... Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

[redqueen]

Trigger warning

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/5555/the_harlot_shall_be_burned_with_fire:_biblical_literalism_in_the_girl_with_the_dragon_tattoo/

The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

(snip)


The passages from Leviticus aren’t in the movie to raise much-needed questions about what happens to women’s bodies in the Bible. The passages are in the movie because they make the killer seem weird and spooky, because they add an aura of mystery, of the occult. We’re running out of creative ways to kill women in movies and books, it seems, and the biblical passages trope hasn’t been used too often.

(snip)

But it’s her naked body on which Fincher’s camera focuses. The backside of her naked body. For a long time. During some moments of this terrible scene, the camera asks us to look at her the same way the rapist looks at her.

(snip)

And what are we to do with Lisbeth’s naked body when it continues to show up? The rapist violently rips Lisbeth’s clothes off, but Lisbeth also takes her own clothes off several times during the course of the movie, and everything depends on this careful distinction between agency and victimization, between consent and refusal, between sex and rape.

(snip)

The violent images weren’t necessary. The rapes could have happened behind closed doors; or with Lisbeth’s clothes on; or the camera could have been kept on her face rather than on her lifted backside. To communicate the terror of the rape scenes all you need is a good actor, and the director surely had confidence in Rooney Mara, whom he’d worked with a year earlier on The Social Network. Every frame, every camera angle, every scene in a feature film is intentional, which leads me to wonder what Fincher wanted us to make of these scenes.

...

Another review of the movie which I found interesting. I wish the author had said more regarding the 'dead sexy women' trope. We're desensitized to many violent images but it seems like it's mostly (only?) one type that is routinely sexualized.