Tag: Silence

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Politics

Biden’s Silence on Abortion Rights at a Key Second Worries Liberals

Biden’s Silence on Abortion Rights at a Key Moment Worries Liberals

However, as a presidential candidate, Mr. Biden was far less vocal than many of his rivals in the primary, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who compared an Alabama law effectively prohibiting abortion to “a scene from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale'”.

“If you look at him as a Catholic and his attendance at Mass and the way he looks at life and death and everything else, he is culturally 1,000 percent Catholic,” said Jo Renee Formicola, professor of political science at Seton Hall University, who describes the relationship between investigated by the Catholic Church and American lawmakers. “He’s very, very Catholic, but when it comes to being political he’s a lot more pragmatic than Catholic.”

In office, Mr Biden reversed several Trump administration policies, including removing restrictions on abortion pills, lifting a ban on federally funded medical research using fetal tissue from abortions, and lifting restrictions on funding for U.S. and U.S.A. international groups that offer abortion services or referrals.

Some abortion advocates say these early steps are neglected. In his joint address to Congress, the threat to abortion rights was not mentioned, but only incidentally referred to “protecting the health of women”. Ms. Harris, who was once fairly open on the matter, has made no significant comments since taking office.

“The scale of the crisis calls for stronger leadership,” said Kelley Robinson, executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We want them to be explicit advocates of sexual and reproductive health care and use this bullying pulpit to make sure this is a priority expressed by the highest office in the country.”

Many proponents consider the president’s budget for fiscal year 2022, due to be released on Friday, to be a key indicator of the government’s position. Reproductive rights organizations urge Mr. Biden to keep his promise to remove the Hyde Amendment and other restrictions on federal funds.

His administration has also urged Congress to codify abortion rights that would guarantee reproductive rights nationwide even if the Supreme Court overthrew Roe. However, it has not proposed any specific legislation or outlined a strategy to get such a bill through Congress.

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World News

Why Asian People on Wall Avenue are breaking their silence

Why Asian Americans on Wall Street are breaking their silence

Alex Chi, Goldman Sachs

Source: Goldman Sachs

A year after the pandemic began in New York City, something snapped in Alex Chi.

The 48-year-old Goldman Sachs banker had been inundated with articles and video clips of horrifying, seemingly random attacks on Asian Americans in his home town. Then, in late March, eight people were gunned down in the Atlanta area — most of them immigrants from Korea and China — and Chi could stand it no longer.

The barrage of attacks forced a change in Chi, a partner and 27-year Goldman veteran. He became an in-house agitator of sorts, attending protests and rallying his colleagues around a simple idea: Silence is no longer an option.

“The message I’ve clearly put out to other Asian Americans is this: You have to start speaking up for yourselves,” Chi said in a recent interview. “We have to use this moment as an opportunity to finally make ourselves heard and change the narrative around Asian Americans in this country.”

This isn’t just the story of the political awakening of a single New York banker. It’s the story of thousands of Wall Street employees who are, many for the first time in their lives, connecting with co-workers in virtual chatrooms, over Zoom and in person to commiserate about being Asian in finance, and in America.

While Asian Americans make up one of the biggest minority groups in finance, comprising roughly 15% of the employees at the six biggest U.S. banks, few have made it to the operating committees of these institutions. Just one, former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, has led a top-tier bank.

Chi, who became a Goldman partner a decade ago, reaching one of Wall Street’s loftiest ranks, says he is one of the first Korean Americans to do so at the 151-year-old institution.

He believes Asian Americans at Goldman and beyond are now pushing back against the stereotype —rooted in a common cultural upbringing that stresses modesty and conflict avoidance and reinforced at times by workplace discrimination — that they are quiet, docile worker bees.

For the broader community, some 23 million people, the past few months have been the first time Asian American issues have reached the national stage in decades. The last time this has happened was probably in the early 1980s, when the beating death of Vincent Chin galvanized an earlier generation to form affinity groups, according to historians.

‘China virus’

The arrival of the coronavirus last year brought a surge in bias crimes against Asian Americans, especially in New York and California. Many of the assaults have been against senior citizens and women. The violence has shattered the sense of security for many in the group, according to the Pew Research Center.

