While I sit here and watch Harper's Island (I refuse to liveblog such a complicated show), its as good a time as any to roll into the nineties on my serialization of my thesis.  Today, we see the birth of the hybrid protagonist as seen through Clarice Starling of Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs.  Spoilers, of course, abound.  Cited this time around, besides the film itself, we have Carol J. Clover's Men, Women, and Chiansaws:  Gender in the Modern Horror Film, AFI's 100 Years, 100 Heroes and Villains, the award page of IMDB's Silence of the Lambs Page, Kendall R. Phillips's Projected Fears:  Horror Films and American Culture, and Cynthia A. Freeland's The Naked and the Undead:  Evil and the Appeal of Horror.  Next time, we'll hit the controversial part of the paper where I discuss Tales from the Crypt Presents:  Demon Knight.  And so, we continue with:

The 1990s: The Masculine-Feminine

     One of the lasting legacies of the archetypes of the 1980s slasher film boom was the rise of hybrid female protagonists who blend feminine and masculine stereotypes into one whole. The "final girl" was the prototype for this character with some describing them as "boyish, in a word. [... their] smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set [them] apart from the other girls" (Clover 40). Over time, the character would evolve, and would become more stereotypically masculine through appearance, action, and deed. In some instances, female protagonists would be seen to act, dress and look similar to a male authority figure. In others, the characters appear to show little or no emotion throughout much of the movie, choosing instead to have the air of a person who is apathetic about surrounding dangers. In so doing, they eschew the commonly-believed stereotype that women are more emotional and sentimental than men and carve out a new style of character for themselves. This particular type of blended protagonist can be seen most clearly in the leads of The Silence of the Lambs and Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight.

     Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs tells the story of Clarisse Starling, an FBI trainee thrust into the hunt for a serial killer who targets women. This particular serial killer, who goes by the name of "Buffalo Bill", has kidnapped a politician's daughter and is holding her captive in an unknown location. In order to capture him, Starling is sent by her supervisor, Jack Crawford, to interview an incarcerated serial killer, the cannibal psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. These meetings drive the movie as Lecter becomes intrigued by Starling and helps her in her investigation through red herring clues, enigmatic puzzles, and his own attempts at psychoanalyzing both "Buffalo Bill" and Starling herself. It is these psychoanalyses that cause Starling to move closer to capturing Bill while simultaneously achieving a deeper understanding of herself and the inner demons of her past. Ultimately, the investigation culminates with Starling being separated from Crawford and his team after he believes that he and the rest of the FBI has determined where the killer is. Starling, on the other hand, acts on Lecter's tips and goes to where she thinks the killer was born, looking for clues from his past and basing her decision on the location where the first victim was discovered. She soon discovers that the house where the victim lived was directly next door to another house. Acting on a suggestion from Dr. Lecter that "we begin by coveting what we see every day" (Silence of the Lambs), Starling investigates the other house only to find the murderer at the same time the separate ground team investigates a completely empty house miles away. "Buffalo Bill" stalks Starling through the pitch-black house and is within moments of killing her when he cocks his gun, the click alerting her to his position and allowing her to kill him with one blind gunshot. Starling goes on to graduate from her training, gaining her supervisor's approval. The movie ends, however, with an escaped Dr. Lecter calling Clarisse to see how the case ended up and let her know that he is not going to kill her because "the world is more interesting with [her] in it" (The Silence of the Lambs). The final shot is of Lecter walking away into a Caribbean crowd, following a newly-arrived Dr. Clifton, his intent presumed to be cannibalistic.

