The Girl, the Film, and the Wardrobe: A Study of Texts, Tension, and Approachability in Punk Clothing and the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo

Abstract

The present study investigates how the modern re-authoring of Punk clothing styles through the character of Lisbeth Salander in Steig Larsson’s novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, its American film adaptation, and the subsequent H&M Dragon Tattoo collection works rhetorically within fiction and reality. A close reading of the novel and hybrid semiotic analysis of the film reveal a problematic characterization of Salander that overshadows the overwhelmingly positive response to her character from readers and viewers of the film. Conclusions from a rhetorical analysis of the original H&M press release and five articles that reported on the announcement, and analysis of data from a mixed methods survey include that the tensions and complexity in the fiction can lead to a contradictory and potentially dangerous understanding of how Punk clothing styles found in the H&M Dragon Tattoo collection function rhetorically in the lived experiences of women in Western society.