Cape Fear and Silence of the Lambs are two of the most critically acclaimed movies of the past year and potentially big winners in the Academy Awards. Both movies are cinematic masterpieces of their genre and provided vehicles for memorable performances by some of Hollywood's most accomplished actors, including Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and Nick Nolte.
But exactly what genre are we talking about in these two movies? They are hailed by the male-dominated reviewing fraternity as "psychological thrillers." Do they warrant that distinction, won so deservedly by such greats as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles? Or are they simply woman-hating slasher films disguised by technical accomplishment?
Let's take a moment to summarize the plots. In both movies, a psychopathic killer is on the loose, threatening mayhem in the form of rape, torture, flaying, starvation, disfigurement, sodomy, and eventual death. The women in the two movies are menaced with piano wire, handcuffs, dressmakers' tools, plaster casts, night vision goggles, handguns, and countless open backhands or closed fists.
The primary psychopath in Silence of the Lambs kidnaps women and starves them to near death by chaining them in a basement pit. He then kills them and removes choice pieces of their famine-loosened skin. The skin pieces are sewn into a suit that will turn him into a woman. Hannibal, the secondary psychopath of the movie, played by Anthony Hopkins, is a cannibal, but it can be argued in his favor that his palate does not discriminate between male or female victims. The character played by Jodie Foster, an FBI trainee named Clarice, is presented throughout the movie as either a potentially tasty morsel for Hannibal or a fetching addition to the dressmaker's skin suit.
Cape Fear offers a somewhat more conventional plot, but one no less threatening to women. Max Cady (played by Robert DeNiro) stalks Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), his wife, Leigh (Jessica Lange), and his 16-year-old daughter. In one scene, Cady seduces a drunken female acquaintance of Bowden's. He handcuffs her, then bites off her right cheek before beating her savagely. In the climactic houseboat scene, Cady prepares to rape the 16-year-old while her mother watches and vows to turn them both into "animals."
The subjugation of the female characters in both movies extends to more subtle levels. In Lambs, Jodie Foster's character is put within striking distance of Hopkins' by her male FBI superiors because they think her feminine vulnerability will draw helpful investigative tips out of the predatory "Hannibal the Cannibal." Critics have hailed her character's resourcefulness, but she is little more than live bait.
The plot of Cape Fear centers on a years-earlier incident when Bowden was defending Cady on charges of rape and brutal assault of a 16-year-old. Bowden suppresses a report on the girl's alleged promiscuity, thereby damning Cady to prison. This progressive move by Bowden is supposed to endear him to the audience, but throughout the rest of the movie he is disparaged by other male characters for his "breech of justice" in not using the report to attack the girl's credibility. Sure, the men imply, it's all right and good to show respect for a 16-year-old girl, but what about justice for a fellow guy?
Meanwhile, Cady is also stalking Bowden's 16-year-old daughter Danny (Juliette Lewis). While we feel sympathy for her, the movie makers undermine her innocence by flaunting her budding sexuality and pointing up her interest in marijuana. The "seduction" scene in which DeNiro's Cady sweet talks the girl has been hailed as the best nine minutes of acting in years, but this scene too implies that the girl is somehow responsible for what is to come because "she wanted it." Indeed, the girl's own father, Bowden, roughs her up when he finds out she may have been attracted to Cady.
This is just a sample. All of those and many more messages to women are supposed to be redeemed by the fact that the bad guys lose in both movies; the women overcome the assaults and come out on top. But after sitting through hours of verbal and physical violence against every female character, women in the audience get the message loud and clear--they got lucky this time.
Perhaps in the ever-quickening waves and counterwaves of political correctness, these questions will be shrugged off as reactionary, or at best, nitpicking. The much maligned men's movement has been dismissed after only a few months as a comical episode in the annals of social behavior. Lest these criticisms be interpreted as overreaction, let me say I am not calling for a boycott of Silence of the Lambs or Cape Fear or a feminist backlash against Hollywood.
What I'm asking for is a relabeling of movies that try to present violence against women as high culture. Let's save the term "psychological thrillers" for the films that engage our minds without assaulting our sensibilities, and call these two movies what they are: misogyny for the thinking man.
Michael Booth was a staff writer for The Denver Post when this article appeared. A version of this editorial aired on National Public Radio.
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