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I am currently acting in the Hollywood version of the bestselling book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The thriller tells the story of a high-stakes effort to unravel the case of a serial killer who has committed unspeakable crimes against women.

The film is a gripping, graphic work of fiction. But it confronts an issue that scars women the world over, though perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

After we finished filming Tattoo, I traveled to the war-torn eastern region of Congo to learn about a horrific epidemic of violence against women playing out every day in real life.

At the height of Congo’s war — which officially ended in 2003 but remains a daily reality for most Congolese in the east — soldiers and mercenaries from eight different countries fought in the mineral-rich region, many of them plundering the country’s wealth. Though most of the foreign fighters are gone now and some of the Congolese rebel groups have joined the national army, the civilians living in the conflict zone have seen no relief.

In war, women and children are often caught in the crossfire. But in Congo, where conflict is fuelled by the struggle over valuable minerals, rebels and even soldiers in the notoriously undisciplined Congolese army systematically target civilians — elderly women, toddlers, middle-aged fathers, young girls, mothers, teenage boys — using rape as a weapon to assert control over communities. The minerals that the armed groups are after become essential components in the electronics products that we’re dependent on — the cell phones, laptops, cameras, iPods that we use every day without even a thought about their origin in the world’s deadliest war zone since World War II.

The link between Congo’s conflict minerals and sexual violence is undeniable. In eastern Congo I met with survivors of these atrocities who are now ostracized by their communities because of the shame of sexual violence. Reflecting on the trip now, I realize that at once, these interactions represented the moment when I felt the most despair about the severity and complexity of the conflict, but also the most inspiration about the resiliency of the survivors and the dedication of local advocates working to rehabilitate the women and provide them with vocational skills.

As conscientious consumers, we can all do more to alleviate this plight — most of all by helping prevent the violence that leaves women incapacitated, like one woman I met in the town of Bukavu who has undergone eight surgeries to try to reconstruct her tattered female organs after being raped.

Right now, the conflict-free movement in the United States is growing, as more and more people learn about the conflict in Congo and demand that the companies they buy from proactively work to ensure their minerals supply chain from Congo doesn’t fund armed groups. Through our collective efforts, we must pressure the U.S. government and electronics companies to implement an international certification scheme that enables companies to trace the source of the minerals, and that allows consumers to choose who to give business to, based on their human rights record in Congo.

Women in other countries around the world, including the United States, suffer from the scourge of sexual violence, though the stories I heard in Congo are exceptional in their brutality. So why focus on Congo? Because the war is an accountability issue for each and every one of us.

Actor and activist Robin Wright, @RealRobinWright, recently traveled to eastern Congo with the Enough Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group focused on ending genocide and crimes against humanity.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin/from-dragon-tattoo-to-con_b_1197226.html

When Rooney Mara, star of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, suggested that Lisbeth Salander was not a feminist, Stieg Larsson’s partner knew how to put her down. “Does she know what film she has been in?” asked Eva Gabrielsson, who shared much of Larsson’s life until his death in 2004. “Has she read the books? Has she not had any coaching?”

In case you were in any doubt, the questions were rhetorical. To Gabrielsson, Mara was another ignorant Hollywood star. If she had taken the trouble to understand The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo before playing its goth heroine, she would have realised that Salander’s “entire being represents a resistance, an active resistance to the mechanisms that mean women don’t advance in this world and in worst-case scenarios are abused like she was”.

Her repetition of “resistance” flagged that Gabrielsson, like Larsson, had done time on the European far left. Their backgrounds only emphasised the extraordinary and apparently admirable success of the Millennium trilogy. The far left’s record on women’s rights would make the Vatican blush with shame. Its alliances with radical Islam make it, at best, a misogynist force and, at worst, an active agent of oppression. Larsson appeared to be the exception. I wrote in the Observer about how impressed I was when I discovered that while completing his thrillers, Larsson found the time to dash off a polemic about honour killings in Sweden. Here, after all these years, was a leftist who preferred to drag himself out of the swamp of relativist politics rather than compromise his principles.

I won’t pretend that the novels are feminist tracts. Like most thrillers, they rely on plots that strike you as absurd as soon as you stop turning the pages. Salander may be a victim of rapists to begin with, but she becomes a superwoman, taking on and beating Hell’s Angels and emptying the bank accounts of a corrupt plutocrat without the police suspecting her for a moment. Mikael Blomkvist, the shabby, middle-aged journalist who helps Salander, is a politically correct Don Juan, so charismatic that he does not even need to try to persuade a procession of beautiful women to join him in bed. As I and every other shabby, middle-aged journalist at the Observer can attest, Larsson’s fantasy is not an example of art imitating life.

For all the surrounding silliness, feminism holds the story together and gives it a strange power. The persistence of the abuse of women by men, and men’s expectation that they can get away with it, explains the novels’ crimes and the determination of the heroes to solve them. There is something truly thrilling in the notion that the bestselling thrillers of the past decade were written by that modern rarity – a leftwing, male feminist.

