The Hidden Violence of “Sharp Objects” and Real Life Pig Farming
In Gillian Flynn’s novel and the HBO adaptation of it, harm is always lurking behind a closed door — at home and at the family’s hog farm
In her debut novel Sharp Objects (2006), as well as in the HBO miniseries adaptation of the book from 2018, Gillian Flynn portrays a world of gruesome violence and monstrous pathologies. Young women disappear. When their bodies turn up, police discover they have been mutilated, their teeth pulled out with pliers. Our protagonist, Camille Preaker, is an alcoholic journalist with her own tragic backstory. Yet, if there is a lesson to be learned from Flynn’s story, it’s that this violent world is sustained by an obscured system of animal slaughter.
After winding her car along a dirt road in rural Missouri, Camille Preaker (played by Amy Adams in the HBO adaptation) pulls into a clearing where her family’s business — an industrial hog farm — is housed in several metal barns. She is following her younger half-sister Amma (played by Eliza Scanlen), whose strange behavior elicits suspicion in the aftermath of the murders. Camille spots Amma slip into one of the barns. When she opens the door, Camille grimaces, either from the din of countless pigs or the repulsive scent of so many live…
