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    • Nietzsche and Animal Imagery in The Silence of the Lambs
      Two images, one visual and one verbal, in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs reference, I believe, an extended metaphor from the first essay in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morality. The first is the hawk, seen when Clarice Starling crosses the first threshold by entering the Your Self Storage unit (belonging to Lector) and reinforced by close-ups of Lector’s raptor-like eyes throughout the film. Inside Your Self is a predator. The titular ‘lambs’ are the second image. Hearing their screaming as they go to the slaughter haunts Starling. It drives her to overcome the helplessness she felt as a little girl running away from the ranch. With characteristic callousness, Lector orders rare lambs chops in the following scene. Through these two images, the film taps into Nietzsche’s disturbing rejection of traditional ‘slave morality’:
      “There is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey: but that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey for carrying off the little lambs…It is just as absurd to ask strength not to express itself as strength, not to be a desire to overthrow, crush, become master, to be a thirst for enemies, resistance and triumphs, as it is to ask weakness to express itself as strength” (Nietzsche 25-26).
      Nietzsche named psychology the ‘queen of the sciences’ because it offered a route to fuller self-actualization, a way of undoing the historical process of ressentiment in which natural masters, or predators, internalized the slave morality. Lector has completed this process. Freed from external, inhibitive ethics, he has created a new, inscrutable system of values. Miggs, who violates this code by flinging his semen on Starling, gets punished. But nobody can punish or control Lector. He is the Übermensch.
      Self-transformation introduces another recurrent animal image throughout the film: moths or butterflies. Their association with Buffalo Bill highlights that character’s failure to live up to Lector’s psychopathic Nietzschean paradigm. His murders only superficially resemble Lector’s. Lector’s choice of the verb ‘covet’ to describe Bill connotes the Ten Commandments, the ‘slave morality’ which he alone fully rejects. “Our Billy,” Lector claims “wants to change too.” He “hates his own identity.” Most important of all, he was not born a killer but “made a criminal.” Unlike Lector, Bill is affected by the suffering of his victims. He distances himself from Catherine, referring to her as ‘it,’ and becomes emotional in response to her pleas: “Put the lotion in the fucking basket!” Furthermore, his transsexuality, not to mention his Bichon Frise, aligns him with traditional characterizations of women as submissive and nurturing (remember the film was made in 1991). The skin-suit Buffalo Bill creates represents the artificiality of his attempts at transformation. Unlike a caterpillar which sloughs off its skin to become a butterfly, Buffalo Bill puts on a costume that emphasizes what he isn’t: a woman. That does not mean Bill is a natural killer like Lector. Becoming a killer is just as unnatural for him as becoming a woman. He is “not a real transsexual.” Instead, the suit signifies what a confused, pathetic, and incomplete person he is.
      Where does this leave Clarice? Starlings are communal animals. They form huge flocks for self-protection. Clarice does evince the ‘herd morality’ of Nietzsche. She struggles throughout the film to protect the lambs from predators like Lector and Bill. Under the direction of her two surrogate fathers, Crawford and Lector, she appears to be presented with a choice, two contrasting models of behavior. But not really. Both Lector and Clarice act the way they do out of instinct, like any other animal. After hearing Zarathustra, she rejoins the herd for cake. What makes the film a disturbing Pyrrhic victory is that Lector is still out there, unpunished and even worse un-punishable. Through Clarice, the audience encounters a sublime being whose actions we abhor but, if we agree with Nietzsche, cannot condemn. Thank God it’s just a movie. Right?

      Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

    • Nate,
      I really enjoyed reading your post, I found your comparison between Nietzsche and Silence of the Lambs to be extremely interesting. I definitely agree with the points that you are making – the film can certainly be considered an extended metaphor to Nietzsche’s “The Genealogy of Morality.” The examples you provided regarding the animals support this concept in many ways.
      While I was watching the film, I noticed these animal metaphors, but not to the extent that you did. However, after reading your post I think that most of the symbolism has become much clearer to me. I particularly liked your evaluation of Buffalo Bill. “The skin-suit Buffalo Bill creates represents the artificiality of his attempts at transformation. Unlike a caterpillar which sloughs off its skin to become a butterfly, Buffalo Bill puts on a costume that emphasizes what he isn’t: a woman. That does not mean Bill is a natural killer like Lector. Becoming a killer is just as unnatural for him as becoming a woman. He is ‘not a real transsexual.’” When I was watching it, I did not necessarily see it this way, I did not think that Buffalo Bill was not a natural killer. But I could not agree more with this point – the whole reason behind Buffalo Bills murder is to represent something that he is not, while he is trying to become something else that he is not. Lector’s point that Bill is not a real transsexual is significant evidence to this, and it also shows that out of the two men, Lector is the real genuine killer. He is able to see right through Bill’s act. Buffalo Bill is trying to transform and find himself throughout the duration of the film, hence the reason for his killings. It is stated in the film that Bill was rejected for gender reassignment surgery, showing that he is not actually a transsexual at heart, rather he is just extremely unsure of who he is as a person.
      Your entire post has changed my perspective on the film in a good way – I think that it may have actually made many things clearer, and I can say that I appreciate the film much more than I did before.