Distorted recognition: on the pleasures of televisual historical caricature

[Extract] A straitjacketed figure is being wheeled on an upright trolley through a dank corridor lit by flickering fluorescent tubes. A low-angled medium closeup reveals the bottom half of a royal blue skirt, and sensible, black, high-heeled pumps. After the trolley has come to a rest, the porter removes from the figure a full-face mask, reminiscent of the one worn by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991). But the face revealed is not Hannibal Lecter’s; it is a woman’s. She has a red-lipsticked, thin-lipped mouth, over which a sinister, cool smile plays. She wears pastel blue eyeshadow and tasteful pearl earrings. Her strawberry blonde hair is teased into a tall perm. When she finally speaks, it is in a low, slow voice with a lilting, arhythmical cadence that allows her to emphasize firmly her increasingly strange and fervent antisocialist opinions.