Steig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was certainly one of the most distressing and disturbing books I have read in a long time. I like a good detective story, and am a major fan of former sex crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein's Alex Cooper books, Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series, and Lisa Scottoline's legal-eagle heroines, just to name a few. There is plenty of gore and perversion in all of those works, but they all have a unifying thread: their underlying optimism and premise that the world is mostly a good one, with some exceptions. The exceptions are those anti-social, sociopathic elements that need to be brought to justice so the rest of us can carry on.
I suppose I subscribe to the notion that Anne Frank expressed so much more eloquently, in the midst of the horror of hiding from the Nazis during WWII, that most people are basically good at heart.
But The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not at all optimistic, and although there is resolution and a kind of justice at the end, it paints a horrific picture that focuses on serial murder, sexual perversion that results in violence, and a general sense of mayhem. It is terribly bleak, and overwhelmingly negative.
The popularity of the Larsson's series and now the subsequent movie (and the Swedish movie before the Hollywood production) seem to celebrate violence, especially violence against women. Certainly there have always been books, films and TV programs about the seamier side, but lately they seem to have reached such a point that we, as the public, have become inured to all of it. I believe that watching all of that material, in general, has desensitized us, and I worry especially about its effect on children. In my opinion, it results in making such extreme anti-social behavior seem commonplace, almost acceptable. Rather than working to do something about it, we are glorifying it.
Therefore, I will not be seeing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I will not help further the glorification of violence against women by contributing my movie dollar to its box office proceeds.