      After its release, The Silence of the Lambs was praised by numerous critics and nominated for awards ranging from Writers Guild of America awards to Golden Globes to Academy Awards. One of the main reasons that the film received this many accolades and is recognized as one of the best movies of the 90s is apparent in the fact that many of these nominations were for the acting of Jodie Foster as Starling and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter. (Awards for The Silence of the Lambs) To discover the multi-layered portrayal of Lecter or sense his impact, one only need examine one of the many essays that have been written on the character or note that the American Film Institute recently named the character the greatest film villain of the 20th century. (AFI's 100 Years, 100 Heroes & Villains) Starling, on the other hand should be noted for Foster's ability to portray her as a woman struggling to gain ground in a male-dominated profession. As such, the performance appears to be one in which Starling chooses to adopt the mannerisms, emotions, and characteristics of the male higher-ups when in their presence as it is the only way for her to advance in the system. This includes that Starling's emotions are human, not over-the-top, showing disgust and fear that anyone would, rather than showing stereotypic "final girl" overreaction (e.g. screaming). In fact, Clover describes Clarisse as "masculine in both manner and career, uninterested in sex or men, and dead serious about her career" (233).

     Starling never shows any overt signs of physical attraction to any male character in the film, deflecting any advances that occur. Also, never once in the film is Clarisse seen at a point in time where she is "off the clock". She showcases tireless work ethic, tremendous drive, and deeply workaholic tendencies, all of which up until that point tended to be characteristics of either "final girls" or masculine heroes. Physically speaking, her voice is relatively deep and features a heavy Southern accent, features that combine to make her sound much less than stereotypically feminine. She also tends to dress in unflattering, business-style suits when not in her training clothes and always has somewhat "restrained" hair, thereby simultaneously appearing both as professional and as unfeminine as she can.

     Finally, in multiple instances throughout the film, she is forced to overcome and deflect both agents who are suspicious of her abilities as a woman and agents who make snide sexual jokes in her presence or attempt to make a pass at her. This includes a moment at the beginning of the movie where she enters the elevator to meet with Crawford, only to be dwarfed and gawked at by a group of other male recruits. This visual idea of Starling being surrounded by towering men is repeated multiple times in the film. Later, when she first goes to visit with Lecter and is being debriefed by Dr. Chilton, Chilton comments on Starling's beauty before making any remarks regarding her credentials. He, in fact, totally disregards her skills, claiming that Crawford only chose her to appeal to Lecter's baser instincts. "Crawford's very clever isn't he using you? [...] Pretty young woman to turn him on, I don't believe Lecter's even seen a woman in eight years." (The Silence of the Lambs) As the movie continues, other recruits stare at her while she practices her running and goes over codes for different crimes. Later, Crawford asks a local police officer to discuss the case in private, specifically doing so to have the conversation on the bizarre sex crime out of Starling's earshot. The rest of the local force is left alone with Starling and appraises her up and down, apparently believing she doesn't belong there and has no right to act as if she has authority over them. Starling would later chastise Crawford for it.

     Through all of this, she perseveres through the case, determined to see it through to the end and save the senator's daughter. (Phillips 159) This is perhaps why Clarisse has to be alone to finish her pursuit of "Buffalo Bill". In that way, she is able to prove her worth in the FBI's system by tracking and capturing the killer they missed. In fact, when Crawford ignores Clarisse's evidence of Buffalo Bill's location in favor of his own, it becomes the FBI's final mistake in ignoring the point of view of the female agent. In general, the final proof of the departure of Starling from the "final girls" who preceded her is found in her final battle with Bill. In it, she is continually hunting for him, willing to stop him at all costs, rather than running away. She is willing to lay her life on the line to stop the villain from killing again rather than protect herself and kill the villain as an afterthought. This departure of the female protagonist from being a character that simply runs from the danger or fights only as a last resort is underlined by Clarisse's use of a gun to deal the fatal blow. That particular weapon in many movies tends to be stereotypically male and is associated with masculine power and dominance. Overall, through the gunshot and her actions through the rest of the film, Clarisse adopts the characteristics of the males of her community, becoming a combination hero-heroine focused on achieving both success in resolving the case and advancement in the FBI's male-dominated system. As put by Cynthia Freeland in The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror: 

"Clarice occupies a more standard (male) heroic role within a narrative arc that presents a solution to the evil of at least the inner story of The Silence of the Lambs: she kills off the ‘bad guy' and rescues the ‘damsel'. Thus, this film suggests that a woman can become victorious over evil by taking on stereotypically male attributes and insignia" (210).