Hannibal: Season Three…And the Beast from the Sea

[These last reviews of the Red Dragon arc were originally published after the end of the series in 2015. I’ve edited these  reviews to reflect new thoughts and information.]

The last episode I reviewed was about the different character’s perceptions, as has been the theme for most of the series., but this episode is about Agency, how each of the characters have it, take it, and/or employ it. Agency is the ability to affect change over the environment by one’s actions. One can affect change oneself or use proxies to do so.

We pick up the narrative where we left off in the last episode.

Graham is outlining the situation for Crawford. Crawford is incredulous that Dollarhyde ate a painting. Graham surmises that Hannibal knows who Dollarhyde is, and that he was once a patient. He’s only half wrong. Dollarhyde is Hannibal’s current patient through secret phone calls, after Dollarhyde masquerades as Hannibal’s lawyer. We flashback (not really) to Hannibal telling Dollarhyde to save himself by attacking Will and his family. This is about Dollarhyde taking and using agency, regarding his relationship with Hannibal, the Red Dragon, and Reba, but he is also Hannibal’s proxy.

Hannibal is using Dollarhyde to get back at Will for rejecting him. Lecter does, as Bedelia states later,  have agency in the world, even though he is locked away. The difference is that she attributes this agency to the wrong person. She thinks the person executing Hannibal’s agency is Will Graham, when its really Dollarhyde. This is Hannibal, once again, playing his old game of I love you/I want to hurt you! Will may be tired of it, but Hannibal always finds this game amusing (except when Will enacts this particular game against him.)

Oh yeah, the flashbacks aren’t actually flashbacks. They’re conversations that Lecter had/is having, with Dollarhyde, over the phone, but are imagined from Lecter’s point of view, and usually from inside what he calls his mind vault. Being given Lecter’s POV is often done without any warning for the audience, an effect with which I’m not entirely comfortable, as nobody really wants to be in Lecter’s head, and is probably equally disconcerting for people who are “first watchers” of this series.

As the next full moon approaches, Reba and Dee (as she calls him), spend some quality time together. I don’t see a whole lot of chemistry in their relationship, (that’s just my inability to see romance between characters, in general), but these are both very good actors, who convince me that they’re in the beginning stages of a relationship. Dollarhyde wants to, but can’t let the Red Dragon go, not even for Reba’s sake, not even as he fears for her. While she cuddles with him on the sofa, he watches home movies of his next possible target, Molly and Wally.

Will’s wife is at the vet because the dogs are sick. She doesn’t understand that the Red Dragon always kills the pets  first. I know this from reading the books, but she believes she poisoned the dogs with some  food from China, because that was a thing going around in the news at the time this show was written, and Fuller, who absolutely loves dogs, was so incensed by that, that he put it in the script.

Graham goes to Lecter to beg for the identity of the Red Dragon, but Lecter would rather tease him. This is one of the quietest, and most sinister arguments, I’ve ever heard, conducted almost entirely in sharp whispers. This may also be the reason I can’t  understand what the hell is going on. I managed to get around this by remembering to turn on the captions.

Dollarhyde tries to murder  Will’s family, hunting them through their house, and injuring Molly. Both she and Wally survive, but Will, naturally, feels incredibly guilty about what happened. He has a conversation with Wally, about the killer’s mental illness, which forces him to divulge the time he spent in a psychiatric hospital. The conversation does not go well. Incidentally, we don’t see or hear from either of these characters again, and no end is written for Molly, as Will seemingly forgets all about her.  Make of that what you will because the fans certainly did.

Will, incensed, confronts Lecter, who readily  admits to giving Dollarhyde Will’s home address. Crawford, and Alana threaten Lecter into cooperating with Crawford’s scheme to capture Dollarhyde using drop boxes.

Because he failed to kill Will’s family, Dollarhyde imagines himself getting beaten by the Red Dragon. Reba walks in on him just after this event, and there’s a very tense moment where he is probably contemplating killing her, as he has not quite come back to himself, and the Red Dragon, having been deprived of the other kill, wants to be satisfied.

This scares Francis because he genuinely cares about Reba, and in an effort to be proactive, to save her from himself,  shows up at Reba’s job and breaks up with her, saying that he’s afraid he might hurt her. Reba, not knowing or even suspecting any of this, (she is a true innocent), is understandably angry, and tells him to get out. It looks bad no matter what he does. From her point of view, they slept together a few  times, and now he suddenly doesn’t want to be with her, having given no indication  that he’s no longer interested.

These are both fine actors, who really sell this scene. I am touched by their conversation, (even though I hate romance movies). I suddenly realize that Francis isn’t as much afraid of hurting her, as he is also afraid of being in love, and being loved. In the flashback sequence with Lecter, he talks about how she makes him feel, and believes himself to be completely unworthy of the level of happiness he feels with her, or her desire for him. Love can be terrifying, especially for someone unused to giving or receiving it, and who has some deep self esteem issues due to child abuse.

I would also like to commend the show for showing an inter-racial relationship as if its no big deal. I like it that the show treats the characters, especially the women, like people, and doesn’t feel the need to change the dialogue to reflect the  character’s race or gender. The same dialogue spoken by a White man in the movie, is the exact same dialogue that’s spoken by a Black man or a White woman on the show. In fact the only major recurring  characters to remain unchanged are Graham, Lecter and Dollarhyde.

Dollarhyde calls Lecter, not knowing that their conversation is being overheard. Lecter gives him a quick warning, because that’s the kind of shit he does, and afterwards is duly punished. Alana keeps her word to him, by having all of his amenities taken away, including his toilet seat. He also gets restraints and the famous Lecter mask, first seen in Silence of the Lambs, (but was also seen on Will Graham in the second season).

Will talks to Molly at the hospital and she nominally forgives him for what happened to her. She’s not really blaming him, but yeah, she’s still pretty pissed that the man Will was hunting, tried to kill her, and her son. Will then goes to see Lecter in his new accommodationless accommodations. The story is not over. Normally, after the attack on Will’s family, the films end with the restoration of the status quo, and Dollarhyde dead, but Fuller has a lot more story to tell.

This is one of television’s strengths. It has the ability to tell complicated, interwoven, long form stories that cannot be done in a two hour movie. It has the ability to flesh out characters and plot in a way that’s more difficult on the big screen, (unless the movie is totally dedicated to a specific person or subject.)

On TV, the writers can create a tapestry of a story, using multiple threads, and deeper characterization, and I think this is where TV has really gained momentum as a  storytelling medium, especially in the last ten years. TV didn’t always take full advantage of its serial nature. In fact it always tried to do what movies did, but in  less time, as it would try to wrap up it’s mini- stories in the space of 45 or 50 minutes. Fortunately, its starting to break away from this model somewhat, and watching a series requires a certain level of dedication, if a viewer wants to understand the entire story.

None of that however, is going to help the casual viewer to understand whats going on in this show. I love this show, but this level of complexity, always just slightly out of grasp, may be the reason this is the show’s last season. You know there’s more depth to the show then you understand, but its ten o’clock in the evening, your mind is gone, and there’s a lot of urgent whispering that requires you to turn on the captions, so you can find out just what the Hell is being said.

Hannibal: Season Three …And the Woman Clothed in Sun

“ And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth. ” Revelations 12:3-4

I was a teenager the first time I read the Book of Revelations, so naturally,  I found it pretty terrifying. Mostly because of some incredibly lurid imagery, I just wasn’t expecting the Bible to have. Reading it when I got older, I was less afraid, and struck instead, by the incredible beauty and poetry of those chapters.

Most people don’t know this, (Hell, I didn’t know it and I went to art school), but the painting featured in the movie version, but which I’ve not seen in the show, is one of a series of paintings by Willliam Blake, about the Book of Revelations, and his interpretation of the Rise of the Antichrist. The one featured in the  Red Dragon movie is the painting  titled The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed IN the Sun.

The second painting in the series, and  that of the first episode of  The Red Dragon arc of this series, is titled …And the Woman Clothed WITH the Sun. There are two other paintings in the series, which are also the titles of the next two episodes.

Hannibal and The Tooth Fairy are clandestinely discussing Francis’ transformation into the Red Dragon. This episode is sort ofabout how characters perceive themselves, vs, how others perceive them, and each character discusses who they are, which is contrasted to the reality. For the first time, we hear Francis declare himself to be the Dragon. This is how he perceives himself,  but what we see in Hannibal’s imagination is the two of them sitting in a room together, while Hannibal looks at an ordinary man, but Hannibal responds with a line from Blake’s poem, The Tyger, in expression of the awe that Francis craves.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

–https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger

 

Bedelia, Lecter’s psychiatrist, is giving a public speech about the nature of her relationship with Hannibal the Cannibal, and how she managed to escape him. She is trying to create the public perception that she was one of Hannibal’s victims. Will Graham is there, and  calls her out on her bullshit. Will’s perception of her is very different.

The two of them have a long meeting, and I have come to the conclusion that not only is Bedelia batshit-insane,  she is also pretty terrifying. Not violent, so much as completely disassociated from what makes a person human, and while I want to think Lecter is responsible for that, this is most likely all her, and may be the reason he liked her so much.

 

 

Now contrast Will’s scene with Bedelia, with my favorite scene, which is when Francis takes Reba to meet the tiger.  This entire scene is about perception. Francis views himself as the beast. It’s not quite obvious, but Reba has kind of caught on to that, and seems to  know what he’s thinking. Apparently Reba can frame “thy fearful symmetry” just fine, of both the tiger, and Francis. I think this perception of what Francis may be thinking is what informs her actions towards him, later. Even Fuller states that this is a deeply sensuous moment between the two of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady,_or_the_Tiger%3F

Francis describes the tiger’s color. Is that helpful to her? Depending on when and how she lost her sight (as we are never told), does she remember colors? In the book, Reba lost her sight as a child, and jokes to him about what animals she remembers. I can’t imagine this Reba knows what he’s talking about, if she’s been blind since birth. This scene is shot to perfection, as we see Reba’s skin tone against that of the glowing yellow fur of the tiger. She listens to its heart, while Francis stands there, barely able to contain his depth of feeling.

Francis takes Reba to his home. She is impressed by his home, and his thoughtfulness in arranging the thing with the tiger. They drink wine, listen to music, and Reba makes the first move.  This is a woman who doesn’t believe in  letting an opportunity to enjoy herself slip away. (Rutina Wesley appears to have these huge man-hands, which is deeply disturbing, and distracting. Her hands are as huge as Francis’ head.)

Their love scene gets the slo-mo treatment, interspersed with shots of Frank’s dragon tattoo. Francis envisions Reba, as the Woman spoken of in Blake’s painting, floating and goddess-like, in liquid gold, the same color as the tiger. Its almost like he’s worshiping her, but without the context that in the Book of Revelations, the Woman clothed with the Sun, is the Dragon’s downfall.

Later, while Reba is sleeping, he uses her hand to touch his face, but it’s not sexy, at all. It’s deeply sad, that he’s so lonely, so removed from normal people, and so starved for affection, and all of it self imposed, as he has deep self esteem issues, because of his disability. Reba is probably the only woman to ever touch him, in a very long time, with any form of love, especially his face, as  he’s very self conscious about his cleft palate.

The next morning, he is summoned to the attic by the dragon’s  voice, where he and his alter ego argue about what to do with Reba. The outcome of the fight is …uncertain, but I think Dollarhyde wins this round. He then takes Reba home.

Hannibal manages to  get Graham’s address and home number. This does not look good.

Will and Bedelia are still talking. Will tells her she deserves to be eaten by Lecter. I’m as disgusted with her as he is, and I see why he’s so pissy with her. She was wholly complicit in Hannibal’s crimes, but claims it was curiosity that kept her with him. She’s as much a sociopath as Lecter, but couches it in  a veneer of professionalism.

Zachary Quinto is guest starring in this episode. That man is everywhere. (Fortunately, I’m in love with him, so I can watch him anywhere.) Lecter used to be his counselor, and he claimed he got worst under his care. This scene switches back and forth between Graham and Bedelia, and her session with Quinto’s outraged patient. He starts having a seizure. Something that was subliminally planted by Hannibal.

To her credit, Bedelia does try to help him, but she botches the job by reaching too far into his mouth, in an attempt to reach his tongue, which she believes he is swallowing. This was apparently before she became inured to death. Now, she could probably watch him choke, with all the compassion of an insect. This is the event that gave Hannibal leverage over her, to coerce her to travel to Italy with him.

The elephant in the room is this deeply intimate relationship between Graham and Hannibal. It’s no secret that fans are shipping the Hell out of these two, and Fuller is well aware of this, and likes to play it up. Will asks Bedelia if Hannibal is in love with him and she tells him her perception of their relationship. From the beginning of the series the primary theme has always been about perception. How Will perceives the world around him, how Hannibal looks at the world ,and how the supporting characters view the two of them.

Will approaches Lecter with the Red Dragon symbol he found at the Leeds’ home, and Lecter informs him of its meaning, mentioning that the full moon is in eleven days, so Will better get a move on, before the next family dies.

 

At the Brooklyn Museum, Francis goes to see the the main Blake painting, and just as in the book and film, he eats it. This is probably his attempt to stop killing by ingesting the painting’s power, or so Will guesses. When Graham shows up, they finally meet face to face, which doesn’t work out too well for Graham, and Francis tosses him through the air like a kitten. Its easy to forget how large the actor is who plays Dollarhyde, next to the rather diminutive Graham. In a prodigious show of strength, Francis picks him up and throws him across the room, before making his escape.

Since the show hews so closely to the filmed version, (which is not unlike the book), this really plays off the difference between television and film. In every respect, this particular part of the series is just like the film, only with a depth of detail that movies simply don’t have time for, in the space of two hours. It’s really like watching an alternate universe version of the same story.

