Jame Gumb
Encyclopedia
Jame Gumb, known by the nickname Buffalo Bill, is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1988 novel
The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris
, and its 1991 film adaptation, in which he was played by Ted Levine
. In the film and the novel, he is a serial killer
who murders overweight women and skins them so he can make a "woman suit" for himself.
in 1949 and abandoned by his mother — an alcoholic prostitute who misspelled "James" on his birth certificate — and was taken into foster care
at age two. He was severely abused
by his foster parents. He lived in foster homes until the age of 10, after which he was adopted
by his grandparents, who became his first victims when he impulsively murdered them at the age of 15. He was sent to Tulare Vocational Rehabilitation, a psychiatric hospital
where he was taught how to be a tailor.
He was working in a Baltimore curio store when he met and began a relationship with Benjamin Raspail. After Raspail left him, he killed Raspail's new lover, Klaus, and flayed
him.
is to kidnap
a woman by approaching her pretending to be injured, asking for help loading something heavy into his van, and then knocking her out in a surprise attack from behind once they are inside the van. He takes his hostage back to his house, then leaves her in a well in his basement, where he starves her until her skin is loose enough to easily remove. In the first three cases, he leads the victim upstairs under the belief that they are to be offered a shower, and slips a noose around their necks and pushes them from the stairs, strangling them. Then he skins part of their body (a different section on each victim), and then dumps what is left over into a different river, destroying any trace evidence. In the case of his first victim, Fredrica Bimmel, Gumb also weighs down her body, so she ends up being the third victim to be found, something he doesn't do to the other bodies. In the case of the fourth victim, he shoots her instead of strangling her, then insert a Death's-head Hawkmoth
in her throat, and dumps the body. He is fascinated by the moths' metamorphosis, a process he wants to undergo by becoming a woman. In the film, he dances around with his penis
tucked between his legs, wearing a silk cape which he flourishes like butterfly wings (in the novel, he tucks his penis between his legs after taking a shower).
Gumb thinks of his victims as things rather than people, often referring to his victims with the pronoun "it", for example, "It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again." The one creature he reserves affection for is his pet poodle
, Precious, which he often speaks to in baby talk while torturing
his victims.
Ruth Martin. FBI trainee Clarice Starling
enlists serial killer
Hannibal Lecter
's help in tracking Gumb down, unaware that Lecter had met Gumb while treating his lover, Raspail; Lecter provides her with assistance in the form of vague clues designed to help her figure it out for herself. Starling finds Gumb in Belvedere, Ohio
after determining that Fredrica Bimmel, his first victim, knew him before he killed her. Gumb flees into his basement, where he stalks Starling with a .357 Magnum
and a pair of night vision
goggles. Starling ultimately guns him down after hearing him pull back the hammer of his weapon.
, they still imply negative connotations about transsexualism. Garber says, "Harris's book manifests its cultural anxiety through a kind of baroque bravado of plot," and calls the book "a fable of gender dysphoria gone spectacularly awry".
Barbara Creed, writing in Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in the Hollywood Cinema, says that Buffalo Bill wants to become a woman "presumably because he sees femininity as a more desirable state, possible a superior one". For Buffalo Bill, the woman is "[a] totem
animal". Not only does he want to wear women's skin, he wants to become a woman; he dresses in women's clothes and tucks his penis behind his legs to appear female. Creed writes, "To experience a rebirth as woman, Buffalo Bill must wear the skin of woman not just to experience a physical transformation but also to acquire the power of transformation associated with woman's ability to give birth." Buffalo Bill wears the skin of his totem animal to assume its power.
Judith Halberstam, author of Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, writes, "The cause for Buffalo Bill's extreme violence against women lies not in his gender confusion or his sexual orientation but in his humanist
presumption that his sex and his gender and his orientation must all match-up to a mythic norm
of white heterosexual masculinity." Halberstam says Buffalo Bill symbolizes a lack of ease with one's skin. The character is also a combination of Victor Frankenstein
and his monster
in how he is the creator gathering body parts and experimenting with his own body. Halberstam writes, "He does not understand gender as inherent, innate; he reads it only as a surface effect, a representation, an external attribute engineered into identity." Buffalo Bill challenges "the interiority of gender" by taking skin and remaking it into a costume.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs (novel)
The Silence of the Lambs is a novel by Thomas Harris. First published in 1988, it is the sequel to Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon. Both novels feature the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, this time pitted against FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling.- Plot summary :The novel takes...
by Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris is an American author and screenwriter, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter...
