The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Raped Again: This Time by a Graphic Novel

Maybe raped is a bit too strong of a word to use as a description, though if youve actually read the book youd know why I chose it. Did you ever play the game Telephone as a kid? Its where a bunch of people sit in a circle and one person comes up with a phrase or message and whispers it to the person next to them. That person then whispers it to the person next to them, and so on and it gets passed along the circle until the last person says the phrase out loud. By comparing the difference between the original and the way it ended up you see how things are lost in translation. One person makes these words into a contraction, someone puts it in past-tense; a bunch of little changes along the line all add up until what youve got is nothing at all like what you started with. I feel like theres a big game of Telephone being played with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. DC Entertainments Vertigo has announced that they are producing a graphic novel interpretation of the book thats due out in November of 2012. I use interpretation rather than adaptation deliberately because there is no possible way the book can be made into a graphic novel and retain any of the actual value of the story. The book is so layered and psychologically tumultuous that I dont think even the movie was able to properly capture it. Not to mention that there are a lot of sections in the book that are just too damnwell, graphic to be a graphic novel. I dont doubt that there are extremely talented people working on this project: The beautiful (though inaccurate) cover art is by Lee Bermejo while the main artists are Leonardo Manco and Andrea Mutti. Crime novelist and Vertigo author Denise Mina is supposedly working very closely with the estate of Stieg Larsson and Hedlund Literary Agency and will be doing the writing. What does that even mean, working closely with the estate of Steig Larsson?? It means that in an attempt to give the project more credibility, they use some bullshit phrasing to make it sound like theyre working with the author- like he would have wanted this. Steig Larsson is probably vomiting in his grave watching whats being done to his books and to his character for the sake of the almighty dollar! Ironic isnt it? The man spends his life a die-hard Communist and womens rights activist, morally against this exact kind of media exploitation of women as sexualized and objectified characters, only to have his legacy and strong female character hoochied up to appeal to a mass market of horny American men! Ironic and sad and really just not necessary; I mean, do we really need this? Its already a best-selling novel-novel that was then made into a movie twice; once as a Swedish major motion picture and then, more recently, once as an American motion picture, so do we really need a graphic novel version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo just because its popular and possible?

Plus its going to be the f#$ked up Telephone-version of it: a book translated from Swedish to English, then condensed into a film, then condensed even further into a graphic novel. Ill give you an example through the evolution of the character Lizbeth SalanderIn the book shes described as being very tiny- under 100lbs to be sure- and extremely skinny with an almost boyish body. She has no breasts or hips to speak of (in fact in another book in the trilogy a doctor tells her there was a disruption in her physical development & her body stopped maturing too soon) and never smiles. Her first appearance in the book was described as the following: "a pale, skinny young woman who had hair as short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows. She had a wasp tattoo about an inch long on her neck, a tattooed loop around the biceps of her left arm and another around her left ankle. On those occasions when she had been wearing a tank top, a dragon tattoo can be seen on her left shoulder blade." She frequently changes her hair color- starting off red, then dying it black, then later a bright lemon-yellow. She also had a lip and nipple piercing and often wore outrageous things: "Salander was dressed for the day in a black T-shirt with a picture on it of E.T. with fangs, and the words I AM ALSO AN ALIEN. She had on a black skirt that was frayed at the hem, a worn-out black, mid-length leather jacket, rivet belt, heavy Doc Martin boots, and a horizontally striped, green-and-red knee socks. She had put on make-up in a color scheme that indicated she might be colorblind. In other words, she was exceptionally decked out. Personally, I think the outfit is the authors way of paying homage to the inspiration for Lisbeth and who he based her off of- Pippi Longstocking. There was nothing seductive or sexual about her appearance or her manner and she was terrible at forming relationships with people. She was very stand-offish and didnt like being touched with a suspicious attitude in general and a highly suspicious attitude towards men and authority. . The official international movie poster has her mohawked and topless, showing off her tats and tits with their lovely nipple piercings while Daniel Craigs arms encircle her midsection. (They came out with the more modest one where hes covering up her naughty bit a little later.) Do I even have to say how completely not like the actual character all of the promo images are? Overly sexualized showing her as submissive, needing Daniel Craigs arm around her to protect her, humping a motorcycle, then she runs around shirtless in the CGI snow why? And now we have this gorgeous cover of a graphic novel showing the same character. For some reason she needs to be naked- or at least shirtless- again with sexy made-up eyes, a long, arched back showing down to what would have to be the very limit of the lowest low-rise jeans ever made, and a seductive open mouth with curls of smoke trailing out (wait, isnt smoking bad for you?)

Something tells me this version isnt going to be like the book, either. So the story cant be the same, the characters will all look different, its based off something thats already a book & a movie- of course DC says lets go for it! Its not like theyre busy coming up with any new ideas of their own these days. Call Me Wasp, -Dianthrax (You can see the images I referred to- as well as a lovely posting by a commenter on my article; followed with my response to her comment & a reminder as to why Im nicknamed after a fucking WMD!! Just go to http://dianthrax.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-raped-again-thistime-by-a-graphic-novel/ And just so you know, its not that I cant take criticism; I know the chick who commented & I know why she did it and it has nothing to do with my writing and more to do with immature High School-ish bullshit. Plus Ive reviewed her comic before andwell She doesnt get to condescend to me when it comes to writing or understanding literature or basically anything involving the written word. Ever.)