This is also one of the reasons that television is in the midst of a kind of renaissance of storytelling, right now. The creators of these shows, informed by social media and digital streaming, can take full advantage of the medium, take serial storytelling to its ultimate conclusion, and respond to fandom critiques of their shows, almost in real time. As a result, movies are just a very different medium of storytelling,  and simply can’t do what a series does, in providing the depth of  character detail that fans crave.

This leads to one of the differences I noted between Transformative fandom vs Curatorial fandom. Curatorial fandom is most often concerned with the minutiae and plot detail provided in movies, which have characters and relationships as less of a priority. It’s not that movies don’t have either of those things, its that its more difficult to get deep into such issues, in a two hour genre movie, that has more pressing concerns, like advancing the plot. However, you can get more in depth character development, and relationships in a ten or twenty hour series. In fact, the success of a series depends on how invested the audience can get into the characters.

Hannibal Season Three: Dolce

I know its been a while since I posted a Hannibal review. I promise I’m not neglecting what I’d said I’d do with this show, which was do in depth reviews of all three seasons, which are currently available to stream on Amazon Prime. Here’s my review of Dolce, which is episode six of season three.

In the sixth episode of this season, we see the long awaited reunion between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, and naturally, by the end of the episode, the two of them try to kill each other, because that’s just  how  they are.

Jack Crawford and Will Graham meet at Pazzi’s gruesome murder scene for the first time since last season. It turns out that this was always the plan between the two of them. We had been led to believe that Will had simply run off to be with Hannibal, but it turns out, that Will went to Europe to find him, while Jack could follow later, and by a different route, so that the two of them would not appear to be in tandem. At their meeting, Will asks Jack why he didn’t kill Hannibal, and Jack says he was saving him for Will.

Throughout this entire series, Will has been a hound caught between two masters. Earlier in season one, Hannibal referred to Will as Jack Crawford’s  hound, and this is an apt description, because Will has the instincts of one, Lecter and Jack sent him out to do their bidding, and often fought over their possession of him. At one point Jack just comes right out and asks if Will is his man, or is he Hannibal’s, and Will had to think about that for a minute, as he neatly sidestepped that question.

When viewed from one angle, Will’s actions make no sense, but if you take into account that Jack Crawford and Hannibal represent opposing sides of who he is, and what he wants: stability, justice, and order, or mayhem, lawlessness, and the freedom to do what he will, then it is understandable why Will is torn. If Lecter is coded as a satanic figure, then Jack is God, or at least Will’s better angel, (in fact, Jack says as much to Lecter, in a later episode), and naturally, Lecter exists in opposition to all that Jack represents. Does Will want to serve, or be served? Hannibal’s power, and ability to flout authority, is intoxicating to a part of Will’s personality, and he seems to constantly be at war, not just with Hannibal, but that part of himself.

Hannibal is severely injured after his fight with Jack Crawford, and limps his way back to his quarters, where Bedelia has already crafted an excuse for her dalliance with him in Rome. She tells him she is preparing for his eventual capture, and wonders if he is drawing his enemies to him. If he, in fact, wants to be caught. One of the biggest movie tropes about serial killers is that they secretly want to be caught, because if they don’t, how can they have their egos fed by becoming famous? How can they be known if no one knows who they are?

 

In the movie Seven, the killer turns himself in to the police at the end of the movie, for this exact reason. How are people to know his grand plan and admire it, if he doesn’t get caught. There is a real life basis for this common movie trope. For example,  mass killers often leave manifestos for why they kill, because they want to be known and admired, and on occasion a serial killer has tried to insinuate themselves  into their own investigation, by contacting the detectives involved, as in the Son of Sam investigation. But largely, the idea that serial killers want to be caught, is a myth.

Gillian Anderson is excellent this episode as Bedelia. Her performance is just one of the highlights. Up to now, she has appeared to be Hannibal’s prisoner, she is with him because of the constant underlying threat that he will kill her. In a sense she is keeping her enemy close to her, because its better for her to know exactly where he is than to be free, and not know where he is, or what he’s doing, which is an issue that will come into play later in the season, between Will and Hannibal.

But Bedelia is going to need to explain to the authorities why she stayed with him, She comes up with the excuse that she was out of her mind, with the same drug cocktail Hannibal used to subdue Miriam Lass, (in season 2), so she genuinely believed herself to be Lydia Fell, the wife of the man Hannibal is impersonating, Norman Fell. Hannibal admires her cleverness, and the two of them agree to support each other’s stories.

When Hannibal leaves, Bedelia shoots up her special cocktail, and is found first by Chiyo. Bedelia seems to be one of those people who develops a semi-adversarial relationship, with everyone she meets, and Chiyoh is no exception. Probably because Bedelia is one of those characters that seemingly every TV show must have, that person who speaks uncomfortable truths to the other characters.

Then Will and Jack encounter Bedelia, in Hannibal’s apartments, and she already has her answers ready. Jack and Will are not buying any of her story, but I can’t tell if the police inspector does. There’s definitely some kind of “frission”, or attraction, going on between the two of them. One of the more amusing scenes is watching Bedelia’s interaction with  Jack and Will. Gillian Anderson, always brings her A game to every project, she looks like she’s having a helluva lot of fun, and that entire scene is hilarious to watch, as Bedelia drunkenly slurs her way through the initial interview, and its one of the few scenes of genuine humor, in the series.

Hannibal doesn’t leave Rome. Instead he makes his way to the Uffizzi Gallery, to view Boticelli’s Primavera, which I talked about in my review of the second episode of the season, titled Primavera. For some reason he is obsessed with this panting. He had a arranged one of his murders to resemble the painting, many years ago, before he left Italy. Here we see him drawing another representation of the painting but replacing the faces of the angel, Zephpyrus, and the nymph Chloris, with the faces of Will Graham, and Bedelia, his two closest “associates”.

Will’s unexpected presence is a source of unmitigated happiness to Hannibal, and he almost loses his chill, telling Will, in a somewhat poetic manner, how much he missed him, and how overjoyed he is to see him again, (for Hannibal, this is practically gushing), even though he had the chance to see him when the two of them were running around in the catacombs, in an earlier episode, but admittedly that was before Will, supposedly,  forgave him. The two of them leave the Gallery together, and Will, feeling some type of way again, pulls out a knife and tries to stab Hannibal. I’m unsure if he was trying to incapacitate him, to capture him, or if the stabbing was revenge for Hannibal stabbing him last season, or just general assholery on Will’s part. Chiyo, sitting on a nearby roof, shoots Will through the shoulder. Since she only kills under the most dire of circumstances, as she did in Lithuania, she would not have killed Will, but she would not allow him to harm Hannibal, either.

Hannibal is, naturally, completely unperturbed by Will trying to kill him, because what’s a little homicide among friends?. He takes Will back to some rented rooms, and minsters to his woulds, before deciding (and I don’t know if this is revenge for Will trying to kill him, or general asssholery on his part), to eat Will’s brain. Notice how he takes the opportunity ,while dressing Will’s wounds, to give him a warm hug, since Will is in far too much pain to fight back, or try to stab him again.

Now, let’s be clear here, Hannibal does love Will, but he still wants to eat him.  He wants to be with Will, but Will is still dangerous to him. One of the many philosophies behind human cannibalism (outside of desperation) is the idea that eating someone is a way of keeping that person close, so that they can never leave. This was the motivation behind the serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. Either that, or he believes he will gain Will’s power and energy through consumption. Normally Hannibal’s reasons for eating others is because he has nothing but contempt for them, so treats them like food.

In the meantime, the police have allowed Jack Crawford to leave, urging him to go back to America, which, of course, Jack doesn’t do. How he manages to find Will and Hannibal is carefully not mentioned, but in a funny moment he encounters Chiyo in the elevator of Hannibal’s building. She either knows who he is, or senses he is a cop, or is just generally cagey, but she manages to avoid his, too close,  attention, although they each sneak suspicious glances at the other.

This entire time we keep switching back and forth between Italy and America where Mason, Alana, and Margot, have been plotting to capture Hannibal, so that Mason can cook and eat him. Alana’s and Margot’s relationship is revealed in this episode, along with Mason’s plans to have a Verger baby with his sister, to be carried by Alana.

We’ll talk more about that particular trio in the next post.

Jack makes his way to Hannibal’s rented apartments, (I’m unclear how he found them, but he was following Will, at the time). Jack gets there, not just in time to watch Hannibal begin his meal of Will Graham, but to be ambushed by Hannibal,  taken prisoner, and made to watch the ordeal, which he vehemently protests, to no avail. Will’s face gets attacked a to this season, for some reason. I think somewhere in there is a statement about the actors prettiness. He is  more attractive than previous actors who played Will Graham, who looked a little more  like Will’s  working class roots.

Hannibal’s feast is interrupted by the Florentine police, who found the apartment by following Jack, in the hope that Jack (and Will) would lead them to Hannibal, having been suspicious of Jack’s motivations, for visiting their city, right from the beginning. They are still in the employ of Mason Verger actually, and they kidnap Will and Hannibal, and send them to the Verger’s Muskrat Farm, for the reward money. They attempt to kill Jack, but Chiyoh, hiding out on a nearby rooftop, assassinates them. Jack is freed by Chiyoh, after arguing that he just wants to go home, and in exchange for telling her where Will and Lecter were taken.Can I just add that Chiyoh is a total bad ass who is not to be trifled with, and that she really should have just had her own show?

Will and Lecter are taken to Muskrat Farm, and trussed like prized birds, while Mason gloats over his victory.

One of the things we haven’t talked about much in the series is the subject of Classism. Particularly the class differences between Will and Hannibal, and Hannibal and everyone else. Its especially important considering Hannibal’s philosophy about  the people he kills, and his attitude towards Will. One of Hannibal’s guiding philosophies is to “Eat the Rude.” so we get lots of instances where Hannibal kills and consumes people he believes were disrespectful to him. And not just to him, he kills and eats one of Abigail Hobbes friends, after seeing her be rude to her own mother.

I am a firm believer that at least part of Hannibal’s motivations for killing and consuming his victims is because of class prejudice. Hannibal’s family was once Lithuanian nobility, and while it may not be a major factor, I certainly think it  informs his feeling of entitlement to respect. he doesn’t feel he needs to earn respect. He thinks he should be given respect by dint of having been born, and all beings should recognize his inherent superiority. When looked at from this standpoint, it is unsurprising that Hannibal would kill (and even eat) those he considered less than, because that is entirely in keeping, with the proletariat philosophy, that the wealthy are parasites, who prey on society.

Next episode however, the tables have been turned, as Hannibal is the one about to be eaten. Mason Verger has Hannibal exactly where he wants him, to exact his revenge for what Hannibal did to him, over a year ago. Unfortunately he has captured Will as well, and we’ll find out just how far Hannibal is willing to go to save them both from an ironic fate.

 

It Came Out Of My Pocket

Here’s a short collection of articles I saved in Pocket. There’s definitely a theme to the stuff I collect there, and that’s gonna be reflected here. Now, I usually post things on Fridays, but its that time of year again where I get really, really, tired, very easily, and all I can think about is going to sleep. I call it post-seasonal malaise. (I think doctors call it SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder.) Well, anyway, I’m gonna soldier through it (while trying to get more sunlight.)

 

The Clapback Mailbag

If you have not read any of these, you need to get over to The Root and catch up. Michael Harriott is hilarious even on his worse days, but he shines when discussing issues of race. He is the only writer who can make me laugh about racism every time. The Clapback mailbag is posted every Friday.

https://www.theroot.com/the-root-s-clapback-mailbag-with-friends-like-these-1838540363

 

 

The Best Of Hannibal

I actually agreed with the choices in this article. These are some of my favorite episodes, but I would pick more than five though, as there are 39 episodes, in three seasons, to choose from.

https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3576484/revisiting-five-best-episodes-nbcs-hannibal/

 

 

 

The Greta Thunberg Helpline

The last thing I posted was about Greta Thunberg, the young girl who has White men in a bit of a tizzy. This is the funniest thing I’ve seen regarding the entire issue, which of course, is not remotely funny.

 

 

 

Can Black Women Be Introverts

It appears that I simply enjoy being contrary,  doing and being everything that’s against society’s mainstream rules. I’m a woman in a society that preferences men. I’m fat in a culture that prefers women be thin. I’m Black in a White supremacist culture. I’m an introvert in a society that prizes extroversion. I’m left handed in a society that prizes right handedness. I have hobbies, I’m not supposed to have, I love music I’m not supposed to listen to, I’m a nerd who likes Science Fiction and math, and a geek who likes to draw superheroes.

According to the American society I’m not supposed to be doing any of that stuff.

Well, that’s too bad, because I mean to go on, as I began.

https://www.bese.com/black-women-arent-allowed-to-be-introverted/

 

 

On Octavia Butler 

Butler talked about the overwhelming Whiteness of the Science Fiction genre waaay back in 1980.

Once again, I did things in the most contrary manner possible, as I did not come by my interest in Science fiction and Fantasy through reading the works of Tolkien and Heinlein, like most people did. I found my way into SciFi by way of Stephen King, and the Horror genre, having started that journey with women authors, like Octavia  Butler, and James Tiptree. Since I didn’t get into SciFi by reading White men, I tend to think of these men  differently than a lot of SciFi fans.

https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/d3ekbm/octavia-butler

 

 

 

Black Time Travelers Fall Short

I would love to see some Black time travel stories where the person truly changes the course of long history, like stopping slavery, or helping some tribe win a war. Its funny, but every time I see Black time travel story, its usually them trying to save  a life, rather than the usual time travel question of who  should be killed, and I wonder if that’s some type of racial thing, because there are a million different ways to change history that do not involve killing someone. And I have never seen stories, at least not the ones written by White people, that ever seek to overturn the truly big events of events of history, beyond the Holocaust. I mean why not stop Christopher Columbus, or disrupt the slave trade?

