Leticia (middle) at APTC in Orlando

The Dragon-Tattooed Girl Who Played with America’s Ideas about Gender and Sexual Identity

Leticia Flores

 

Last year, a good friend and fellow psychologist kept imploring me to read Stieg Larsson’s “Millenium Trilogy” books. For those of you who have not been initiated into this cult, the trilogy includes the books The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; The Girl who Played with Fire; and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.  While I traditionally shun those best-selling books that abound in airport bookstores (you say snob, I say discerning), this friend’s passionate endorsement convinced me to give the books a try.

I was hooked.  I was so hooked, that upon finishing the Dragon book while sitting in the Atlanta airport, I broke down and shelled out the cash to purchase the Fire book in one of those blasted bookstores.

Without spoiling anything for those thinking of reading the books or in the midst of reading the trilogy, I can safely assert that the story’s main character Lisbeth Salander has captured the imaginations of readers across the nation.  It’s no surprise that the Swedish films based on the Trilogy have also enjoyed significant appeal in the U.S. The first movie will be my focus of this review—more specifically, the representation of this compelling female protagonist.  I watched the movie with a group of 40-plus-year-old women, about half of whom had read the books.  Their responses to the movie and to Lisbeth demonstrated the apparent ambivalence about this new fictional heroine, especially related to her sexual and gender expression.

The movie’s initial scenes offer only vague glimpses of Lisbeth. We barely have a chance to see her face, and it’s unclear in the beginning whether we are watching a male or a female character. 

When she is fully introduced to us, we are struck by her full-on Goth appearance. She sports black lipstick, several face rings, and platform, lace-up combat boots as she converses with her conservatively dressed male colleagues.  She is tight-lipped, blunt, and blatantly uninterested in small talk and exchanging niceties with her colleagues. Before we get through the first hour of the film, Lisbeth is harassed and attacked in increasingly graphic and brutal ways, and the stage is set for this character’s quest for revenge and justice to unfold. While the film plot is an enjoyable thriller in its own right, the real story is Lisbeth Salander, and her inscrutableness.

Lisbeth is a rare character in contemporary fiction and film (and in the real world?)—a  self-sufficient, resourceful, female loner.  She distrusts and shuns even innocent, friendly attempts at connection from others. She seems most comfortable with computers and other outcasts who hack them—their language is cold, manipulable data.  Throughout the first film, we get hints that Lisbeth is a lesbian, but we soon see explicit evidence of her desire for sex with men as well as women.  She possesses few conventional, stereotypically “feminine” elements—indeed, Lisbeth the woman is all hard lines and angles, no soft curves.  Everything about Lisbeth is black and white, both internally and externally- no shades of gray, even in her Goth makeup.  She possesses a violent streak, a harsh but clear moral code, and a striking lack of remorse for past actions.  She is riding the antisocial fence, as it were, and some might quickly diagnose her as such. Yet unlike the femme fatale, Lisbeth has no desire to hurt, manipulate or gain power by using her feminine wiles. She just wants to be left alone, with a modicum of comfort—she can easily survive on frozen pizzas, cigarettes and a decent internet connection. It is rare (and pleasing) to see such a female character in fiction for whom we are supposed to cheer instead of taunt, revile or laugh at.  We did cheer, and loudly.  When she first wreaks vengeance against one who does her great wrong, we women reacted like sports fans watching their team’s quarterback throwing a miracle touchdown pass in the end zone.

Why have people been so taken with this character, who flouts our conventional notions of what it means to be a popular or desirable woman?  There is not an ounce of Angelina Jolie, Sandra Bullock or Elizabeth Gilbert (of “Eat Pray, Love” fame) in Lisbeth.  The answer is not easy to find or articulate—but I’ll give it a shot.

The women watching the movie in my living room who were not familiar with the book still found Lisbeth to be “odd” and unsettling.  I had one friend say she liked the movie, but was bothered that Lisbeth had to “act like a man” to solve her problems. Others seemed to have difficulty identifying with her according to gender and sexual terms, she was just too “other”.  Yet they all cheered her ability to strike back.  Those of us who read the book were thrilled to see the character so faithfully rendered on screen. Younger graduate students I have talked to who have read the book and/or watched the film have had different, generally more positive reactions. They don’t react so much to Lisbeth’s outward

appearance as they admire and resonate with her struggles with self-determination and her fight against established power structures that systematically oppress women. A student also stated that she liked that Lisbeth could express typically “masculine” characteristics like aggression, both sexual and physical. I admit that I am disturbed by the general acceptance of Lisbeth’s violent counter-attacks, and am frankly still trying to reconcile this piece.   I alternately admire young Lisbeth’s physical confidence and prowess and fret over her propensity for violence and cruelty.

The ambivalence and varied feelings that women across generations have articulated regarding Lisbeth have proven fascinating.  She has clearly brought to (fictional) life the shifting ideas about society’s past, current and future imaginings regarding women’s sexuality, gender expression, and freedom to choose who and how they want to “be”.  Oh, and the movie?  Loved it.

 

For the movie trailer, go to:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL8LI-h2WFc