Trial By Fire: Mad Max, Rorschach, and the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

 
Three Scenes
 
In the climactic scene of the Swedish film Män Som Hatar Kvinnor — literally, “Men Who Hate Women”; released in the U.S. as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo[1] — the serial killer, Martin Vanger, fleeing from the heroine Lisbeth Salandar, runs off the road and flips his car.  Injured and trapped, he pleads for his life as gas leaks from the tank:  “I can’t… I can’t… I can’t move,” he cries piteously.  “I can’t move.  Help me.  Please help me.”  Lisbeth, however, can spare no feeling for the rapist and murderer who is suddenly at her mercy.  She watches silently as the vehicle catches fire, and walks away while Vanger screams.  We see the car explode behind her.

The image is distinctly reminiscent of another, filmed three decades before.  In the final scene of 1979’s Mad Max, the cop — or ex-cop — Max Rockatansky finds himself similarly confronted with an enemy at his mercy.  Here, too, a vehicle is overturned, leaking gas, and the villain pleads with the hero:  “Don’t bring this on me, man.  Don’t do this to me, please.”  And here, too, the hero is unmoved.  Max, in fact, takes a more active role that Lisbeth.  He handcuffs the “Johnny the Boy” to the overturned truck, fashions an ad hoc fuse where the gas is leaking, and hands him a hacksaw, saying:  “The chain in those handcuffs is high-tensile steel.  It will take you ten minutes to hack through it with this.  Now, if you’re lucky, you can hack through your ankle in five minutes.”  As Max drives away, we see the explosion in the background.

The hacksaw shows up again a few years later in Alan Moore’s graphic novel, Watchmen.[2]  In the sixth chapter, Walter Kovacs recounts how he became the masked avenger Rorschach:  “1975. Kidnap case.  Perhaps you remember.  Blaire Roche.  Six years old. . . .  Thought of little child, abused, frightened.  Didn’t like it.  Personal reasons.  Decided to intervene.  Promised parents I’d return her unharmed.”  He does, eventually, find the girl — or rather, her remains. Then Rorschach waits, hiding, for the killer to return home.  When he does, Rorschach handcuffs him to an old stove, leaves him with a saw, and sets the building on fire.  Unlike Lisbeth or Max, Rorschach stays to face what he has done:  “Stood in street.  Watched it burn. . . .  Watched for an hour.  Nobody got out.”

The Moment of Truth

In each of these stories, the incident with the fire — triumphant and horrifying — is treated as a revelation.  It shows us what kind of person the hero really is.

Yet in all three stories, the hero had already been portrayed as ruthless and vengeful.  Lisbeth had previously tortured and then blackmailed a rapist.  Max had hunted down and killed other members of a murderous motorcycle gang, sometimes using torture to do so.  And Rorschach’s methods are so extreme they even frighten other superheroes.  But to kill a person who is helpless is presented as an ultimate transgression, a final forbidden threshold, a border at the outer limits of moral goodness.

All three heroes kill their helpless adversaries, if only by their inaction, but the event signifies different things for each of them.  For Rorschach it is a transformation:  When he sees that the kidnapper had killed the girl and fed her to his dogs, he recalls, “It was Kovacs who closed his eyes.  It was Rorschach who opened them again.”  For Max the crisis is the culmination of a process long underway:  He had previously worried that “any longer out on that road, and I’m one of them. . .  a terminal crazy.”  By the end he has lost everything to the forces of barbarism — his friend, his family, his sense of his own goodness — and he does, finally, become a barbarian himself.  The representative of law becomes an outlaw.

For Lisbeth, however, the revelation is different.  As she watches Vanger burn, she flashes back to a scene of a child deliberately throwing gas on a middle-aged man, and setting him ablaze.  In the second film of the series, The Girl Who Played with Fire, we learn that she was the girl; the man, her father; and she was acting to save her mother from his persistent abuse.  Lisbeth was institutionalized as a result. Thus her character is revealed at the climax, but with reference to a transformation that occurred much earlier.  And yet the two scenes are identified: she is, in some ways, still that little girl.  And, watching Vanger burn, it is as though she is not only remembering, but re-living the first attack.  In that sense, by the film’s identification of these acts, we again see the heroic transgression as both revelatory and transformative.

