The Science of Monsters

Kelly:“Do you think horror films (Norman Bates was an avid taxidermist) or the media in general have given people a negative view of taxidermy? Are there any films that have shown it in a positive light?”

Lexi Ames: “Oh my goodness, yes. As a big horror film fan and true-crime junky myself, I can’t help but be riveted by a story about someone like Ed Gein or Jeffrey Dahmer that involves collecting bones in early life. Obviously, there is something greatly different in the motivations of serial killers versus that of your local taxidermist or anatomy enthusiast, but what is it, exactly? I think it becomes very difficult to see the difference and draw the line of distinction if you are someone who isn’t compelled by anatomy. If someone hasn’t grown up going to natural history museums frequently, their only lens of taxidermy may be through the horror genre. For me, interacting with anatomy is like interacting with a great art form, and I think we are typically trained as a society to see it as the exact opposite of that.

I really racked my brain to think of ‘nice’ taxidermists in film or television, and had a difficult time drumming up any! The closest I could come was Vanessa Ives in the series Penny Dreadful (2014–2016). Of course, every character in this show is meant to be inherently creepy, but Vanessa is a particularly strong and curious person, and even with her dark sides she is impossible not to admire. In a rare scene that depicts Vanessa as happy and contented, she is shown dabbling with taxidermy as a young child. Although her prodigiousness in the craft is completely unbelievable (she’s like a ten-year-old nineteenth-century Martha Stewart of death!), it’s charming to see her and her young friends explore the natural world through the art before everything in their lives is swallowed by betrayal and darkness. Overall though, it’s clearly entertaining to be creeped out by a character who curates the dead. I can’t imagine that trope disappearing, especially as there are too many real-world examples in public memory, but perhaps it can expand into normalcy in other genres. It would be great to see taxidermists and death workers portrayed in entertainment that are just plain boring and unremarkable.”

Kelly:“Or without the stereotype of a morgue worker eating over the dead bodies!”

Thanks to Lexi Ames, we learned so much about taxidermy, specimen collection, and the intersection of science and art which feels apropos for a book about the science in film. We don’t think we’ll ever look at roadkill the same after our enlightening interview!

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CHAPTER SIX

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

Year of Release: 1991

Director: Jonathan Demme

Writer: Ted Tally

Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins

Budget: $19 million

Box Office: $272.7 million

There are two monsters in the acclaimed, Academy Award–winning movie The Silence of the Lambs (1991). If we were to use the serial killer classifications laid out by Holmes and Holmes on these fabricated killers, Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) would fall into similar categories. Both men are compelled to kill for a product. Lecter eats the bodies of his victims, and as he’s a class act, he serves them up with the famous “fava beans and a nice chianti!” While Buffalo Bill, far less sophisticated, kills women of a larger girth in order to inhabit their skin. This, of course, evokes the anti-hero of this section, Ed Gein, who shared in precisely the same practice. Gein purposely chose larger women. Both Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden were known to be plus-size, as are Buffalo Bill’s markedly younger victims. Surrounded by the bones, organs, and skin of his victims and those he grave robbed, Ed Gein engaged in any number of horrific acts. It’s easy to let our macabre imaginations run wild. Yet, there is one misnomer that has been perpetuated since his capture: there is no proof that Ed Gein was ever a cannibal. Because of their fixation on female skin, Buffalo Bill and Ed Gein are inexorably linked. Any link between Gein and the well-educated and poised Hannibal Lecter would be a tenuous one. In fact, it was another true monster who resulted in the creation of the notorious Dr. Lecter.