How The Silence of the Lambs paved the way for our obsession with true crime

Anne-iversaries is a bi-weekly column by writer Anne T. Donahue that explores and celebrates the pop culture that defined the '90s and 2000s and the way it affects us now (with, of course, a few personal anecdotes along the way).

30 years ago this week, Dr. Hannibal Lecter crossed paths with FBI agent Clarice Starling and changed the way we consume true crime forever.

Of course, The Silence of the Lambs (both the 1988 novel and the movie that came out three years later) is a work of fiction. And despite his talent for groundbreaking storytelling, director Jonathan Demme obviously wasn't seeking to anchor Thomas Harris's book in reality — even if so many of the movie's traits are the same ones that have helped make true crime a pop culture sensation. In real life, the process of capturing serial killers is far less dramatic. But The Silence of the Lambs framed the business of apprehending a killer using the now-essential narrative tools that helped morph true crime into what it is today.

Think about it. A quiet sense of foreboding replaces the jump scares of traditional horror. The villain presents himself as a person to be darkly fascinated by instead of overtly feared. Instead of simply being the retelling of a serial killer who assists with an FBI case, the story is upheld by an exceptional attention to detail; to close-up shots, to stretches of silence, to the way bright, safe lighting doesn't stop Lecter from escaping his prison and killing whoever he needs to in order to stay free. And, most importantly, these elements helped make the film a smash hit that appealed to both normie viewers and niche audiences of horror fans. Not to mention that Lecter is a loose amalgamation of murderers Ed Gein, Gary M. Heidnik, and Ted Bundy, adding not only to his mystique, but to the chilling revelation that real-life monsters exist everywhere.

The Silence of the Lambs is, in a word, terrifying. Demme's subtle, quiet approach to most of the narrative creates a sense of unease so potent that it permeates every sense and every pore, leaving anyone watching to wonder if this scene will be the one to finally unload all the tension that's been built. At 14, one of my friends and I rented the VHS tape (since we were finally old enough to rent it on our own) and were almost bored by the way it strayed from the over-the-top slasher content that our short attention spans expected from a horror movie. But for weeks after, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

This weight stayed on my mind for many of the same reasons that true crime has become such a mainstay in film, television, books, and podcasting. The movie takes its audience through the terrifying realization that most predators are hardly the stranger-danger caricatures we were taught to avoid as kids; instead, they're cunning deceivers who go to great lengths to pass themselves off as Regular Guys™. Of course, Hannibal presents himself as much more. He's brilliant. He uses his psychological genius to pry into the minds of his subjects (or victims) and uses their traumas and neuroses as tools with which he can play. He merely speaks to, not yells at, Clarice. He listens to classical music. He can carry off a prison-issued white t-shirt. He's a genius in his field and also outside of it. He's small. He's older. He's not one to hide behind the bushes before jumping out in a hockey mask (although he does, of course, wear his own much worse mask). He's the ultimate reminder that we may not truly know anyone — especially the people who want to hurt us.

Which is a vastly improved way to consume and interact with the crime genre as a whole. Sure, the movie may have dazzled us with one particular character, but to fixate on Lecter (or even on its other villain, Buffalo Bill) is to do a disservice to the greater story. On its surface, The Silence of the Lambs is a crime drama with occasional gore and complete psychological havoc — but on a deeper level, it's a story about the humanity of a woman who learns how to hold onto her capacity to feel and to relate in the midst of horror and tragedy, saving someone else in the process. It's about survival and about the gift of being a person who wants to connect with other people. So yes, it changed the true crime game and the way we consume the worst stories tied to the worst people.

Of course, not all of the results of this have been positive. There's a fine line between fascination and misplaced romanticization, and both fictional and real-life killers have consistently found themselves the subject of everything from fandoms to heart-eyed discussions about their attractiveness. And this emphasis on the predator over victims have skewed our perceptions of who the anchor of a story should really be. It's become shockingly easy to lose sight of the humanity of the victims involved and to overshadow their identities with the looming presence of their attacker. And in both certain parts of The Silence of the Lambs and recent true crime hits like Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, Night Stalker (whose gratuitous crime scene photos nearly cancel out any good narrative intent), and The Dating Game Killer, there's often an emphasis on the sensational over the grim realities of being targeted by a predator or having a friend or family member snuffed out by one. (And that's not even getting started on the film's transphobic elements, which Jonathan Demme later apologized for and were part of the reason he went on to direct Philadelphia.)

The Dating Game Killer, while very well-researched, is a perfect example of the way true crime can fixate more on the perp than those he assaulted and killed. Aspects of the podcast are essentially dramaticized, with sound effects and film noir-esque background music making the story seem pulpy and salacious — as if Rodney Alcala's crimes weren't bad enough and needed a narrative boost to emphasize his psychopathy. Contrast this to last year's I'll Be Gone in the Dark, the HBO miniseries that follows the trajectory of the Golden State Killer and examines his crimes and what may have fuelled them. In the same way that the better moments of Lambs keep the focus on Clarice, the doc makes murderer Joseph James D'Angelo almost a secondary character to those who survived him. In this tale, the survivors — both his victims and his family — seize control over the story, detailing what they lived through but forcing us to keep eye contact with them the entire time.

Fortunately, the larger legacy of The Silence of the Lambs is the one we're finally starting to embrace more in true crime, as well as the discourse surrounding it. More and more, investigations into real-life horror have kept their attention fixed on victims as opposed to the maniacs who sought them out. And while the sleekness on display in the film has found its way into modern crime podcasts and TV series, that dark fascination with serial offenders has, in the better examples, shifted from how interesting they seem to the factors that sparked their sadistic inceptions.

Let's just hope we see more of that in modern true crime. After all, the monsters have never been the real stars of the story.