ABSTRACT
In Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs, the cannibalpsychiatrist Hannibal Lecter quizzes rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling about how we acquire our tastes. Lecter is trying to put her into the mind of the serial killer known as Buffalo Bill, who is a discriminating consumer, collecting fabrics for a wardrobe made from human skin. There may be no accounting for taste, but Lecter wants Clarice to understand that consumers desire the things that are dangled in front of them. “We begin by coveting what we see everyday,” he tells her, and goes on to remind her of the desiring eyes she feels on her own body as she goes about her work.1