Here Sherronda Brown talks about how she would love to see time travel stories that destroy the status quo.

http://blackyouthproject.com/i-want-black-time-travelers-to-be-a-threat-to-the-status-quo/

 

Yasuke: The Black Samurai

We’re supposed to be getting a movie about this soon starring Chadwick Bozeman. Ive been fascinated by Samurai since I was a teenager. I will watch any movie that has samurai in it, and I will definitely see this, if it ever gets made. In the meantime, there’s a couple of books on the topic that I’m looking forward to reading.

 

 

There’s already a book on Yasuke’s time in Japan:

 

An interview with the author of African Samurai Tim Lockley:

 

And here’s a short fictional film about a young girl who finds out that she is Yasuke’s great, great grandaughter. I would love to see this done on a larger scale.

 

Weekend Reading: Pop Culture Edition

On Gender:

I still have not gotten over how the Ghostbusters was so badly treated by the public, and how we will now never get a sequel. The “feminists ” who are forever talking about how they love these types of movies, where women get treated like people, totally slept on this one. To be fair, the trailer did suck, but a trailer is not a movie, and I’m still a firm believer that most trailers are designed to make you hate a movie before its release. Some of them are successful at that, some less so.

http://www.unleashthefanboy.com/movies/analyzing-10-common-criticisms-of-ghostbusters-2016/140340

http://www.indiewire.com/2016/07/ghostbusters-reboot-backlash-1201705555/

 

My biggest criticism of the movie was this though:

https://www.polygon.com/2016/7/21/12239704/ghostbusters-is-still-haunted-by-negative-racial-tropes

https://www.salon.com/2016/03/04/the_new_ghostbusters_and_race_why_it_matters_that_leslie_jones_isnt_playing_one_of_the_scientists/

But despite my strong misgivings, I did like the movie, and  Leslie Jones, who endured so much abuse about her character, Patty Tolan, has a great defense for the criticism of her character. MTA workers apparently get paid more than college scientists, and she’s a regular person who helps save the world, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/07/ghostbusters-leslie-jones-defends-remake-racial-stereotyping-criticis

Incidentally the scene above is one of my favorite one-liners in the entire movie. Patty gets some of the best lines in the movie, despite the fact that the trailer made it seem like she got the worst ones. in the director’s cut Holtzman answers that by calling her mouthy, and I’m really glad they left that line out of the movie.

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I thought this was an interesting read about how the  Coen Brothers movie, Fargo, is really a discussion about toxic masculinity:

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/how-fargo-captures-sad-realities-toxic-masculinity

 

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I liked this article about how WoC never get to have happy endings, as the friends and sidekicks of their White co-stars. It seems like we always have to suffer (I’m looking at you Handmaid’s Tale.)

1201705555/https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a12022020/how-women-of-color-portrayed-tv-film/

 

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I skipped the second season of Jessica Jones, because I hated the first season so much, I couldn’t even finish it. To give you some indication of how important that is, I watched all of Iron Fist, after I talked a lot of shit about that show.  That I’ve said almost nothing at all about Jessica Jones, says a lot about my attitude towards the show.

http://www.anathemamag.com/jessica-jones-doesnt-care-about-men-of-colour/

 

On Dystopia:

For some reason dystopias where regular, middle-class,  pretty, White people get treated the way they’ve always historically treated marginalized people, seems to be a popular sci fi trope. So popular in fact that even MadTV had a skit related to it:

 

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When I was a teenager, I used to theorize that White people liked to sit around watching a problem fully and completely develop, and then, instead of fixing the problem,  fix the blame. This also brings the to mind the idea that Black people don’t envision dystopia as an exciting future, because we’ve already been there. We have nowhere to go but forward, and nothing to have but hope. Dystopia is a White people thing.

http://blackyouthproject.com/white-liberals-stay-predicting-dystopias-caused-by-whiteness-without-doing-anything-about-it/

In a recent discussion, my friend Preston Anderston posited that white people “can understand the destruction of the planet before the destruction of the white world,” and perhaps nothing exemplifies this better than their dystopian imaginings. To them, there is no world without whiteness, so even if they acknowledge the hell whiteness necessarily brings, there is no other future possible than that hell.

 

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I found this post by the writer, Cory Doctorow, really interesting. Why does there need to be a dystopia at all? We’ve seen plenty of instances where crises  didn’t end in some kind of Mad Max free for all, and we need more stories that reinforce the idea that we can get through a disaster with our humanity still intact.

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/cory-doctorow-walkaway/

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 On Disability:

I found a series of articles about how Hollywood approaches the topic of disability in film and TV. 

https://byrslf.co/its-time-for-hollywood-to-rethink-disability-e1dfc4142c9b

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https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/tv/at-the-heart-of-hannibal-respectful-treatment-of-mental-illness/

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http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2015/05/28/disability-in-the-dystopian-future-of-mad-max-fury-road/

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https://www.inverse.com/article/15806-one-year-later-fury-road-resonates-on-disability-sexuality-and-the-end-of-days

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https://serfbazaar.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/furiosa-disability-representation-and-empowerment/

 

On Fandom:

The discussion of Fandom misbehavior continues tonight on:  Tumblr Calls Shit Out

There a a lot of fans who change, misrepresent, or just straight lie about the source material to justify White prioritization of the characters. As I’ve said before, most White audiences have no other template, and in many cases will do these things to  reproduce a dynamic with which they’ve always been  comfortable: Poc as side narratives that support the White character’s primary story.

princeescaluswords answered:

Because the disregard or misrepresentation of canon is frequently used as a foundation of fandom racism.  We live in a time of change, where Hollywood is oh-so-slowly beginning to understand that primary stories and primary characters don’t always have to be entitled white males.  This stands contrary to seventy years of television history, which has taught the audience that the only thing that matters are the emotions and interests of those same white males.   Unfortunately, the viewing audience has learned the old lesson well and so expects the canon to support their predisposition.  When it doesn’t meet their expectations, when the emotions and interests of characters of color are given priority, their need to see white men on top can be met by getting rid of the canon.

Take the most popular ship in my fandom (This is not an attack against shipping. Shipping does not have to be inherently racist or inherently demeaning.   Early in my fandom days, I thought so, but I do not any more).  This ship and its fandom which put together two white males whose purpose on the show was to serve as the main character of color’s foils. The ship itself is not in question for me.  What is in question is the way that the fandom demanded that this ship become the center point of the show, and when it became clear that no matter how many nods that the powers that be were going to give to the ship, the show wasn’t going to make it canon, canon was discarded in the most hostile and negative way imaginable.   This wasn’t just in my (or others’) imaginations.  When the star of the show and the executive producer have to comment on the impact of this canon erasure, it’s pretty serious.

Canon misrepresentation doesn’t stop with just shipping.  Attacks on the importance of characters of color and their role in the show are frequently aided by simply pretending parts of canon don’t exist. For example, in my fandom, Scott is frequently vilified for a single act of perceived hostility towards Derek (the famous Gerard-neck-grab-bite), and it is used as a way to delegitimize him as a main character, ignoring the fact that not only was it a necessary evil to save Derek and those he cared about by disabling the enemy, it was a direct parallel to the very actions that Derek took against Scott previously. For fandom, those actions are dismissed as “yeah, Derek was an asshole, but it was for Scott’s own good” but that same excuse is not sufficient. Or, when the idea that Scott ditched Stiles for Allison continually is used to delegitimize the central relationship of the show, when ditching never happened in the show, but is treated by fandom as if it did.    If you ignore or manipulate canon in order to keep a character of color from being the focus of the show, why shouldn’t I add the tag?

People get rid of canon as a way of dealing with the fact that their white characters are not the center of the story, even though their favorites have important roles.  It’s easier to just get rid of canon rather than let a character of color share the spotlight.  It’s easier to dismiss writing as a ‘trainwreck’ even when that writing gives you the characters you enjoy, and thus delegitimize the whole story because that focuses on a character of color.

I must admit that I have considered that maybe this is all my own perception. Maybe Teen Wolf’s canon is so bad that they have every right to ignore the parts that don’t favor their white faves.

But then, I take a look at other fandoms.  I look at the Star Wars fandom, where the canon has been Death Star-ed as hard as Alderaan in order to celebrate genocidal white fascist man-children.  I look at the Shadowhunters fandom.  I look at the Flash fandom.  I look at the Supergirl fandom.  And another fandom. And another fandom.   And another fandom.

In the words of my favorite show, “three times is a pattern.”  What do you call too many times to count?

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This discussion is an addendum to the above:

 haintxblue

I feel like I have to specify that when I say I hate Reylo I don’t mean people shouldn’t be able to ship whatever the hell they want, because I honestly could not care less. When I say that I hate Reylo what I mean is that there is an extremely vocal and offputting majority in the Reylo fandom that consistently puts forward meta-analysis of Star Wars–and more succinctly, Kylo Ren–that I find abhorrent, disgusting, delusional, and at worst regressive. I also mean, when I say I hate Reylo, that I hate the idea of Reylo being canon, because it would be shitty, stupid, regressive writing if it does.

Ship whatever you want and anyone who’s on you for it probably needs to get a life. But if you start openly advocating for abusive actions to be considered “romantic,” handwaving real critique of the source material, and posting “meta analysis” that’s deeply problematic you should probably be prepared for some backlash.

I do not care what you ship. Go, be free, write your beautiful fic and draw your beautiful fanart. But you can’t tell me not to care about toxicity in fandom and regressive writing in canon.

 

aimmyarrowshigh

It’s also a sector of fandom that mimics one of the worst traits that fandom can have – the “big name” Reylo bloggers are the arbiters of all info that gets through to their followers about Star Wars, to the point where the Reylo fandom en masse believe things are canon that were literally just made-up fanon, but the BNFs who made it up dig in their heels because admitting that they aren’t all-knowing, or that their “analysis” of SW is insanely biased, would give their followers cause to doubt them and start thinking for themselves, looking at and listening to outside sources.

Reylo, like some other toxic ship fandoms – many of which aren’t even about ships that are themselves toxic! Reylo is, but like, there are toxic ship fandoms based on perfectly benign ships, too – is more about the shippers being venerated than the characters they claim to love. (Their complete disregard for Rey as a human person and protagonist is p much proof of that, but that’s not even the point here.) It isn’t a coincidence that almost every Bad Reylo Meta either was OP by, or based on a meta by, a handful of “in crowd” bloggers, and it DEFINITELY is not a coincidence that Reylos are obsessed with the idea of Being Right and the idea of Casting Out the Other, more than they are about actual fucking Star Wars.

There is a huge aspect of Reylo fandom that, like their OTP, is based on manipulation and gaslighting more than anything to do with actual content, and that’s 100% wrong and also deserves to be called out whenever it’s seen. 

Like, part of why combating Bad Reylo Meta is a thing that needs to be done is not for the characters’ sake, but for the sake of younger and/or more vulnerable fangirls who worship the Big Reylo Bloggers and think that they’re genuinely smarter/more enlightened/“the only ones who really understand.” It’s absolutely fine to make up fanon about your ship. It’s absolutely normal when ships have cliques. I can even understand the normalcy of ship wars, even if I think they’re dumb as soup. But the way that Big Name Reylos rewrite the entire schema of the franchise and twist both SW canon and actual reality wrt the behavior of Kylo Ren – an INTENTIONALLY WRITTEN NEO-NAZI METAPHOR WHOSE FIRST INTERACTION WITH REY WAS STATED BY THE DIRECTOR TO BE A RAPE METAPHOR – is not normal.

It is not normal to care more about “Proving Antis Wrong” than just liking the thing you like. It’s not normal to be so virulently fearful and aggressive towards people who just don’t agree with your fave blogger’s bad meta made up based on nothing. And it’s not normal for a handful of bloggers to have such a stranglehold on not only their followers, but public discussion of the entire fandom.

Almost none of the SWST has actually unfolded, in canon, the way a handful of Big Name Reylos told their fans it did, but their version has spread like flat earth theory. And that’s not a coincidence, either. Batshit conspiracy theory and charismatic leaders who willfully mislead their followers go hand-in-hand.

Make that your Shitty Snoke Theory™. (Who, by the fucking by, DID NOT BRAINWASH KYLE FROM THE WOMB. THAT’S FANON.)

 

diversehighfantasy

Yup. All it took was a couple BNF reylos to say that TLJ made the ship canon (contradicting the movie and everyone else who had seen the movie, even those who thought the force skype stuff was “sexy”), and a disturbingly large number of fans carved it into stone. There are fan spaces not meant to be dedicated reylo shippers spaces where you can not even have a conversation about Star Wars that isn’t centered on Reylo, because so many fans are 100% convinced that the entire trilogy is Kylo’s story and Kylo’s story ONLY, with Rey as an object belonging to him, whose purpose is to redeem him and fuck him. They 100% believe this is how it’s written, and any conversation about the ST that isn’t about Kylo/reylo or anything that can be used to prop it up is irrelevant and off-topic. Which is why talking about Rey’s relationship with Finn is seen as irrelevant to the story (contradicting the canon), but so is talking about Finn as an individual, developed character or speculating about his story independent of Rey.

