Sub-Subtlety: The Dynamics of Propaganda and Sex Stieg Larsson hates rape and Nazis. His book The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is quite clear in that respect, and though those two things are pretty much universally disliked, Larsson is really good at making you hate them even more. In The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo there is an evident detest toward women in Sweden. All violence in the novel is representative of the misogynistic socio-political landscape within the context of the Larsson’s depiction of Sweden. This leads to an overall “progressive” feel to the book, sparking discussions about the issues that women face in everyday life in a man-dominated society, which is wonderful and exactly what he wants. But Larsson is not a feminist. He is not even writing about these issues chiefly to point out the
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Because sex sells. Everything from the obvious romantic connections between characters to the drawn-out rape scenes are designed to make you want to read this book and talk about it. This is not to say that Larsson does not care about the issues at hand, but like Melanie Newman stated this book is just “the latest in line of novels which aims to titillate readers with graphic depictions of men raping and murdering women.” This becomes the most interesting when you begin to notice that this is propaganda, and that propaganda has been used to make you feel a certain way your entire life from T.V. advertisements, to documentaries, and even children’s books. The popularization of bias information to synthesize opinions in others is inherent to human interaction. But is it inherently better for propaganda to be evident or for
Because sex sells. Everything from the obvious romantic connections between characters to the drawn-out rape scenes are designed to make you want to read this book and talk about it. This is not to say that Larsson does not care about the issues at hand, but like Melanie Newman stated this book is just “the latest in line of novels which aims to titillate readers with graphic depictions of men raping and murdering women.” This becomes the most interesting when you begin to notice that this is propaganda, and that propaganda has been used to make you feel a certain way your entire life from T.V. advertisements, to documentaries, and even children’s books. The popularization of bias information to synthesize opinions in others is inherent to human interaction. But is it inherently better for propaganda to be evident or for