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Set & ContinueSweden2011(158 min)
Along with The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is based on Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s best-selling trilogy about men who hate women. The global popularity of the series (both Larsson’s original novels and the Swedish film adaptations directed by Niels Arden Oplev in 2009) is largely based on the unique character of Lisbeth Salander, a punkish, bisexual, antisocial hacker with a photographic memory who, despite her petite size and physical vulnerability, is extraordinarily strong. Though persecuted by her criminally insane father and brother and institutionalized by a corrupt patriarchy, she succeeds in using her rare intelligence and laser-like focus to avenge her mother, solve fascist femicides and subdue her own enemies. According to Mikael Blomkvist (the female-friendly male lead in all three Swedish films), Lisbeth has Asperger’s syndrome. There is no mention of Asperger's in the 2011 American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by David Fincher.
According to Stuart Murray (Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination), despite the prominence of real-life women on the spectrum (such as, Temple Grandin, Donna Williams, Sue Rubin and Amanda Baggs), the representation of females with autism in popular narratives is very rare. Perhaps reflecting the fact that males are four times more likely than females to have ASD, most characters with autism in fictional films and TV shows are males, or more specifically young boys. This situation leads Murray to adopt the term “research orphans,” which was coined by Ami Klin (Director of Autism Research at Yale University) “because of the difficulty in finding sufficient numbers of autistic females to use in large-scale research.” Yet this rarity makes Lisbeth Salander all the more appealing as a sexually ambiguous action hero, with whom both women and men can identify. The global success of the series shows how the “autistic savant” has become an updated incarnation of the underdog turned-crime-fighting superhero—one who combines the biological idiosyncrasies of mutant X-men with the anti-social, hyper-perceptive intelligence of Sherlock Holmes. An American version of the first film in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by David Fincher, was released in December 2011.
Watch the American trailer for the first of the Swedish films here: http://youtu.be/rIrjgFphVIc
Read an analysis of Lisbeth Salander’s pros and cons of having Asperger’s syndrome here: http://www.cnsforum.com/educationalresources/filmforum/girl_with_dragon_tattoo/