More to the point, the fandom hyperfocuses on Kylo because he’s the one they can empathize with, even though he’s awful and has done shitty thing after shitty thing to Rey. The intensity of that empathy only spotlights their blatant lack of empathy for Finn, who the fandom by and large aggressively believes is only in the series as a comic relief (not true, even in TLJ, where the clear comic relief was Hux) and general buffoon. That empathy gap is a facet of systemic racism, so I don’t know why fans often hesitate to criticize Kylo Ren’s disproportionate popularity, not as a villain, but as the “real protagonist.”

It’s not only harmful, it drains a lot of the fun of the SW movie fandom, which was never about one character. Fans used to talk about every creature in the Cantina and Jabba’s Palace, every member of the Jedi Council. You could go on about Kit Fisto (a personal favorite from the prequels), and no one would get pissed that you weren’t paying attention to Anakin and Obi-Wan. This isn’t nostalgia, it’s noting the difference in the fandom’s behavior when the films were predominantly white and there was no need to aggressively insist that a white guy was at the center.

@

lapixelette

Honestly? i’m pretty sure nazis have infiltrated this fandom. Just straight up.
given all the behaviours and the way they line up I feel this goes way, WAY beyond white prioritization, as disgusting as that behaviour alone is.

 

diversehighfantasy

Nazis haven’t infiltrated the fandom. These are very mainstream attitudes that can be found in every fandom, as well as in irl communities, businesses  and schools. It lets too many people off the hook to imply otherwise.

 

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In my last post on forthcoming films, I forgot to add Crazy Rich Asians. I’m almost as excited about this film as I was about Black Panther because I know how much Asian Americans have been looking forward to this. This is notable because its a  film with a primarily Asian cast,that isn’t about the martial arts, or nerds.

 It looks really cute, but the plot isn’t something to my taste, as I generally dislike romantic comedies, but I probably will watch this at some later date. Ultimately this film  isn’t aimed at me, but I hope everyone likes it. if it does well, we may get more of this type of movie.

 

 

 

 

 

Best Scifi Costumes on TV

 

Luke Cage

Luke Cage makes this list not just because the costumes are beautiful, but because this is some of the most politically relevant costuming in the MCU. All of the costumes speak to the specific backgrounds and identities of the wearer, and were designed by Stephanie Maslansky, whose priority was keeping things casual.

Cottonmouth’s dapper business suits represent his aspirations for legitmacy, as does Mariah’s middle-class chic. Cottonmouth’s suits are carefully crafted to inspire ambition to the young people of Harlem, while Mariah’s are carefully coded to inspire the folksy warmth and political legitimacy she seeks to project to the community.

Misty Knight’s no-nonsense practiciality is what’s on display in her costuming. She is a competent detective who is sexy while not being sexualized.

Luke’s hoodie is representative of the anonymity he attempts to cling to while protecting Harlem.That hoodie full of bullet holes is a direct callback to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, (one of the many young Black men who have died at the hands of police and  vigilante shhotings in the US.), and meant to invoke a feeling of hope and strength to the show’s audience.

Farscape

I think Farscape had some of the most imaginative costuming on television. There’s nothing on TV right now that’s come close to it. The creators managed to make the female characters both alien and sexy, while the men were alien and virile, and funny.

I think one of my favorite costumes was Crichton’s black coat, that he adopted at some point towards the end of season two, which created a very sexy outline for him, with broad shoulders, a cinched waist, and it flared nicely during his action sequences.

The creators seemed to figure out that black leather seemed to work really, really well in this universe, and so, just made an infinite variety of  these outfits for everyone on the show. There was definitely some bondage leather influence on the wardrobe.

 

This is Scorpius, a half Scarran, half Peacekeeper hybrid, whose unique body chemistry requires a face mask, which gives him a sinister look..

 

I especially liked this red and black number Crichton wore in season two. I think this is a Peacekeeper outfit.

 

These are the Scarrans. They wear lots and lots of black or red leather.

 

It wasn’t until the second season that I figured out that Virginia Hey, who played Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan, was also the Warrior Woman from The Road Warrior.

Space 1999 – Maya

Maya, played by Catherine Schell, was the only character worth watching this show for, and the episodes that centered around her, were always the most interesting. For some reason, there was a thing about bird aliens during this time period, because Buck Roger’s had a male character that was kind of like her, too.  The only difference was that Maya could take on the shapes of different aliens. Still, she was definitely this show’s version of a Spock character, and the creators tried to differentiate her from Spock by giving her superpowers.

What’s interesting is the idea of a woman with the suggestion of mutton chop sideburns, who is sexy in a mainstream television show. But you have to remember, back in the day, these types of shows remained very much under the radar, as most people wrote them off as being for children, even if Space 1999, strived to present more mature themes. I appreciate it now, in a way I didn’t, when I was a teenager.

There’s also more than a little bit of Barbarella in her outfits and posing. In how she was prominently featured on the show. Space 1999 also starred Martin Landau, from the  Mission Impossible TV show, and Barbara Bain, who was also from that show.  I liked them both okay, and they really were too good for this show, but Maya was real draw for most people

The show aired from 1975 through 1977, but there was a definite 60s vibe in the setup, designs, and fashions, the were heavily reminiscent of Star Trek, which first aired in 1963.

American God

I loved the costumes from this show. To go into the influences, and meaning, of the costumes, would require several posts devoted entirely to the subject, and guess what? I found one! My favorite is of course Media. Gillian Anderson is absolutely stunning throughout the entire season. A close second would be Anansi, and Easter, who had some wonderful outfits.

https://tomandlorenzo.com/2017/05/american-gods-style-costumes-art-direction-cinematography-analysis/

Suttirat Anne Larlarb is Series Costume Designer on American Gods first season, with Assistant Costume Designers Laura Montgomery, Brenda Broer, Sabrina Zain, Anita Bacic and Costume Supervisor Quita Alfred.

 

Notice the old world European embroidery on the lapels and cuffs of the Zorya’s   costume, which is appropriate, since she hails from Russia. The designs echo other  details in her home, which is old and shabby, but warm and comfortable, just like her attitude.

 

This is Media as the late, great, David Bowie, one of several gay icons as she was dressed for the show. The others are Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland. Gillian Anderson proved to be  incredible chameleon, and this must have been great fun for her.

 

Notice the similarity in costumes between Loki and Odin.

If you look closely at Shadow’s suit, it has tiny little dots all over it. There’s such great attention to details that the viewer will almost certainly never notice.

 

I think I already mentioned Easter’s slightly tattered finery. Notice the tiny frayed edges on her flower headpiece, and her matching eye-shadow.

 

This is one of Bilquis’ outfits from her 70s scenes.

The faceless men in white, with their jackboots, suspenders, and black hats were deliberately meant to resemble the Droogs from the movie, a Clockwork Orange.

Outlander

Claire’s dresses are designed by Terry Dresbach and are one of the highlights of this show. No matter what era she inhabits,  whether it’s the American 40s, or 18th century Scotland, Claire is always dressed to the nines. There are websites out there dedicated to examining the fashions of this show

http://www.instyle.com/reviews-coverage/tv-shows/best-fashion-moments-outlander-season-2

 

Downton Abbey

What I liked most about this show is that it told the story of this wealthy  English family as much through clothing, as what they did. And the characters themselves occasionally discussed fashion and how it was changing.

The time period moves from the turn of the 20th century, through the first world war, to the 1920s, and you can get a very good idea, not only of how women’s fashions changed over that time period, but more importantly, WHY they changed. Women’s fashions were often a response to outside events,   because, in the past centuries,  the vast majority of women’s fashions were designed by women, who were responding to the ebb and flow of historic events.

In an exclusive interview with MASTERPIECE, Downton Abbey’s costume designer, Anna Mary Scott Robbins, recently took a break from her exciting work on Downton Abbey Season 6 to talk about the signature styles of the women of Downton and designing their sumptuous, jazz-age costumes.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/programs/features/slideshow/downton-abbey-s5-behind-designs-fashions-season-5/

 

Contrast the above manner of dress (from 1900 through 1910s) with the looser, lighter style of dress below. In the 20s, the world was just coming out of the first World War, when everyone, rich and poor alike,  had experienced significant hardship. With so many men lost during the war, it marked a significant turn, for women, as they begin to movie into the workforce in greater numbers, especially the women of the middle, and upper, classes, the kind of women who had been pressured against working before the war. The new style of dress was more practical, and business-like.

Take note that with so many people dead from the war, the servant class all but dried up afterwards, as they also moved into the greater workforce. The servant class, that had made it really easy to dress in the many layers of clothing that women required during the Victorian era, were all but extinct. Upper class women needed to be able to more easily dress themselves, and take care of their own clothing and hair, since, after a while, there were no longer such things as Lady’s Maids. Dresses and hairstyles became simpler. There were fabric restrictions during the war, so women saved fabric by raising hemlines, (which never went back down, and got raised again during, and after, WW2.)

In one episode, we can  hear the women’s opinions of the change in fashion, when the younger daughters of the house model the new 20s flapper dresses for their mother and grandmother, who express shock at the flimsiness and skin exposure of the designs. The silhouette of the flapper dresses are completely different from the more modest dresses that came before.

 

 

 

Star Trek :The Original Series

The fashion designer for the original Star Trek was William Thiel. You can see a lot of the 60s influence in his fashions, even though he tried really hard to make the outfits realistic. Still these are some of the loveliest women’s costumes in Scifi, all very feminine, with some beautiful colorwork.

The amount of skin being shown is entirely in keeping with the 60s era thinking, which was a reaction to the deep conservatism of the 50s. These fashions were considered very progressive for women, at the time. The biggest influence over fashion was the invention of the bikini, which was invented in the 40s, just after the war, but didn’t make its way to American shores until the 50s.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/5969957/weirdest-and-sexiest-costumes-from-the-original-star-trek/

 

See the bikini influence:

 

The miniskirt was a huge thing back in the 60s. There’s been a lot of discussion about how the miniskirt does not make Star Trek a sexist show.

 

The third woman just appears to be wearing a one sleeved poncho.

Into the Badlands

Being the only martial arts television series is a big burden, It’s important that everything be meticulous and that includes the wardrobe. i talked about this just a bit in my reviews of the second season.

The men’s outfits  feel influenced by the costumes from A Clockwork Orange.

 

Even in the Badlands, people manage to find luxurious fabrics:

 

You can see the Asian influence here, where there’s  a bit of Genghis Khan, Warlord, in Quinn’s outfit.

 

 

Hannibal the Series

One of the best parts of this series is  looking at Hannibal’s suits. Hannibal comes from very old money, so I don’t think he’s making his wardrobe choices based on a therapist’s salary.

http://ew.com/article/2015/08/29/everything-hannibal-wore-hannibal/

 

One of the few times we see Hannibal witohut a suit is in the season three premiere episode. The showrunner, Bryan Fuller, says he was specifically influenced by the movie The Hunger ,which starred Katherine Deneuve, and David Bowie.

 

You can see The Hunger’s influence on Gillian Anderson’s look for the third season, too:

 

In Hannibal, Gillian Anderson got a chance to dress upscale. Here she’s wearing a very modern Parisian look.

 

Hannibal Season Three: Ep. 2 – Primavera

In the last episode, we got caught up with Hannibal’s activities since the night of the Red Dinner. In this episode, we find out what Will Graham has been doing, as one of the survivors of that night.

All throughout season two, we’ve been getting strong “hints and allegations” that Hannibal and Will have an intense (and dangerous) attraction to each other. This season the subtext has definitely become text, as it’s flat-out stated by both of them, what feelings they have for each other, and exactly how far into the abyss Will Graham fell, in his efforts to bring Hannibal to justice. At the beginning of this season, Will sets out to find and re-engage with Hannibal again, seemingly not having learned his lesson from that night.

We open almost immediately after the Red Dinner, with Will in the hospital recovering from his wounds, reliving the events of that night, and  imagining that Abigail has survived. Actually this imagining of her isn’t any different from his previous thoughts about Abigail. Will has an idealized view of Abigail, as the perfect daughter and companion, an image that Hannibal well knew, and used against him. In the real world,  he and Abigail weren’t  that close, and she certainly didn’t feel about him the way he felt about her, although since this Abigail argues with, and castigates him for his actions last season, this is probably a much truer version of her than we’ve seen from Will before.

This is something a lot of fans of the show forget. That Will and Abigail didn’t interact that much in the real world, beyond season one, and on those occasions when they were together, she was just as unforthcoming, duplicitous, and manipulative with Will, as she was with everyone else, so I was immediately suspect of this image of her. And the show  plays coy with the idea that she survived that night, until near the end of the episode.

One of the  clues, that maybe she didn’t survive, is that Abigail asks Will questions about things she couldn’t possibly know about, unless Hannibal discussed these things with her, and  I don’t believe he did. Also notice that Abigail wears the same hunting jacket that Will has imagined her wearing before, but in a dried blood color,  we’ve never seen. Her body language, and attitude, are the same as when he imagined talking with her, when he was in prison last season.

So keep in mind that Abigail did not survive that night, and Will’s discussions with her, are just Will castigating himself for being stupid.

Will also has an image of the stag, for the last time, as it dies on Hannibal’s kitchen floor.  The Stag doesn’t represent Hannibal, (as he knows Hannibal isn’t dead), and when Will is hunting for Hannibal in Europe, the Stag  is reborn. There has been a lot of discussion about what the Stag means, but my theory is that this is an avatar of  Will. This isn’t the RavenStag, which is an avatar of Hannibal the Killer. This is just The Stag that Will imagines whenever the darker side of his nature begins to assert itself.

Will  has an image of himself, and Abigail, drowning in a lake of blood. I’ve written before, that images of drowning represent  someone’s belief that they have gotten in over the heads, or into a situation that has overwhelmed them, or that they can’t control. Bedelia has such dreams in the last episode. These dreams of drowning are Will’s though, and are tied to the knowledge that he totally underestimated Hannibal’s will to survive, and his spiteful nature.