, and its 1991 film adaptation, in which he was played by Ted Levine
Ted Levine
Frank Theodore "Ted" Levine is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs and Captain Leland Stottlemeyer in the television series Monk.-Early life and career:...
. In the film and the novel, he is a serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
who murders overweight women and skins them so he can make a "woman suit" for himself.
Background
The novel reveals that Gumb was born in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1949 and abandoned by his mother — an alcoholic prostitute who misspelled "James" on his birth certificate — and was taken into foster care
Foster care
Foster care is the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward is placed in the private home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent"....
at age two. He was severely abused
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
by his foster parents. He lived in foster homes until the age of 10, after which he was adopted
Adoption
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...
by his grandparents, who became his first victims when he impulsively murdered them at the age of 15. He was sent to Tulare Vocational Rehabilitation, a psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
where he was taught how to be a tailor.
He was working in a Baltimore curio store when he met and began a relationship with Benjamin Raspail. After Raspail left him, he killed Raspail's new lover, Klaus, and flayed
Flaying
Flaying is the removal of skin from the body. Generally, an attempt is made to keep the removed portion of skin intact.-Scope:An animal may be flayed in preparation for human consumption, or for its hide or fur; this is more commonly called skinning....
him.
Gumb's M.O.
Gumb's M.O.Modus operandi
Modus operandi is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode of operation". The term is used to describe someone's habits or manner of working, their method of operating or functioning...
is to kidnap
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
a woman by approaching her pretending to be injured, asking for help loading something heavy into his van, and then knocking her out in a surprise attack from behind once they are inside the van. He takes his hostage back to his house, then leaves her in a well in his basement, where he starves her until her skin is loose enough to easily remove. In the first three cases, he leads the victim upstairs under the belief that they are to be offered a shower, and slips a noose around their necks and pushes them from the stairs, strangling them. Then he skins part of their body (a different section on each victim), and then dumps what is left over into a different river, destroying any trace evidence. In the case of his first victim, Fredrica Bimmel, Gumb also weighs down her body, so she ends up being the third victim to be found, something he doesn't do to the other bodies. In the case of the fourth victim, he shoots her instead of strangling her, then insert a Death's-head Hawkmoth
Death's-head Hawkmoth
The name Death's-head Hawkmoth refers to any one of the three species of moth in the genus Acherontia. The former species is primarily found in Europe, the latter two are Asian, and most uses of the common name refer to the European species...
in her throat, and dumps the body. He is fascinated by the moths' metamorphosis, a process he wants to undergo by becoming a woman. In the film, he dances around with his penis
Penis
The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...
tucked between his legs, wearing a silk cape which he flourishes like butterfly wings (in the novel, he tucks his penis between his legs after taking a shower).
Gumb thinks of his victims as things rather than people, often referring to his victims with the pronoun "it", for example, "It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again." The one creature he reserves affection for is his pet poodle
Poodle
The Poodle is a breed of dog. The poodle breed is found officially in toy, miniature, and standard sizes, with many coat colors. Originally bred as a type of water dog, the poodle is highly intelligent and skillful in many dog sports, including agility, obedience, tracking, and even herding...
, Precious, which he often speaks to in baby talk while torturing
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
his victims.
In The Silence of the Lambs
The FBI intensifies the manhunt for Gumb when he kidnaps Catherine Martin, the daughter of Republican U.S. SenatorUnited States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Ruth Martin. FBI trainee Clarice Starling
Clarice Starling
Clarice M. Starling is a fictional character and the protagonist in the novels The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal by Thomas Harris....
enlists serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter M.D. is a fictional character in a series of horror novels by Thomas Harris and in the films adapted from them.Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer...
's help in tracking Gumb down, unaware that Lecter had met Gumb while treating his lover, Raspail; Lecter provides her with assistance in the form of vague clues designed to help her figure it out for herself. Starling finds Gumb in Belvedere, Ohio
Belvedere, Ohio
Belvedere is a populated place near Bloomingdale in Jefferson County, Ohio, United States.Belvedere, Ohio is also the name of a fictional town depicted in the novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, as well as the 1991 motion picture based on the novel....
after determining that Fredrica Bimmel, his first victim, knew him before he killed her. Gumb flees into his basement, where he stalks Starling with a .357 Magnum
.357 Magnum
The .357 S&W Magnum , or simply .357 Magnum, is a revolver cartridge created by Elmer Keith, Phillip B. Sharpe, Colonel D. B. Wesson of firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson, and Winchester. It is based upon Smith & Wesson's earlier .38 Special cartridge. The .357 Magnum cartridge was introduced in...
and a pair of night vision
Night vision
Night vision is the ability to see in low light conditions. Whether by biological or technological means, night vision is made possible by a combination of two approaches: sufficient spectral range, and sufficient intensity range...
goggles. Starling ultimately guns him down after hearing him pull back the hammer of his weapon.
