I resist reading current bestsellers because:
- I like to think I'm above the herd mentality and
- I'd rather pick up an inexpensive copy months later at a thrift store or used bookseller.
(I guess I'm more about being cheap than bucking the status quo.)
I also resist doing what I'm told.
So when various friends of both genders kept saying, "You've gotta read Stieg Larsson's books about Lisbeth Salander!" I ignored them on principle. Seriously, does any "international bestseller" ever live up to its hype?
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo does. Back in September, I stopped being smug 50 pages in...then I saw David Fincher's American film version earlier this week. (No, I have not seen the original Swedish film; remember, I came to the book late.) Satisfied as I was with the novel, I was even more pleased with the film.
Rooney Mara, a little-known but attractive 26-year-old actress, didn't balk at the requirements of the role: an unflattering off-kilter haircut, bleached eyebrows that added to the expressionless quality of her face, multiple piercings and a severely skinny frame under layers of gender-obliterating attire. Once she stopped being conventionally pretty, she experienced a shift in how others responded to her: "The biggest change that I noticed was that when you look slightly off in that way people sort of pay less attention to you and their expectations of you are lowered. I didn't mind that - I actually enjoyed it."
Unlike the Swedish actress whose version of Salander retained some semblance of attractiveness and sex appeal, Mara's Salander was about as sexually attractive as a Dementor. (You know, from that other "international bestseller," Harry Potter and the Most Profitable Children's Story of All Time.) It was a role Mara described as "a once in a lifetime opportunity and when do you ever get to do something like that?"
How can you not root for a heroine like Salander? The antithesis of the iconic Disney Princess, she wears tattered black t-shirts with graphics that make liberal use of the F word, rides an angular matte black motorcycle that reads more like a weapon than a mode of transportation, sports a haircut so anti-style that it seems to repel even helmet head, and barely blinks whether she's happy, mad, or unconcerned.
I'm not giving anything when I say that she literally saves the day in a manner which feels totally consistent with her character and requires less brawn than cunning.
Even Rooney Mara finds herself permanently altered by the girl with the dragon tattoo. She now acknowledges she's less "feminine and girlie" than she was BS - Before Salander. Not that there's anything wrong with femininity, but in Hollywood -- the land of the beautiful and the home of the hot -- how often does a woman make it to the top by looking so androgynous she could pass for a boy?
Is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a feminist film? That's like asking if Hillary Clinton is successful as Secretary of State because of her sex appeal. Both are examples of situations in which women don't defy gender but move past it because it has little to do with the seat of their power and success. When gender is little more than an encumbrance to who you are as a person, why cling to the label?
The irony that the films and the books refer to Lisbeth as "The Girl" is not lost on me. Perhaps Larsson intended to upend gender roles and expectations with his novels and puncture existing myths about strength, vulnerability, and what happens when the two collide.
By choosing a slight, petite female more "girl" than woman he may also be making amends to the real-life Lisbeth who did not find an ally in him when she was brutally gang-raped as he watched and did nothing. Wait - you didn't know the origin of Lisbeth Salander's character is rooted in Larsson's past? Read my review of the David Fincher film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and you'll get the whole story and my take on why Mara's work is groundbreaking.
Related article: Film Review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
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