Except that Larsson wasn’t a feminist – or not a consistent one. He wrote with real anger about the oppression of women with white skins. When others tried to do the same about the oppression of women with brown skins, he denounced them as racists. My friend and colleague Johan Lundberg, the editor of the Swedish journal Axess, has done what I should have done and read Larsson’s obscure book on honour killings. He waited for the release of the film to give us his findings.

Larsson did indeed break off from writing the Millennium trilogy to intervene in the debate about the “honour killings” of two Kurdish women in Sweden. Far from worrying about the suffering of women, Larsson and his co-author said those who campaigned for the rights of women in immigrant communities wanted “to portray all male immigrants as representatives of a single homogeneous attitude towards women”. They had sexist as well as racist motives. They only talked about honour crime because they wanted to divert attention from how white men raised in the “patriarchal structures of Swedish society” abused and murdered women as a matter of course.

If all Larsson wanted to say was that the rights of women should be upheld, regardless of colour or creed, then no one could argue with him. He came close to asserting the opposite. Believe that western legal systems, for all their faults, were preferable to forced marriages, religious courts where the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man and the stoning to death of adulterous women and you were a “rightwing extremist”, carrying on the fascist tradition. In a final descent into paranoid dementia, he accused those who disagreed with him of preparing to unleash “special operations forces, which are ready to begin the ethnic cleansing”.

Read the trilogy or watch the film and you can trace Larsson’s beliefs by his errors of omission. He includes every variety of male violence against women, except the violence inspired by religious and cultural misogyny. I do not wish to be too priggish. A work of art – high or popular – lives or dies on its own merits. Larsson was also a brave man, who faced down death threats from Scandinavian Nazis. That he could propagate brutish ideas in his political pamphlets on occasion does not change his anti-fascist record or invalidate his fiction.

His views would not matter if they were confined to Trotsky cults. Unfortunately, the notion that anti-racism trumps feminism is everywhere in the European liberal mainstream and has an especially tight hold on the British liberal-left. Its adherents are so frightened of taking on conventional wisdom they do not notice that they are behaving like the racists they profess to oppose. Last year, members of the British Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, which is not made up of the “rightwing extremists” of Larsson’s conspiratorial imagination, provided details of thousands of threats, abduction, acid attacks, beatings, forced marriage, mutilations and murders men had inflicted on Muslim and ex-Muslim women. If the victims had been white, the left would have gone wild.

Our centre-right government would have never dared cut funding to women’s refuges. Liberal opinion would have demanded that the police make tackling “honour” violence a priority and accused chief constables of sexist prejudice if they refused. As the victims were British Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, Kurds, Somalis, Arabs and Iranians, a nervous silence descended. Too few were willing to endure the accusations of racism from Stieg Larsson’s successors a consistent defence of women’s rights would have brought.

I do not go to actors for political advice. But when Rooney Mara said that she did not think that Larsson’s Salander was a feminist, she was not the empty-headed celebrity she seemed.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/08/nick-cohen-stieg-larsson

What would you have tattooed on your arm? Photo by Janine Carney. Used with permission. Click image for photo blog.

Are you inked?

I’m not, though I’ve thought about it seriously and have a pretty good idea of what I would get and where I would put it—if I could work up the nerve to get in the chair. I’ll tell you one thing: It most certainly is not a QR code like Fred Bosch, who designed his tattoo to link to something new every time it’s scanned. While the idea is intriguing and presents an interesting re-imagining of tattoos in the digital age, it seems to run counter to the nature of tattoos.

Tattoo As Talisman and Symbol

The word “tattoo” derives from the Tahitian word “tatau” (wound) and the the Polynesian root “ta” (drawing), which neatly summarizes the history of the practice (1). Humans have been inscribing their bodies (and the bodies of others) for thousands of years for self decoration, to display affiliation, and for punitive reasons. The oldest example of a tattooed individual is 5,200 year-old Ötzi the Iceman, who was found in 1991 in the area of the Italian-Austrian border. He had several tattoos on his back, right knee, and around his ankles, which researchers believe may have served medicinal purposes—possibly a form of acupuncture before acupuncture existed (2). Tattoos have also been found on Egyptian mummies dating to 2000 B.C. And sculpted artifacts and figurines marked by body art and piercings provide clues that tattooing was widely practiced from 500 B.C. to – 500 A.D. (3).

Tattoos have been used to signify occupation, patriotism, loyalty, and religious affiliation. For example, there is a rich maritime tradition of tattoos, including initials (both seamen’s own and those of significant others), anchors, mermaids, fish, ships, and religious symbols (4). It seems that most seafarers in the 18th and 19th centuries entered the ranks of the tattooed with initials—possibly for identification purposes—before adding different imagery (5), reflecting what was popular at the time: seafarers born after the American Declaration of Independence displayed more patriotic symbols (e.g., flags, eagles, stars, the words “Independence” and “Liberty,” and the year 1776 than those born prior). And there are also some interesting superstitions tied to them suggesting that tattooing has been an important means of exerting control over one’s situation (6):

• H-O-L-D-F-A-S-T, one letter on the back of each finger, next to the hand knuckle, will save a sailor whose life depends on holding a rope.