It is interesting to compare Lisbeth’s back-story and Rorschach’s.  Walter Kovacs, too, saw his mother mistreated by men, and was himself “regularly beaten and exposed to the worst excesses of a prostitutes (sic) lifestyle.”  The critic Katherine Wirick has persuasively pointed to textual evidence that he was sexually abused as well.[3]  Then in one scene, Kovacs — just a little boy — attacks some older children who are threatening him.  Fire is the weapon here, too: he burns one of the bullies, blinding him with a cigarette.  After that he is institutionalized.

But Rorschach’s transformation comes later, like Max’s.  And in both stories, the critical moment when they put themselves beyond the law comes as a kind of revelation, not only about them, but for them.  Max has learned how fragile civilization really is, how easily chaos overtakes order.  Rorschach, likewise, opens his eyes.  As he watched the kidnapper’s house burn, he

looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there.  The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. . . .  Existence is random.  Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long.  No meaning save what we choose to impose. . . . .  Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Lisbeth, however, experiences the climactic scene not as a revelation, but as a return to painful memories.  She has known for a long time the kind of world she is living in.

So Max abandons civilization for the wasteland, and Rorschach uses violence to impose order where none exists — but Lisbeth’s rejection of order takes the form of resistance.  Martin Vanger is not merely a rapist and serial murderer.  He is also wealthy and powerful, from a prominent family with a Nazi past.  In the context of the story, he is a representative of the social order, and especially its worst aspects — corporate control, lingering fascism, racism, and male dominance.  And Lisbeth’s father, too, (we learn in the sequels) is not only a misogynist and a bully, but a human trafficker operating with the protection of ta secret section of the intelligence services.  It is not chaos, but the forces of order, that Lisbeth fears; and when she attacks her father, and later, when she lets Vanger die, she does so to protect the people she loves.

Redemption Without Forgiveness

Mad Max ends with Max driving into the desert, the explosion behind him, his transformation from law to lawlessness complete.  But the movie’s sequel, The Road Warrior, tells the story of his redemption.  After months, or possibly years, surviving as a kind of scavenger, Max helps to defend a small community against a horde of bandits and regains some of his humanity in the process.  It is a story of redemption, but redemption without forgiveness: The people he has helped to save leave him stranded on the roadway, in the desert, alone.  The future he has fought for, and the community he defended, have no place for him.

Rorschach’s redemption is equally ambivalent.  He alone, among all the superheroes, cannot be blackmailed into silence after discovering that one of their own has attacked New York, killing millions but likely averting nuclear war.  Ozymandias asks, “Will you expose me, undoing the peace millions died for?  Kill me, risking subsequent investigation?  Morally, you’re in checkmate.”

Dr. Manhattan, the Silk Specter, and the Nite Owl, all quickly acquiesce: “Exposing this plot, we destroy any chance of peace, dooming earth to worse destruction”;  “We’re damned if we stay quiet, Earth’s damned if we don’t.”  They soon agree to “say nothing.”

To which Rorschach replies: “Joking, of course.”  He then interrupts further argument:  “No.  Not even in the face of Armageddon.  Never compromise.”

Rorschach’s unwavering position is just what we should have expected — not because he believes in moral absolutes, exactly, but because he believes that we alone are responsible for the world we live in.  As he watched the fire that fatal night, years before, Rorschach realized, “This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces.  It is not God who kills the children.  Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs.  It’s us.  Only us.”  Later, in his last entry in his journal, he wrote:  “For my own part, regret nothing.  Have lived life, free from compromise . . .  and step into the shadow now without complaint.”  The only thing that Rorschach can be certain of is his own integrity, and so that becomes his absolute.  He is unbending in his own moral code precisely because he has seen that there are no absolutes.

The other heroes, equally naturally, cannot allow him to reveal what he knows.  The only way to stop him is to kill him, and Rorschach accepts this martyrdom.  But it is significant, I think, that at the end he takes off his mask.  Facing death, he becomes, once again, Walter Kovacks.  In death, Rorschach rejoins humanity.[4]

Lisbeth Salandar fares better.  She walks away from the burning car and returns to Mikael Blomkvist, her investigative partner and occasional lover.  Later, he asks her:

“What happened out there?  He didn’t die in an accident, did he? …”

“He burned to death.”

“Could you have saved him?”

“Yes.”

“But you let him burn.”

“Yes.”

