The following article contains graphic content regarding true criminal behavior.

On Monday, April 7, Amherst Cinema hosted a screening of Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs” as part of its ongoing “Science on Screen” event series, which presents compelling science-fiction films with guest speakers in the fields of science, technology and medicine. The screening included an introductory presentation by Professor Erik Cheries titled “The ‘Science’ of the Lambs?: What Hollywood’s most famous crime thriller tells us about serial killers, psychopathy, and the birth of Forensic Psychology,” and closed with a Q&A.

Dr. Erik Cheries is a senior lecturer and faculty member in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research includes infant and developmental psychology, analyzing the developmental foundations of moral thought and behavior. As a professor of forensic psychology, his presentation included a preliminary look into the ways that psychology permeates all aspects of the criminal justice system, and how real criminal profilers influenced popular films like “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Originally a book by the same title, “The Silence of the Lambs” was inspired by true stories. Thomas Harris, the author of the novel, studied pioneering criminal profilers John Douglas and Robert Ressler. Douglas and Ressler were the first to interview incarcerated serial killers in hopes of understanding criminal behavior, as well as use the term “serial killers” or “serial murderers” to distinguish their behavior. The ambitious cadet Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, and the tenured unit chief Jack Crawford, played by Scott Glenn, represent Douglas at different points in his career.

The main antagonist, Buffalo Bill, played by Ted Levine, was based on three real-world serial killers. Perhaps the most notable is Ted Bundy, whose claim to fame included murdering over 30 women across the U.S. in the 1970s before his execution in Florida in 1989. Bundy manipulated his victims by feigning injuries or car trouble, a practice used by Buffalo Bill in the film.

Another inspiration for Buffalo Bill was Gary Heidnik, also known as “the House of Horrors Killer.” Heidnik, like Buffalo Bill, kidnapped and tortured women in pits underneath his home. The third and arguably most gruesome example comes from that of Ed Gein, or “the Butcher of Plainfield.”

Although only confessing to two murders (serial killers murder three or more victims between periods of “cooldown”), Gein was known for grave robbing, digging up bodies of recently-buried individuals and dismembering them. Police investigation found furniture and clothing made from human skin, including a suit and belt, at Gein’s residence. This behavior was fictionally represented by Buffalo Bill’s, shall we say, creative pursuits of tailoring human skin.

“The Silence of the Lambs” is approaching its 35th anniversary next year, and despite its age, the film has aged like a fine Chianti. Since its sweep at the 64th Academy Awards, where it became the first film in over 15 years to win Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Directing and Best Adapted Screenplay, the film has continued to shock generations of avid film lovers.

The film follows Clarice Starling, a young FBI cadet who gets placed on a serial murder case. In order to figure out the identity of the killer, dubbed “Buffalo Bill,” as well as his motivations, she recruits the help of a convicted serial killer and cannibal named Hannibal Lecter. During visits to Lecter’s maximum-security asylum, Lecter’s demands of ‘quid pro quo’ cause Starling to confront her troubled past. With Lecter’s help, she uncovers the mystery in a hair-raising conclusion.

Cheries, once the film stopped screening, answered audience questions in an open Q&A. During this time, many of the misconceptions regarding the film’s contents were addressed. “There was quite a bit of backlash when the film first came out about how people with gender dysphoria might have been portrayed,” stated Cheries in a follow-up interview. “In the books, this is described much more clearly … Still, you see that there’s this man who’s cross dressing and wearing the skin of his female victims. And so, it’s easy to come away with this connection that they’re portraying someone who’s trans as a psychopath and a violent, a very violent one. But it is a problematic portrayal if people are just looking at what they’re seeing, and here’s a man who wants to be a woman and he’s also a serial killer. So, it would be easy to make that connection where no such connection exists in the world.”

Despite the connections drawn in the film, there is a further lack of correlation between psychopaths and serial killers, according to Cheries. “We don’t have people who are psychopaths just running around and killing people, but that’s what people think the term psychopath means, because that’s how it’s portrayed in movies like ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and in pop culture in shows like ‘Criminal Minds.’ So, we only hear that word psychopath in these sensationalist contexts where like, ‘oh, they’re murderers,’” Cheries emphasized.

He followed up with, “We know that approximately one percent of the population has psychopathy. The most basic definition of being a psychopath is that you lack a connection to other people’s pain. It’s primarily a disorder of empathy. But just because you’re not sensitive to someone else’s pain, doesn’t mean you’re gonna go out of your way to cause them pain.”

Cheries further clarified what it means to be a psychopath: “And it also doesn’t mean that they can’t understand people’s pain. They just don’t feel it as their own. They can read the score, but they can’t hear the music.”

Another misconception involves criminal profilers in “The Silence of the Lambs” and other popular media, and whether their portrayals are balanced in their popularity and accuracy. To this, Cheries commented, “I would say they’re inversely correlated.”

“Maybe the less accurate they are, the more popular they become. These are people who are experts in reverse engineering the criminal mind. So, looking at the details of a crime scene and then trying to figure out what psychological predispositions someone would have that would have led to that crime being committed. That’s a real job, but those people don’t carry guns and run around trying to catch bad guys. The criminal profilers are behind the scenes as consultants, and that’s not as sexy to portray, you know, a bunch of people talking in a room looking through photocopies of crime scene evidence and coming up with hypotheses. They don’t carry guns and they’re not breaking down doors and rescuing people out of basements. There are real heroes that do that, but they’re not the criminal profilers,” he said.

Though the film’s story holds strong, the methods portrayed in the investigation against Buffalo Bill are becoming increasingly dated. New technologies, including social media, are changing the way that criminal profilers and agents identify potential serial killers. “[A story] that comes to mind that’s really relevant to social media is the one that’s on Netflix called ‘Don’t Fuck with Cats.’ It’s the story about a serial killer who first came to notoriety on YouTube, because he had posted a video of drowning a kitten in a bathtub. Really cruel and unusual. And people saw this video, and people got really upset about it, of course, but there was a community of people that formed that were just hell-bent on catching whoever this person was,” stated Cheries.

“There were these Internet sleuths who would track this person based on their social media accounts, looking at their IP address, doing the kinds of dorm room hackings that you can do, and they actually ended up finding the person.”

New technology on genetics in investigation has also changed. “Genealogy sites are kind of social media, kind of a genetic media, crowdsourcing lots of DNA descriptions, and that database has been used by police to catch some serial killers. The Golden State Killer, who was breaking into people’s apartments and raping them was caught through one of these genealogy database investigations. So, there’s new technologies that crowd source lots of information through lots of people that have definitely been effectively used to help catch people,” stated Cheries.

He followed up with, “I can’t think of any cases where someone has advertised their crimes using social media. So, what BTK was sending to the police and the Zodiac Killer was sending to newspapers, now with the access to the Internet, you know, you could transmit that around the world. And thankfully, we haven’t seen serial killers using social media as a venue for that kind of notoriety. Knock on wood.”

Amherst Cinema’s “Science on Screen” event series continued through Tues. April 15 with a screening of “The Pod Generation,” accompanied by Carrie N. Baker, professor and chair of the program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Smith College.

Daniel Estrin can be reached at [email protected].