• A crucifix on the back will save the seaman from flogging because no boatswain’s mate would whip a cross, and if he did, the cross would alleviate the pain.

• A seaman who could stand to have a full rigged ship tattooed on his chest would automatically make a good topman.

• Crucifixes tattooed on each arm and leg would save a man who had fallen in the water and found himself among 775,000 hungry white sharks, who would not even bother smelling him.

That last point might be a bit of a fisherman’s tale (what if it’s 774,000 white sharks?), but it serves nicely to show how deeply enmeshed tattooing has been with certain occupations.

Early Christians got tattoos of religious symbols. Tattoos were purchased by pilgrims and Crusaders as proof that they had made it to Jerusalem, serving as a symbol of witness and identification. The Church largely did not approve even though there was biblical authorization for the practice: While there is evidence that “God’s word and work were passed on through generations through tattoos inscribed on the bodies of Saints, like the stigmata on St. Francis of Assisi,” the idea that the unmarked body is representative of God’s image and should not be altered was persistent (7).

The Mark of the Deviant

Tattoos have also been associated with savagery and deviance. Greeks, Romans, and Celts used tattoos to mark prisoners, servants, and slaves. Civilized Greeks viewed tattoos as degrading and used it as a way to mark criminals and slaves who were a flight risk—the mark was placed on their foreheads or faces and were meant to help easily identify the individual. This form of branding is repeated elsewhere throughout time:

“Before the Civil War, ads in North America for runaway slaves distinguished three kinds of body marking. A ‘Negro’ runaway, if born and previously marked in Africa, would be said to have ‘country marks,’ in addition to scars from diseases, accidents, or beatings, and brands showing the name of the owner” (8).

It should come as no surprise that the Greek word for the resulting mark was stigma, bearing the same negative connotation as it does today. Punitive markings were then a means of control, serving as a record of power and subjugation, as is most clearly evidenced by the Nazi branding of Jewish concentration camp prisoners (9). They stripped the individual of their personal identity and social connections, and imposed an artificial identity that established ownership—you belonged to the nation.  In late antiquity, punitive tattooing expanded to include soldiers and workers in military factories of the Byzantine Empire, who were marked for identification to inhibit desertion, but in an interesting twist, these marks also served as an indicator of rank and were also viewed as occupational insignias.

This association with deviance has been hard to shake. When colonial expansion brought Europeans in contact with people among whom tattoos were commonplace and adopted by both sexes, the idea of the tattoo as a savage symbol gained footing:

“The tattooed body is first widely observed, then, as an artefact of Europe’s encounter with its ‘new’ worlds, initially the Americas, then the South Pacific. Images, descriptions and eventually ‘specimens’ of tattooed people had been brought back acros the Atlantic since the 16th century; among other exotica imported to satisfy European fascination with this first new world, two tattooed ‘Indian princes’ toured English and European fairgrounds in the early 1720s” (10).

Though the exposure did much to broaden awareness of tattoos and introduce Pacific and Asian techniques and styles to a larger audience, tattoos remained on the fringes of European society:

“Within a few years some Europeans were also taking financial advantage of the public fascination with exotically decorated bodies. Typically these showmen equipped themselves with sensational stories of adventure, kidnap or captivity to accompany and explain the origin of the elaborate tattoos they displayed. Among the earliest were Joseph Cabri, the first European known to have tattoos across his whole body, and the English sailor John Rutherford, who toured Europe in the 1820s with a dramatic tale of capture and forcible tattooing and scarification by Maoris” (11).

The stories, for the record, were by and large false, but they drew a crowd. These exhibitions would give rise to the “Tattooed Lady,” and while tattoos were slowly gaining ground in Europe as a form of self decoration, the activity was largely a male one and it was further stigmatized as criminal investigators used the marks to identify persons of interest—cementing the idea that tattoos were the trademark of the outsider. This perspective overlooked the ways tattoos have been used as means of personal identification by non-Westerners, and minimized the meanings that can be gleaned from the intricate designs.

Toward A Personal Brand

Tattoos can craft a personal brand. Photo by Janine Carney. Used with permission. Click image for photo blog.

Tattoos create a “social skin” that reconcile the individual with society (12). In African societies, for example, tattoos established local identity as well as status and membership in different social groups. In the Edo Kingdom of Benin, no male citizen could claim his place as a member of palace society without a tattoo. Similarly, Igbo scarification denoted age, gender, and political affiliation. And Kayapo body modifications are a social initiation to the larger social group because they are tied to life-cycle events.

