The film that I have selected is that of “The Silence of the Lambs”. It is a 1991 American psychological horror film directed by Jonathan Demme. According to Brigid Cherry - Horror-Routledge book she has noted something Wills who says there are grand narratives of horror. Some of the grand narratives of horror are: “social alienation, the collapse of moral and spiritual order, a deep crisis of evolutionary identity, the overt articulation of humankind’s innermost imperatives,a need to express the implications of human existence in an appropriate aesthetic”. In the Silence of the lambs, we see the character of Hannibal (“The Cannibal”) Lecter as the collapse of more order. While he serves as the monster in the story, but at the same time we have another character Buffalo Bill, feels unfit to inhabit his own body, his own skin. He murders young women and skins them to make a human suit. These types of horror films seem to be centered on the idea of something mysterious and the theme of having a monster. The film “ The Silence of the lambs” reflects our present cultural movement by the way that it takes into account the horrible crisis that others are faced with when not accepted. I also feel like it harms our current movement to provide more equality for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Many have called this movie a step back for the members and have portrayed them as monsters that need to be hunted and arrested. This imagary of the movie is one that does not fit into our current movement.
Black Panther was a movie that transcended throughout all generations and the whole world. It ranked more than 700 million in ticket sales in just the first 12 days, taking the box office by storm (Cascone, 2018, #). The first film that had a black superhero and had a community (Wakanda) that uplifted each other while being in a position of power. At the same time, it has touched on fundamental concepts of colonialism and the ownership of African artifacts. In the scene, we are introduced to the Museum of Great Britain and the African artifacts that have. In our reading, we talked about the concept of “ The Great Divide” and this separation of high and low cultures. This concept was presented during the interwar period, when there was a great fear for war and several nations had been having technological advances. This museum scene is showing how this elite culture of museum which to profit from people that they used to call “ Savage”. These Museums are feeding into the narrative...
Very interesting Kasiana. As it happens, I re-watched this film a couple of months ago which led me to think about the moral issues that you comment on here. I think that the depiction of the psychopath as being gender fluid can be seen as questionable, but also something that reflects the social anxieties and taboos of that time (early 1990s) and it makes me wonder whether the film would have represented those fears any differently had it been filmed today.
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