Mikael thinks for a long moment, and lies down, exhausted.  Lisbeth lies next to him.  Struggling to speak, he says: “I would never have done that, Lisbeth.  But I understand why you did it.  I don’t know what you’ve been through.  . . .  Whatever it is you’ve been through — you don’t have to tell me.  I’m just glad you’re here.”

“Thanks,” she says, and takes his hand.

Mikael’s reaction is complex.  He neither idealizes nor judges.  He does not justify her action, or forgive it.  He wants only to understand, though he will not demand that she explain herself.  It is a moment of deep compassion.  Sympathetic understanding is a reaction not usually associated with heroism, but one most appropriate to tragedy.

Heroic Sacrifice

Understanding is not without its risks.  The title of Watchmen’s sixth chapter, “The Abyss Gazes Also,” is taken from a quote of Nietzsche’s: “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”  In the story this epigram refers, first, to Rorschach’s nihilistic epiphany and the change in character that overtakes him, and then, to the attempts of a prison psychologist to comprehend the workings of Rorschach’s mind.  But the warning might apply to the reader as well:  Our heroic fictions sometimes contain dangerous truths.

It is possible to read these stories — Mad Max, Watchmen, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — as revealing, not only the nature of these heroes, but the dark side of our heroic ideals.  (That is, after all, the entire point of Watchmen.) The transformation of victim into avenger is central to revenge stories, of course, but in each of these three cases that transformation is also treated as a kind of loss.  There may be some symbolism in the fact that both Rorschach and Max offer their victims an improbable and cruel chance for escape.  Are they suggesting, from their own experiences, that the price of survival is severing a part of oneself?

The heroic figure is defined, in large part, by the risks he accepts and the sacrifices he makes.  What these stories show is that, among the things he may risk — and sacrifice, if need be — is not merely his life, but his own moral standing.  This risk, this sacrifice, cannot be understood only in terms of particular actions, but more broadly as such actions help to shape one’s character.  At the end of the ordeal, a hero may well be a worse person.[5]  We often hear of the heroic virtues — qualities such as courage, loyalty, and resilience — but less is said of the heroic vices.  Prolonged exposure to violence may well leave one bitter, vengeful, suspicious, cruel, callous, even cynical and sadistic.  In the revenge fantasy, it is precisely these attributes that motivate the heroic transgression.

Our heroes — Max, Rorschach, Lisbeth — are not just imperfect, they are deeply damaged.  And their actions seem to occupy a space outside of our normal moral judgments.  The deaths they cause cannot rightly be called justice, but neither are they merely murder.  And these killers, whom we may love or admire, are not simply Good Guys, and are not quite villains.  In this sense they might be thought of as monstrous.  The evil they do is the result of their virtues, and the good that they do depends upon their vices.  These two elements cannot be separated, they cannot be reconciled, and they do not cancel each other out.  The heroic ideal subsumes, or surpasses, our moral categories; the heroic figure, however, is sometimes destroyed by the contradiction.  Hence, the sense of tragedy.  Hence, also, the need for redemption — to enter, again, into the moral community, to regain some measure of humanity.


[1] I’m writing specifically of the first film.  The American film, and the original novel, on which the films were based, handle this scene quite differently.

[2] Here, I’m specifically discussing the comic.  The saw is absent from the film version.

[3] Katherine Wirick, “Heroic Proportions,” The Hooded Utilitarian, April 5, 2012.

[4] This reading gives a double meaning to Dr. Manhattan’s earlier prediction: “I am standing in deep snow. . .  I am killing someone.  Their identity is uncertain.”

[5] It is interesting how commonly philosophers have forgotten about the effects on one’s character as a relevant moral consideration.  Thomas Nagel, for example, has written:  “the notion that on might sacrifice one’s moral integrity justifiably, in the service of a sufficiently worthy end, is an incoherent notion.  For if one were justified in making such a sacrifice. . . then one would not be sacrificing one’s moral integrity by adopting that course: one would be preserving it.”  Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 63.   Notice that Nagel assumes that the person who embarks on the sacrifice and the one who remains when the sacrifice is over are substantially the same.  One may tell a lie for decent and even justifiable reasons.  If those reasons force one to lie repeatedly over a long enough period, however, it seems at least possible that one will lose the habit of truthfulness, and his estimation of its value may well decline.  The notion that one’s integrity is preserved not only during such a shift in values, but through it, would seem to rob the notion of integrity of any content.

