That’s just your personal take, though. “First we create a fucked character, then we attach some trans attributes.”
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No, that's not what I said. I said they added the trans attributes as a way to indicate to the audience the character is fucked up.
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No, that's not just my personal take, it's how the character's creator said he did it.
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Your condescending faux-superior attitude isn't conducive to good faith discussion.
Bye.
There is no need to change the movie again. We all know that Clarice shot first.
When people struggle to fit into their surroundings, they sometimes find weird ways of coping. I don't remember thinking anything other than that. Maybe i need to rewatch it.
I wonder what Nicolas Cage's excuse is for Longlegs. Most transphobic piece of shit movie I've ever watched.
Nic Cage named himself after a Black comic book hero, named his kid Kal-El, and spent something like a million dollars for a dinosaur fossil.
He's fun to watch, but I wouldn't look to him for a lot of real world nuance
He married Elvis' daughter because he was obsessed with Elvis.
True, but I've been a fan since Rumble Fish, he's just a few years older than me so he was one of my youthful film heroes.
It was extremely disappointing. I actually think he was just stupid, not intentional, but I think someone in that production was fucking intentional.
Look up 'Tribulation'
2000 AD film starring Margot Kidder. It's got a heavily Christian revivalist message.
Kidder had no idea what the script was about. It was just a paycheck job.
Can you remind me what was transphobic about it? I think I turned it off halfway through because I got bored.
Yeah, I don't recall trans identities in the movie at all. The film itself was a letdown, considering it was supposed to be up there with Silence. I expected a grounded serial killer flick, what I ended up with was some supernatural mumbo jumbo.
Nic Cage plays the psycho antagonist and appears trans-coded. This is unfortubate because trans representation in media, especially horror, has historically been a bit rough (see Psycho and Silence of the Lambs). Oz Perkins, the director, has stated that he is not meant to be trans, but is supposed to be a "glam rock" guy. There are other parts of the movie that validate that, but ultimately it is up to viewers choose what they think.
Glam Rock was an overtly queerified (I mean that in a good way) presentation of a music genre which, up to that point, was pretty hypermasculine.
I do see the Glam aesthetic as well, but culturally, glam boys were pretty and just wanted to rock and/or roll you a little, and didn't much care if you were a girl or boy.
It's still queer-coded at minimum. In the context of the modern day, where only weirdoes like me enjoy hatewatching old TOTP videos of Gary Glitter and "Glam" is as likely to mean Motley Crue and Cinderella than the New York Dolls, it's trans-coded as fuck.
I don't fucking buy that, in other words. I bet if we scratched the surface of Oz Perkins, we'd find he's a nickel-plated edgelord.
The character itself. Indeterminate gender, presented in a completely grotesque way, and it's a serial killer of course.
It walked straight out of the fever dreams of Jordan Peterson, when he was in that medically induced coma.
