Culture MOVIES
60 NEWSWEEK.COM
Eventually, a sequel was made,
2001’s Hannibal, but only Hopkins
reprised his role. Foster has declined
to talk publicly about her choice not
to appear in the film (Starling was
played instead by Julianne Moore).
“It was a big deal to not do the
sequel. I’ll never talk about it partic-
ularly, but it’s always that question
that people ask,” she says.
While Hannibal wasn’t as much
of a success as Lambs, the franchise
has found success on television. A
series based on the film and book
Hannibal ran for three seasons on
NBC, and Clarice recently debuted on
CBS. Rebecca Breeds, who plays the
title role in the new series, recently
told Newsweek that Starling is “one
of the most well-written characters
in history.”
But while the original film is
largely considered a win for women—
with Foster’s Clarice at the center
of the story, a rarity not only for
the horror/thriller genre but also
just film in general—it has been
criticized for its representation of
LGBTQ+ characters.
“The Buffalo Bill character was
simply the latest in a very long line
of cross-dressing, psychopathic serial
killers, going back to 1960’s Psycho, if
not before,” says Nick Adams, Direc-
tor of Transgender Representation
at GLAAD. “The average filmgoer in
1991, and even today, confuses and
conflates women who are transgen-
der with cross-dressing psychopaths,
men who disguise themselves as
women for other nefarious pur-
poses and cisgender men who per-
form in drag. Therefore, regardless
of the filmmakers’ intentions, the
impact of the Buffalo Bill character
was deeply harmful. Anyone watch-
ing the film today should be aware
of, as the Netflix documentary Dis-
closure makes clear, Hollywood’s
“It’s not that
having a
queer villain is
a problem. It’sonly having
queer villains,that’s the
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