celebrity gossip, academic style

Let’s make this clear: I liked this movie. David Fincher has established himself as a master of making otherwise unexciting and unfilmic activities (computer coding, researching) into heart-pounding, exciting, and filmic montages. The film is still overlong, but it had to set itself up for the sequel and there’s only so much you can cut from a densely plotted narrative in keep it cogent. I don’t think Fincher was trying to be faithful to the book so much as faithful to the actual chain of events: Point A must happen so that Point B can happen, which must also happen so that C can happen, etc. etc. and so on. And while I enjoyed the film more than Mission Impossible: Make People Like Tom Cruise Again, which I saw the day before, my inner crotchedy-ass self has some lingering questions:

 

1.) No seriously, why the fuck is this film named Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

This beef is more with the English-language publishers of the book than the film itself, but my complaint holds: in Swedish, the book is titled Men Who Hate Women. This title underlines Larson’s feminist intent with the novels, which was not to make entertainment out of sexual violence, but rather to highlight misogyny in all its manifestations. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo not only makes Lisbeth into a nameless Girl, but also a girl whose overarching signifier is a tattoo. One of the points of the narrative is to encourage us to see Lisbeth as much more than her appearance suggests, and the title does the absolute opposite.

 

2.) Why is the sexual violence played as catharsis?

The sexual violence against Lisbeth is not cathartic. It’s visceral and horrible and necessary to the plot, and to shy away from it would be to shy away from what makes Lisbeth who she is. (Narratively speaking, it would also decrease her resolution to find the serial rapist/killer). There was a lot of gasping and swearing in the theater by unsuspecting viewers during these scenes. But the scene when Lisbeth takes revenge is essentially played as catharsis: the brutality she inflects upon her rapist is framed not only as just, but as narrative closure. Sure, Lisbeth comes to check up on him, but it’s played for laughs, not as a moment of continued trauma. Within this paradigm, the state, even a progressive state like that of Sweden, will always ignore sexual violence, and it’s up to the victim to take revenge — and after it is taken, she can move on with her life. Do you see how this is problematic? It’s also problematic for the audience, which is encouraged to feel a similar catharsis: that thing that happened to her was horrible, but now that she’s sodomized her killer and blackmailed and tattooed him so that he won’t do it again, whew, problem solved, I feel great, let’s move on to the heady MacBook investigating!

 

3.) Why is the death of a serial killer played off as a plot point?

YOU GUYS, MARTIN VANGER AND HIS FATHER BRUTALIZED LOTS AND LOTS OF WOMEN. But again, vigilante justice takes precedence: because he dies in giant fireball, his last memory that of a woman (who had just clubbed in the head and forced him to flee) coming slowly towards him, we are to believe that he’s received what’s coming for him. But then nothing! No expose! No information given over to the victims’ families, nothing! He just dies and then we go on to Lisbeth’s dress up party!

In the book, we’re given some hemming and hawing over whether or not the Vanger family should make the information public. But in the film, Martin Vanger dies and we just up and move on to the third act of the film. Seriously! That’s it! There’s not even a mention, save to prompt the woman we believe to be Anita Vanger to contact Harriet.

 

4.) Why is Lisbeth’s Macbook Pro so much more awesome than mine?

First of all, I couldn’t help thinking of Steig Larson’s totally bizarre fascination with Apple hardware (remember how he detailed the hard drive specifics of each machine Lisbeth touches? I can understand working for accuracy, but there was some serious fetishism going on, and it only gets worse in the (much worse) second and third books). But here’s the thing: we’re used to seeing awesome next-gen technology on-screen. Mission Impossible was filled with it. It makes our heroes seem cooler and more savvy simply because they know that such things exist, let alone how to work them. And we suspend our disbelief in Google Maps that pop on on the windshield of the actual car because we’ve already suspending our disbelief that agents like Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) exist. But Lisbeth is given a machine that is absolutely the same as mine. And they do enough close-ups to make that abundantly clear. But why do her PDFs look so much more vibrant? How does she go through all of them so quickly? Where’s that hacker interface? Can I buy it at the App Store?

Now, I realize that the filmmakers are underlining that Lisbeth does things with “normal” technology that others cannot. She’s not a special agent; she’s just a savant. But instead of making me feel like she’s totally awesome, so makes me feel like I’m a bumbling Grandpa.

 

5.) How did Fincher manage to turn a narrative about solving an intricate mystery into a contemplation of what Rooney Mara would look like in pretty girl clothes?

Look to the extra-textuals: in the lead-up to the release of the film, nearly every article focused on how Rooney Mara, a cute, blonde, every-girl, transformed herself into an androgynous punk. (See especially the creepy Vogue profile, which I wrote about two months ago). With established stars, a “character” (I won’t say Method) performance such as this one is viewed as an Oscar turn, and most viewers spend a considerable amount of time marveling at how effectively the star has transformed him/herself into something not suggested by his/her image, namely fat, poor, mentally disabled, homeless, genius-level mathematician, etc. But Rooney Mara wasn’t an established star. Her most visible role was a brief appearance in a notable scene in The Social Network. And while many media savvy viewers would have seen pictures of her looking “normal,” many had not. But there’s something in Lisbeth’s facial structure and body that suggests she might be hiding a Hollywood star — the defined cheekbones, the eyes, the near-emaciation that treads the fine line between “hot body” and “obvious eating disorder.”

The film thus becomes a game of “how pretty would this girl be if we could just get some normal clothes on her”? The wonder is only underlined by the scene in which Lisbeth dons expensive, feminine clothing, and physically alters her body to become stereotypically womanly: yes! She’s gorgeous! Look at her legs in those heels! The discourse about Mara’s performance centers on transformation, not the way she portrays vulnerability and strength.

Lisbeth, as is, can’t be beautiful. An actress who actually looks like Lisbeth could never be Lisbeth. She has to be played as masquerade — as something that an otherwise traditionally beautiful girl dresses up as. Otherwise, she, a bisexual, androgynous, intelligent woman who rejects Western standards of beauty, is altogether too troubling of the status quo.

 

So what are your lingering crotchedy-ass questions? Or do you have answers to mine?

 

Previously: Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about X-Men: First Class