Perri Birney's Blog - Posts Tagged "lisbeth-salander"
Lisbeth Salander Reigns
A bisexual, tazer-toting, female hacker who zaps her foes, goes toe-to-toe with hardened criminals and grapples with murderers. Move over Lara Croft. A powerful female icon is stimulating our desire for justice in more fanciful ways than we could have imagined.
Lisbeth Salander, the modern-day heroine, has stirred the hearts of readers and viewers alike. Women respond to the the small-boned, anorexically thin character as if she were the new Joan of Arc. Why is that? For one, Salander packs a lot of punch. In a world of computer geeks, she’s a superb hacker who uses her skills on the side of justice, actually eradicating the bank accounts of a high-powered, shady billionaire who had formerly been able to commit his crimes undetected. The fact that she does so without getting caught — no matter how believable or unbelievable that may seem — doesn’t thwart the feeling she arouses in us. I have to admit, reading the Millennium Series by Stieg Larsson and watching the Swedish film versions of the novel have me ready to take on adversaries with a new gusto.
Do we normally like to watch female characters who enact revenge? Our sensibilities say, Oh no, but our feelings say, Go get ‘em girl. We support Salander because the issues underscoring her motivations — rape, physical violence, societal neglect, child abuse, government fraud — are so vile that we are aware her only recourse for survival has been to attain justice through her own means. It’s a road we wouldn’t normally want to travel. But when push comes to shove, who’s to say what anyone would do, especially in life-threatening situations.
I venture to say that none of us likes having the deck stacked against us. Salander’s obective is to even the score. Although her father was despicable, beating and violating Salander’s mother whenever he wished, he was protected by government agencies who viewed him as an asset. A fictional scenario that easily relates to real-life events.
Empowering women through the creation of strong female characters is an art in itself. Larsson did a superb job with Salander. He was able to create a sympathetic character — vulnerable yet fearless, violated yet undefeatable, a survivor of injustice but never a victim. Friends of the late author relate that an incident from Larsson’s teenage years — when several friends gang-raped a girl and he stood by and did nothing to help her — inspired his creation of Salander’s character.
In his Millennium trilogy — The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – Stieg Larsson gives us a sensitive male perspective of the female plight, a dilemma which is global in scope. He covers the issues of sex trafficking, physical abuse, violence, and subjugation in the political and professional world. In a discussion series I developed, Women’s Empowerment in Fiction: The Millennium Trilogy Explored, we reviewed Larsson’s themes and their effects on the women in the group. It’s amazing that no matter how unsavory Salander’s methods were, most women felt empowered and inspired by her character. And why wouldn’t they be? Salander willingly enters dangerous lairs like an avenging lioness in order to exact justice. She’s courageous, brilliant, unstoppable, outrageous, and ballsy. Without question, Larsson created a fiction showstopper, one that slam-dunks female typecasting in novels in one fell swoop. Disturbed or enthralled by her, the character of Lisbeth Salander is one for the books.
Lisbeth Salander, the modern-day heroine, has stirred the hearts of readers and viewers alike. Women respond to the the small-boned, anorexically thin character as if she were the new Joan of Arc. Why is that? For one, Salander packs a lot of punch. In a world of computer geeks, she’s a superb hacker who uses her skills on the side of justice, actually eradicating the bank accounts of a high-powered, shady billionaire who had formerly been able to commit his crimes undetected. The fact that she does so without getting caught — no matter how believable or unbelievable that may seem — doesn’t thwart the feeling she arouses in us. I have to admit, reading the Millennium Series by Stieg Larsson and watching the Swedish film versions of the novel have me ready to take on adversaries with a new gusto.
Do we normally like to watch female characters who enact revenge? Our sensibilities say, Oh no, but our feelings say, Go get ‘em girl. We support Salander because the issues underscoring her motivations — rape, physical violence, societal neglect, child abuse, government fraud — are so vile that we are aware her only recourse for survival has been to attain justice through her own means. It’s a road we wouldn’t normally want to travel. But when push comes to shove, who’s to say what anyone would do, especially in life-threatening situations.
I venture to say that none of us likes having the deck stacked against us. Salander’s obective is to even the score. Although her father was despicable, beating and violating Salander’s mother whenever he wished, he was protected by government agencies who viewed him as an asset. A fictional scenario that easily relates to real-life events.
Empowering women through the creation of strong female characters is an art in itself. Larsson did a superb job with Salander. He was able to create a sympathetic character — vulnerable yet fearless, violated yet undefeatable, a survivor of injustice but never a victim. Friends of the late author relate that an incident from Larsson’s teenage years — when several friends gang-raped a girl and he stood by and did nothing to help her — inspired his creation of Salander’s character.
In his Millennium trilogy — The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – Stieg Larsson gives us a sensitive male perspective of the female plight, a dilemma which is global in scope. He covers the issues of sex trafficking, physical abuse, violence, and subjugation in the political and professional world. In a discussion series I developed, Women’s Empowerment in Fiction: The Millennium Trilogy Explored, we reviewed Larsson’s themes and their effects on the women in the group. It’s amazing that no matter how unsavory Salander’s methods were, most women felt empowered and inspired by her character. And why wouldn’t they be? Salander willingly enters dangerous lairs like an avenging lioness in order to exact justice. She’s courageous, brilliant, unstoppable, outrageous, and ballsy. Without question, Larsson created a fiction showstopper, one that slam-dunks female typecasting in novels in one fell swoop. Disturbed or enthralled by her, the character of Lisbeth Salander is one for the books.