Contemporary attitudes are changing—though slowly. The “tattoo rennaisance” that began in the 1960s identified by art historian Arnold Rubin marked shifts in practice and experience, including the establishment of tattoo artists as professionals, increased access to tattoos, a shift in iconography to include full body art and Asian styles, and the broadening of clientele. By the 1990s, tattoos had become fairly pervasive among the middle-class, normalized by celebrity use but still plagued by hints of disapproval marked by judgments about the morality of tattooed individual.

Sociologist Katherine Irwin has documented the experience of this disapproval as being rooted in a fear of deviating from convention, losing status among peers and relatives, and having success compromised. The basis of this fear is ill defined but perhaps we can understand it in terms of the punitive administration of tattoos. If you bore a tattoo as punishment, you were stripped of free will, independence, and identity. To be marked by several tattoos for this reason put you on par with hardened criminals. These social consequences may have survived in perception. In this line of reasoning, to seek a tattoo voluntarily is an impulsive act that the individual will regret, which contributes to a sense of and fear of disapproval. There is a concern that deviant behavior will taint the network because behaviors reflect the skills (or apparent lack thereof) concerning connected parties like relatives and friends. Still, the nature of tattoos as that which highlight the boundaries between the individual and society and between experience and representation persists:

“For some men and women, becoming tattooed marked a passage from one life phase to another. Potential tattooees often saw this passage as representing movement out of an oppressive phase and entrance into a freer and more independent one. This passage included such activities as moving out of their parents’ houses, graduating from college, or ending unsavory relationships. Because they saw having tattoos as a violation of female beauty norms, many women used their tattoos to symbolically “take back their bodies” from their husbands’ or boyfriends’ control” (13).

When forced on a person, as in the case of punishment, tattoos may serve as a means of control and branding. However, following these experiences, they can also be a means of reclaiming self and (re)establishing oneself within a social order:

In Brazil, on the Indian subcontinent, in Russia, and elsewhere, convicts marked by the penal authorities are known to reclaim their bodies by writing over the inscriptions or by displaying them in new social situations as a sign of resistance. Penal and gang tattoos often represent a coalescence of socially imposed and voluntarily assumed marks, gaining some of their power from the fusion of subjection and resistance. Similarly, sex workers are said to reclaim their bodies through tattooing, using their tattoos to confront the fantasies that others project onto them (14).

Irwin describes a type of mediation that occurs where tattooees work to establish the act of getting a tattoo as a thoughtful process (14). They use tattoos to commemorate celebrations marked by conventional norms, show consideration in choosing and emphasizing a meaningful symbol, are careful to select a clean, reputable establishment, and often—particularly if it is a first tattoo—will choose a discrete location. Irwin maintains that these steps do much to assuage the concerns of a conventional perspective.

Tattoos aren’t necessarily a way to break from the social order—as has been the fear—but can be a way to establish a deeper connection to a social group, as they have been used elsewhere historically. They are a way of of publicly sharing one’s interests, and the artistic quality of tattoos today does much to dispel the notion that they are ugly, antisocial tools. That is not to say that some people don’t get tattoos to be different, but this act of public display (even if it is only a representative display typically covered by an article of clothing) is an act of sharing an element of self and creating a personal brand. Individuals with multiple tattoos are engaged in creating a rich symbology weaving together meaning and experience utterly unique to them that may grant them access to multiple social groups.

So, About That QR Code Tattoo?

If tattoos are a personal brand, the QR code tattoo could potentially be an excellent branding tool. It neatly does away with concerns about iconography and can be discretely placed. It seems to lend itself to convention. It also offers flexibility: Imagine not having to to remove your ex-lover’s name from your body, and instead, just changing the associated image with your QR code.  It might perhaps be a really interesting way to get ink that doesn’t get old—tattoos that can grow and change with you. On the other hand, it seems largely depersonalized, which runs counter to the idea of being inked, and of having some visible sign of something that’s important to you that can grant you access to the communities to which you belong.

Show and Tell

Tattoos are sometimes deeply personal, sometimes social, and are always meaningful. They reflect who we are and what’s important to us.

So what would I get if I ever took the plunge? The Eye of Horus—though I’ll spare you the explanation why until I actually get it done. What about you? Do you have one? Are you thinking about doing it? Would you do it?

By the way, I’d be remiss not to point you to Carl Zimmer’s collection of science-themed tattoos, Science Ink. The New York Times feature on the collection shares several of the fantastic tattoos people have had done.