Eric Berlatsky on Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I only occasionally get my brother to write for HU. I did manage to annoy him sufficiently to get him to post two lengthy comments, though, so I thought I’d reproduce them here (with a few edits for coherenece.)

Eric started out with a response to my comment that the film Girl with the Dragon Tattoo “strongly suggests that [Lisbeth would] be healthier/happier/normalized if Mikael followed through and did save her.” To which Eric says:

Sure…and if my aunt had balls—

Just the opposite, I think, it suggests that Mikael can’t follow through and save her, because such salvation isn’t possible in those terms. Sure, “if” he saved her, she’d be saved…but he can’t, so she won’t be…

In general, I’m not sure where you get this notion that the film “strongly suggests” that she’ll be normalized if he sticks it out. Where? Are there other examples of damaged women being saved by older sensitive men? Lisbeth being saved by her previous ward? Hardly…eventually, circumstances intervene and she has to fend for herself…which is to say, there is no such thing as permanent salvation. In the serial killings? No sensitive man saves the daughter/rape victim. Rather, her SISTER saves her (and her sensitive uncle ignores her in her hour of need–suggesting perhaps that men, even sensitive men, can’t really be trusted)…and then she forges an independent life by herself. And who clears the way for her to return to “life” as herself?—Not a man, but Lisbeth, who kills the serial killer, etc.

Actually, insofar as any saving is done in the film, it’s by Lisbeth….both of herself and of Craig. She extricates herself from the abuse with the counsellor/parole guy and from whatever abuse was going on with her dad. She saves Craig from de rigeur serial killer and from Craig’s economic/journalistic enemy. She even has “normalized” herself to a great degree (got herself a job, leading an independent life, etc.). It’s only if you’re willing to read bisexuality, tattoos, etc. as abnormal that you can say that she isn’t a normal functioning member of society (I’m not willing to do that, for the record). In fact, she is the most competent, effective, efficient figure you’re going to find. If anything, she’s a “Mary Sue”–men (and women) want her, and women (and men) want to be like her (nobody wants to undergo what she does…but everyone would like to be able to react to such trauma with such resources, force, efficiency, resiliency, etc). She (at times, anyway) may feel like she needs to be saved….but the film doesn’t really give that indication. She’ll save herself (and does), thanks very much.

Maybe your claim is that’s it’s also a fantasy for older men to be saved by (and still sleep with) such figures? But more often isn’t being saved by a woman somewhat emasculating? Even in 2012?

Or maybe the only male fantasy being fulfilled in the film is the one revolving around younger attractive women being willing to have sex with (or throwing themselves at) older, less attractive men (though Craig is a sex symbol in his own right, right?).

I agree that the sex fantasy is a real and sexist one…but the notion that the movie suggests that Lisbeth needs saving by a man (or that such salvation is likely/possible) is much more tenuous—in fact, largely nonexistent.

And a second post here.

I think the movie’s fairly confused, basically. The book (as I understand it) is more complex on these issues and the movie tries to follow the book’s plot for the most part, without having the wherewithal to get us inside the possible complexity of Lisbeth’s (or Mikael’s) mind. Even basic things are unclear. Like when she set dad on fire…Was this an act of “madness” (as she at one point implies), or was it an act of self-defense and perfectly justified (as I think much of the movie implies).

I’m not trying to make this movie some kind of ideal treatment of women’s rights, consciousness, and liberation—I’m just pointing out that the claim that was made (that it’s a fantasy of man saving woman and curing her of homosexuality) doesn’t make sense in terms of what actually happens in the film.

I would also say that pointing out that something is a trope, “successful career woman unhappy in love” doesn’t tell you much…since those tropes can be played in a variety of ways.

Such a trope can mean, “Being successful at work will make you unhappy in love, ergo you should forego your career, and allow men to control the public sphere”–

Or

the same trope can be played to blame a sexist/patriarchal society for putting too much of a burden on women… That is, it’s society that makes happiness both at work and at home a near impossibility for women…so society should change.

Admittedly, you see the latter far less in popular culture, but the same basic narrative can tell very different ideological stories.

I would say in “GWTDT”–there are lots of tropes, but what exactly they “mean” isn’t particularly consistent…as the movie itself isn’t consistent. Sometimes it’s empowering to women, sometimes exploitive.