But a silver lining to the racial scapegoating that accompanied Covid-19 has been that it has unified many Americans of Asian descent, the fastest-growing minority group in the U.S. They make up a significant portion of the corporate workforce in industries including finance, technology and health care, and are an emerging force in politics.

“There’s so many differences within Asians, but you’re treated as one group,” said Joyce Chang, chair of global research at JPMorgan Chase. “Now, being targeted for hate crimes, people are saying, we are being treated like a monolith, we may as well get organized.”

Lillie Chin, mother of Vincent Chin who was clubbed to death by two white men in June 1982, breaks down as a relative (L), helps her walk while leaving Detroit’s City County Building in April, 1983.

Bettmann | Getty Images

Chang says she studied the history of anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. while at Columbia University in the 1980s, including the vicious 1982 killing of Chin by two bat-wielding Detroit autoworkers who mistakenly assumed he was Japanese. The killers, who blamed Japan for the decline of the U.S. auto industry, were fined $3,000 and avoided prison.

Chang said the current period reminds her of that time. Both for the larger issues — in the 1980s, anxiety over Japanese economic might was common, while today the emergence of China as a global superpower has policymakers worried — as well as the response.

The first use of the phrase “China virus” by former President Donald Trump on Twitter in March 2020 led directly to an increase in online and offline anti-Asian abuse, according to a recent report in the American Journal of Public Health. Trump had nearly 90 million followers before getting booted from the platform.

A close-up of President Donald Trump’s notes shows where Corona was crossed out and replaced with Chinese Virus as he speaks during a White House briefing, March 19, 2020.

Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Now, people are forming pan-Asian affinity groups to help keep track of the bias attacks and boost philanthropy. One such nonprofit, the Asian American Foundation, launched this month and said it has already raised $125 million for AAPI causes over the next five years. It, along with JPMorgan and other organizations, have given money to Stop AAPI Hate, a new group that began tracking bias attacks in January 2020 after a rash of incidents in California.

Initially, it was journalists in New York and San Francisco who chronicled the attacks, which began in the early days of the pandemic and ramped up this year, occurring on a daily basis at times. Then Asian American celebrities including actors and athletes amplified the coverage. Posts on social media brought home the idea that even being famous and powerful didn’t insulate people from feeling vulnerable.

The movement has extended to the finance realm. At JPMorgan, Chang says that after the Atlanta shootings, attendance at an internal forum for Asian Americans had 6,100 participants, about 10 times larger than the typical attendance before the pandemic.

The sentiment of many of those I spoke with was something akin to shock. Several had had superlative careers on Wall Street, and yet here they were, reliving some of the same trauma from their childhoods they had believed was a thing of the past.

A demonstrator during a rally in Seattle on March 13, 2021.

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

Tom Lee, co-founder of research boutique Fundstrat and a regular CNBC on-air guest, said he faced “merciless anti-Asian attacks” growing up in a small town 25 miles from Detroit. That tough childhood helped him chart his own course as one of the best-known market prognosticators in the country, he said, because he had learned to tune out noise.

“It’s been easy to feel like Asians have a bit of a bull’s-eye on their backs,” Lee said in an interview.

Mike Karp, CEO of Options Group, a recruiting firm that has placed thousands of traders and salespeople on Wall Street in the past three decades, put it a different way.

“They thought they were part of the mainstream until this ‘Chinese virus’ stuff,” Karp, who is Indian American, said of his AAPI clients. “Now there’s a building resentment that people have, and they aren’t taking it anymore.”

West Coast bias

Distress over the violence she was seeing in San Francisco and the initial lack of national media attention moved Cynthia Sugiyama, a senior vice president at Wells Fargo, to publish a highly personal piece in March.

Sugiyama says she has been overwhelmed by the response to her column, published in the San Francisco Chronicle and LinkedIn, from colleagues and others who related to her experiences being harassed as a child, and her resolve to respond to the current moment.

“I’ve never before felt this sense of community as much as now,” Sugiyama said. “What makes this moment pivotal is that the surge in anti-Asian sentiment on one side has been met with a powerful swell on the other side from Asian Americans who are finding their voices.”

Cynthia Sugiyama, head of HR communications for Wells Fargo.