–

References:
Caplan, J. (1997). ‘Speaking Scars’: The Tattoo in Popular Practice and Medico-Legal Debate in Nineteenth-Century Europe. History Workshop Journal: HWJ (44), 107-42 PMID: 11619699

Dye, I (1989). The tattoos of Early American Seafarers, 1796-1818. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 133 (4), 520-554

Irwin, K. (2001). Legitimating the First Tattoo: Moral Passage through Informal Interaction Symbolic Interaction, 24 (1), 49-73 DOI: 10.1525/si.2001.24.1.49

Schildkrout, E. (2004). Inscribing the Body Annual Review of Anthropology, 33 (1), 319-344 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143947

Notes:

(1) Caplan 1997:117.
(2) This article from the Smithsonian has more on the Iceman and Egyptian tattooing practices.
(3) Sculptures from the Jama-Coaque culture show piercing on the face and torso of men and women; Mayan figurines depict body art for royalty; and fourth-century Thracian vases show tattooed figures (Schildkrout 2004: 326).
(4) Dye 1989: 537.
(5) How did they get those tattoos? One potential method called for a thin trail of gunpowder to be laid out on the skin, or rubbed into cuts in the skin modeled after the design, and then ignited, leaving behind a black scar in the shape of the design. While researchers have dismissed this as a myth, it seems a likely means of getting tattooed given the availability of gunpowder on the ships (Dye 1989: 531).
(6) Dye 1989: 521.
(7) Dye 1989: 547.
(8) Schildkrout 2004: 323.
(9) An earlier version of this post omitted a reference to the tattooing of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. Following comments below, a small change was made to include this information
(10) Caplan 1997: 117.
(11) Caplan 1997: 119.
(12) Schildkrout 2004: 321.
(13) Irwin 2001: 56.
(14) Schildkrout 2004: 324 – 325.
(15) Irwin 2001: 60-64.

Article source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=questioning-permanence-would-you-get-a-qr-code-tattoo

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The New Yorker has touted Lisbeth Salander, the main character in the best-selling novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as a new kind of heroine today.

• movies
• Culture

Intelligent, computer savvy, resourceful and able to save her leading men from life and death situations, Salander has garnered a cult following, with many women looking to model after her.

But Karen Swallow Prior, an associate professor of English at Liberty University in Virginia, declared that the girl with the dragon tattoo was everything but a heroine worth emulating.

After viewing the U.S. film adaption of the novel with a couple of girlfriends, Prior shared her thoughts on the latest unhealthy craze over Salander on Her.meneutics, the Christianity Today blog for women.

“To me, the most intriguing part of the story was Salander, who apparently has ignited a new obsession among moviegoers now joining longtime fans of the books,” she penned. “One website has compiled a lengthy list of the contradictory descriptions of Salander – ranging from hero to anti-heroine, from interesting to terrifying – proving her to be a kind of Rorschach test of cultural icons.”

“The trendy clothing chain HM has even announced a new ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ line. Clearly, the character The New Yorker touts as a new kind of heroine is catching on.”

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Article source: http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-not-a-role-model-for-women-professor-says-66633/

As Lisbeth Salander, the damaged computer hacker at the heart of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” actress Rooney Mara projects waves of emotion, emanating from somewhere deep, buried under layers upon layers of angry clothing.

Trish Summerville, costume designer for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” grew up in Gretna and Lafitte, a world and a climate change away from the cold streets of Sweden, where the film is set.

Pierced, tattooed, with spiked hair and biker jackets, she’s a walking steer-clear sign.

Mara’s chilling portrayal already has earned her a Golden Globe nomination. If she wins on Jan. 15, she’ll have Louisiana native Trish Summerville to thank for helping to create Salander’s off-putting appearance.

Summerville, who grew up in Gretna — a world and a climate change away from Salander’s Sweden — is the brilliant costume designer behind the anti-heroine’s biker jackets, dropped-crotch pants and gray hoodies.

The street-tough look is so sharply drawn that it’s now resonating beyond the big screen. Inspired by Salander, Summerville designed a capsule collection of similar punk-infused styles for Swedish cheap-chic retailer HM. When it was unveiled last month, the collection sold out in less than 10 minutes at the company’s Los Angeles store, and within two hours online in England and Sweden.

“There’s a certain urban, subterranean, nocturnal feel to her clothes,” Summerville said during a recent phone interview. “A lot of women could identify with that, wanting to feel strong.”

Merrick Morton / Columbia Pictures

Rooney Mara stars in Columbia Pictures’ “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” also starring Daniel Craig.

It’s a look that Summerville, 42, finds somewhat familiar. She went through a punk phase herself in the ’80s. Dyed hair, partially shaved head, combat boots, the works.

That experience, wearing clothes designed to repel and provoke, provided a small reality check when she started building Salander’s wardrobe.

“Her character is so completely different, but it did help me to understand a few things,” Summerville said. “I duct-taped her boot. She’s not someone who would take the time to have her shoe repaired, and she doesn’t have money. It makes her seem real, authentic. She dresses way more out of function than fashion.”

Summerville, along with makeup artist Pat McGrath and hairstylist Danilo Dixon, were responsible for turning Mara, the soft-skinned, auburn-haired actress, into the brilliant but brittle avenger finely drawn in Stieg Larsson’s bestselling novel.

To get her into character, Dixon started by cutting 10 inches off Mara’s hair and dying it ink black. Mara then went through a metamorphosis: Her nose, lip and nipple were pierced, her eyebrows bleached and her forehead fringed by micro-short bangs that make her look both childlike and ferocious.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” costume designer, Trish Summerville, center, designed a line of clothes for HM based on Lisbeth Salander, the computer hacker at the center of the film.