Lisbeth’s “unhappiness in love” is clearly not because she’s a successful career woman, but because she’s been abused by men (including her own father) her whole life and is emotionally damaged. So…it’s not her public sphere efficiency that fucks up her private life….it’s men who fuck up her private life, from beginning (dad) to end (Mikael). It’s not Broadcast News (a much better movie, btw). The narratives of the two movies are far from identical up to the final shift…so the comparison doesn’t really work in any significant way. We might say that GWTDT gives the illusion that men have ultimate power over women…but we could also say that the film shows a very powerful woman capable of overcoming all of that patriarchal social hegemony. That is, it’s somewhat contradictory.[…]

Again, I don’t want to be the “defending GWTDT guy”— I actually don’t think it’s all that great, or liberating, or whatever…. It’s just not quite so clearly about the “guy saving girl” narrative that you (were) claim(ing). Now it seems that the claim is different?

My understanding is that in the books, the relationship between the two continues to be vexed, and that Lisbeth has a number of sexual encounters with both men and women, retaining her bisexuality. I don’t know enough about these to suggest whether or not the reader is meant to see her return to women as a symptom of her “failure” with Mikael, or whether she simply continues to be bisexual, as she always was, but it’s an interesting question. Of course, it tells us basically nothing about the meaning of the film.

Finally (I hope):

“It’s a reiteration that romance with a man is something she needs (as a woman) to be normal/happy/fulfilled, but can’t have.”

You’re free to read it that way, I guess, but since so much of the film revolves around the wrongs done to women by men–and especially the wrongs done to Lisbeth by men—and even the sins of omission made by otherwise nice guys—I think the notion that the story says: “All will be cured by the presence of a penis,” is far too simplistic. There may be currents of this in the film, but there are also strong countercurrents, which makes the film more interesting in this regard than you suggest (though not so interesting, really, as a murder mystery/serial killer story). The villains are all men here, and the male “protagonists/heroes” are basically impotent and accomplish nothing of value (Craig and Christopher Plummer). Only Lisbeth is an effective agent. Craig’s only real effective move is asking her for help. Plummer’s only effective move is asking Craig for his…and only because it leads to Lisbeth.

Perhaps all of the “feminist” elements come from the book’s plot and all of the “sexist” elements come from Hollywood, but I doubt it. My guess is that the book is similarly vexed and contradictory.[…]

Monika Bartyzel on the Hollywoodization of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Sometime commenter on HU Monika Bartyzel had an thoughtful post about the softening and sexualizing of Lisbeth Salander in the Hollywood version of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” I talked to her a little about it on email, and she kindly agreed to let me publish her further reflections. So here they are:

I appreciate the book. As you’ve already seen with Twilight, I can read around certain issues if I find something compelling or interesting. I so completely appreciate his [Stieg Larsson’s] intent and the path he takes that any literary questions of value/etc are irrelevant to me. The only thing that did really weigh on me was supposed to – it was hard work to read about repeated abuse to one woman, but I think it was entirely necessary to make the environment palpable, especially to those who would deny it…while also noting that even with just a sliver of what Lisbeth experiences, the audience sees it as too much. It adds weight.

As for similar problems – do you mean in her characterization or the film? Yes, the film is dense and not structured in the usual way (again, I don’t mind that). As for her – it’s similar yet very different. It basically boils down to privilege and how stories are filtered. Larsson saw a rape and wrote from the vantage of being emotionally impacted by the continual violence against women that he saw. Fincher is coming from sexy Hollywood of flash and lust.

So through Larsson and on the page, Lisbeth’s vulnerability is more about the men than about her (though her body is slight). She has things happen to her that she can’t control, so she reacts in an entirely different way to the world than we do. For her, in the book, she feels like she’s given a lot to Mikael and has deep feelings for him (love? No idea. She cares for him, but there’s no base of comparison). So when he walks off with his long-time paramour, she’s hurt and writes him off. But she wasn’t womanized. She wasn’t a romantic fool. There was never a moment of dual intimacy. To her, she’s sharing a lot; to him, she’s cold, aloof, and fascinating, but not warm. It’s a look at her struggle to find the balance between who she became due to her terrible life, and the human feelings and impulses she has. Some say that it’s ludicrous that she’d even like Mikael, but it’s not. He’s the second kind man in her life, the first who isn’t a father figure. He isn’t a misogynist, he’s smart, fit, and comes to her in a place of warmth and kindness that immediately gets under her skin because no men have this obvious, inherent respect for her.

