Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses: Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy in Feminist Perspective

By Vanderbilt University Press

Stieg Larsson was an unabashed feminist in his personal and professional life and in the fictional world he created, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest are full of graphic depictions of violence against women, including stalking, sexual harassment, child abuse, rape, incest, serial murder, sexual slavery, and sex trafficking, committed by vile individual men and by corrupt, secretive institutions. How do readers and moviegoers react to these depictions, and what do they make of the women who fight back, the complex masculinities in the trilogy, and the ambiguous gender of the elusive Lisbeth Salander?

These lively and accessible essays expand the conversation in the blogosphere about the novels and films by connecting the controversies about gender roles to social trends in the real world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Release date: Jul 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780826518514

Book preview

Introduction

Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses got its start in the summer of 2010, when the final installment of the Millennium trilogy was released in the United States, fueling sales of all three volumes. People could be seen reading Stieg Larsson’s books on planes, in trains, at the beach, in backyard lounge chairs, and in bed, sitting up late into the night. What struck us in our own readings of Larsson was the unexpected combination of familiar crime fiction devices—rape, murder, mayhem, etc., often at women’s expense and described in excruciating detail—served up with a distinctly feminist flavor and with some remarkable feminist characters. The juxtaposition was jarring, yet strangely compelling, and the question it raised more than any other was What do other feminists think about these books?

The Millennium trilogy revolves around two main protagonists, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. In book 1, we are introduced to Blomkvist, a middle-aged investigative journalist recently convicted of libeling a powerful businessman. In trying to extricate himself from this legal mess, he crosses paths with Henrik Vanger, a formerly powerful industrialist who offers to support Blomkvist in exchange for help in unraveling a family mystery. Through his involvement with the Vanger family, Blomkvist eventually meets Lisbeth Salander, a freelance hacker and investigator with a punk, tattooed appearance and a mysterious past. As the trilogy unfolds, we learn more about Salander and her troubled background, which includes a horrifically abusive father and a victimized mother, a sadistic state psychiatrist who enjoyed torturing her while she was under his care, a guardian who rapes her, a violent and thuggish half-brother, and a corrupt criminal justice system intent on prosecuting her for murders she did not commit. Salander saves Blomkvist’s life early in the trilogy, and Blomkvist later gathers a small but devoted group of friends and allies to work on Salander’s behalf.

Along the way, we meet a remarkable cast of supporting characters. There is Erika Berger, who is Blomkvist’s friend, his married lover, his colleague, and his editor in chief at Millennium, and Miriam Wu, a half-Swedish, half-Asian lesbian with whom Salander is both friend and lover. There are good men (such as Salander’s first guardian and her former boss) and there are bad men (such as her father, her half-brother, and a cast of assorted goons and thugs). We meet strong women who stand up for themselves and defend themselves, and we meet many nameless women who are victims of men’s sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Some critics argue that many of the trilogy’s characters are one-dimensional and lack complexity. For instance, Salander’s father and half-brother are simply evil and devoid of any goodness. In contrast, Salander’s first guardian is a kind and gentle man who views her as an equal and provides her with wise counsel. While some characters lack nuance, Larsson’s ability to pack many different social issues and controversies into his complex stories keeps us talking about them. Violence against women takes center stage, and Larsson also examines shoddy journalism, out-of-control capitalism, incompetent law enforcement, and a Swedish state that fails to protect its citizens. Racism, sexism, the role of cutting-edge technology, and the ability of hackers to penetrate into any system are also some of the topics he addresses. While Salander attracts most of the attention from critics, Larsson’s wide-ranging social critiques strike us as equally responsible for popular interest in the trilogy.

Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses uses a variety of feminist approaches to examine the tensions inherent in many of the issues Larsson’s work raises. For example, is the explicit portrayal of violence against women a predictable convention intended to sell the books? Is it simply encouraging voyeurism? Or is Larsson providing an unvarnished view of a harsh reality that more people need to recognize in order to stop the violence? Is Salander a hero for women everywhere, with her gender ambiguity and her feminist avenging power? Or is she a cautionary tale about body hatred and the consequences of going it alone in the face of sexual abuse and harassment? Is Sweden a bastion of social progressivism, gender equity, and sexual freedom? Or is it a haven for reactionary misogynists, neoliberal free-marketeers, and corrupt state officials?

Larsson’s work also raises broader questions about the relationship between individuals and society. We see various characters challenging social norms. Salander is perhaps the best example of this: she designs her appearance to be decidedly unfeminine and nonprofessional, she scorns established social institutions, and she adheres to her own set of rules about ethics and justice. Blomkvist and Berger’s relationship is clearly outside the norms of monogamy or adultery, women such as Harriet Vanger are successful corporate leaders, and the misfits of the underground group Hacker Republic uncover hidden secrets and rescue friends.