Will’s hallucinations and images are jumbled with Hannibal’s images of the breaking teacup, that reverses itself, and becomes un-shattered. I think  this represents Will, and the reversal of its breakage represents the turning back of time, and the resurrection of their previous relationship, which is something Hannibal deeply misses, even in his anger at Will’s betrayal. It’s something that Will longs for too, as he deeply regrets the decisions he made leading up to the night Abigail died. So both men are in the same place emotionally, saddened. missing each other, and regretting what they did to each other.

Will sets out in his boat to look for Hannibal in Europe, based on conversations had during Will’s therapy sessions. On arrival, eight months later, still accompanied by the ghost of Abigail, he goes to the Norman Chapel in Palermo, Italy that Hannibal mentioned, and finds a murder investigation in progress.

The Norman Chapel  is an actual place, which is also part of Hannibal’s Memory Palace. It’s  real, although, the skeleton on the floor isn’t actually there. That was placed in post-production by Fuller, and i think it indicates indicates Hannibal’s placation to Will. It is an image of Hannibal’s forgiveness, or perhaps, he is praying to Will for forgiveness..

---

http://foyernormanchapel.tumblr.com/post/142312644934/hannibals-memory-palace

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One of the images of Hannibal’s forgiveness is the Vetruvian Man origami from the first episode, and the mutilation sculpture of Dimmond’s body by Hannibal. He folded Dimmond’s body into the shape of a heart, pierced it with upside down swords, and placed it in the Chapel’s foyer. Will doesn’t actually get to see the body, though. He is met at the Chapel by a Rinaldo Pazzi, a detective in the city, who has been reading of Will’s attempts to capture The Chesapeake Ripper. Pazzi shows WIll a photograph of the crime scene, and believes it is linked to Will’s arrival in the city.

Pazzi believes that Dimmond was killed by a serial killer that he calls Il Mostro, who managed to escape capture many years ago, by framing another man for his murders. He believes Il mostro, and The Chesapeake Ripper, are one and  the same, and that Il Mostro left Dimmond’s body as a message for Will, which it is. After learning from Bedelia that Will is still alive, and has traveled to Italy to find him, Will is much on his mind. Even if Hannibal may not recognize his feelings as a form of love, Bedelia does. (I mentioned in season one, that every show needs a truth-teller, a person who sees things more clearly than the main character/s around whom the story revolves. Bedelia’s role is to say what the outsider (us, the viewer) has observed.)

https://www.keen.com/articles/tarot/3-of-swords-tarot-card

Pazzi recalls the case that set him against Il Mostro. He found the bodies of two people designed to emulate the 1482 painting, La Primavera by Boticelli, which hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

http://www.uffizi.org/artworks/la-primavera-allegory-of-spring-by-sandro-botticelli/

Hannibal was obsessed with the painting. Sitting for hours, and drawing the painting over and over, and his last murder in Italy was a reenactment of Zephyrus chasing Flora (to the right in the painting). Pazzi recognizes Hannibal’s style in the killings of the Chesapeake Ripper and believes Hannibal has returned to Italy. He thinks Will may have some insight into Il Mostro’s nature.

https://hannibalfannibals.com/2015/06/17/hannibal-the-history-of-il-mostro-fact-vs-fiction/

But Will is not helpful, as he grapples with his darker self. Will is torn between wanting to join Hannibal, and wanting to capture him. Whenever he feels he is getting too emotionally involved, too close to Hannibal, he becomes afraid that he will lose himself, (hence his dreams about drowning), and feeling a need to reassert his better self (as an agent of the law), he  tries to capture him instead. He seems to go through this cycle of longing and destruction at least twice a season.

Observe that while contemplating Hannibal’s crime scene, Will doesn’t use his pendulum system to ease into the killer’s mindset. He knows Hannibal so well that he doesn’t need it, and he seamlessly moves back and forth between his own mind, and Hannibal’s. He hallucinates (or dreams) of the Dimmond heart, and in one of this series most grotesque scenes, it comes to life, unfolds itself into the shape of the Stag, and stalks him across the chapel floor. My theory is that this is the rebirth of Will’s murderous avatar. Just being in a place Hannibal has been, has awakened the darker parts of his nature, a part of himself he thought was destroyed that night in Hannibal’s kitchen, when Abigail died.

Will and Pazzi descend into the catacombs underneath the Chapel. Will is searching for Hannibal, believing he can feel him nearby. Will warns Pazzi to not be so trusting, because he may harm him. Will knows that his distress will attract Hannibal and killing Pazzi might bring draw him for sure. And Hannibal is there, so he hears Will’s quiet assertion that he is forgiven. But what is Will forgiving him for? Running away and leaving him? Trying to kill him? Killing Abigail? All three? Does it matter?

 

Of Note:

Will’s mention of the church ceiling falling in is something mentioned by Hannibal, in the movie Silence of the Lambs, where he says he likes to collect church collapses.

Abigail stares at one of the priests in the chapel, and he stares back as if he can see her, as if he can see this dark spectre following Will around.

 

Posts & Articles

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/the-moral-universe-of-hannibal

http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/seitz-on-hannibal-its-a-dream-and-it-hurts.html

http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/hannibal-redefined-how-we-tell-stories-on-tv.html

Weekend Linkspam: Television

Here, have some more interesting article links.

On Hannibal: The Series

 

I loved this mashup video of all the different iterations of this specific scene in Hannibal.

 

 

http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/seitz-on-hannibal-its-a-dream-and-it-hurts.html

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/the-moral-universe-of-hannibal

http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/hannibal-redefined-how-we-tell-stories-on-tv.html

http://hythlodays.tumblr.com/post/52981828578/a-curiosity-for-chaos

http://balphesian.tumblr.com/post/47241177811

 

 

On Whitewashing and Other Concerns

The Seven Strategies for Defending Your Problematic TV Show or Movie—and Why They Don’t Work

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/03/24/filmmakers_and_actors_keep_defending_casting_controversies_but_here_s_why.html

 

On American Gods:

 

https://blackgirlnerds.com/american-gods-realities-race/

 

On Popular Media and Racism Vs. Historical Accuracy

https://eidolon.pub/how-to-be-a-good-classicist-under-a-bad-emperor-6b848df6e54a

https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/09/10/hold-my-mead-a-bibliography-for-historians-hitting-back-at-white-supremacy/amp/

https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-racism-middle-ages-toc/

 

On The White Savior Trope

Oh Come All Ye White Saviors

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/oscar_loves_a_white_savior/

 

 On Daredevil and the Yellow Peril Trope

Black Mask, Yellow Peril: Anti-Asianism in Netflix’s Otherwise Brilliant <i>Daredevil</i>

https://io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-s-got-an-asian-problem-and-it-s-not-getting-any-1781448797

 

On Furiosa and  Disability in Film

https://catapult.co/stories/love-disability-and-movies

http://www.popmatters.com/feature/194573-power-and-disability-in-mad-max-fury-road1/

https://serfbazaar.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/furiosa-disability-representation-and-empowerment/

https://www.inverse.com/article/15806-one-year-later-fury-road-resonates-on-disability-sexuality-and-the-end-of-days

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/more-our-machines/aesthetics-and-prosthetics-science-fiction

American Gods/Hannibal Crossover

*Since the airing of American Gods, there has been a lot of speculation about the “FULLERVERSE”,  since the showrunner of both Hannibal the Series and American Gods, is one and the same, Bryan Fuller.

As a result there have been quite a few mashups of these two. Here from Tumblr Fannibal hannibalsbattlebot is one of my favorites fanfictions:

hannibalsbattlebot

Church of One

An American Gods/Hannibal mashup for Fuller Fest. (Eventually going to post on ao3)

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“The next one we’re going to is out in the sticks,” Wednesday said. “This time of year, they’ll be at their summer home in Montana. When it gets colder, they head for the warmer climes. The Florida Keys. Too bad its not winter.”

Shadow said nothing. They were going there for business, not a vacation.

“This man we are going to see…It could go either way,” Wednesday continued. “He’s a mixture of old and new; born out of brimstone, but suckled at the teat of Media. He could be an important ally.”

“If you can get him,” Shadow said.

Wednesday raised an eyebrow.

“I mean if he suckled at Media’s…teat..or whatever, will he want to turn against her? Isn’t she like his mother?”

Wednesday chuckled. “Relationships between parents and children can be fraught with conflict. I hope to agitate those feelings.”

“Stirring the shit as usual?”

“Stirring the shit,” Wednesday agreed. “Seeing what floats to the top.”

The last stretch of road was little more than a footpath through the trees. Shadow thought they would have to get out and walk at any moment, but somehow the large car kept finding a way between the trees until they finally came to a small cabin sitting in a clearing. Half a dozen dogs came from around the back, barking and rushing the car.

“Shit!” said Shadow and barely pulled his door closed in time as a husky mix jumped up and braced his front paws against the driver’s side window.

A sharp whistle from the cabin called the dogs away from the car. A dark-haired man stood on the porch, hands in pockets, watching sternly as the pack ran up the stairs to join him. However, for all his serious expression and scarred face, he didn’t look like a child of brimstone.

“You can come out,” the man on the porch said. Shadow opened his door slowly, waiting for the dogs to rush them once more, but they stayed seated at the man’s feet.

“Thanks for calling off the hounds,” Wednesday said as they mounted the porch.

The man eyed the wooden box Shadow was carrying and, still unsmiling, said. “He’s waiting for you inside.”

The cabin was small and the front door opened directly into the main room. There was a fireplace on the far wall, and although it was a warm day there was a fire roaring in it. A man sat in front of the fire, but slightly to the side, so he was half in shadow and half illuminated by the flames. The firelight played over the severe planes of the figure’s face and the knife-sharp pleat in his trousers.

“Come in,” the man said, his voice resonant with a strange accent Shadow couldn’t place. He leaned over and turned on a lamp and Shadow could see him better. The severe bone structure was still there, but with the full light on him, he was softened somewhat and  looked like a normal, if fastidious man. He was wearing navy blue slacks, dress shoes, and a smoothly-ironed electric blue shirt that lost none of its formality by having the top button left undone.

“I brought a gift for the host.” Wednesday motioned for Shadow to hand over the tributes: a single white truffle, sealed tight in a glass jar with a cork and red wax seal, and a bottle of wine still in the wooden crate they transported it in. On the way here, they had swaddled it like a baby so the ride wouldn’t shake up the sediment.

Their host stood to receive it.

“It’s a good vintage,” he said, using his thumb to wipe dust from the label. “Just barely. Its teetering on the edge of being overblown. We should drink this soon. Maybe tonight.”

“It needs to settle,” Wednesday said. “From the trip.”

“Would you at least stay for dinner? Will and I don’t often have guests.”

“Absolutely not,” Wednesday said with a smile. Curiously, the other man did not seem to take offense to that. “Unfortunately, we are in a bit of a time crunch.”

“I heard,” their host sat and indicated a chair next to his for Wednesday to sit in. “I don’t have another chair. How rude of me. Should I have my consort bring you one?”

“I like to stand,” Shadow said.

Their host nodded deferentially then turned to Wednesday. “Are you here to ask for my help? I’ve heard you’ve been supplicating all over the country and finally you find your way to me. I don’t know why I should consider helping you. Would you even want my help? I’m so far down on your list.”

“That’s more a function of geography than lack of respect,” Wednesday said. “Of course I respect you. You are the newest old deity I know. An old soul in a glossy new package. You could play an integral part in the war that is coming, the fight for the hearts and minds of this land. Let’s face it, you could only exist here, in this country, with a 24-hour news cycle and tabloid journalists scrabbling for profundity. But they have the depth of a wading pool and the attention span of a mayfly.” Wednesdays voice got low. “They are already forgetting about you. Last week there was a man in Florida who bit his girlfriend’s tongue off while they were fucking because he wanted to know what it would taste like.”

“Chewy, I would guess.” the man looked up at Shadow with a ghost of a smile on his lips. “At least they usually are, in my experience.”  Shadow felt a chill in the overheated room.

“They are already forgetting about The Ripper,” Wednesday said.

“They will never fully forget about me,” he said. “I will be feared in nightmares and taught in classrooms–”

“In a few years you will be on internet listicles with names like ‘Ten Shocking Killers You’ve Never Heard Of.’”

Shadow saw the anger flare up in the man’s eyes, although he remained perfectly still and otherwise expressionless.

“Such meager offerings,” Wednesday said. “Not what you deserve.”

“I have all the worshipers I need,” the man said. “I have my consort who is totally devoted to me.”

“One person? I think you are losing sight of the big picture here.”

“I have a foot in both camps, Wednesday,” he said. “So I have carved out a space for Will and myself that is in neither camp.”

“You make running from the cops sound like a utopia of your choosing.”

“I don’t believe discretion and prudence are the same as cowardice.”

Wednesday leaned forward. “What about the blood sacrifice? What about the meat that is passed through the fire?”

“I told you, my consort is very devoted,” he said. “When I want meat, I have it. Do I want a million people to have a vague idea of who they think i am or one person who knows me totally and would do anything, sacrifice anything to me and for me, up to and including his very life?” Again, the man, this Ripper, looked up at Shadow. Shadow couldn’t understand how brown eyes could look so heat-fired and yet so cold. “I took Will’s child and still he loves me. I spilled his blood and still he loves me. I stripped everything from him, and he is still with me.”

The Ripper turned back to Wednesday. “ You cannot offer me that sort of devotion if I help you, but I may lose it if you fail. So, no, I will not help you. The outcome of this war does not affect me.”

“Even if it means you become yesterday’s news?”

