"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" a Feminist Film?

A few years ago I was getting my hair colored by my smart, gay colorist in Phoenix and he started telling me about a series of books he had been reading by a man named Stieg Larsson. We’d had discussions about feminism before, he knew I was a Women’s Studies major and he assured me I had to read these books.

Due to marathons of Hoarders and heavy drinking habits, I never got around to reading them, and admittedly still haven’t. Years later another friend of mine who regularly makes fun of my feminist sensibilities told me quite seriously that I had to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that he’d be curious to know what I thought of it, as a “feminist.”

Due to late night rendezvous with pizza rolls and an addiction to campy B horror movies rather than smart foreign films, I never actually watched it.

Fast foward to nowish, when The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has ditched the subtitles and adopted a hip director named David Fincher (oh, I loved Seven AND The Social Network) and is suddenly on Pay Per View on a Tuesday night when I have nothing to do but try and pirate the latest version of Final Draft (I have to update my torrent magnet WTFFF??) and drink vanilla vodka with Coke Zero. Okay, so, time to finally give it a chance.

I would like to state up front that I enjoyed the film. David Fincher is stylistic and brilliant and the film is visually sort of breath taking and each scene is noticeably dark and jarring. The story is twisted and compelling and unfolds at the perfect pace before you. It’s a good movie.

That’s all the beside the point, isn’t it? After all, I can’t call myself a feminist and not watch a piece of popularized high art that has suddenly put the word “feminism” higher up on the Google search engines and sparked controversy and debate in a very mainstream way and not, you know, watch it with that in mind.

Is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a feminist statement? Is Stieg Larsson a feminist or an extremist? Can a movie that so blatantly shows such real, visceral images of a woman being tied up, raped, and subsequently paid for her services really be considered good for women? Consider who is watching this and for what reasons we, as a society, enjoy seeing women being brutalized and beat down. Watch any movie and you can clearly see a woman’s dignity being stripped from her in the first 30 minutes or so, and despite the fact that Lisbeth comes back to the house of the man that raped her and sodomizes him as he did her, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is no different in that sense. Before we know what a bad ass she is, she’s crying bloody in the shower. As an audience, no one seems to notice that female characters are always beaten down earlier on, it’s something we’re desensetized too, it’s simply a part of movies.

Of course, this is all to propel the story, the vigilante concept, the abused becomes the heroine, revenge on the man (or men) who made you suffer. I can dig that in a story telling sense. We certainly see enough action films portraying men seeking revenge on the antagonist who killed their wife or father or brother— it seems a good idea to show a woman, or women, seeking revenge on the men who abused them. The concept is taboo though, no one likes to talk about the fact that girls are raped, abused, sexually exploited, bought, sold, etc. as it makes us all uncomfortable, yet we certainly enjoy seeing images of it. When we see it now, in a film like GWDT, in which the abuse is not only seem but talked about, and ultimately drives the story, it suddenly becomes a “feminist statement.” Perhaps the real feminist route would be for the concept to be more visible already, and when I say “visible” I don’t mean more movies with rape scenes, as the whole “movie goers love to see women brutalized” thing is a little disgusting to me. I can’t help but consider that when I see a good movie like GWDT, with a good idea, I also have to consider who is watching this scene— and who is liking it for the wrong reasons, who is maybe rewinding it, watching it over and over. It’s important to remember that despite the ultimate statement of a piece of art, as a film, we’re still consuming the images and more often than not what we’re consuming are, in fact, images of women being beat down by men in one way or another which, in my opinion, is digressive for the overall feminist movement. It is one thing to see a woman beat down by her own demons, we don’t see much of those flawed female characters, it is somehow more popular to see images of a woman beat down by men.

Lizbeth is striking and visually compelling, though not in the tradition sense, which makes me curious about the author’s seeming addiction to extremes. While Lisbeth does not boast what is traditionally considered sexy: big tits, round hips, pretty hair, make up, color, femininity, she’s given a look that is quite obviously another extreme: stick thin, pale, gaunt, piercings, tattoos, disheveled hair. She is not a female heroine in high heels and red lipstick. Though make no mistake, you won’t get through the film without seeing her get a blonde haired make over, and while I understand it was an essential element in the plot for her to need a disguise, I can’t help but think it was also to satisfy an audience full of men (and probably women too) wondering what she’d look like without all those rough edges. That said, I can’t genuinely say that I don’t appreciate seeing this look on screen, even if it’s amped up to an extreme for all those Suicide Girls fans out there, it is a movie after all. Showing variations of beauty and sexuality in mainstream films is always a good thing, even if it is still created through a male gaze. Again, it’s all about the consumption of images, and if we’re consuming images that are showing there’s more than one very boxed in look that can be considered sexy and beautiful, I can get on board with that. Furthermore, when the studio execs finally figure out that there are lots of men these days who prefer a contrast to the blonde haired, big titted beauty, we’ll start seeing it even more. Variations of beauty in the media, even if it’s still for the men and still about the bottom line, is still a good start for women.

After Lisbeth gives a blow job for money, is anally raped, bleeds and cries in the shower, picks up a woman at a club to fuck (perhaps this was to show her sexual openness or addiction, either way, I comend David Fincher for not adding a lesbian scene), she meets Daniel Craig’s character, Mikael.

