The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Film Analysis

Equal Representation in a Crime Movie

The film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo allows for a woman to be represented outside of what is stereotypical of women in film. This stereotypical role is best described as a woman having to wait for a man to do what is needed to keep the woman safe and that a woman should look feminine and pretty.

The lead character, Lisbeth Salander, played by Noomie Rapace, is the genius sidekick to male lead Mikael Blomkvist, played by Michael Nyqvist. She helps him solve a half a centuries old crime using her incredible computer hacking skills. Along this path, Lisbeth is raped by her social worker since she has been placed under supervision of the Swedish government after her father died and her mother became hospitalized.

When she is raped by her social worker, she does not wait for someone else to exact justice for this wrong doing, she takes the matter into her own violent hands. She insures that this man will never rape another woman again by tattooing “I’m a Rapist Pig” to his stomach. This strong female is able to overpower a man and take matters into her own hands, something that is rarely seen in film. Also, Lisbeth proves to be much smarter than her male counter part, Mikael, when she rushes in at the last minute to save him from being murdered. Typically, these roles would be reversed with Mikael rushing in to save Lisbeth at the last minute but this film breaks this stereotype by having a woman to save a seemingly weak man. Lastly, it is important to note Lisbeth’s appearance. Unlike typical female leads that have flowing long hair and beautiful makeup, she has short black hair with thick black eye liner. This appearance breaks the norm for women being over sexualized in crime films as the romantic interest. Instead, she is shown to be possibly bisexual when it is made clear that she sleeps with a woman as well as Mikael. These matters are presented in a very matter of fact way without making them into these raunchy scenes as a woman goes crazy for some guy. The film shows that a woman is able to be equally sexual as a man and this is also a rare