Source: Cynthia Sugiyama

Sugiyama, who manages human resources communications for a company of 264,513 employees, said that Asian American employees have flocked to internal forums to share their feelings and experiences.

According to employees at some of the biggest banks, one of the main topics being discussed is the difficulty Asian Americans have climbing the corporate ladder.

Wall Street hierarchy

The Wall Street model is to take in thousands of college graduates a year, placing them on the bottom of a hierarchy where analysts and associates grind out long hours in support of merger deals or trading activity. By design, few junior bankers make it to the vice president or director level, where annual compensation typically reaches several hundred thousand dollars. Fewer still make it to managing director, where pay packages often total more than $1 million a year.

For instance, at JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, about 25,000 employees identify themselves as Asian. While roughly 1 in 4 of the bank’s professional workers are Asian, just 10% are senior managers. At the very top of the organization, the bank’s 18-person operating committee led by CEO Jamie Dimon includes just one Asian person, Sanoke Viswanathan.

Park Ji-Hwan | AFP | Getty Images

Some have had the realization that the playbook used by Asian Americans to reach a certain level of workplace achievement isn’t enough anymore.

“Every bank is happy to hire a young Asian who will work double hard and is good at math and analysis,” said a Morgan Stanley employee who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “As time goes on however, I noticed how most of the people I knew in Wall Street never really progressed past VP level, and many were laid off when cost-cutting rounds came.”

His explanation for this phenomenon is two-fold: Parents of Asian Americans drilled a set of principles into their children — study, work hard — that gets you past the first few hurdles at an investment bank, but that doesn’t necessarily help people advance beyond that. Further, little emphasis is given to so-called soft skills like public speaking and finding mentors, things needed at higher levels, he said.

Some corners of Wall Street are friendlier for Asian Americans than others, he said.

When it comes to stock research, people only care if an analyst makes them money, he said. With mergers advice, however, the client is always right, and sometimes owners of mid-sized and small companies didn’t want to work with nonwhite bankers, he said. In wealth management, Asian Americans often don’t have the social connections to help them succeed.

And, just as with Black and Latinx employees, Asian Americans are hindered because managers are more likely to support and promote people who look like themselves, he said.

‘A bit of bragging’

Lee, the Fundstrat co-founder, said that in his 24 years on Wall Street before striking out on his own, he often saw the careers of Asian Americans stall. What hampers them from progressing is an aversion to drawing attention to themselves and the clubby nature of banking at higher levels, he said.

“I’ve seen that the most successful people are the ones who do a bit of bragging,” Lee said. “Asians aren’t really good at that, and I think that hurts us, because it’s easy to not realize someone has a lot to offer if they aren’t bragging about it.”

Tom Lee, Fundstrat Global Advisors

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Despite the general success of the cohort in the corporate setting, Lee says, Asian Americans haven’t been involved enough in other areas of civic life, especially politics.

That may be changing, however. Kamala Harris, who is of Indian-Jamaican heritage, became the first Asian American, Black and female vice president, and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang is a front-runner for New York mayor. Asian American voters were a key constituency in the last presidential election, casting a record number of votes in states where President Joe Biden eked out narrow victories.

Still, some of the Asian Americans interviewed for this story said they felt invisible at work. Or worse, given the spike in harassment and violence, some felt like permanent foreigners despite having lived in the U.S. for decades. Most Americans can’t name a single prominent living Asian American, according to a recent survey.

A big umbrella

Part of what has hamstrung an Asian American political movement is that the construct itself has always been an imperfect solution, a term created in the late 1960s to consolidate smaller cohorts to gain leverage amid the wider Civil Rights movement.

Today, the term Asian American includes people from more than 20 countries across East and South Asia, each with their own languages, food and culture. People who have familial roots in China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea and Japan make up about 85% of all Asian Americans.

In fact, the presence of most Asians in the U.S. can be traced to the Civil Rights movement, which established that a race-based system of laws was unjust.

After an initial wave of immigration to the continental U.S. in the 1850s, Asians were seen as a “yellow peril” and explicitly excluded from coming to the U.S. for nearly a century by laws including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

That changed after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened up migration from Asia, Southern Europe and Africa, instead of solely favoring Western and Northern Europeans. The law would forever change the complexion of the country and happened only after the Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson.