Yet, there are also many characters who fail to confront or change societal norms. Salander herself displays a strong unease with her body and decides to get breast implants. Berger is unable to transform the aggressively hypermasculine workplace culture of mainstream journalism, Harriet Vanger has to fake her own death to escape from her sadistically abusive brother, and the hackers—while successful at bringing down corrupt and unsavory individuals—fail to transform existing social structures.

How do we make sense of this? Larsson portrays a complex world in which defying norms is not a straightforward matter, and social structures seem impervious to change. Even as some are challenged, others are reinforced (witness Inspector Jan Bublanski, who personally supports his sexually harassed colleague, Sonja Modig, but fails to take any formal action on her behalf). We can read the Millennium trilogy as interrogating oppressive social norms and at the same time see it as exposing the intractability of real structural change. This ambiguity raises important issues of action and advocacy.

For us, a particularly important aspect of Larsson’s trilogy is the question it raises about appropriate responses to interpersonal violence and social injustice. Lisbeth Salander is a powerful exemplar of this throughout the trilogy. She is a one-woman force, physically retaliating against those who violate her (and her sense of right and wrong) to the extent of disabling an abusive husband she encounters in Grenada and leaving him to drown in a hurricane, firing a nail gun into her sociopathic half-brother’s feet and leaving him to be killed by a motorcycle gang, and, most infamously, crudely tattooing indelible invectives onto her rapist-guardian’s torso and then maintaining constant surveillance over him to keep him in check. The kick-ass character of Lisbeth Salander is undeniably compelling. In his own way, Blomkvist, too, is a maverick of sorts—the crusading investigative journalist who independently exposes corrupt corporate executives. Through these characters, Larsson appears to support the view that we have to take matters of injustice into our own hands because we cannot rely on established institutions to look out for the oppressed and the abused.

Yet Salander ultimately requires the help of friends and allies—and their strategic manipulation of the state—to clear her name and restore her life. And while the independent journalist and the private investigator successfully expose corrupt corporate practices, they also collude in covering up heinous crimes committed against innumerable women, and they benefit financially from their illegal hacking activity. Without a doubt, the moral high ground is murky here. Again, this raises questions: how should we respond to violence, abuse, and injustice, and when is individual reaction or organized collective action most effective?

Notably, this reflects tensions within feminism as well. What is gender equality and how do we achieve it? With the advent of second-wave feminism in the late sixties, we saw a variety of responses to these questions, ranging from radical critiques of capitalist patriarchy, to calls for the expansion of opportunities for women within existing social institutions, to media campaigns challenging sexist stereotypes of women and girls. As third-wave feminists emerged in the nineties, they advocated for liberated sexual expression, girl power, and personal agency as powerful weapons in the fight against gender oppression. At the same time, many feminists continue to analyze and expose interlocking systems of race, class, and gender inequality and work for social justice for all. We needn’t see any of these approaches as opposing or conflicting; they reflect just a few of the many feminist perspectives available for addressing social issues raised in Larsson’s work.

We can view Larsson as an amateur sociologist of sorts. We think his work ultimately wants us to address the question of what it means to live in a fair and just world. What is justice? Is justice the ability of individuals to protect themselves through whatever means they have at their disposal? Or is justice best administered through legal institutions? In a world where some men and women are able to live freely in unconventional ways, many other women are violated, abused, and murdered. There are no clear or easy answers here.

While the plot of the Millennium trilogy is intriguing, perhaps the saga surrounding Stieg Larsson is even more so. The story is familiar to many by now: After delivering the manuscripts to his editor, Larsson walked up seven flights of stairs to his office and suffered a massive heart attack. He did not live to see his work in print. He and his life partner, Eva Gabrielsson, were never legally married, and under Swedish law, Gabrielsson was not entitled to Larsson’s estate. Instead, Larsson’s father and brother inherited his estate—despite Gabrielsson’s claim that Larsson was estranged from them. They in turn claim to have been on good terms with Larsson and blame Gabrielsson for trying to drive a wedge between them. Yet more intriguing are the persistent rumors that Gabrielsson possesses a draft of a fourth Millennium book on Larsson’s laptop.

