Last edited Wed Jan 23, 2013, 09:14 AM - Edit history (1)
i didnt see her in the heroin role, nor a feminist nor the book as female positive.
Our Hero, Mikael Blomkvist, is what we might refer to as a “breast man”; when he is not hunting down depraved serial killers, he spends a lot of his time resting his head on the breasts of the lady he is sleeping with, kissing breasts, noting when ladies are not wearing bras, and commencing his sexual endeavors by “stretch[ing] out his hand to touch her breast.” Blomkvist comes into contact with a lot of breasts, because a lot of ladies want to sleep with him. At one point Blomkvist takes a time-out from his liaisons amoureuses to read the “sensational debut of a teenage feminist,” after which he wonders “whether he could be called a feminist if he wrote a novel about his own sex life in the voice of a high school student. Probably not.” Cute. (A not super-normatively-attractive middle-aged anti-fascist journalist writing a novel starring a “very good-looking” middle-aged anti-fascist journalist whom ladies line up to get breast-grabbed by does, apparently, get to be called feminist.)
And then, of course, there is feminist heroine Lisbeth Salander, the super hot (“with the right make-up her face could have put her on any billboard in the world”) damaged skinny white chick with a bunch of tattoos (“in spite of the tattoos and the pierced nose and eyebrows she was…well…attractive. It was inexplicable”) who kicks ass. Boy is that a new one in the universe: the super hot damaged skinny white chick with a bunch of tattoos who kicks ass. Lisbeth has a penchant for Doc Martens and body art (as we all know, an immediate indicator of profound emotional disturbance). She is, of course, the best computer hacker in Sweden, and she spends some time torturing the man who raped and tortured her. Also she hits a serial killer over the head with a golf club in an effort to save Blomkvist, with whom she has fallen in love despite her general inability to feel emotional connections with other people. That’s badassery for you. Despite these unassailable feminist credentials, Salander repeatedly describes herself, and is described by others, as a victim: “Bjurman had chosen her as a victim. That told her something about the way she was viewed by other people”; “…this was the natural order of things. As a girl she was legal prey”; “he had never been able to shake off the feeling that Lisbeth Salander was a perfect victim.”
We are also told a lot how much she hates herself: “She had no faith in herself”; “She was convinced that her skinny body was repulsive…She did not have much to offer.” After she is raped by her social worker, Salander goes home and eats some sandwiches, and Larsson makes the startling observation that “An ordinary person might have felt that her lack of reaction had shifted the blame to her–it might have been another sign that she was so abnormal that even rape could evoke no adequate emotional response.” What an adequate emotional response to rape might be is lost in translation. Hysterics? Fainting? She does not go to the police, also unlike a normal lady: “Salander was not like any normal person…Visiting the offices of those visor-clad brutes to file a report against Nils Bjurman for sexual assault did not even cross her mind.” (Ironically, one of the supposedly real-life statistics Larsson cites at the beginning of each part of the book asserts that “Ninety-two percent of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police.” That’s an awful lot of abnormal women for one country.)
So, feminist heroine? Maybe not so much. Salander reads more like masturbation fodder for dudes who want to pretend they aren’t sleazy; Tomb Raider for manarchists, if you will. She hates herself, she “look[s] fourteen,” and she has “high cheekbones that [give] her an almost Asian look.” I don’t even want to touch that last one, honestly, but I am not the first person to note that there are some especially inappropriate tropes of Asian ladies currently circulating in our culture, and they are not, shall we say, feminist. Reading Salander as a feminist icon for our times is a pretty challenging endeavor. About the best thing you can say about her is that, unlike Larsson’s other characters, she at least has some depth.
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/07/29/the-girl-with-the-lots-of-creepy-disturbing-torture-that-pissed-me-off-on-stieg-larsson/Secondly - this is a book very much written by a man about women. Everything about this book screms I HAVE A PENIS. From the start we know that Lisabeth is pretty much willing to throw down her clothes and fuck you senseless. We know that she is irrevocably damaged to the point where you feel a like your going to barf so hard it comes out of your nose. She's skinny to the point where she is described by a number of characters as being anorexic looking. She herself knows she is no match physically for any bodily attack she might find herself under. She's tiny and frail and broken. Incomplete. Not a whole person, but a damaged girl waiting for the right kind of care and attention to be bestowed upon her. What a fucking load of misogynistic crap.
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Fifthy - Never have I read a book that degrades women so much. They are beaten and raped and manipulated to the point where I wanted to scream. The low opinion the author seems to have for women just leaks out of the pages. They're either weak, or frivolous, or always ready to drop their pants to fuck anything that walks. the violence in this book is extremely explicit and graphic. They are almost gratuitous. They are grossly mishandled.
Seventhly - I get the feeling that I am supposed to be sexually attracted to Mikael. In fact, I found him rather tiresome. I have no interest in the financial well being of large compaines, nor trying to plot their demise by investigating rumors of tomfoolery. The females in the book existed too as to solidify his sexual prowess and to let us know that even though every other male in the book under 70 was a misogynistic fuckhead, the he was the nice guy who would make love to you only if you wanted him to. He existed merely as a means to an end, the token hot guy who helps the damaged broken girl and maybe shows her that love, yes love, is really all you need. Pass me that bucket whilst I blow chunks of feminist rage. Reading about violently disturbing rape scenes which serve no purpose to the storyline makes me sad. It had little to no literary purpose except to further cement the fact that this book was far from a feminist read.
Eleventh - This book was prime time fucked up. I won't be reading the sequel. I've had quite enough of this anti feminist, misogynistic shit. Now, I'm going to read a book about a princess, and hope the vivid vile images retreat into thin air. And yes, I deleted the e-book when I finished reading. I am rather sad I christened my Kobo with it to be quite honest.
http://thecrookedshelf.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-which-girl-with-dragon-tattoo-makes.htmllots of people agree with you. not everyone.
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