President Lyndon Johnson signs the liberalized U.S. Immigration bill into law. Attending the ceremony on Liberty Island, (L-R) are: Vice President Hubert Humphrey; first lady Lady Bird Johnson; Mrs. Mike Mansfield (wife of the Senate Majority Leader); Muriel Humphrey; Sen. Ted Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy, on October 4, 1965.

Bettmann | Getty Images

When Johnson signed the landmark immigration legislation in 1965, he was quoted as saying that the previous system “violated the basic principle of American democracy, the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit.”

Seminal moment

Back at Goldman Sachs, Chi realized he had a part to play after the horror of the Atlanta shootings, at least within the confines of his 40,300-person firm. Some managers hadn’t been aware of the violence against Asian Americans, particularly in public areas like subway platforms.

Now, amid the company’s push to encourage more employees to return to Goldman’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, workers were speaking up, telling managers that they didn’t feel safe. Employees got permission to expense rideshares for their commute, and the bank invited public safety experts to offer advice, Chi said.

“In the past, they would’ve just sucked it up and done what they needed to do,” Chi said. “Now, our Asian American community here is speaking up, and they’re going to their managers and saying, ‘I’m not comfortable. Have you seen what’s going on?'”

CEO David Solomon meets with Asian partners and senior leaders of Goldman Sachs’ Asian Network

David Solomon | Goldman Sachs

Chi also reached out directly to CEO David Solomon, who quickly set up a roundtable meeting where he listened to senior Asian American executives air their concerns. When Solomon shared a photo of the event on social media and the bank’s internal homepage, it opened up the firm to many more discussions where managers acknowledged they hadn’t known what their Asian American employees were going through, Chi said.

“When I walked out of that room with one of my partners, we turned to each other and said, ‘Wow, this is a seminal moment, because here we are with our CEO, talking very openly about Asian American issues,’ ” Chi said. “That’s never happened before.”

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Categories
World News

Myanmar Troopers, Aiming to Silence Coup Protests, Goal Journalists

Myanmar Soldiers, Aiming to Silence Coup Protests, Target Journalists

Ten days after taking power in Myanmar, the generals issued their first order to journalists: stop using the words “coup”, “regime” and “junta” to describe the military takeover. Few reporters observed Orwell’s policy, and the junta pursued a new goal – the suppression of all freedom of expression.

Since then, the regime has arrested at least 56 journalists, banned online news outlets known for their harsh reporting, and disrupted communications by shutting down the mobile data service. Three photojournalists were shot and wounded while taking photos of the anti-coup demonstrations.

Under pressure from professional journalists, many young people who have come of age during a decade of social media and information sharing in Myanmar have come into battle, called themselves citizen journalists, and risked their lives to document the brutality of the military. They take photos and videos with their phones and share them online when they are given access. It is a role that is so common today that they are simply referred to as “CJs”.

“They are aimed at professional journalists so that our country needs more CJs,” said Ma Thuzar Myat, one of the citizen journalists. “I know that at some point I could be killed for videotaping what was happening. But I will not resign. “

Ms. Thuzar Myat, 21, noted that few people were able to document the protests in 1988 when the Tatmadaw, as the military is known, exterminated a pro-democracy movement by massacring an estimated 3,000 people. She said she saw it as her duty to gather evidence of today’s violence, even though a soldier had already threatened to kill her if it didn’t stop.

The regime’s obvious goal is to set the clock back to a time when the military ruled the country, the media was tight, and only the richest people had access to cell phones and the internet. But the new generation of young people who grew up with the internet say they are not giving up their freedoms without a fight.

“What we are seeing is a widespread attack on the centers of democracy and freedom,” said U Swe Win, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Myanmar Now, one of the banned outlets. “We are very concerned that Myanmar will become North Korea. They will destroy all forms of information gathering and sharing. “

The Tatmadaw has a history of suppressing the opposition. When it took control in 1962, it ruled for nearly half a century before it decided to share power with elected civilian leaders and open the country to the outside world.

In 2012, under a new quasi-civil government, inexpensive cell phones poured in and Facebook became the dominant online forum. Vibrant media sprouted online and competing newspapers flocked to newsstands.

