If you have not read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the first book in the Millenium Trilogy, stop reading this article right now. Hit the back button, exit out of whatever Internet browser you are using and head to the nearest library to pick up a copy. After you’ve read it, you are of course allowed to come back to this article and form your own opinion based on how you read into the events and plot of the book.
However, if you have read Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, then you’ve also probably seen advertising for the new movie coming out on December 21.
Since the announcement of David Fincher’s American adaption of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, people have been clamoring about how Hollywood doesn’t need to remake foreign movies just so people don’t have to read subtitles. But for now we’ll ignore that and focus on another more important issue, one that is being fiercely discussed right now. After all, Hollywood has a long, rather painful past of sexualizing female characters in movies they produce. Thanks to the first theatrical poster for Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, many people are afraid that the new Lisbeth Salander will be nothing more than tits and punked-up tattoos.
The offensive poster showed a topless Rooney Mara (Lisbeth Salander) wearing a pair of leather pants that are rather difficult to see and the arm of her fully-clothed costar Daniel Craig (Mikael Blomkvist) around the top of her breasts to keep the poster from getting too racy. Despite this, the poster has been criticized as “pornographic,” “titillating,” “sexualized,” and giving Lisbeth a “sexually inviting” appearance, not to mention making Craig appear more powerful by keeping him in clothes.
Firstly, glaring murderously at the camera and looking as if you would bite the face off of anyone who even glanced at you the wrong way has never really been the same as looking “sexually inviting.” There is nothing alluring about her face. If anything, the expression makes the viewer want to back away slowly and carefully. Perhaps if Mara was lying on her back in a playboy pose, fully nude and without any of Craig’s conveniently placed arms, there may have been an issue. But Mara doesn’t look like that. She’s naked, yes, but we’re not really seeing anything provocative.
Secondly, these books are about sex, and there is no other way to phrase that. The entire plot of the first book deals with incest and rape, while the second and third books focus on prostitution. Scattered throughout all three books are sexual themes such as bondage, infidelity, having more than one sex partner and lesbian sex. All of the books regularly find Mikael and Lisbeth sleeping with more than one person, and both are comfortable with the fact that sex is a big part of their lives.
The second poster to be released for the movie, from which a topless Lisbeth was notably absent.
The argument that Hollywood will sexualize Lisbeth in the movies in a ridiculous one, because a large part of Lisbeth’s personality is made up of sex. She has been raped and been accused of working as a prostitute. She has slept with men and women. She has been both the dominant and the submissive role. She has been in casual one-night stands and long-lasting relationships. The point is that Lisbeth is in control of her sex life and her sexuality. She’s aware of the fact that as a woman, she runs the risk of having her body used against her or exploited. But that neither stops nor bothers her. This then begs the question how do you sexualize a sex object? How do you turn a woman in control of her sexuality into a bare-chested whore?
The answer to that question is that you can’t.
So what if Lisbeth is naked in the film (or in the poster)? That doesn’t mean or say anything about the movie. A naked woman on a theatrical poster means that there is a naked woman on a theatrical poster and nothing more. Based on what happens in the book, we can assume that there will be nudity and sex in the movie, but that has to do with how Stieg Larsson wrote his books, not with what creative liberties David Fincher took. There is sex and nudity in most movies these days because that is what our society wants to see on the big screen.
There isn’t enough released information for people to make assumptions about the movie. Audiences will have to wait until December 21 to pass judgment on the quality of Girl With A Dragon Tattoo, and hopefully that judgment will be based on something other than if Lisbeth wears a shirt or not.
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