Fincher takes the vulnerability of a girl whose legal and human rights are continually ignored and thrusts her into a two-part personality of the soft girl who just wants to be loved and the hard girl who will kill if she’s crossed. So to him, her sneers are sexy, rather than sad or unfortunate. He makes her obviously romantically interested in Mikael. He makes her share dark secrets and openly trust him. He makes her the emotional hero and
Mikael the man who broke her again. He takes away the context around Lisbeth so to understand her, you fill in the blanks, and since she’s been infused with more classic Hollywood portrayals, the blanks are filled in with assumptions that defeat the purpose. The biggie for me: In the book she’s attacked by drunk guys and her computer is broken. No one helps her and it helps to set up how men continually try to prey on her. In the film, it’s just a thief, and she’s just a tough ass-kicker. It glamourizes it at the expense of the painful truth.

You can read Kinukittys’ discussion of the film here. Richard Cook’s take on the book is here.

Gluey Tart: Valhalla, I Am Coming

I saw the new version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” movie on Christmas Day (you don’t force your seasonal observances on me and I won’t force mine on you), and of course I had mixed feelings even before the opening wails of Trent Reznor and company running “The Immigrant Song” through the random industrialization machine signaled the puzzling (and oily) James Bond intro. (Not all that inexplicable, really; it was, you know, edgy. Man.) (And apparently I shouldn’t be so offended, since Wikipedia tells me that marching bands commonly play “The Immigrant Song” at high school and college football games. We will never speak of this again, all right?)

I mean, I know Daniel Craig is Bond, but this is a different huge, high-profile franchise. And the damned thing was way too long, anyway. It made me cranky even before I found out it was a serial killer movie. To which I say – really? A serial killer movie? (Yes, yes, it was a serial killer book before it was a serial killer movie; I don’t care.) I love murder and evil as much as the next person, but serial killer plots are where writers turn when their ideas have abandoned them and all they have left is to sit at the kitchen table, alone, hating their mothers. (I know, some people like serial killer movies. Whatever.)

Anyway. I didn’t go to see this movie for the plot (although a serial killer seems egregious even in a movie you fully expect to suck). I went, obviously, because I have a huge crush on Rooney Mara. I am perfectly happy to watch Daniel Craig for hours at a time, as well. I felt OK about this, at the time, because Rooney wants me to stare at her, enthralled, for the duration of the film. And I’d read her bloviating about how vulnerable the character is, and what a triumph this is, so I thought I knew what to expect. I mean, a vulnerable female character – what next? A brilliant, insightful, shockingly attractive, effortlessly sexy male journalist?

I began to feel uncomfortable in the role of voyeur, though. Mara’s character, Lisbeth Salander, couldn’t be more vulnerable. Steig Larsson took pains to fuck with her in every way he could come up with, and the actress sold it and then some. She was bad ass – so bad ass, in fact, that she made Daniel Craig pretty much superfluous. Which is saying something. (He has it all – acting, looks, ill-humored comments in interviews.) The extravagantly unpleasant abuse Larsson heaps on Lisbeth is unnecessary, at least in this version, because Rooney Mara nailed it. Her portrayal is so good she could have just showed up and solved the mystery, and we’d still get it.

But then we wouldn’t have gotten to see the rape scenes, and that would be a shame, wouldn’t it?

I’m also accustomed to women suddenly taking a sharp left turn without signaling to inexplicably fall in love with some asshole, largely in service of the ego of the writer/director/male movie-going public, but when Lisbeth Salander does it, that’s just wrong. I was actually offended. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see a beautiful woman in her early twenties going for a man who’s over 40, rumpled, and kind of ordinary (except for his keen intellect, indefatigable sense of justice, and blinding yet low-key charm), even one who isn’t played by Daniel Craig. My issue is that this woman set her father on fire, people. We just saw her get brutally raped. No penis is magical enough to magically fix her issues with men.  I do not buy it to a degree that destroys all the disbelief I’d managed to suspend. It is more unlikely than the serial killer. It is more unlikely than everything. It is wrong and stupid.

