The accusations of homophobia/transphobia

They protests of the LGBT community, particularly at that time, in relation to Silence Of The Lambs as a mainstream movie were entirely legitimate. Even without conscious intent to stereotype gay or transgender people, the exploitation of a certain type of minority figure for mainstream entertainment purposes is likely to do nothing for perceptions of LGBT folks except make it worse. In the grand scheme of things, not being part of the solution made The Silence of The Lambs part of the problem. In retrospect there can be few people who think that the reaction to Silence of The Lambs was not a relatively positive outcome. 

The protests of the LBBT were not in the least bit legitimate. First let's remember for a start that this was a film adapted from a best selling novel so all this film was doing was cinematically retelling the story. Author Thomas Harris based the character on several killers, cherry picking certain aspects of each killer and combining them to mould the character. These were:

Jerry Brudos, who dressed up in his victims' clothing and kept their shoes.
Edward Gein, who fashioned trophies and keepsakes from the bones and skin of corpses he dug up at cemeteries. 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, dumping their bodies far away.
Gary M. Heidnik, who kidnapped and tortured six women and held them prisoner as sex slaves.
Edmund Kemper, who, like Gumb, killed his grandparents as a teenager "just to see what it felt like."
Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer (still unidentified at the time of the novel's writing), who, like Gumb, dumped women's bodies in rivers and inserted foreign objects into their corpses.

Furthermore it's not as if serial killers in movies up until them hadn't portrayed as being heterosexual either. The Boston Strangler, Manhunter, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Childs Play, Badlands were all perfect examples of this. If anything the LGBT who complained over this movie just made themselves look like a bunch of hyper sensitive, moaning cry babies. Fact is there's good and bad in every walk of life and filmmakers or any one else for that matter shouldn't have to walk on egg shells and worry when creating a movie how they might potentially offend someone.

You also have to remember that the movie Silence Of The Lambs, while based on one of Harris's novels, came about as a sort of an attempt at mainstream maturity for the slasher/thriller genre. That genre already had a very poor track record for exploiting lurid depictions of alternative sexualities and almost always played the insane sexual deviant card. Even if Silence Of The Lambs was relatively more tasteful, it did not go out of its way to really differentiate between Bill's sexualtiy and his psychosis/ so in a way it's no better than some of the trashy horror that preceded it. 

Quite the contrary as I already pointed out. There had been many about serial killers which did not depict “alternative sexualities”. And sexual deviancy didn't have to automatically equate with homosexuality. A perfect example being the Boston Strangler. And let's face it, this was a movie about a serial killer and let's face it, they're hardly a “tasteful” subject are they. Also the character of Clarice Starling does state when she's consulting with Hannibal Lectre in the film that she doesn't believe him to gay and states that homosexuals tend not to be violent. I don't know how you could have missed that but it did seem to suggest that Buffalo Bill was not gay.

I don't think you should agonise over the hostility towards the film or its makers exposure to libel. The film and everyone involved with it did pretty well, you must agree. Clean sweeping the oscars. Big Box office sucess. Sequels, spoofs rip-offs etc. [/i]

And I don't think the LGBT who protested over the film should have agonised over the depiction of Buffalo Bill. Whether the film and it's stars is neither here nor there as to be quite frank, the criticism and animosity directed at it were not only unjustified but tantamount to libellous. What you're saying is like someone saying it's ok someone accusing somebody of stealing their idea for a film because they happened to make a lot of money and had great success with it. It's a nonsense argent.

[quote]Jonothan Demme and Tom Hanks (who wasn't even in the film) did fantastically well out of the reaction it provoked within the LGBT community. Would Philadelphia have been made and been that succesful in the mainstream without the response to Silence Of The Lambs? I doubt it. Not at that time. So it was perhaps even the best thing that happened to Demme's career. 

Still doesn't make it right what the LGBT community did. You could use your argument to say that it's ok that say, World War II happened because some soldier happened to meet his wife who worked as a Nurse in the Hospital he was in after being wounded in battle. Just because something good comes of it doesn't automatically make it all hunky dory.

In retrospect, 25 years on I find it difficult to listent to anyone still offended on the film-maker's behalf. All involved have commented on their surprise and disappointment but are intelligent enought to recognise the context in which those arguments are valid, and it also helped some of them realise what responsiblities and powers they had to make a difference. Not many people ever get that opportunity.

In retrospect, 25 years on I find it difficult for anyone to defend those who were offended by the film in the first place. In terms of taking offence not a lot has changed as hardly a day goes by where any group of people aren't getting offended about something. Political correctness has come to the detriment of free speech and the freedom of expression. Franky, Jonathan Demma or anyone else involved with The Silence of the Lambs had no other responsibility other than to attempt to make a thoroughly entertaining piece of cinema which in my opinion they succeeded in doing. It wasn't their responsibility to pander and concern themselves with the feelings of a lot of over sensitive, PC thugs. As much as I like Philadelphia I'm kind of disappointed at Demme's reasons for making the film. It struck me he was caving in to his detractors and attempting in some way to appease them and it was some act of contrition. Personally I wouldn't have blamed them if he had told them to kiss his ass!

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I don't recall any significant outcry about any of those films, apart from Braveheart's fairytale historical inaccuracy and The Phantome Menace's testing the patience and nerve of people who had grown up with the original trilogy.

Glasgow's FOREMOST authority Italics = irony. Infer the opposite please.

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