Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs)
Buffalo Bill | |
---|---|
Hannibal Lecter character | |
First appearance | The Silence of the Lambs |
Created by | Thomas Harris |
Portrayed by | Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs) Simon Northwood (Clarice) |
In-universe information | |
Alias | John Grant Jack Gordon |
Gender | Male |
Occupation | Tailor |
Jame Gumb (known by the nickname "Buffalo Bill") is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs and its 1991 film adaptation, in which he is played by Ted Levine. In the film and the novel, he is a serial killer who murders overweight women and skins them so he can make a "woman suit" for himself. In the television series Clarice, he is portrayed by Simon Northwood.
Overview
Background
Gumb was born in California in 1948 or 1949. It is stated that "The 'Jame' on his birth certificate apparently was a clerical error that no one bothered to correct." Gumb's mother, an aspiring actress, went into an
The screenplay omits Gumb's backstory, but does imply that he had a traumatic childhood. In the film, Hannibal Lecter summarizes Gumb's life thus: "Our Billy wasn't born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse."
Both the novel and film depict Gumb as hating his own identity, though multiple characters state that Gumb is not transsexual. In the novel, multiple examples of how Gumb does not fit the psychological profile of a real transsexual are given. Gumb wants to become a woman—or at least believes he does—but repeatedly fails to qualify for
Modus operandi
Gumb's modus operandi (MO) is to approach a woman while pretending to be injured, ask for help, then knock her out in a surprise attack and kidnap her. He takes her to his house and leaves her in a well in his basement, where he starves her until her skin is loose enough to easily remove. In the first two cases, he leads the victims upstairs, slips nooses around their necks and pushes them from the stairs, strangling them. He then skins parts of their body (a different section on each victim), and then dumps each body into a different river, destroying any trace of evidence.[1]
This MO caused the homicide squad to nickname him Buffalo Bill (
At the start of the novel, Gumb has already murdered five women. Behavioral Science Unit Chief Jack Crawford assigns gifted trainee Clarice Starling to question incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter about the case. (Lecter had met Gumb while treating Raspail.) When Gumb kidnaps Catherine Martin, the daughter of U.S. Senator Ruth Martin, Lecter offers to give Starling a psychological profile of the killer in return for a transfer to a federal institution; this profile is mostly made up of cryptic clues designed to help Starling figure it out for herself. Starling eventually deduces from Lecter's riddles that Gumb knew his first victim, Frederica Bimmel, and goes to Bimmel's hometown of Belvedere, Ohio to gather information. By this time, Crawford has already found out the killer's true identity and gone with a SWAT team to his house to arrest him, but they find that it is only a business address. Meanwhile, Starling goes to the home of Bimmel's employer, Mrs. Lippman, only to find Gumb – calling himself "Jack Gordon" – living there. (Gumb had murdered Mrs. Lippman earlier.)
When Starling sees a moth flutter by, she realizes she has found the killer and orders him to surrender. Gumb flees into the basement and stalks her with a revolver and night vision goggles. Just as he is about to shoot Starling, she hears him behind her, turns around and opens fire, killing him. In the novel, he addresses his final words to her, asking her, "How does it feel to be so beautiful?" before choking to death on his own blood.
Influences
Harris based various elements of Gumb's MO on three real-life serial killers:[2][3]
- Ed Gein, who fashioned trophies and keepsakes from the bones and skin of corpses he dug up at cemeteries, as well as from two women that he murdered. He also made a female "skin suit" and skin masks.
- Ted Bundy, who pretended to be injured (using an arm-brace or crutches) as a ploy to ask his victims for help. When they helped him, he incapacitated and killed them.
- Gary M. Heidnik, who kidnapped, raped and tortured six women while holding them prisoner in a pit, where two died.
Analysis
The film adaptation of Silence of the Lambs was criticized by some LGBT journalists for its portrayal of Gumb.[4]
Marjorie Garber, author of Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, asserts that despite the book and the film indicating that Buffalo Bill merely believes himself to be transsexual, they still imply negative connotations about transsexual identity. Garber says, "Harris's book manifests its cultural anxiety through a kind of baroque bravado of plot," and calls the book "a fable of gender dysphoria gone spectacularly awry".[5]
Barbara Creed, writing in Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in the Hollywood Cinema, says that Buffalo Bill wants to become a woman "presumably because he sees femininity as a more desirable state, possibly a superior one". For Buffalo Bill, the woman is "[a] totem animal". Not only does he want to wear women's skin, he wants to become a woman; he dresses in women's clothes and tucks his penis behind his legs to appear female. Creed writes, "To experience a rebirth as woman, Buffalo Bill must wear the skin of woman not just to experience a physical transformation but also to acquire the power of transformation associated with woman's ability to give birth." Buffalo Bill wears the skin of his totem animal to assume its power.[6]
Filmmaker
Bill's character and Silence of the Lambs' claims that Bill is "not really transsexual" have been criticized for transphobia by transfeminists, who claimed that it is "one of the most significant and impactful examples of pop culture transmisogyny" and it "encourages disbelief of trans people’s self-identification".[9][10][11]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-312-92458-5.
- Turner Broadcasting Systems. Archived from the originalon October 11, 2008.
- Salon Media Group.
- ^ Cassady, Charles Jr. (July 11, 2005). "Common Sense Media review of The Silence of the Lambs". Common Sense Media. San Francisco, California.
- ISBN 978-0-415-91951-7.
- ISBN 978-0-415-07759-0.
- ISBN 978-0-8223-1663-3.
- ^ Staff, THR (March 9, 2016). "Transgender Wachowski Sibling Criticizes 'Silence of the Lambs' in Coming-Out Statement". The Hollywood Reporter. Los Angeles, California.
- ^ Truitt, Jos (2016-03-10). "My Auntie Buffalo Bill: The Unavoidable Transmisogyny of Silence of the Lambs". Feministing. Retrieved 2023-12-24.
- ^ Romano, Aja (2021-02-16). "Understanding Silence of the Lambs' complicated cultural legacy". Vox. Retrieved 2023-12-24.
- ^ Ophelders, E. P. H. (2019). The Transvestite, the Transsexual and the Trans Woman: The Transmisogynist Representation of Transgender Killers in Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs and The Mantis (Bachelor thesis).