I have two related problems. The movie makes it clear to us that Lisbeth sleeps with women because she’s damaged. To which I say, fuck you, movie. Bisexuals are fucking sick to death of being tormented and confused. Please accept that some people like both men and women and move on, all right? How often do I have to explain this to you? Also, the woman Lisbeth picks up is much better than the stupid journalist, anyway. When he shows up at Lisbeth’s apartment and seems vaguely threatening, the girl asks Lisbeth if she wants her to stay. That is sweet. On the other hand, we have the 40+ year-old man macking on a woman almost as young as his daughter, and he knows she’s fucked up, on top of it. And the movie doesn’t seem to think this is horrible and creepy. I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to find it romantic. Fuck you again, movie.

I actually enjoyed the movie, mostly, even though it pissed me off (if I only liked things that didn’t piss me off, I wouldn’t like much) and made me wonder about myself for wanting to stare at Rooney Mara/Lisbeth Salander under these circumstances. It is not the first time I’ve had these concerns. And regardless of how wrong or not wrong this might be, I’m proud to say Lisbeth really did save the day. She totally rode in on her motorcycle and saved Daniel Craig’s ass, and then, as an encore, she took care of the slippery businessman who had tried to ruin Craig’s career at the beginning of the movie. Lisbeth is as cool as Clint Eastwood (in a spaghetti western sort of way, not Every Which Way but Loose or Pink Cadillac or some shit like that), and women don’t get to be Dirty Harry very often.

Not a Superhero Comic, But It is Plenty Violent

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Written by Stieg Larsson
Translated by Reg Keeland

Every mainstream reviewer seems to love this novel. It’s an international bestseller that’s spawned two sequels and has already been made into a movie. All this despite the fact that the author is dead and Swedish. My reaction, however, was “meh.” Other than the Swedish names that I can’t pronounce, there’s nothing in this book that sets it apart from any typical crime thriller.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible novel. The mystery at the heart of the story is well-crafted, and I didn’t notice any glaring plot holes. The pacing is brisk, except for a few lengthy discussions of Swedish finance. The translation from the original Swedish produced a few awkward lines, but nothing memorably ridiculous.

 But much of the novel’s appeal depends on whether the reader identifies with the main character, Mikael Blomkvist. As shameless Mary Sues go, Blomkvist could give Superman a run for his money. Blomkvist is a middle-aged, left-leaning journalist and magazine editor, just like Stieg Larsson. He also happens to be one of those courageous and brilliant journalists who’s dedicated to THE TRUTH. And he’s irresistible to the ladies without even trying (I’m not joking about that last part, he gets as much play as James Bond per film). Perhaps if I were a middle-aged Swedish journalist, I might find Blomkvist appealing. As it is, he’s somebody else’s empowerment fantasy, and I just feel left out.

Although Blomkvist is the protagonist, the titular girl with the dragon tattoo is Lisbeth Salander, an anti-social hacker who helps Blomkvist solve the big mystery. The inspiration for Salander is rather odd. According to a longtime friend, Larsson admitted that as a teenager he failed to intervene when he witnessed a woman being gang-raped. So the character of Salander was supposed to be his attempt at redemption, and the writer’s redemption came from the character’s rape-revenge narrative. (Spoiler Alert!) Midway into the novel Salander is orally and anally raped by her legal guardian. Salander eventually gets a fitting revenge, but the novel never spends much time on her reactions or development. Despite his desire for redemption, Larsson is always more interested in the trials and tribulations of his thinly drawn author-avatar. The plot focuses on Blomkvist and the big mystery, Salander becomes his sidekick and eventually his lover, and the rape-revenge storyline ends up being much more exploitative than Larsson probably intended.

The entire novel, in fact, seems like an effort to have a sexy violence cake and eat it too. On the surface, the novel takes the uncontroversial stance that raping women is bad. But this is still a crime thriller, and the genre requires a certain amount of depravity. The numerous instances of sexualized violence are not simply elements of the story, they’re the driving force behind the plot and the novel’s most notable feature (besides the unpronounceable Swedish names). I’d go so far as to say that the sexualized violence is one of the novel’s main selling points. The forbidden thrill of sexual violence can be secretly and safely indulged so long as it’s coupled to the condemnation of the same sexual violence.

But I’d be lying if I said the sexualized violence actually offended me. Mostly, I was just bored. This novel is not some glorious, genre-busting breakthrough. It’s nothing more and nothing less than competent pulp, Scandinavian style.