As a curious post-millennial phenomena, a new arms race of sorts, television channels seem to have become saturated with a coordinated stream of new transatlantic dramas beholden to rich
production values, ‘intelligent’ writing and increasingly bigger marquee names to star in central roles. Storylines arch over entire seasons, some 13 episodes or so, compared to the
brevity of episodic pre-Sopranos fare which would perhaps devote a two episode finale at best to satisfy trainspotters within the audience. Characters often are presented as being ‘complex’, with arguably the plot device of a disintegrating moral compass being used in increasing excess. See Walter White as good dad gone mad in Breaking Bad, Omar’s Robin Hood turn in The Wire, Frank Underwood channeling Richard
III in House of Cards and so forth. Sadly, the mould through which these archetypes were set this past week was lost this week when James Gandolfini aka Tony Soprano, passed away. I think Soprano is still the most provocative, nuanced and engaging embodiment of this alluring alpha male archetype thus far. In any case, any emerging show that
lays claim to being a part of this new class of televisual social realism has
at least one as its linchpin. Whilst Hollywood increasingly disappears into the
libertarian wet dream of the superhero, TV is off searching the weathered terrains of moral ambiguity, to varying degrees of success.
In the present, I feel an increasing amount of conversations with friends and family seem to revolve more around discussing such transatlantic dramas. I suppose it’s a very accessible common denominator, and realistically, a lot of these shows are quite watchable, if occasionally derivative. The easiest going relationship I've ever had with a hairdresser revolves around geeking out over our viewing habits, excited when we both like the same ones, swapping tips for newies, etc. On my most recent visit after a discussion on the nuances of The Walking Dead finale, she laid down her most recent new televisual exploits, one of which was NBC’s brand new Hannibal series.
As earnestly described to me, Hannibal revolves around the adventures
of a pre-incarceration Hannibal Lector, as he routinely perhaps his own unique act of psychology savant/eating
people’s faces off/enjoying a dash of opera. On paper I wasn't so sure. After Silence of the Lambs, the Hannibal Lector character increasingly retreated
into a camp approximation of the former's earlier menace. If the eponymous film by Ridley Scott would turn Hopkin's Lector into a globe trobbing, punchline dealing cliche of an antishero, I shuddered to think what the format of episodic television drama could do to such a character. I envisaged a Dexter type
affair - a bit grisly but light-hearted enough to allow the cast to develop into to
a gang of trope laden adventure hounds. Suffice to say I didn't plan on viewing Hannibal until I managed
to catch a broadcast late at night. Turns out I was a bit
wrong. Hannibal is one the most quietly
subversive texts to emerge this side of the ever mounting cascade of new transatlantic TV drama.
From the jump, the quality of the cast is surprising. Hannibal
himself is played by Mads Mikkelson, better known for an agreeable turn as bond
villain in Casino Royale, and further well acclaimed appearances in
Danish cinema. Mikkelson’s icy and opaque presence is ideal for the role of savant killer. A lot of the psychoanalytic platitudes revolve around the somewhat cliched notion of masks being and their useage throughout daily life. Even if this trope rubs off as a little reductive, Mikkelson is a graceful enough player to allow Lector to lift his veil, affording the character with an even more austere and chilling charisma than Hopkins could ever bear to cloak. The greatly underused Lawrence Fishburne
makes a welcome appearance as a paternal yet authoritative FBI chief Jack
Crawford, competing with Hannibal to provide tutelage to the gifted and unusual talents of
Will Grant (Hugh Dancy).
The psychology angle is not really the most compelling dimension of Hannibal, as is perhaps too dependent upon the practises more obvious public tropes such as the
afore-mentioned masquerade cliché that is laid on a little thick at times. This does not exactly make for an exact representation of the ethics and nuance that forms the basis of contemporary therapeutic practice. More often than not it is merely a device for Lector to duplicitously manipulate other characters towards his own sociopathic ends, of which seem
to be simultaneously abundant, enigmatic and outright malcontent. If anything the relationship with psychotherapy is far more cynical, recalling the scathing
condemnations of Deleuze of Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia, whereby the doctor-patient relationship is
more based on enabling, encouraging and misdirecting the neuroses of the
patient as opposed to a realistically nurturing intervention. Series creator
Brian Fuller offers us a pretty nice summary of the character and Mikkelson’s
own unique contribution to its reification:
What I love about Mads's approach
to the character is that, in our first meeting, he was adamant that he didn't
want to do Hopkins or Cox. He talked about the character not so much as
'Hannibal Lecter the cannibal psychiatrist', but as Satan –
this fallen angel who's enamoured with mankind and had an affinity
for who we are as people, but was definitely not among us – he was other.
