A Study on the Silence of the Lambs in the Context of the Heroine's Journey Model

Abstract

Research ArticleSince cinema has the characteristics of being art and industry together, genre films have existed since the beginning of cinema, and genres have continued to evolve and hybrid genres have emerged in the history of cinema with the interaction of different film genres. The myths that have traditionally spread and can change shape in different societies also diversify in a way reminiscent of the diversification of genres in cinema over time. However, Joseph Campbell, an American literature professor, stated that all myths are different aspects of one and the same story with the concept of "monomytos", which he mentions in his book The Endless Journey of the Hero and borrowed from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Maureen Murdock, who reshaped Campbell's traditional male hero monomite model, established the Heroine Journey model in her 1990 book called The Heroine's Journey. In this study, the movie The Silence of the Lambs, an hybrid example of thriller and modern film noir, which was revealed by the findings of the research and has a deeply rendered female lead character directed by Jonathan Demme, was chosen as the sample. The film, which tells about the journey of young agent candidate Clarice Starling, was examined through Murdock's model of the Heroine's Journey. In the study, in which document analysis was used as a data collection method and the descriptive analysis method was applied in the analysis of the data obtained, suitability to model of the journey Clarice Starling experienced, whose character development was observed throughout the movie, was examined and tried to be revealed with the findings.