“Even so,” The Ripper said. “I have created an entire universe for my consort and I to rule.”

“Rule? Rule what? You only have one worshiper.”

“And one is all I need.”

With that, the Ripper stood and showed them to the door.

Will was still out on the porch when they left, seated now in a rocking chair, with the dogs clustered around him.

“He’s not going to help you, is he?” he said.

Shadow paused, but Wednesday kept walking to the car.

“No,” Shadow said. “He..uh..declined that opportunity.”

Some of the dogs raised their heads, but Will made a sound through his teeth and they settled back down.

“I’m a lot like you, you know. Or I was,” Will said. “I was just a person, not even a particularly religious person at that. I didn’t know what I was getting into. When I finally figured it out, it was too late.” Will leaned down to scratch the ear of the nearest dog. “Tell me, Shadow, have you ever looked the devil in the face?”

Remembering The Ripper’s eyes, Shadow said, “I may have.”

“What if you liked what you saw?”

Shadow didn’t answer. He couldn’t imagine what Will must have gone through to get to this point, if he really was “just a person” to start with.

“You can still go back,” Shadow said.

“Here’s where myth and reality divide,” Will said. His eyes were the same blue as a cloudless summer sky. “No on wants me back.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Everyone is either dead or glad to see me gone,” he said. “Besides, I keep him away.” He nodded toward the cabin. “I keep the beast sated.”

“Can’t someone else do it?”

“No,” he said. He smiled, looking happy about that. “They tried and they’ve died. And here is where myth and reality converge again: I wouldn’t want to go back even if I could. I’m not bound to his underworld because I ate his food. I eat his food and live in his world because I am bound to him. Nothing else matters.”

“Are you trying to warn me or something?” Shadow asked.  He didn’t want to talk to this man any more. He could feel the fanatical devotion coming off of him in waves.

“Worship whatever gods you want, Shadow. But when you find one who worships you back? Run.”

 

*I hope she doesn’t mind my posting this here, and possibly blowing up her Tumblr stats. Please visit her blog, for lots of gifs, info, and some excellent reviews of the TV show, Hannibal.

On Tumblr: Hannibal Meta

*Yes, I’m still fascinated by this show, its characters, and its meanings. I hope some of you guys are just as interested, so here’s some Hannibal meta, that showed up on my dashboard, from when the show was at its peak. This might  spur some of you to re- watch certain episodes with a fresh perspective.

Remember Bedelia’s statement, later in the first season, about Hannibal’s careful facade and that she could catch glimpses of the real man through his human suit. This is important because Hannibal has been wearing this “person suit” from the moment Will first met him.

From: hannibalsbattlebot

On the surface, Will telling Hannibal “I don’t find you that interesting” seems unbelievably rude. Ah, we think, Hannibal must find Will special if he puts up with that. But, this early on Hannibal has only shown Will his mask, his human suit. To most people, the facade is interesting enough. That’s the point. All the trappings were put there by Hannibal to distract everyone from his real self. When Will is not impressed by this smoke screen, he has passed an important test.

@

*This is an essay about Hannibal’s ability to feel. I would say that yes, he does have emotions, but I would argue they are somewhat truncated, not as fully developed as they should be in a grown man, as he rarely, if ever expends emotion on anyone other than Will or himself.

It’s not that Hannibal’s emotions are fake, (although I believe in some cases they are), but when we do see him showing emotions towards others, I think that he’s simply going through the motions,  pretending to care about Jack, or Alana, for example, and when he does have genuine emotions for others, like Abigail and Will, it’s only in relation to how close/useful that person is to himself.He certainly has emotions when it comes to something directly affecting him, but something that directly affects others, not so much.

In other words, Hannibal lacks empathy.

From: slayerangels

”Will loves Hannibal because he doesn’t have emotions and so Will can be himself around him because he can’t pick up feelings from Hannibal with his empathy disorder.”

I’ve seen this idea a few times and it’s baffling. Here’s a list of reasons why that’s wrong:

1. Hannibal has emotions. Many emotions. His emotions are not fake. He shows emotions when people aren’t even observing him or in the same room. He was upset at what happened to Margot after Will left the room. He was upset that Bella died and was crying over it by himself in Italy. He moped around about Will in Italy the entire time. He missed Will so much in Sorbet he was fidgeting around and clearly upset about it. He was mad that Gideon was calling himself the Ripper. He gets super annoyed at rude people. These are all emotions.

2. Will can “read” the Ripper enough to know which crimes scenes are his and which aren’t and also give a history about his childhood to Jack. Will can also “read” the copycat. Hannibal is the Ripper and the copycat. So, Will can read Hannibal. Which is why Hannibal got super defensive about Will in Season 1 and framed him and put him in prison. Because he knew Will would find him out eventually.

3. Will can “seduce” and “deceive” Hannibal in S2 because he can empathize with him or “understand” him. Hannibal says this directly and Will agrees.

4. Hannibal and Will share a memory palace. Will goes to places he has been to “read” him, just like he does at crime scenes. Will knows Hannibal “intimately” as he says himself. If he likes being around him because he doesn’t “pick up” things from his empathy, then that makes no sense.

5. Will doesn’t automatically know who a killer is, even if he’s investigating their crimes. Tobias is a prime example. Hannibal realized Tobias was a killer immediately, Will didn’t. Another example would be Abigail. Hannibal knew she was a killer before Will did. If anything Hannibal has more insight into people than Will does. That doesn’t mean he has less empathy than Will, it means he has the same amount or more. “I can’t turn it off anymore than you can” Hannibal says to Will in Aperitif. When Hannibal was doing Will’s job in S2 for Jack he got the job done, he figured out who the killer was and why he was killing and exactly where he was, he just didn’t tell all that info to Jack because he wanted to go kill him first. Hannibal can in fact do Will’s job and he helps Will do his job better, “Will has never been more effective than he is with you inside his head”. Hannibal knows all about the Shrike enough to help Will figure out who the Shrike really is, right from the beginning of the show. “He had to show me a negative so that I could see the positive, that crime scene was practically gift wrapped.” My point being that just because Will doesn’t know Hannibal is the Ripper for a while (about 3 months) doesn’t mean that he can’t “read” Hannibal’s emotions. His empathy disorder doesn’t make him psychic and it isn’t supernatural.

I get it’s hard to understand why Will didn’t realize Hannibal was in love with him, but this is no explanation. It negates the entire show. Other explanations should be entertained. Will knows that Hannibal is very sad over him, “He sent us his broken heart” and he knows that the key to understand him is love, “No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them” and he knows he can take advantage of Hannibal’s feelings for him, “You’d only do that if I’d rejected you.” So, taking all that into account, the explanation that he just didn’t want to fully believe it, he was lying to himself, or wanted it confirmed by Bedelia (because he was afraid Hannibal loved her or because he believed she would know more than anyone else), or some combination of those is the most likely.

@

*I loved this particular meta. I have yet to start reviewing season 3, so  haven’t discussed Will’s mind pendulum  yet.

From: silkysimpona

Will’s Mind Pendulum

Has anyone else noticed the difference between Will analyzing Hannibal’s crime scene and Will analyzing someone else’s crime scene?

When he investigates the Leeds murder in The Great Red Dragon, his mind pendulum makes an appearance for the first time in season 3.

The pendulum is a way for Will to get into the murder empathy mindset, but it also represents a physical barrier between him and the subject he wants to analyze. In essence, it establishes a defensive barrier between his sense of self and his sense of the killer’s self, keeping them completely separate from each other. The stronger the pendulum, the stronger his sense of self.

Compare this to his analysis of the Hannibal’s crime scene in Primavera. Here, Will doesn’t use a pendulum. There is just a brief blur in and blur out to signify his entrance into Hannibal’s state of mind.

At this point, his mind is so intertwined with Hannibal’s that he doesn’t need the physical act of the pendulum to get him into the correct mindset. His sense of self is already almost entirely wrapped up and muddled up with Hannibal’s. Not only does he not need to use his pendulum in this moment, he probably can’t use his pendulum to put up a mental barrier between them. They’re already conjoined after all.

In Dolce, Will says to Hannibal, “You and I have begun to blur.” I think it’s pretty neat that they were able to illustrate that with the simple absence of a pendulum effect.

 

@

*This essay is about something I touched on in an earlier essay, regarding how Alana changed after her relationship with Hannibal, how she became, in the third season, harder and colder, in reaction to having known him. It also points out some interesting details about Margot.

thatlightsaberlesbian

You know what I really fucking love about Marlana? (everything)

No but really, aside from everything, one specific thing that I love about them is that they had equally interesting but “opposite” wardrobe changes as their characters developed.

Alana started out with the wrap dresses, which were usually not layered with anything, and then by season 3 she was wearing three piece suits. She armored up. Did she abandon femininity? Hell no. But she still, finally, after implicitly trusting Jack, Hannibal, and Will and being betrayed in that trust by literally all of them, learned to protect herself. She withdrew her trust and the physical armor of the suits reflected that change nicely. (One could also argue that she consciously or unconsciously was imitating Hannibal.)

Margot, on the other hand, started out with these incredibly stiff and layered outfits. Her hair buns were sleek and severe, and her lipstick reflected that. Need I say anything about the shoulder pads–designed to make her appear larger, more intimidating? Yes, Margot was protecting herself with these layers of clothing, I don’t think anyone failed to pick up on that. And then she meets Alana. And she makes this switch to softer clothing choices, and hairstyles, and makeup. But only with her.

I find this to be really awesome because both of these wardrobe choices were incredibly well-thought-through. Both of them accurately reflected the development each of them was going through. And that’s really cool because a lot of the time in media you see more masculine girls lauded for becoming more feminine in coming-of-age stories, or by contrast, feminine girls who become more masculine to redeem themselves (e.g. Regina George in Mean Girls). And what I love about Marlana is that there’s none of that, because both of their transformations were intensely personal and reflected what they personally were going through.

@

*This one is about the loneliness of both Will and Hannibal.

bu0nanotte

Do you ache for him?For me, these two scenes effectively sum up just how alone Hannibal and Will are without each other. We see Will desperately attempting to focus all his attention on fixing a boat motor, a problem we heard Hannibal refer to as ‘easy’ to solve in season one. The simplicity of this creates a stark contrast in relation to Will’s current state of mind regarding his feelings for Hannibal, confirmed through the series of flashbacks we see. Will is not entirely haunted by the fact that Hannibal gutted him; he is haunted by the fact that Hannibal left him. We see flashbacks of Hannibal holding Will, followed by Will falling to the ground and Hannibal bending over him. These are not the typical flashbacks generally associated with people suffering from post-traumatic stress; these flashbacks are rooted in Will’s heartbreak over the fact that Hannibal left him.

In relation to Hannibal, we see him sat in a chair, pensive as he stares ahead. This in itself is unusual as we usually see Hannibal busying himself with something or other. Again this serves to elucidate just how barren his existence is without Will. This also confirms how much Will has changed him, given that the Hannibal we met in season one was entirely self-reliant and self-serving. I believe there was a void in Hannibal’s life, an ache he couldn’t quite identify or pinpoint. Will filled that void. Independence and the isolation associated with it was something Hannibal was used to and previously drew comfort from. Now there is no comfort in his isolation. He and Will quickly realise and accept just how empty, how devoid of purpose their lives are without each other, testament of the vicious mutual co-dependency they each fostered.

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Ooh, I really enjoyed this one, which outlines the various ways that people respond to threatening behavior, and specifically to how Hannibal responds to Will.

I just noticed a dynamic between these guys that I’d never quite put together before: in precise contrast to what Will thinks he wants, he will always fail to follow through on a lethal confrontation with Hannibal if (and only if) Hannibal makes a show of rolling over for him.

Bear with me for a sec because this is kind of fascinating: a while ago, I read a book called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. The author Dave Grossman proposed a theory which jives with a lot of stuff I learned in anthropology classes, but he has a particularly pithy way of describing it. Between animals of the same species, he says, the choices of behavior in a confrontation aren’t as simple as the “fight or flight” choice we usually talk about.

Grossman calls his model “fight, flight, posture, or submit.” This model takes into account a common trait among most animals (including humans): members of the same species almost never jump immediately to the ‘fight’ option in a confrontation. Doing so would result in needless deaths, particularly among younger individuals who haven’t yet learned to defend themselves, and then to eventual depopulation and extinction.

Instead, animals tend to begin confrontations by posturing – by making a show of their superiority in an attempt to make the other party back down. If, during the posturing phase, it becomes clear that the individuals are fairly evenly matched, they are likely to start a physical fight in order to establish dominance, while still avoiding lethal attacks if possible.

However, if it becomes clear during the posturing phase that one of the individuals is definitely strong enough to defeat the other one, the weaker opponent will do one of two things: flee or submit. I’ll just quote the book here:

“Submission is a surprisingly common response, usually taking the form of fawning and exposing some vulnerable portion of the anatomy to the victor, in the instinctive knowledge that the opponent will not kill or further harm one of its own kind once it has surrendered.”

So, now that we’ve got all that context out of the way, let’s talk about Will and Hannibal!

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*Here’s a more scholarly approach to why the show, Hannibal, is the way it is, and what that means to the larger culture.

White Collar Cannibal: the Gentrified Grotesque in NBC’s Hannibal

Hannibal Season Two: Ko No Mono

(Yes! I’m still writing these, even if no one is reading them. They’re kinda fun to write, and good practice for my other essays.)

In the last episode we saw Will Graham murdering Freddie Lounds at his house, and we assume that he, and Hannibal, ate parts of her body. Alana is growing increasingly perturbed by Will and Hannibal’s relationship, as Will appears to be becoming more and more like Hannibal, in his and Jack’s scheme to capture him.

