Event Summary: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

Even if you haven’t seen any of the Swedish movies made from the trilogy of novels by Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest will still wreak havoc on your emotions.

A quick summary of the story is this: Lisbeth Salander is a twenty-something punk computer-hacking genius who has no civil rights because of her status as legally insane. Being a woman without rights, she is taken advantage of on many occasions and hasn’t been taken seriously by many people aside from the reporter whom she helped rescue from wrongful conviction: Mikael Blomkvist. Due to the fact that she has no legal rights of her own, she was given a guardian to take care of her financial needs and to make sure that she didn’t get into trouble. He raped her. This becomes the crux of her trial for the attempted murder of her sadistic father who had abused her mother during her childhood. This was not the first time that she had attempted to kill him. When she was a child, she threw gasoline on him and threw a match in the car because the police would not save her mother from him. However, this event triggered a conspiracy around her to keep her from ever having legal rights and being considered sane by a secret government organization. This organization sent her to a mental institution where she was abused physically and sexually by the head psychiatrist who convinces the prosecution to send her back to his hospital instead of to prison if she is found guilty.

This movie, and the two others before it, examine gender relations in European countries, particularly in Sweden. In the Verstraete article, immigrants are described as second-class non-citizens whose problems do not typically receive any thought from the European community. Women in particular are treated with suspicion because they are associated with criminal enterprises like prostitution and because their demons of rape and other gender/sexual persecution are viewed as impossible for a government to intervene in (31). Lisbeth is treated in much the same way. Because she is suspected to be a criminal, the fact that she is a woman takes credence away from her claims. Especially as the psychiatrist dismisses everything as fantasies or delusions, Lisbeth’s position as a second-class female comes into light. Until the defense provides undeniable proof that Lisbeth is not coming up with stories which derive from madness and the licentiousness which is often thought connected to it, Lisabeth’s sex and her appearance work against her.

Being a woman myself, I found this movie quite difficult to watch passively. Every time that psychiatrist or one of the conspirators appeared on the screen, smiling smugly, I wanted to attack him and vindicate Lisbeth. Yet, I appreciate what the author and the movie are trying to communicate: sexual discrimination still exists, especially if we get caught up in legal definitions versus recognizing the humanity of another, perhaps different person.