Their relationship provides undertones of father/daughter sex abuse love, and you gotta love the realism behind that. Mikael has to do little more than, you know, be Daniel Craig and she’s taking her panties off in front of him. It’s things like this that lift the curtain for me and I’m reminded that no matter how bad ass a chick is in in a film, the story was still created by men, and there are always elements of an overall male fantasy bullshit.

Maybe I’m too harsh about this, Lisbeth meets a man who is understated and sexy, smart and good to her, she wants to fuck him, so she does. Perhaps that is more “feminist” than anything else. I am one who likes a good sex scene in a film, and the scenes between the two characters were, dare I say, kind of fucking hot. It’s not a love scene, nor a scene of a woman getting pounded from behind, but one that shows a woman on top, fucking how she wants, and at one point she asks him to be quiet until she cums—- and it actually shows a woman cumming. These sexual images are good ones, different and effective. It’s still the female body that is on display, but her body is boney, waify, almost boyish to the viewer, and it shows her in control of her desire.

Sex is, essentially, the film’s star. While the sex scenes between the two characters were not gratuitous or exploitative, the underlying factor for Lisbeth was still love and connection, right? The basics behind a woman abused and let down by their fathers: they offer sex to a man who is a father figure, they hope they get love in return, and again she is let down. She presents herself to him, a seemingly complicated girl with obvious sexual issues, and he takes it, despite being involved with another woman, despite the working relationship, because he is a man, and the reasons to reject her do not outweigh his desire to fuck her.

As the movie comes to a head Lisbeth gets everything she wants… almost. I suppose this is why people call this a “feminist” story: it’s about a woman who avenges the men that wronged her, kills the killer of women, saves a good man, and emerges as an unlikely heroine. I feel like there are two ways you can assess the ending of this film. One way is to look at is that it’s, you know, bullshit. Lisbeth is a bad ass, inaccessable and seemingly in control of what she does, yet all that goes out the window because she has fallen in love with Mikael and wants him, maybe as a friend, someone to Father her, fuck her, give her love, whatever, but she wants him and he doesn’t want her anymore. She submits, as all women do in films, that all she really needed was a man to humanize her. No different than, say, Sandra Bullock’s character in The Proposal.

Or, you can see it differently. The final scene is perhaps what is different and somewhat special about GWDT, being a “feminist” movie. I wondered if she’d end up hurt and vulnerable, the same as she was in the beginning. She is excited at the prospect of “making a friend” she says, of Mikael, who she eventually sees with another woman, tosses his expensive gift in the trash and takes off on her bike. Ah, let down again. Yet, for me, the overall sense you get from the final shot of her riding off is one that is sad but hopeful: sure, she’s let down, but she’s been around the block enough, and maybe that’s the first and last time she’s going to expect anything more than a good orgasm from a man. She is not one to approach him in the night, shed a tear, or let it move her. Would the story be more “feminist” if he had fallen for her and she had rejected him in the end? I’d like to think that it wasn’t exactly about her letting a man get to her, but riding away from it unscathed once again.

SO. Is GWDT a feminist movie? And really, what does that even mean? Let’s not forget the big picture here: The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo is a film made by a studio run by men, written by a man, directed by a man, produced predominantly by men and Daniel Craig still got first billing over Rooney Mara and I’d imagine was paid more money despite her certainly being the star of the film. Though this is simply how things are, an industry standard, and shouldn’t necessarily speak to the credibility of a “feminist” story, right? I’m simply not sure. Feminism is, at it’s base, just about equality, so maybe a “feminist” film is a movie of any credence written, directed, produced and starring women and not slapped with a “chick flick” label. Maybe what would have been really great for their feminist street cred would be to just, you know, give the women in the film industry some jobs on the movie instead of making a lot of money off some pretty explicit images of a woman getting raped— but that’s being broad and somewhat unfair I think. The author of the original trilogy is a professed feminist, a liberal white man who is unafraid to use the word and label himself as such and it’s his story that has gotten so much attention and acclaim— and that’s better than some asshole prick making movies that aren’t trying to say anything, right? Yet I can’t help but wonder how it is that after all the great feminist literature out there the thing that makes it big was, surprise surprise, created by a white man. Maybe the books are just that good though, and the brutality against it’s heroine, overt sexuality, and pull at our love for extremism and violence has nothing to do with it, eh?

There’s also this to consider: while I am self proclaimed feminist, not ashamed of it, the only tattoo I have is a feminist symbol behind my ear and I regularly read, write and am immersed in its meaning: I’m also just a big movie fan, and a fan of cool bad ass shit in movies. Despite all the underlying and layered feminist elements here, I can’t deny that seeing Lisbeth sodomize her rapist with what appears to be a giant stainless Steele dildo and kick it inside him over and over is fucking awesome to me. In a sense, I can’t help but feel a kind of catharsis when I witness what is, essentially, female fantasy bullshit, even if it’s sandwiched in-between some male fantasy crap. You don’t have to be a child of sexual abuse or rape to cheer for this, nor do you have to be a beat down woman, a battered wife, or someone victimized in any way by a man: all you have to be is a woman in today’s society, a girl living day to day in what is a world run by men— and for that, I applaud this movie, I like it as a piece of art and that small piece of catharsis and escapism it gave to me, as a woman, is more than what most movies do. While I realize that me being a fan of violent sodomy may be counterproductive and hypocritical in any sense, I don’t care, if the male population can witness their fantasies before them in every other film guilt free, I should EQUALLY be able to be enjoy a little violent bad assness. After all, it’s all about equality, right?