What of Gabrielsson’s role in crafting these books? As Joan Acocella (2011) points out in the New Yorker, there are allegations that Larsson had help writing the trilogy—namely, from Gabrielsson. Meanwhile, others complain Larsson’s work was not carefully edited, a criticism his Swedish editor, Eva Gedlin, rejects. Still more controversy has been raised about the translation from Swedish to English. Steven Murray, who translated the trilogy at top speed at the request of Norstedts (the Swedish publisher of Larsson’s books), is said to have been so distressed by the further extensive editing done by Christopher MacLehose of MacLehose Press (an imprint of Quercus, the London publisher of Larsson’s books) that he removed his name, hiding behind the pseudonym Reg Keeland to distance himself from the subsequent mess. Gabrielsson, too, has publicly criticized MacLehose’s version of Larsson’s work. MacLehose, for his part, argues that the books were unpublishable as originally translated and found willing publishers in the United Kingdom and the United States only after he edited them (Acocella 2011, 71). Although Larsson is credited with authorship, these issues raise questions about his and others’ contributions and roles. How much of the trilogy was Larsson’s vision and how much of it was crafted into being by others? Our perceptions of Larsson’s intent are unavoidably filtered as we read the books in serial editions and translations.

And then there are the inevitable films based on Larsson’s books. Apparently, the novels were hastily translated into English so Norstedts could show them to a film company (Acocella 2011, 71). David Fincher’s Hollywood version of Dragon Tattoo was already creating controversy while still in production in 2011, with its pornification of Lisbeth Salander in online posters (Silverstein 2011). By contrast, the Swedish adaptations of the series were released in 2009 to wide critical acclaim, especially for Noomi Rapace’s performance: the strikingly enigmatic actor plays Lisbeth Salander with a quiet, almost feral intensity antithetical to Hollywood’s topless incarnation.

Viewers of the Swedish films who subsequently read Larsson’s books will notice that the treatment of violence is different. They may be surprised at the brevity of the written scene where Nils Bjurman rapes Lisbeth, which takes longer to execute cinematically. As many authors attest in this collection, the episode is as shocking in the book as it is on screen, despite its brevity, but the question of distinguishing the reception of the films from that of the novels is nonetheless important. The handling of details such as the length of a violent encounter can lead to different interpretations and understandings of feminism in the trilogy.

In a 2009 acceptance speech for an award from the Observatorio contra la Violencia Domestica y de Gerero (Observatory against Domestic and Gender Violence), Gabrielsson affirmed Larsson’s consciousness as a feminist. He was, she recalled, able to see past superficial differences and understand that violence against women is an affront to all women, regardless of the different terms we use to categorize them. It is Larsson’s public support of women and feminism that led us to study his enormously popular novels from a variety of feminist perspectives. And like us, when readers finish Larsson’s books, they want to talk about them. We offer the essays here as exciting and engaging springboards for generating many more lively, passionate, and critical discussions.

References

Acocella, Joan. 2011. Man of Mystery: Why Do People Love Stieg Larsson’s Novels? New Yorker, January 10, 70–74.

Gabrielsson, Eva. 2009. Stieg Larsson Remembered (speech). First Post, September 30. www.thefirstpost.co.uk.

Silverstein, Melissa. 2011. The Pornification of Lisbeth Salander. Women and Hollywood, June 8. blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood.

Note: In this volume, we employ shortened versions of the titles in the trilogy (Dragon Tattoo, Played with Fire, and Hornet’s Nest). The editions each author consulted are indicated in the reference list specific to her or his chapter.

PART I

Misogyny and Mayhem

1

Always Ambivalent

Why Media Is Never Just Entertainment

Abby L. Ferber

In this essay, I want to focus on the deep feeling of ambivalence I have about the Millennium trilogy. How can three books that I am so fond of be so upsetting? Feminist cultural critics often identify their feelings of ambivalence in analyzing popular culture (Douglas 2010; Henry 2007; Kennedy 2002). Diane Shoos (2010) highlights this in her examination of the ongoing debates about the representation of, especially, the violated female body and the central issue of visibility and invisibility in regards to violence against women (115). My own ambivalence revolves around these issues.

While reading the Millennium trilogy, I was reminded of the words quoted by Maria Guajardo at a conference for educators in 2009: Our job is to comfort the distressed, and distress the comfortable. These powerful words have stayed with me since I heard them: they capture what I aim to do in my teaching, and what I struggle with each semester. Can we do both at the same time? It is a balancing act I have not yet perfected. In teaching extremely difficult topics, including the history of slavery, lynching, rape, and sexual assault, I am constantly aware of the emotional impact of the subject matter on my students, as well as the toll it takes on me. We become, in effect, secondary witnesses to the horrors we examine (Jacobs 2010, 8). I pay particular attention to the texts and films I select with this in mind. While my intent is to reveal these hidden histories to my students, their own gender and racial identities affect their particular experience of the class. I know that intent and impact are not always consistent. No matter what Stieg Larsson intended, I believe the Millennium trilogy can potentially distress the comfortable. Yet at the same time, I am disturbed by its potential impact on those already distressed.