As the episode begins, we are with the Wendigo and the Ravenstag, in the forest, as the Stag falls over, and squirts blood. While we watch, a new creature, based on a combination of the Wendigo and Will Graham, claws it’s way out of the Stag’s limp body. Will is once again, as he was earlier in the season, being haunted by thoughts of Lecter. The Stag began as a kind of precursor to Lecter’s presence, always appearing to Will in moments when he was subconsciously thinking of Hannibal, and sometimes, just before Hannibal’s actual appearance. As the series progressed, Hannibal’s icon has morphed into the Wendigo, while Will has taken on the Ravenstag as a subconscious token of himself. This happens especially as he’s gotten closer and closer to Hannibal. And now, as his relationship with Hannibal nears a crescendo, he secretly fears he’s become Hannibal’s iconic twin.

This becomes obvious in Hannibal and Will’s discussion at table, as Hannibal tells him that killing Freddie Lounds has changed Will’s thinking, remarking that Will’s imperturbability is a sign of true sociopathy. During this romantic dinner, Will and Hannibal swallow  some whole, tiny, naked birds, that look not unlike little babies, but what this is symbolic of, is not made clear, unless it’s a reference to all the fighting over Margot’s unborn baby, that happens later in the show.

Bryan Fuller:  Master of Symbolism.

That evening, a figure strapped into a burning wheelchair is pushed into a parking garage. The body lands in Freddie’s parking space, so we are meant to believe this is her, which is confirmed by Team Price and Zeller, when they examine the body. Naturally, Jack calls in Will and Hannibal to examine the body as well, and they do that thing where they stand around making assertions about the killer.  I’m still confused about how these personality assumptions, based solely on looking at the burned body,  would ever help the authorities capture any kind of criminal, but this is TV, where you’re not supposed to think too deeply about stuff like that, especially when it looks cool. In the movie, Red Dragon,  it’s slightly more realistically depicted, with a team of people sitting around brainstorming about a particular crime. Watch that scene where Chilton’s burned body has been discovered, with the team guessing where the killer might have done it, and how, so as to narrow down vectors of investigation.  That’s probably a little more like real-life profiling. In the show, Will and Hannibal look like they’re just riffing.

Later, Margot admits to Will that she slept with him just to get pregnant. And it works because she’s now carrying the Verger heir, and her brother can’t threaten to boot her out of the family anymore, making her homeless and destitute. Will is understandably upset about being so callously used, but isn’t this what he’s essentially doing with Hannibal? Pretending to be Hannibal’s friend, to accomplish some personal goal. So when Will feels a sense of betrayal at what Margot did, he should understand how exactly Hannibal felt, when he learns Will has been lying to him the entire time.

Margot says she wants nothing from him (being wealthy, she’d need for nothing anyway) but says she wouldn’t mind if he wants to be a part of the child’s life. She certainly doesn’t want Mason to be an influence because look how he turned out. He’s vile, petty, arrogant, abusive, entitled and whiny. In the movies the character is slightly more nuanced, but I think that’s more due to Gary Oldman’s acting, rather then the writing. Also in the books, and movies, we never met the version of Mason that hadn’t met up with Lecter, a much bigger shark.  In fact TV Mason has few, if any, redeeming qualities. I don’t even like Mason and I’ve  only seen him onscreen for a few minutes. At that moment, he’s psychologically tormenting a small child at Muskrat Farm, making him cry, so he can collect the little boy’s tears. In the books it’s stated that Mason is a child molester, and that he, did indeed, molest Margot. In the show it’s only heavily implied and never illustrated, in keeping with Fuller’s general idea of showing characters being vile, while not actually showing their victims being victimized. There’s a minimum of running, screaming, and terrorizing, on this show, which is very thoughtful of him. Most writers and directors seem to think that the screaming and terror of victims is what creates horrific moments, and I think that’s just lazy writing. (Plus, who wants to listen to 90 minutes of constant screaming? That shit is annoying.)

Afterwards, Alana visits Will at his home, (he’s still dreaming about the Wendigo), and spurred by Freddie’s insinuations, she expresses her misgivings about Will and Hannibal’s relationship. Will is more than a little salty that she’d question his relationship with Hannibal, while she is sleeping  with him.  This is the second time he’s mentioned that to her. He’s also more than a little salty about how no one believed him, when he said Hannibal was a killer. He says no one will believe Alana now, if she says Will is a killer. But he still cares about her and shows her the only way he knows how. He warns her about Hannibal and gives her a gun. Alana looks pretty flummoxed. I guessed she really wasn’t expecting that as a response. I did get the sense that  Will isn’t just worried about Hannibal coming after her, but expects her to use the gun on him, if he gets too lost in his roleplay.

Mason Verger has taken Hannibal up on his offer of therapy, and he is as whining and and thoughtless as you’d expect. Hannibal can’t stand him. Watch his face when Mason visits his office. He’s probably wishing he could kill him right then. Even I winced at Mason’s actions, and I’m not nearly as fastidious in my behavior as Hannibal. If you’re looking to find some excuse for why Mason is so vile, such as he was horribly abused as a child, or sexually assaulted, or something, Fuller refuses to give you that out. There’s no particular reason Mason is the way he is. He was spoiled and overindulged by his father, and has simply never grown past being a rotten ten year old.  He gleefully tells Hannibal about the arrangement his father made that would cut his sister out of the will, if anything happens to him. Hannibal is the one who puts the thought in Mason’s head that his sister could always upend his plans by  getting pregnant.

A funeral is held for Lounds, while Will and Alana watch it from afar, exchanging terse words again, their friendship is totally broken at this point, even though they still care deeply for each other, but it’s something that won’t play out until the third season. That night someone digs up Freddie’s body and mutilates it to look like the Hindu Goddess Kali, posed with extra arms. This body sculpture is a pun on how Hannibal sees himself, as a godlike figure, who is both creator and destroyer, giving and taking life. This time Alana is called in to profile the person who desecrated the body and she sees a connection between Randall Tier and Lounds. She insists to Jack that it might be Will. She goes to Hannibal  and expresses the same fears about Will. Hannibal is distracted by the scent of gunpowder on her hands and she tells him she’s been paranoid.

Although Hannibal is a master manipulator, it’s been shown that he often sets things in motion, and moves people around, with no idea of the eventual outcome. He sets disastrous events in motion, on nothing more than spite, or whim, with no idea of the end results, how many people will be drawn into play, or even if he’ll walk away from them intact, just as happened between Will and Abigail’s  father. Ironically, its this inability  to keep himself from intervening, that first sets Will on his scent, beginning their narrative together.

Mason confronts Margot at the estate, hinting that he knows she’s pregnant, having been given he idea that she might be by Hannibal. Margot has no safe place on the estate. Mason can invade her spaces anytime, and knows it. I always wondered why Margot didn’t just walk out on the entire thing, but  then Ithink  that she likes the perks of being rich, too much, to leave it, and likely has no marketable skills,with which to live in the world, and make her own way. Her father would’ve seen to that, expecting her to get married, and be taken care of by a husband, and most certainly had not counted on his daughter being a lesbian.

I’m still not entirely certain Mason knows Margot is pregnant or if he is just guessing. Even if she isn’t, she could easily become so and he  makes plans to prevent that from ever happening. Margot knows he plans to harm her, possibly kill her, and while this isn’t the first time he’s ever threatened her, this time her unborn child is at stake. She attempts to flee, but Mason’s henchman, Carlos,  crashes into her car, stopping her. She wakes up in an operating room, and in one of the more horrifying moments, in a show full of them, she realizes that Mason has violated her once again, by removing her baby and her entire uterus. She will never have a Verger heir.That loophole she found in their father’s will, has just been closed. Mason’s money can pay for all manner of corrupt behavior, such as the henchman who injured her, and the doctor who mutilates her.

Alana confronts Jack about how everyone is lying to her and she can’t rust anyone, including Hannibal. That whatever they’re all up to, Jack is going to be the clear loser in their agenda. Jack, exasperated but sympathetic takes her into the other room where Freddie Lounds is very much still alive, having faked her death to capture Hannibal. I don’t know what Alana is thinking in this scene, but she looks devastated.
Will enraged is an intense sight to see. He really is like a force of nature when he’s got his blood  up. He goes to Muskrat Farm, to confront Mason, who is attending to his flock of prized pigs. He threatens to shoot him and feed him to his pigs, while dangling him over the pen. He explains to Mason that they’re all being manipulated by the grandmaster of manipulation, Hannibal Lecter, who put a bug in Margot’s ear, and Mason’s, and then encouraged Will to take revenge on Mason, for hurting another child, like Abigail, that Will is  never going to know.

He informs Mason their true enemy is Hannibal. Once again  he throws Hannibal’s plans, by doing the something he couldn’t predict.

Tumblr Discussion – Fandom

And the discussions about racism in the various fandoms and how it manifests continues. A lot of people want to be insulted by these criticisms, but I look on it as an attempt to make a person’s writing better. These are valid criticisms. That they’re being given by individuals who are completely exhausted at having to explain, “Yet Again”, why its not right to make slave AUs of Finn and Black Panther, or write the deaths of Black characters,so as to remove them so you can ship two White characters, is beside the point.

But first, a bit of humor. This is only something you’ll get if you’ve watched Hannibal the Series mutliple times, though.

hannibalsbattlebot abigailhobbssghost

avegetariancannibal:

Imagine everything that sheep in Su-Zukana saw, from the guy in the horse to Hannibal and Will’s near-murder cuddles in the stables.

Imagine if she wrote a tell-all book about that night.

Pshaw. This book was a self serving work of FICTION. Beulah Jean totally glosses over the fact that she RECEIVED HEAD SCRITCHES from HANNIBAL LECTER ON THR NIGHT IN QUESTION! Wake up, sheeple. This is far from the unbiased account we deserve! Don’t let her pull the wool over your eyes!

Source: avegetariancannibal

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I have nothing to add to some of these critiques. Some things just are wrong.

theprettyfeminist adorablecresta

adorablecresta:

cyber-rich:

adorablecresta:

The interesting thing about discussing unpopular black female characters with certain fans is that many of them will openly acknowledge that fandom racism and racism in the media is a real thing, but will then go on to argue why a certain black female character should be written off the show, or sidelined, or killed off or be kept away from the white male lead. These fans know that fandom racism is a problem, but in their minds, their hatred for the character is completely justified. They know the trends. They know the pattern of black female characters repeatedly being abused by the fandom, but will still go on to list dozens of relatively benign reasons why a black female character should be written off the show. They like to argue that this time it’s different. This time it isn’t racial bias that’s driving their hatred of the character. This time it’s completely justified! So, next time when we’re listing all the black female characters that have been completely destroyed by the fandom, be sure to put a little asterisk next to so-and-so’s name, because that time was totally different.

Well, guess what? That whole list would be full of asterisks because to you, there’s always a perfectly valid reason for wanting the death of a black female character. There’s always a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the black female lead of a show should be sidelined and stripped of her status as leading lady. Whether it be Martha Jones, Iris West, Bonnie Bennett, Tulip O’Hare, Michonne, Gwen, Annie Sawyer, Braeden or any other intensely disliked black female character, the response is always the same. You may think you have perfectly valid reasons for disliking these women, but the fact is that they create a pattern. And whether you like it or not, your hatred is feeding into that pattern.

This is why no-one wants to break from the norm of creating white characters because no-one will say ‘racism’ or ‘sexism’.

However when creating a character who is not a male or a white person, people tend to complain like this and call racism or sexism if something bad happens to that character.

At the end of the day it’s the writer’s call what happens to character or not. If you want a black female character that doesn’t die, write a story yourself.

Um, did you even read my original post? I wasn’t talking about the lack of representation, I was talking about the racist response from audience members during the rare moments when we actually do get representation. I literally gave you a list of black female characters that this has happened to. And while I agree that we should have more prominent writers of color, you have to realize that there are already legions of poc writers out there, but they either can’t get their stuff published (because of racism) or their material isn’t given the proper amount of publicity it deserves (also because of racism).

Also, one more thing. When people of color complain about the lack of representation in the media, please do not tell them to simply “do it yourself.” First of all, as I listed above, people are already doing it themselves, but aren’t being recognized for it. And second, telling people to simply do it themselves is a not-so-veiled attempt at letting white writers who promote racist material off the hook. White writers should be held to a certain standard. It shouldn’t always be up to us to tell them to stop being racist. They should know this themselves.

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People are still arguing about Finn with people who absolutely refuse to see him as a viable candidate for being shipped with Rey, and craft any and all manner of bullshit as to why they won’t ship the two main characters in the movie. Finn has the most screen time of any male character in the entire movie. He is, unquestionably, one of the leading good guys, but some people would rather craft elaborate fantasies about how wrong he is for Rey, rather than acknowledge that they just don’t want to ship a Black man with a White woman.

This writer brings up another point not often made by critics. Black men do not get “woobified” in fandom. There’s not a single man of color, anywhere in fandom that gets the “woobie” treatment. This is something reserved exclusively for white male characters (many of them are often villains). When you consider that most of the people who are writing fandom consists of White women, from middle class backgrounds, most of them under thirty, then you need to ask  why that is.

diversehighfantasy onelonecandle

onelonecandle:

receiptsyall:

This post is the terrible gift that keeps on giving.

@onelonecandle: “Finn is an emotionally relatable character, but not in the same ways that Kylo Ren is. Even when Finn is displaying fear and stress in the film, it is frequently made out to be funny (and that’s a great example of differences in character representation between black and white actors based on racial stereotyping).”