Director David Fincher initially wanted to shave Mara’s eyebrows, a drastic move that made everyone a little nervous. “We were worried about how they’d grow out and that we’d have to shave them every few days during the filming,” Summerville said.

To exaggerate her already thin frame and to keep the actress from freezing during long days shooting in frosty Stockholm, Summerville piled on the layers.

“I did a lot of research on street kids in Sweden,” she said. “In the book, Stieg describes her as very slight. I wanted to show that. She’s in no means muscular. She’s very androgynous; you could mistake her from behind for a 16-year-old boy. When you see her, you’re afraid of how very odd she looks.”

Salander alternates between very slim pants and oversized tops, and shredded jeans, tucked into work boots, with heavy leather jackets.

To make her look authentic, Summerville scoured Swedish second-hand stores and retailers, such as HM. Salander’s biker boots were by Belstaff, while her leather jackets were custom made by Los Angeles brand Cerre and veteran leather goods maker Agatha Blois. Summerville then “aged the hell out of them.”

“One of the things that was important to me was that she didn’t look like she was in a band, or that she was trying to get attention,” she said. “She’s not dressing with giant spike collars or creeper boots. She’s trying to get through society that’s told her she’s trash.”

Jean-Baptiste Mondino / Columbia Pictures
Daniel Craig, standing, and Rooney Mara star in Columbia Pictures’ “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”

In one scene, Mara draws the hood of her sweatshirt over her head when she notices a guard looking at her. In another, she hides in the corner of an elevator, her head covered by the hood, blending with the paneling, until the door closes.

“Her clothes are her shield,” Summerville said. “She fades into the shadows.”

With “Dragon Tattoo,” Summerville herself has stepped out of the shadows. A veteran stylist and costume assistant, this film is her first as the lead costume designer.

But she’s been into clothes for decades. She designed her own dress for prom at Fisher High School in Lafitte. As a teenager, she would comb through Thrift City for castoffs that she could remake in new ways.

At 18, Summerville went to San Francisco, moved in with her aunt and started studying fashion design. Eventually, she headed south to Los Angeles, and hasn’t left.

Much of her work has been in styling commercials, music videos and tours for musicians and bands such as the Black Eyed Peas, No Doubt, Christina Aguilera and Janet Jackson.

Those experiences provided a strong foundation for film work. “For concerts, you design for the singer, the band, the dancers, everyone,” she said, “and it has to be really functional.”

For “Dragon Tattoo,” Summerville clothed 300 people. “I was in Sweden for a total of nine months. We did all the period ’60s stuff, We did every photograph in the film, the extreme characters, the country Swedish heritage family. It was a lot of work, long hours,” she said, “but, remarkably, I never panicked.”

When the film wrapped, Summerville took some much-needed time off. Now, she has other projects, including a jewelry line, she’d like to pursue.

But Salander will remain a part of her life for a while. There already are rumblings that “Dragon Tattoo” may get some award-season notice for costume design, as well as acting. There also are two other books in Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. “And we really want to make books two and three,” she said.

Article source: http://www.nola.com/fashion/index.ssf/2012/01/dressing_the_girl_with_the_dra.html

By
Kirsty Mccormack and Nadia Mendoza

Last updated at 12:34 AM on 6th January 2012

Danielle Lineker revealed a love for literature today when she showed off a brand new inking that quotes William Shakespeare.

The stunning 32-year-old’s tattoo, hidden beneath her arm on her left ribcage, reads: ‘Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win.’

The phrase is from the Bard’s comedy Measure for Measure.

Literature in ink: Danielle Lineker’s new tattoo has been revealed to read ‘Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win’

Borrowing from the Bard: The quote is from Measure for Measure

The previously unseen tattoo was revealed during the Lineker’s holiday in St Barts today.

While Danielle has been
uncharacteristically shy about hiding her figure during the trip, she
finally unveiled her bikini body yesterday - giving fans a glimpse at
the new body art.

The tattoo has only come recently, with Danielle having performed near-naked, but not quite in her birthday suit, for her stage debut in Calender Girls minus the body art.

Gary proved he can rival Danielle’s physique by showing off his toned torso in a pair of white shorts.

Yesterday, as
Danielle, 32, relaxed on the sand, Gary looked like the cat that had got the
cream as he gave his wife’s derriere a little squeeze.

Simply stunning: Danielle looked effortlessly attractive in her bikini and sunkissed hair

Life of luxury: Gary and Danielle have escaped the New Year blues by heading to St Barts

Beach bodies: Gary showed he could rival Danielle by showing off his toned torso in white board shorts

Accompanied by a Cheshire grin, the former footballer looked rather pleased with his cheeky feel.

It prompted Danielle to lift her head and have a word with Gary; who was still grinning from ear to ear.

As the pair relaxed in the shade, Gary let it all hang out wearing a tiny pair of khaki swimming shorts.