There are many reasons I love reading these novels. First, they are populated by strong, complex women. In her analysis of Lara Croft, Helen Kennedy (2002) observes that many feminist scholars have welcomed the increasing appearance of active female heroines; Lisbeth Salander certainly falls within this category. Like Croft, she is a fantasy female figure who resonates with the recent media construct of girlpower. Regarding the mystery-thriller genre, which is largely a bastion of men heroes and protagonists, Kennedy observes that the general absence of such characters is part of the reasons why fans become so invested in these characters. . . . [The woman hero’s] occupation of a traditionally masculine world, her rejection of particular patriarchal values and the norms of femininity . . . are all in direct contradiction of the typical location of femininity within the private or domestic space.

Larsson depicts women as equally capable as men, whether as news reporters, editors, police officers, lawyers, novelists, or board members. He also pays his dues to women writers. Whenever he mentions other authors in the trilogy, they are almost always women (including, for example, Sue Grafton, Val McDermid, Sara Paretsky, Elizabeth George, Astrid Lindgren, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Enid Blyton).

The Millennium trilogy also depicts the reality of women’s lives and the positive impact of the women’s movement and feminism. Throughout the trilogy, feminism is often referred to in a positive light, which is unfortunately rare in pop culture. Larsson credits the women’s movement’s many successes in creating women’s shelters, rape crisis centers, hotlines, and other resources. In Dragon Tattoo, he refers to women who experience domestic violence and are forced to seek help from the women’s crisis centre (41). At another point, he writes, Gottfried Vanger . . . was the father of four daughters, but in those days women didn’t really count. . . . It wasn’t until women won the right to vote, well into the twentieth century, that they were even allowed to attend the shareholders’ meetings (170).

As numerous scholars have detailed, the mainstream media has generally embraced a postfeminist perspective, one that assumes gender equality has now been achieved and oppression of women is largely a thing of the past (Douglas 2010; McRobbie 2004). As Angela McRobbie observes, There is little trace of the battles fought, of the power struggles embarked upon, or of the enduring inequities which still mark out the relations between men and women (260). Part of the appeal of Larsson’s novels is his direct and repeated refutation of these postfeminist assertions. For example, the statistics at the beginning of each part of Dragon Tattoo reveal the extent of violence faced by women in Sweden.

Larsson tackles this violence as an urgent social problem threatening women’s lives and well-being. The original Swedish title, Män som hatar kvinnor (Men who hate women), specifically names the widespread violence as men’s actions against women. This is crucial. In their book Gender Violence, Laura O’Toole, Jessica Schiffman, and Margie Kiter Edwards provide ample evidence that incidents ranging from sexual harassment to sexual slavery

have a common link: male perpetrators, acting alone or in groups, for whom violence and violation are rational solutions to perceived problems ranging from the need to inflate one’s sexual self-esteem to denigrating rivals in war to boosting a country’s GNP. They also demonstrate the real harm that women face on a daily basis in a world that views them sometimes as property, often as pawns, and usually as secondary citizens in need of control by men. (2007, xi)

Too often, we find books and articles that generically decry violence against women. Larsson’s naming of it holds men accountable (Shoos 2010). While violence in lesbian and gay couples is a real problem, and women do perpetrate violence as well, men nevertheless commit the vast majority of violent acts against women and men (O’Toole, Schiffman, and Edwards 2007).

Making this violence visible is the trilogy’s strength, but also the source of my ambivalence. I first begin to feel uncomfortable on page 195 of Dragon Tattoo, when an investigator tells Mikael Blomkvist, What I’m talking about are those cases that stay with you and get under your skin. . . . This girl was killed in the most brutal way, and then proceeds to describe it. These words produce a powerful affect. As I reread the passage, I feel sick to my stomach and the muscles in my jaw tighten. According to Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth (2010, 1), this experience of affect is found in those intensities in the body. These unconsciously triggered visceral forces can either lead us to action or analysis, or leave us overwhelmed and immobilized. One minute I am reading this terrific book and enjoying it, and then all of a sudden, pow! It feels like a punch in the stomach, out of nowhere. From that point on, I am on guard; I can no longer simply enjoy the book. When I read this passage, I wonder if the detailed description of brutal violence is really necessary.

Experiences of sexual assault and exploitation loom large in the many descriptions of murdered women in Dragon Tattoo. Laura Mulvey argues that "the female body