Protests have broken out almost every day since the February 1 coup – often led by young people – and a broad civil disobedience movement has brought the economy to a virtual standstill. In response, soldiers and police killed at least 536 people.

At the United Nations on Wednesday, the special envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener warned that “a bloodbath is imminent”. The regime has arrested thousands, including the country’s civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. On Thursday, one of her lawyers said she was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act and added a list of suspected crimes.

While the UN Security Council has not punished the military in Myanmar, it has spoken increasingly negatively about the repression. In a statement released Thursday evening, the Council expressed “deep concern about the rapidly deteriorating situation and strongly condemned the use of force against peaceful demonstrators and the deaths of hundreds of civilians, including women and children”.

While the military uses state media to spread its propaganda and fire warnings, attacks on journalists and arrests have increased dramatically in recent weeks.

In order not to be targeted, journalists have stopped wearing helmets or vests with the word “PRESS” on them and have tried to adapt to the demonstrators. Many also go quietly by not receiving credit for their published work and avoiding sleeping in their own four walls. Even so, their professional cameras can give them away.

At the same time, soldiers and police routinely search civilians’ phones for protest photos or videos.

“If you get arrested with video clips, you can go to jail,” said U Myint Kyaw, secretary of the Myanmar Press Council, an independent advocacy group for the news media, before he and most of the others stopped the panel in protest in February.

At a recent press conference, a junta spokesman said it was up to journalists to avoid behavior that could be construed as violating the law.

“Only the action of the journalist himself can guarantee that they will not be arrested,” said Brig. Gen. Zaw Min Tun spokesman. “If their actions are against the law, they will be arrested.” All three journalists shot and wounded claim to have been attacked by security forces.

Freelance journalist Ko Htet Myat Thu, 24, photographed protests in Kyaikto, a city in southern Myanmar, as a soldier on Saturday shot him in the leg, he said. A video of his arrest, recorded by a citizen journalist from a nearby building, shows soldiers beating him and forcing him to jump on his good leg as they lead him away.

Another photojournalist, U Si Thu, 36, who was shot that day, was hit in his left hand while holding his camera in front of his face and photographing soldiers in Mandalay, the country’s second largest city. He said he believed the soldier who shot him aimed at his head.

“I had two cameras,” he said, “ “So it was obvious that I am a photojournalist, even though I had neither a press helmet nor a vest.”

“I am sure the military junta will target journalists because they know we are showing the world the realities and they want to stop us by arresting or killing us,” he added.

Half of the 56 journalists arrested have been released, according to a group tracking arrests. Those released included reporters for The Associated Press and the BBC.

However, 28 remain in custody, including at least 15 people sentenced to up to three years’ imprisonment under an unusual law prohibiting the dissemination of information that could induce military officers to neglect or fail to perform their duties.

Ma Kay Zon Nway, 27, a reporter for Myanmar Now, televised her own arrest in late February while escaping from police in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. Your video shows the police shooting into the air as the demonstrators flee. The sound of their labored breathing can be heard as the police catch up with them and take them away.

She is among those charged under the vague and comprehensive law. She was only allowed to meet her lawyer in person once.

Mr. Swe Win, the editor of Myanmar Now, was imprisoned for seven years in 1998 for protesting. “All of these legal proceedings are being conducted for formality reasons,” he said, adding, “We cannot expect fair treatment. ”

With mobile communications blocked, Facebook bans and nightly internet shutdowns, Myanmar’s mainstream media rely on citizen journalists for videos and news tips, said Myint Kyaw, the former press council secretary.

One of them, Ko Aung Aung Kyaw, 26, was videotaping the police arresting people in his neighborhood in Yangon when an officer spotted him. The officer cursed him Aimed his rifle and fired, Mr. Aung Aung Kyaw’s video shows.

The bullet hit a wall in front of him.

“I know that recording such things is very risky and I may be shot or arrested,” he said. “But I think I have to keep doing it, to have evidence, to punish her.”

Rick Gladstone contributed to the coverage from New York.

Categories
Business

‘Silence of the Lambs’ celebrates 30th anniversary

'Silence of the Lambs' celebrates 30th anniversary

Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins star in “Silence of the Lambs.”