Cat that got the cream: Gary Lineker has a cheeky feel of wife Danielle’s bottom as they sunbathe in St Barts

Comfortable position: The former footballer appeared to be resting his head on his wife as they relaxed

His wife, however, who was once the
face of La Senza, has been surprisingly conservative during their break,
despite having a figure for the catwalk.

She
wore a pair of skimpy purple bikini briefs for their trip to the beach
and kept her top half covered up in a sleeveless floral top; completing her look with a straw hat and a pair of dark sunglasses.

They spent a long time relaxing amongst other holiday-goers, including two topless women.

Danielle looked fed up as they exposed themselves, ensuring they would have no dodgy tan lines.

Still covering up: Danielle wore a pair of purple bikini briefs with a floral-print top, a straw hat and sunglasses

Still smiling: The former sportsman looked very pleased with himself as he laid next to his wife

But the former Hell’s Kitchen
contestant obviously isn’t bothered about getting a suntan as she hasn’t
been pictured wearing just a bikini during their entire stay in St
Barts.

On Tuesday, she was spotted wearing a
playsuit which she kept undone, and the day before she wore a
long-sleeved top with white bikini bottoms.

Even
when her and Gary have ventured out in the evenings, Danielle has been
conscious of what she wears - sticking to maxi dresses.

People watching: The couple were sunbathing near two topless women on the beach

Showing off: Gary was more than happy to put his body on display wearing just a pair of khaki green swimming shorts

But there’s still been a glimpse of model instinct as her floor-length garments are either sheer or feature a plunging neckline.

Danielle has been concentrating on her
acting career recently and last month she told MailOnline that she was
putting a lot of effort into her latest move in the industry.

‘I’m starting shooting for a feature
film next March/April and then I might be involved in another film next
year too,’ she said.

That’s enough for one day: The pair headed back to their hotel carrying a towel and were still covered in sand

‘I’ve
just finished another acting course because obviously I didn’t go to
drama school and I think if I can do as many courses as possible then
its going to help me.’

Last June, hypnotherapist Marisa Peer
was inspired to devise a diet for Danielle fans in the hope they could
achieve a body like hers in time for their holidays.

At the time Danielle said: ‘I’m
flattered if people think I look good in a bikini. But unlike some
people, I won’t lie and insist I can eat anything I want and get away
with it.

Staying true to her roots: The former lingerie model stepped out wearing a sheer maxi dress (R) and one with a plunging neckline

‘Since I hit my thirties, my body is far less forgiving. I have to be disciplined, but I’m not obsessive.

‘I try not to have too many salt and vinegar crisps, which is hard since I’m married to Mr Crisps. And I love dark chocolate, but I don’t have any little sins like that for a couple of weeks before a holiday.’

She added: ‘I eat food that’s high in protein and low in carbohydrates. I truly believe if you cut the junk from your diet and stick to the plan you will see improvements in as little as a couple of days.’

Choosing to cover up: The brunette wore her playsuit undone (L) and kept her top half hidden on Monday

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Article source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2082267/Danielle-Lineker-borrows-Shakespeare-sideboob-tattoo.html?ITO=1490

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Lisbeth Salander—my new hero—is the descendant of a long line of Scandinavian female warriors. More specifically, in David Fincher’s new film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, she’s a scrawny modern-day Valkyrie complete with a helmet of dead-black hair. As Lisbeth, Rooney Mara manages to be completely vicious, thoroughly sympathetic, and more than equal to the task of rescuing well-intentioned but inept men. Where crusading journalist Mikhail Blomkvist (eye candy Daniel Craig, looking especially gaunt and bristly) seeks justice, Lisbeth takes revenge.

The heroine of Stieg Larsson’s Nordic noir picks up where Hedda Gabler, Nora Helmer, and Miss Julie leave off. The notoriously strong, complex female characters of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and Swede August Strindberg are, like Lisbeth, victims of their male-dominated society—Lisbeth of the Swedish welfare state that entrusts women to men’s “better” judgment. But she doesn’t kill herself, doesn’t slam the door on a secure life only to face an unimaginable future. She fights.

Lisbeth is particularly sweet to me, I think, because of my Scandinavian heritage. More important, I hail from the state that coined the phrase “Minnesota nice”—a double-edged sword if there ever was one. Even when it’s applied to genuinely courteous, community-minded, non-confrontational people, it can be offensive, suggesting semi-idiotic cuteness. (Garrison Keillor, I’m talking to you.) And it can also be applied to those who only pretend to be nice. 

Lisbeth never pretends. And, despite loving moments, she’s never nice. Consistently condescended to by middle-aged men, including Mikhail at first, she pointedly fails to get that she’s supposed to play a subservient and pleasing role. The most she’ll do is go along to get along—and even that has disastrous consequences. It’s as if Larsson is waging war on niceness, particularly in a crucial scene where Mikhail decides to maintain rather than breach a façade of politeness. 