It his outward daily appearance, Lector flatters himself as the apotheosis of brilliant psychiatrist balanced with the refinement of a well-bred gentlemen, given the finer things in cultural life. When the viewer is momentarily afforded a glimpse into Hannibal’s simulation of social life, it is in the public engagement of some well appointed indulgence of sophisticated cultural activity. Aside from being one of popular cultures most infamous
serial killers, a deeper inspection of a pre-incarceration lifestyle allows us to confirm Lector as perhaps its most redeemed bourgeoisie fictional aesthete. Hannibal loves to cook for his colleagues and friends, constantly is on hand to lightly drop obscure knowing references as if a walking wikipedia - and he adores a good
piece of classical music. But whenever Hannibal is presenting his odecadent banquets, there is always another level of consumption stirring in the gut. The
main dish at Hannibal’s exquisitely ornate dinner parties is more often than
not the shorn flesh of a recently butchered victim, something he clearly takes
delight at as he delivers a knowing pun about the procurement of the chow whilst
his guests lavish him with praise. The middle class dinner party, ultimate
symbol of civility and virtuous sophistication becomes supplanted with new
insidious meaning.
As if the bare bones become illuminated for a split second, the depravity of the dinner party, a feast of civility and enlightened exchanges, reframed as barbaric excess, digestion of weaker beings, the ones
who couldnt get away. Each new entrée obscures dimensions of removed suffering at the hands of parties unable to make it the table.
Hannibal’s dinner parties are sick, but so is the gentility that devours the
body and soul of creatures low enough on the scale to be considered expendable. Hannibal knows that the cost of his cultural elegance is a pound of flesh, be
it figurative or literal, even if his guests haven't quite come to acknowledge this fact. A later episode features fellow a miscreant vying for Lector's attentions, a musician in the
orchestra who fashions his violin strings out of the vocal chords of his
victims, a monstrous act no doubt, but as several characters helpfully point
out, the real string is quite often farmed from the guts of cat. Whatever makes
your instrument ‘sing’ I suppose.
Hannibals allegorical transgressions are visualised within aesthetic language of affect. The often overbearing atmosphere
deliberates like a character itself, furnishing proceedings with an intensive noir tonality that offers little in the way of relief to the audience. Enclosed within a unforgiving
vignette that produces sensations of tunnel vision, tense synths
and discombobulated instrumental stabs overdubbing a very raw muted colour scheme - most obbviously evoking the uncanny ambience of Twin
Peaks, The X-files and more recently
The Killing. Location seems to be
critical here, with Hannibal taking
place across several what could be termed ‘zones’. Hannibal’s office and
treatment room is deceptively ornate and genteel as his exterior personality,
baroque and exploding with cultural reference, yet ultimately as hollow and
unforgiving as the Lector's undisclosed ego. The blood red red walls and furnishings
scream at you, an abrasive affect serving as a loud register of the very real danger
within the fallen angel’s lair. As the series unfolds it becomes ever apparent than
more than one soul has met their maker in this troubled place. The
scene is immaculately framed, almost to the point of obsession and revulsion, a disturbing
tableau vivant that further underlines the ancient Lucifierian evil of Hannibal’s
malevolence. Such notions would probably flatter the urbane sensibilities of such
a creature, whom values the maintenance of an outward veneer of bourgeois excellence far greater than human life itself.
This is contrasted with the relative safe zone of the FBI
headquarters. This interior space feels like an impenetrable bunker, all
concrete, steel and reflective surfaces - a kind of tough neo-brutalism. This place
is cold and sterile, nor is there any natural daylight to soften the atmospherics.
It does however provide the viewer a haven of sorts, weird as that sounds. Lector’s as yet unknowing nemesis
Jack Crawford rules the roost here, and though his methods fluctuate between overbearing sincerity and shortsighted dismissal, he’s essentially the binary towards the former’s duplicitous deceits. If Hannibal Lector posits an disavowal of society by enacting its barbarity to excess, Jack Crawford is the unwitting gatekeeper of a submerged territory not yet lucid to the threat that walks amongst it. More an advocate of tough love to achieve a greater moral good, Jack
Crawford seems to function as a surrogate for a kind of necessary but
essentially benevolent paternalism to counteract the destructive chaos that
Hannibal gleefully seeks to interject. The cold modernism of the FBI headquarters
may produce an alienating affect upon initial encounters, but comes to offer merciful relief to the
baroque madness of Hannibal’s interior and exterior playgrounds.
As the first series draws to its bleak finish, Hannibal is by no means a perfect text.
It is sometimes clumsy and prone to gratuitous pomp. Most central characters are
beholden to some kind of narcissistic flaw, in varying degrees of severity,
making it sometimes painful to sit through for the wrong reasons. Also the
episodic demands of the 13 episode series format force some extraneous material
to seep through, causing deviations that seem to be more to stall for time
rather than progress the narrative. However in spite of this, Hannibal has emerged as a mischievous and quietly subversive abberation to emerge from a mode of production fast becoming
saturated in the same televisual tropes that it sought to distinguish itself
from in the first instance. Where The Wire beats viewers over the head with literal manifestations of urban realism, and Breaking Bad takes the crime drama perhaps a little too far into the realm of hyperreal, Hannibal subtly insinuates through a language of affective modulation, preferring the abstract and allegorical to formal representation of its demons. One senses that the next series will be more
decisive is establishing Hannibal as a serious cultural contender, but until
then…bon appétit.
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