Orion Pictures

“Believe me, you do not want Hannibal Lecter inside your head,” veteran FBI Agent Jack Crawford warns trainee Clarice Starling, and viewers, at the start of Jonathan Demme’s Academy Award-winning film “Silence of the Lambs.”

Thirty years later, the charming, yet monstrous, villain remains fresh in the minds of modern audiences.

“Silence of the Lambs” is not the first film to delve into the twisted mind of Dr. Lecter, and certainly wasn’t the last. It’s based on Thomas Harris’ novel of the same name, which was actually the second book he wrote centered around the prolific and eerily bewitching serial killer, a follow-up to the hit “Red Dragon.”

Released on Valentine’s Day in 1991, “Silence of the Lambs” was a low-budget sleeper hit that gradually gained widespread critical acclaim and box office success. With Demme at the helm, the film was not only lauded as a cinematic work of art, but has had a lasting impact on Hollywood.

The film follows a young FBI trainee named Clarice Starling who is tasked with interviewing the brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who has been imprisoned for murder and cannibalism. Senior FBI Agent Jack Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into an ongoing serial murder case and Starling could be the perfect bait to get his cooperation.

Starring Jodie Foster as Clarice and Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Lecter, “Silence of the Lambs” quickly captured the imaginations of moviegoers.

“When I think back on the movies I really remember seeing in theaters, you know… it’s an alarmingly short number,” said Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University and a pop culture expert. “I left the theater thinking I had seen a movie to be reckoned with, in a way I didn’t usually feel leaving the theater.”

A big win for the horror genre

The film opened on a Thursday, garnering $1.4 million in ticket sales domestically. By the end of the weekend, it had tallied $11.6 million, according to data from Comscore.

And that was after running in less than 1,500 theaters, a relatively small number compared to modern day wide releases which often debut in up to 5,400 locations, explained Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.

The film had long legs in theaters, running for eight months and collecting more than $130.7 million in the U.S. and Canada and a total of $275 million worldwide.

Although not the first horror film to be nominated for the Academy Awards, or for the ceremony’s best picture honor, it was the first film in the genre to win the top award. In fact, “Silence of the Lambs” swept the 1992 Oscars, becoming only the third film in history to win best film, best director, best actor, best actress and best adapted screenplay.

“It Happened One Night” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” were the only films to previously achieve this distinction and no film has done it since.

“It was horror as presented by the Louvre,” Dergarabedian said.

Best Actor recipient Anthony Hopkins, Best Actress recipient Jodie Foster and Best Director recipient Jonathan Demme hold their Oscars at the 64th annual Academy Awards March 30, 1992 in Los Angeles, CA.

John T. Barr | Hulton Archive | Getty Images

While the horror genre has often been synonymous with blood, gore and jump scares, it’s actually a bit more broad and nuanced. Generally, the horror genre encapsulates any form of storytelling that is intended to scare, shock or stir up dread and terror in an audience.

This can take on many forms. “Silence of the Lambs,” for example is a psychological thriller in addition to being a horror film. Whereas a movie like “Poltergeist” is a supernatural horror film or “Shaun of the Dead” is a comedic horror film.

“If you define what the horror genre was before ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ it wasn’t all goofy slashers,” Thompson said. “There had been intelligent horror films, but I think there was a sense with ‘Silence of the Lambs’ that really did change the idea of what could constitute a horror movie. “It wasn’t so much about the moments of screaming, it was a much more almost quiet sense of absolute hopeless terror.”

Filmmakers had blended genres long before Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs.” The film arrived in Hollywood at a time when the horror genre had become inundated with “creatively exhausted” slasher films, said Adam Lowenstein, professor at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Horror Studies Working Group.

After the success of films like “Halloween,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13th,” the entertainment industry began to churn out films in the slasher subgenre. While there were a number of horror films produced in the ’80s and ’90s that went on to cultivate cult audiences, the majority of films were widely panned by critics and the category was soon thought of as inferior compared to other genres.

“I saw it when it came out and I was very impressed and very excited,” Lowenstein said. “Not just because it was a good movie, but because I was excited for the genre at large because here was in my mind an undeniable horror film that was winning all sorts of acclaim and it felt like a breakthrough in a sense.”

Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs.”

Orion Pictures

Prior to “Silence of the Lambs,” there had only been two films in the horror genre nominated for best picture since the very first Oscars ceremony in 1929 — “The Exorcist” in 1974 and “Jaws” in 1976.

In the years that followed, only three joined that list. “The Sixth Sense” was nominated for the top prize in 2000, “Black Swan” in 2011 and “Get Out” in 2018.

There is some debate within the entertainment community about whether Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” which won best picture in 2018, should be considered along these other films. After all, del Toro’s film was inspired by “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”

Lowenstein argued in favor of this. However, it seems that the film’s horror elements are overshadowed by other classifications like fantasy, romance and drama.

The brilliance of Jonathan Demme

Much of the success of “Silence of the Lambs” as a film is due to Demme. The filmmaker, who studied under horror legend Roger Corman, dialed back on the gore, at least for the first two-thirds of the film, and relied on tight close ups, editing and exposition to stir dread and terror in audiences.

With only around 16 minutes of screen time, Hannibal Lecter looms over all of the characters in the film. Ahead of his first appearance, Clarice is repeatedly warned about him. Crawford tells her not to let him into her head and Dr. Chilton, the director of the sanitarium in which Lecter resides, describes in detail how she is to behave around the imprisoned psychiatrist.

He then shows Clarice the reason the sanitarium insists on such precautions. Lecter had complained of chest pains nearly a decade before and was brought to the building’s medical center for an EKG. When his restraints and mouthpiece were removed, he brutally attacked a nurse.

“The doctors managed to reset her jaw more or less,” Chilton says, showing Clarice a picture. “Saved one of her eyes. His pulse never got above 85, even when he ate her tongue.”

The audience is not privy to the image, but the implied violence is enough to set a firm picture of “Hannibal the Cannibal.” That is, until audiences first lay eyes on him.

Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins star in “Silence of the Lambs.”

Orion Pictures

The man waiting for Clarice to approach his cell is a gentleman. His speech is impeccable, a cutting and succinct dialect that Hopkins said he mirrored from Hal 9000, the evil computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The camera begins cutting between Clarice and Hannibal, extreme close-ups that seem to suggest the characters are speaking to the audience and not each other, and the terror builds.

“Hopkins is only in it for 16 minutes,” Thompson said. “That piece of data is a real testimony to the real power of that movie and the highly disturbing nature of the message that I left [the theater] with. The intellectualizing of horrible behavior, the idea that this really monstrous character thought and behaved in ways that were rational and intelligent and ways in which I was taught to admire.”

It is only in the last third of the film when audiences get a glimpse at the physical monster lurking beneath the surface. Lecter, who had been planning his escape since the beginning, savagely beats two guards; hangs one from the rafters of the court house, disembowled, and carves the face from the other, using it to pose as the deceased officer in order to gain transport in an ambulance.

“Demme is not afraid to showcase [the film’s] attachments to the genre,” Lowenstein said. “He understands the need to alternate graphic violence and implied violence. You increase the impact of each by alternating them. ‘Silence of the Lambs’ does that very well.”

The case of Buffalo Bill

One piece of “Silence of the Lambs,” which has become a hot topic in recent years, is its portrayal of Buffalo Bill.

In Harris’ novel and Demme’s film, Jame Gumb is a disturbed man. He is a man who kidnaps women so he can make suits from their skins. Within the film, Gumb dances around wearing women’s clothing, a woman’s scalp complete with blond hair, and has had a homosexual relationship with a least one man.

On the surface, the character is very negative stereotype of the LGBTQ community. However, in both the book and the film, it is pointed out that Gumb is not actually a transsexual person.

“Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence,” Dr. Lecter tells Clarice about the serial killer. “Our Billy wasn’t born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse. Billy hates his own identity, you see, and he thinks that makes him a transsexual. But his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying.”

Ted Levine as Jame Gumb aka Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs.”

Orion Pictures

“When ‘Silence of the Lambs’ came out, the list of trans characters in big movies and in television was a pretty short list,” Thompson said.

While the filmmakers intention may not have been to showcase the trans community in this way, with so few of these characters in the industry, having someone who is questioning their identity be a savage serial killer didn’t help public perception of transgender individuals.

