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

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Category:

Film & Animation

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• the
• girl
• with
• dragon
• tattoo
• film
• movie
• review
• critic
• Film Criticism
• feminist
• fincher
• kubrick
• clockwork
• orange
• sexual
• violence
• women
• A Clockwork Orange (film)
• stieg
• larsson
• hate
• men

[BuBBaGump014]

The rape and subsequent revenge helps set up Lisbeth's motivations for wanting to help Mikael catch the "killer" [I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen it]. In the movie, everything happens very quickly and Lisbeth and Mikael team up rather hastily. It makes sense that she would agree as such knowing that she has had such intense experiences with men who mistreat women. Also, Lisbeth is bisexual. I don't know man, I think you missed the mark on this one; do more research!

[ZOMGitsCriss]

Just an addendum, I doubt the nowadays radical feminists would appreciate a character like Salander. She's most likely too sexually promiscuous to be considered a "real feminist" by those standards.

Personally, I think she's one the strongest female characters I ever found in fiction. She's intelligent, determined, sexually liberated, nonconformist & doesn't take shit from no one. She hates men who hate women, but doesn't see the world as a "men vs women" battlefield. She rocks.

[Synnek1]

You're so cute...>;-)

[Wolfau5]

"Real rape" is a moral grey, some people may feel somewhat sympathetic to him which is bad for the story (ie they may not support the main character in her plot for revenge), or may feel that the victim has some responsibility for not handling the situation better. For the audience to largely be sympathetic to the main character for the majority of the film, it needs to be an extreme situation with no moral ambiguity. Thats largely the nature of hollywood and storytelling.

[Wolfau5]

You're complaining about the specific wording of a title of a foreign book/film... are you fking kidding me?

Violence against men has been a "spectacle" for thousands of years. I find it very very amusing that women freak out when they get a taste.

The "1 in 4 women" statistic is utterly bogus.

Basically it sounds like you're subscribing to this idea that rape has to be something that there can be no mature discussion about, it has to be hidden away for fear of someone finding it appealing.

[MotherNatureisBiased]

She looks androgynous. That's pretty much makes it feminist by default.

[SoulTheWhale]

@ZOMGitsCriss Of course radical feminists would appreciate a character like Salander! I might surprise you but we, feminists, don't see sex as anything wrong. In our opinion objectifying women is wrong but she's by no means passive and she's no one's toy. She is slightly objectified in the American version but I'm referring to the series in general :)

[TheHuntress144]

Bisexuality =/= 'feminist'. Female bisexuality/lesbianism has been fetishized by the media, women are *still* sex objects in this sense (oh so empowering!) and I'm annoyed that promiscuity is touted as some half baked feminist 'ideal'. I've not seen the movie, but in the book Salander is terribly insecure and loaded with a hackneyed rape backstory which is supposed to 'explain' her abrasiveness. Terrible charachterization coupled with eroticized violence against women;won't be seeing the movie.

[jvalander]

Steig Larsson = feminist. Lisbeth Salander = Lisbeth Salander. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo = whatever the viewer wants it to be.

what I find interesting about Salander's vengeance is how easy it is for any normal person with high moral values to get satisfaction from watching her literally ruin a man's life. of course she had more than enough justification, but that's not really the point... kinda similar to how you sympathize with Alex from A Clockwork Orange.

[DrowningArt94]

I recommend the books highly, since the social commentaries becmoes more clear, even though i think they captured it in the film, i think it is more clear in the books.

[DrowningArt94]

Also, Lisbeth is not a lesbian or a heterosexual in either the film or the book. she's bisexual, and i think she's more of the hero(Or an anti-hero) than the protagonist Mikael Blomkvist.she's the one that saves him and she's the one that solves the mystery. but the great thing about her is that she's not an emotionless "bad-ass", she's actually a vulnerable woman who had a traumatic life and she is forcing herself to make a resistance.

[DrowningArt94]

it's not a remake, but an american adaption. this one includes more from the book and is closer to the characters in the book than the swedish film is. Stieg Larsson himself was a feminist, and the violence against women was very graphic for the reason that he wanted to show the reality of the abuse women is going trough. the whole theme of the story is a patriarchal society in decay, which i think Zaillian and Fincher captured well, but the swedish film didn't.