Yet Lisbeth’s lack of social skills—to put her “condition” in a mild Minnesotan way—has often been seen as pathological. In the books, Mikhail suggests she has Asperger’s, the syndrome marked by an acute inability to read social cues or respond to them appropriately. Others have called her a sociopath. 

So how come nobody pathologizes or belittles the righteous avengers of Clint Eastwood movies? Instead they’re celebrated as thrilling exemplars of our frontier mentality.

To me Lisbeth is thrilling too. She’s the anti-Bimbo, the perfect antidote to Fincher’s previous directorial effort, The Social Network, where every woman was pretty and/or crazy—and utterly replaceable. (Notably, Rooney Mara played the only female onscreen with a brain, the Harvard girl who dumped Zuckerberg in the opening scene.)

Oddly—or not—Ibsen and Larsson were both driven to create their female revenge dramas by the real-life victimization of women. Ibsen had a writer friend, Laura Kieler, who—like Nora in A Doll’s House—forged a bank note to aid her ailing husband. When Kieler’s husband found out, he took their children away from her, threatened divorce, and put her in an asylum. The two reconciled, at his suggestion, when she was released. In Ibsen’s story, Nora doesn’t let Torvald take the initiative. She walks out the door.

Larsson had a much more violent experience of the oppression of women. As he reportedly told common-law wife Eva Gabrielsson, he witnessed a gang rape at 15 that haunted him for his remaining 35 years. He also told Gabrielsson, “To exact revenge for yourself and your friends is not only a right, it’s an absolute duty.”

Exact revenge Larsson does—and through a take-no-prisoners female character who looks as haunted as he must have felt. The novel may be pulpy, and the film may resort to telegraphing the wide-ranging plot. But together Larsson, Fincher, and Mara have given women a memorable new warrior heroine and a fantasy to relish, even if most of us wouldn’t dream of actually branding our sexist pigs.

Article source: http://www.wbez.org/blog/onstagebackstage/2012-01-04/post-valkyrie-girl-dragon-tattoo-95275

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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - What happened to 007?

In “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” the swaggering, lady-killing Daniel Craig is practically a damsel in distress.

As investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist, Craig leaves the gun-slinging and bare-knuckle beating to his sleuthing partner, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara).

In a pivotal scene, it is Craig who is tied up by a serial killer. The film implies that he would join a long list of victims were it not for a golf club wielded by Salander. Throughout the ordeal, he barely puts up a fight.

It’s left to Salander to ask as the villain escapes from his torture chamber, “May I kill him?”

Over the course of the nearly three-hour mystery, Salander will also beat up a hapless mugger and exact gruesome revenge on a rapist.

In contrast, Craig’s Blomkvist is shot at, nearly vomits at the sight of a mutilated pet, and never lifts anything more dangerous than a pen — which in David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s crime novel is a lot less mighty than the sword or even Salander’s cursor.

In a refreshing change of pace, Craig’s female cohort is physically and mentally superior. Too often, it seems, mainstream movies force actresses to twiddle their thumbs until their male costars can save or seduce them.

Not this time.

As David Denby notes in his New Yorker review of the film, “In this movie, is modest, quiet, even rather recessive. It’s Mara’s shot at stardom, and he lets her have it.”

It’s as if he’s playing, in sexist movie terms, “the girl.” The frequently shirtless Craig almost seems to be doing penance for all of his chasing after women as James Bond. This time, the British actor allows himself to be the object of desire.

In a twist that would be unimaginable for say, Sean Connery, Craig lets Mara drive the love train when it comes to their between-the-sheets encounters.

It’s she who seduces him, while he raises a few mild objections about his age and the impact a hook up might have on their working relationship.

That differs from Larsson’s portrayal of Blomkvist. In the book, the journalist is much more sexually promiscuous. Although the movie retains Blomkvist’s affair with his editor Erika Berger (Robin Wright), it jettisons his other sexual liaisons.

That was a deliberate choice, screenwriter Steven Zaillian said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.

“I’m a fan of the book — I like it very much — but when I was reading it at a certain point I thought, am I reading ‘Shampoo?’” Zaillian told the magazine. “Is this Warren Beatty or is this Mikael Blomkvist? I didn’t drop those things in order to make him more sympathetic. It was really just that they were unnecessary to the story.”

Carnal relations aside, Craig does piece together some important clues early in the mystery, but his investigation is more or less at a dead-end until he enlists the computer hacking, motorcycle straddling Salander. In short order, Salander is able to link a series of apparently disconnected murders with a few clicks of the cursor and a couple of visits to Swedish police stations.

In one scene, a kindly police officer asks Salander if she’s had anything to eat before she looks at photos of a savage murder scene. He’s concerned, he says, that she might be sick.

As Mara’s butt-kicking Salander demonstrates throughout the Nordic thriller, there’s no reason to worry.

Craig’s Blomkvist, on the other hand, better look at those pictures on an empty stomach.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/why-daniel-craig-real-girl-dragon-tattoo-030537515.html