There are few movie posters more iconic than The Silence of the Lambs, and there are few movie stars as iconic as that movie’s large, charismatic moths. The film’s secondary villain, serial killer Jame Gumb, dubbed “Buffalo Bill,” breeds them inside his home and inserts a pupa inside the mouths of each of his victims.
The film used live moths for the scenes inside Gumb’s house, and the moths themselves are a real species. They’re death’s-head hawkmoths—specifically Acherontia atropos, the African death’s-head hawkmoth, and Acherontia styx—and they really do have human skull-shaped markings on the back of their thorax. They’re members of the family Sphingidae, a group colloquially known as both hawkmoths and sphinx moths, containing some of the largest and heftiest moths around. They can grow as big as your hand and different species vary in coloration from pink to green to mottled brown and black, and they’re found all over, mainly in tropical regions of the world.
The poster for the movie features one of these moths with its wings spread over Jodie Foster’s mouth, its skull marking fully displayed. The skull on the poster, while accurate to the species of moth, has been digitally enhanced: If you zoom in, the skull is formed by the nude bodies of seven women, an homage to “In Voluptas Mors,” a photography project by Philippe Halsman and Salvador Dalí (which also appears on the poster for The Descent).
The moths are also treated as a clumsy metaphor for Jame Gumb's trans identity: “Caterpillar into chrysalis, or pupa, and from thence into beauty,” Hannibal Lecter says. The moth represents transforming from an undesirable form into a desirable one, as Gumb wishes to do with his “woman suit,” a human-shaped chrysalis.
One officer quipped it was because he "skins his humps." He also inserts a Death's-head Moth into the victim's throat because he is fascinated by the insect's metamorphosis, a process that he wants to undergo by becoming a woman.
The way Clarice “couldn't do anything” for the lambs at the time continues to traumatize her (230). Lambs conventionally symbolize innocence and purity, and here they represent the innocent victims of crime. Their screams represent the extreme violence that Gumb enacts upon his vulnerable victims.
The Death's-head Hawk-moth is the rebel of the moth world. Strikingly large, with a skull-like marking on its thorax and the ability to squeak when alarmed, the moth was traditionally seen as an omen of death.
Introduction: My name is Geoffrey Lueilwitz, I am a zealous, encouraging, sparkling, enchanting, graceful, faithful, nice person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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