Not to mention, during the time that “Silence of the Lambs” was released, the majority of transgender characters were either portrayed as prostitutes or male characters dressing in drag for comedic effect.

“There’s no doubt that we live in a time now that our awareness of not just queer but trans issues is so much more nuanced and mainstream,” Lowenstein said. “There’s no doubt that the portrayal of Buffalo Bill would have to undergo a rewrite of some kind and would have to deal with it in a more in-depth way.”

“I don’t think it disqualifies the film from admiration or further study,” he continued. “It is, as all film, a product of its era. It’s valuable to go back and study old films. They tell us something about the time they came from.”

An enduring legacy

“Silence of the Lambs” helped elevate the horror genre in the decades after its release, but it also had a clear rippling effect across the entertainment industry.

Harris wrote four novels that centered around the character of Dr. Lecter — “Red Dragon,” “Silence of the Lambs,” “Hannibal” and “Hannibal Rising” — and there have been adaptations of each in the last four decades.

However, Demme’s film took Harris’ work and brought it into the mass culture. The iconic portrayal of Dr. Lecter by Hopkins, the quiet and profound performance by Foster and the psychological elements of the film that captured audiences and filmmakers in 1991 are still influencing them today.

Nearly 30 years to the day of the anniversary of “Silence of the Lambs” debuting in theaters, CBS launched a series called “Clarice” which follows the newly minted FBI agent a year after the events of “Silence of the Lambs.”

Clarice Starling and the VICAP team are deployed to Tennessee where the FBI is laying siege against a fringe militia group called “The Statesmen,” on CBS’ “Clarice.” , Thursday, Feb. 18 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Pictured Rebecca Breeds as Clarice Starling (Photo by Brooke Palmer/CBS via Getty Images)

CBS Photo Archive | CBS | Getty Images

Only a few years ago, NBC had a three-season series called “Hannibal,” which followed the psychiatrist in the time leading up to his arrest.

Outside of direct adaptations, “Silence of the Lambs” has inspired and laid the groundwork for numerous projects.

“You look at a series like ‘Dexter,’ it owes so much to ‘Silence of the Lambs,'” Thompson said.

The Showtime series, which ran for eight seasons, follows Dexter Morgan, a Miami-based blood spatter expert who doesn’t just solve murders, he commits them, too. He’s a serial killer, but only murders the guilty. His adoptive father, recognizing his homicidal urges at a young age, taught him to hone his skills and use them for good.

Dexter is an antihero that, by all accounts, audiences should be rooting against. However, he is portrayed as a normal guy who rationalizes his addiction — murder — in such a straight-forward way that viewers begin to rationalize it, too. His intellect, tenacity and sense of justice almost shield him from ire. The audience sympathizes with him.

Then there is NBC’s series “The Blacklist,” which started as a show about a career criminal named Raymond Reddington who turns himself in to the FBI, but will only talk to Agent Elizabeth Keen, who is coincidentally starting her first day at the bureau.

James Spader stars as Raymond Reddington in “The Blacklist” on NBC.

NBC

When Keen first meets Reddington, he’s sat in a glass cage waiting for her with a similar expression as Dr. Lecter had while waiting for Clarice to arrive. While the show ultimately deviated from “Silence of the Lambs,” its initial premise centered heavily around Reddington using his expertise while incarcerated to help Keen solve crimes and apprehend criminals.

A similar storytelling setup can be found in Fox’s “Prodigal Son,” although the Hannibal/Clarice relationship is now between a father and son.

Malcolm bright is an ex-FBI agent turned NYPD consultant whose father, Martin Whitly, is a serial killer known as “The Surgeon.” Malcolm is forced on multiple occasions to consult with his father on cases because of his unique insights into the psychology of criminals and murders.

Tom Payne and Michael Sheen star in Fox’s “Prodigal Son.”

Fox

Some of the marketing for “Prodigal Son” even featured Whitly standing behind his son, mimicking the iconic shot of Clarice with Dr. Lecter.

“‘Silence of the Lambs’ opened the door for other filmmakers,” Dergarabedian said. “You could pitch unconventional heroes and antiheroes and not get a boot out the door.”

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.