Influences
Harris based various elements of Gumb's M.O. on six real-life serial killers:- Jerry BrudosJerry BrudosJerome Henry "Jerry" Brudos was an American serial killer and necrophiliac, also known as "The Lust Killer" and "The Shoe Fetish Slayer".-Early life:...
, who would dress up in his victims' clothing and keep their shoes. - Ed GeinEd GeinEdward Theodore "Ed" Gein - July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes...
, who fashioned trophies and keepsakes from his victims' bones and skin. He also made a female skin suit and skin masks. - Ted BundyTed BundyTheodore Robert "Ted" Bundy was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women during the 1970s, and possibly earlier...
, who pretended to be injured (using an arm-brace or crutches) as a ploy to ask a select few of his victims for help or assistance. They helped him, and this was when he subsequently incapacitated and killed them, dumping their bodies far away. - Gary M. HeidnikGary M. HeidnikGary Michael Heidnik was an American murderer who kidnapped, tortured and raped six women and kept them prisoner in his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania basement.-Childhood:...
, who kidnapped six women and held them prisoner as sex slaves. - Edmund KemperEdmund KemperEdmund Emil "Big Ed" Kemper III , also known as "The Co-ed Killer", is an American serial killer who was active in California in the early 1970s. He started his criminal life by shooting both his grandparents when he was 15 years old. Kemper later killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers in...
, who, like Gumb, killed his grandparents as a teenager "just to see what it felt like." - The then-unidentified Green River KillerGary RidgwayGary Leon Ridgway is an American serial killer known as the Green River Killer. He murdered numerous women in Washington during the 1980s and 1990s, earning his nickname when the first five victims were found in the Green River. He strangled them, usually with his arm but sometimes using ligatures...
, who, like Gumb, dumped women's bodies in rivers and inserted foreign objects into their corpses.
Analysis
Marjorie Garber, author of Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, asserts that despite the book and the film indicating that Buffalo Bill merely believes himself to be transsexualTranssexualism
Transsexualism is an individual's identification with a gender inconsistent or not culturally associated with their biological sex. Simply put, it defines a person whose biological birth sex conflicts with their psychological gender...
, they still imply negative connotations about transsexualism. Garber says, "Harris's book manifests its cultural anxiety through a kind of baroque bravado of plot," and calls the book "a fable of gender dysphoria gone spectacularly awry".
Barbara Creed, writing in Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in the Hollywood Cinema, says that Buffalo Bill wants to become a woman "presumably because he sees femininity as a more desirable state, possible a superior one". For Buffalo Bill, the woman is "[a] totem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...
animal". Not only does he want to wear women's skin, he wants to become a woman; he dresses in women's clothes and tucks his penis behind his legs to appear female. Creed writes, "To experience a rebirth as woman, Buffalo Bill must wear the skin of woman not just to experience a physical transformation but also to acquire the power of transformation associated with woman's ability to give birth." Buffalo Bill wears the skin of his totem animal to assume its power.
Judith Halberstam, author of Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, writes, "The cause for Buffalo Bill's extreme violence against women lies not in his gender confusion or his sexual orientation but in his humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
presumption that his sex and his gender and his orientation must all match-up to a mythic norm
Norm
-In academia:A designated standard of average performance of people of a given age, background, etc.*Norm , a set of statements used to regulate artificial intelligence software...
of white heterosexual masculinity." Halberstam says Buffalo Bill symbolizes a lack of ease with one's skin. The character is also a combination of Victor Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein was born in Napoli, is a Swiss fictional character and the protagonist of the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley...
and his monster
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name...
in how he is the creator gathering body parts and experimenting with his own body. Halberstam writes, "He does not understand gender as inherent, innate; he reads it only as a surface effect, a representation, an external attribute engineered into identity." Buffalo Bill challenges "the interiority of gender" by taking skin and remaking it into a costume.