Even the opening shot, before we ever seen FN-2187′s face, the camera work is giving us a sympathetic POV on him. The dizzying whirl is meant to evoke a panic attack. Just because Finn gets to smile more in his giddy (and terrifying) new life doesn’t mean he’s not written or portrayed sympathetically.

I think you’re overlooking how carefully we’re taught to give sympathy to white men in fiction. Even when that white man is acting reprehensibly.

(Quick example with misogyny rather than racism: how many fans of Breaking Bad thought that Skyler White was an absolute bitch for protecting her family from her drug-dealing husband, and that Walter was being held back by her terrible bitchiness? Answer: far too many.)

Fandom has the same racial empathy gap that exists in the rest of our culture(s). Add in the echo chamber effect of fandom (enough people say that Driver made Kylo sympathetic and Boyega/the writers didn’t do the same for Finn), and suddenly a nuanced performance by Boyega is viewed as anything but.

In my opinion, Adam Driver, with less than 20 minutes of screen time, did not manage to portray Kylo Ren with more sympathy than Boyega with his 40+ minutes of screen time. That’s mostly on the audience.

@contains-the-force: “…Imagine John with golden/yellow eyes and that cocky/cute grin of his!”

Or let him keep his natural dark eyes, which are lovely?

In context, this was related to sad, brooding male characters with certain feminine emotive traits made popular by anime.

In fairness, almost every one of those sympathetic prettyboy anime characters that my generation swooned over in high school was represented as white or asian.

You make good points and my argument was a little scattered there.

I’m sorry but that… wasn’t the context. It wasn’t about anime at all. The context was that the quote above followed a comparison between Black villians and white villains – that Black villains are “hard” and “self-contained,” while white villains are “soft, emotionally raw, feminine white boys.” And because of internalized racism on the part of the writers and directors, Kylo Ren was a more well-written, well-acted character, while Finn was a stereotype because he had funny moments. If John had been given the superior Kylo role and pulled it off as well as Adam, everyone would love him.

But this follow-up confirms what I’d already gleaned from the conversation – that it was more about liking brooding white guys than villains, since sympathetic Black villains like The Operative are not seen as sympathetic. Which is exactly what @receiptsyall is talking about. The empathy gap is real, and while media certainly contributes to that, when a Black character is sympathetic but the audience can’t see it, there is a problem with the audience as well.

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You really need to go to the Tumblr page and read the entire post. Its very enlightening.

eazzy–pink

Fandom culture posts that overwhelmingly describe how the state of fandom is worse now than it was before always put me to sleep because one of the most prevalent differences between what we have now to what we had then is that people started becoming more vocal about the kinds of negative and problematic things going on in fiction and fandom culture as a whole.

Like. I just saw a post talking about how if a person grew up in today’s fandom culture, they would be terrified and unable to enjoy things. Simultaneously, this person used two caps to emphasize this point: “EW GROSS YOU’RE A PEDOPHILE” for liking one ship or “OMG THAT SHIP IS ABUSIVE” to describe another.

I remember growing up in fandom and the kinds of things that I liked. For example: I fucked heavy with Twilight back when it came out. I passed the threshold for caring about Harry Potter and didn’t really have a vested interest in the series, but Twilight was the shit to me. It had a darker element to it than the books I was reading and the characters were compelling, blah blah blah, that whole shebang. I had been writing some stories prior to this, but Twilight was the one thing that saw me actually put work into grooming my writing abilities. I got involved in a writer’s club at my school, my friends and I geeked out about the characters and would come up with our own terrible knock-offstories that were centered around the supernatural, vampires and werewolves because it was really cool.

Fast forward to me discovering this blue hellsite called “Tumblr.”

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An analysis of how Blade sits within the MCU, and the superhero genre in general. (Another film I think deserves analysis within the superhero genre is Unbreakable by M. Night Shyamalan.)

 I also want to point out the whitewashing of the Blade franchise. As the films became more popular, and the budgets got slightly larger, the cast became whiter and whiter, until you have the complete WTF*ery going on in that last film. You went from a movie that was set in a black neighborhood, with a WoC as the co-lead, and its full representation of both humans and vampires, to token representation in the second film, with an Asian man,  Hispanic woman, and a Black guy, to no representation at all in the third film, (although the third film did wonders for White feminists, though.) 

Whitewashing doesn’t just mean exchanging characters of color with White people, in movies. Whitewashing is also about increasing the number of White characters in a show, or movie franchise, to the detriment of characters of color. This even extends to whole networks. Remember when Fox began as a network? Networks usually get a foot in the door by appealing to minorities. As the network strives to become more mainstream, shows that appealed to minorities are expunged, in favor of whiter casts and series, until PoC are all but absent from that network. Fox is a perfect example of whitewashing, and so is Teen Wolf.

fandomshatepeopleofcolor madmaudlingoes

And that’s the real difference between Blade and the superhero franchises that have followed. Blade was never a big-name character in the first place. So there wasn’t a whole lot of retro-geek enthusiasm associated with the character. But more than that, Blade, the film, simply isn’t backwards-looking.

There’s none of the Greatest Generation boosterism that clings to the Captain America franchise, for example. Nor do we get from Blade the home front 50s stay-at-home mom-with-kids meme that pops up incongruously in Age of Ultron when we get to meet Hawkeye’s secret, perfect family.

Instead, Blade is deliberately, defiantly hip. Motherhood isn’t idealized; on the contrary, one of the queasier moments of the film involves Blade ruthlessly offing his feral, incestuously sexual, evil vampire mom. If there is nostalgia, it’s for blaxploitation’s up-to-the-minute cool.

The movie’s first grinding, sweaty, sex-and-blood drenched night club scene hasn’t dated at all. Nor has the Afrocentric incense store where Blade buys his formula fix, nor the black, brotherhood embrace between that store’s owner and the hero. There’s a notable lack of cell phones, of course, and the computer graphics prophesying the coming of the blood god look rather dated. But there’s little question that, as much as it’s able, the film is looking forward not back.

And part of the reason it’s looking forward, I think, is race. Blade—unlike most superhero films—is set in a meaningfully integrated world. That Afrocentric shop suggests, quietly but definitely, that Blade is part of a black community and that that community matters to him. One of his two crime-fighting companions Dr. Karen Jenson (N’Bushe Wright), is also black.

The diverse cast, and the acknowledgement of diverse communities, is part of why the film still feels and looks relevant. Here, after all, is a narrative that was fulfilling the call for more diverse superhero movies before superhero movies were even a thing.

But beyond that, Blade makes clear the extent to which nostalgia and whiteness are inextricably bound together in so much of the superhero genre. Retooling old, old pop-culture heroes[1] means, inevitably, dreaming about white saviors and about a time when white people were the only ones who were allowed to be heroes.

THE WHITE SUPERHERO FAD STARTED, CRAZY ENOUGH, WITH BLADE

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A lot of us have talked a lot about how Blade started the current superhero domination in Hollywood and how current films forget that; and though it’s important to ask what kinds of behind-the-scenes decisions have caused that, I like this analysis about how Blade is fundamentally different from what we’re getting today and how that film is, in many ways, incompatible with today’s Ant-Men and Men of Steel.

(via dakotacityukuleleorchestra)

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More on how White villains get “woobified” in fandom narratives, and PoC, who are sometimes not even the villains, don’t get sympathy or empathy. Really, check out the whole article. Its  all well stated.

diversehighfantasy

The Sympathetic Black Villain (Or How Loving the Bad Guy is Racially Conditional)

(Something Rukmini Pande said in the @fansplaining Race and Fandom podcast reminded me of this old meta I never got around to posting, so here it is, updated for 2016. Contains spoilers for In the Flesh series 2 (you can watch the whole series on Hulu). Thanks to @psmith73 for input and feedback!)

The Bad Guy of Color

In movies and on TV, we’re used to seeing people of color – especially men of color – as bad guys. You’ve got your drug lords, your terrorists, and your gang leaders (but not the “cool” white-friendly kind like mafia kingpins or bikers), all in a variety of shades of brown and black. As a rule, Bad Guys of Color have a few things in common: They’re scary (like, white folks’ worst nightmare scary), they’re The Other against white protagonists, and they’re not sympathetic characters.

Most of the time, there is no attempt to make us sympathize with the BGOC, because it might make it hard for us to watch them die, sometimes by the dozen. Usually, they don’t even give us a reason to hate them (exceptions, like Victor Sweet in John Singleton’s Four Brothers, who is shown as fully unsympathetic when he treats another Black man like a dog, are usually Black-written characters).

These are not the captivating villains. They’re not the Negan, The Governor, the Walter White, let alone the Loki, Joker, or Kylo Ren. They’re undeveloped, nondimensional, and more than a little racist.

When a person of color is written as a sympathetic villain, a developed character, they should be sympathized with, right? Especially if the character isn’t, as they say, defined by race?

Well… no.

Meet Maxine Martin, played by Wunmi Mosaku.

Keep reading

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Okay, that’s it! I’m going to start watching The Flash in support of Candice Patton, cause seriously, people! What kind of fu***ry is this?

White feminism is a hell of a drug…

theprettyfeminist darlingwestallen

braveheartannie:

You know what I don’t understand? Certain fans who are intent on proving that Candice and Danielle hate each other. I’ve come across 2 or 3 blogs this week that have been spreading nasty rumors about Candice bullying Danielle and doing things behind her back in order to decrease her screentime on the show. Like…what is this, the Twilight fandom? Grow the fuck up. These assholes like to pretend to be supportive of women, but when one of those women is black, all of a sudden, that support is thrown right out the window. There is zero evidence that Candice or Danielle have any ill will towards each other. Each and every time they’ve been out together in public, they’ve been nothing but gracious and kind. The reason certain fans want to stir up trouble is because they need a reason to hate Candice. They know they’ve lost the battle of trying to sideline Iris West as a character, so they’ve resorted to making up racist and sexist rumors accusing her of bullying her co-starts and even sleeping with the producers. Yes, you heard me right. There are blogs here on Tumblr accusing Candice of sleeping with the producers. Instead of believing that a gorgeous talented black actress used her charm, talent and intellect to get the job, these assholes are spreading rumors that the only reason why she was cast as Iris West is because she slept with Grant Gustin and the producers. Like, could you be any more transparent? You’re not racist, but you spend all day spreading rumors about how the only black girl on set is fucking everyone in sight and bullying her co-stars?

Donald Trump’s candidacy got ya’ll feeling braver than a motherfucker, I swear…

@reverseracism

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Honestly, I just wanted to put this here for posterity. I loved this answer. Now this is professional level snark.

fandomshatepeopleofcolor localpsychoticplant

Anonymous asked:

Why do you hate whites so much like wtf

taint3edcakes answered:

I don’t hate ya’ll. I think ya’ll are cute, honestly. It’s like I’m your mentor and you are all my mentees. And so you all look up to me and think I’m an amazing role model so you want to dress just like me, talk like me, have what I have. You want my boyfriend, you want my family, my culture, you want to say what I say. And at first it’s like aw haha that’s so cute they want to be just like me but then you’re ALWAYS there and you’re ALWAYS talking like me and it starts to get annoying and I’m like HEY BE YOURSELF PLEASE I don’t want to teach you to be a copycat, or a follower. BE A LEADER BE YOU. DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE? And I mean you love me so much that you’ll go under the knife of SURGERY to be like me. You love me so much that you’ll get beat up just so you can say the N word. It’s flattering, but annoying. That’s how it feels to be black. It feels like mentoring a little ass kid that goes too far and starts looking cool doing what I’m doing, that steals my ideas and profits off them to the point where I dislike them and I’m like

I

MADE

YOU.

AND

I

CAN

END

WHAT

I

MADE

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I think I mentioned something on this issue before, about how the only thing White fans have to work with when it comes to PoC, are decades of stereotypes. Writers who are less talented, less aware, unwilling to examine, or just plain lazy, will only reproduce the stereotypes they’ve been given about PoC all their lives. (Yeah, okay sometimes they’re just straight out racists.)

Real writers, people who care about, and want to hone, their craft, will pay attention to these types of critiques. These critiques are not an indictment against the writer. They are made to suggest improvements. If your’e not willing to use these critiques to  learn or improve your craft, and make bullshit excuses for  writing these stereotypes, than either your talents simply aren’t up to snuff, or you’re just a bigot.

Also there’s more on  the Strong Black Woman stereotype,  where it came from, how damaging it is, and why its okay not to be one. This is details how the stereotypes for White women are different from the stereotypes for Black women. White feminism doesn’t take into account how there are stereotypes for different groups of women. Asian, Muslim, Latinas, all have different stereotypes from each other, and Black women, all of which are designed to shut all women up and keep them subservient. Mikki Kendall also addresses this in her tweets about Strong Black Women.

Examples of the SBW are: Queenie, from season 5 of American Horror Story, taken to extremes in her case, and Gina Torres character from Suits. Actually Gina has made a career out of the Black character who feels no pain. Don’t believe me? Remember how she reacted all through all of the show Firefly and in Serenity after her husband dies? And how her character Bella planned to go through stage four lung cancer without any help from her husband, Jack? All of Gina’s characters are always tough as nails.

theprettyfeminist

thejollyswangirl asked:

In regards to you post about progressive white fangirls and the representation of black women, I think it’s important to remember that we are dealing with socially ingrained racism that stretches back to the days of slavery. Back then, slave owners routinely raped their black slave women. Their wives didn’t have the power to stop this behavior so they ignored it, often shifting the blame for their husband’s actions to the slave women. They created two categories for black women. (Part 1)

(Part 2) 1) Evil/seductress out to steal your man or 2) the much less threatening motherly (often overweight and/or ignorant) maime. This has carried over from centuries worth of literature into movies and tv shows. Progressivism is no antidote for racism. Neither, is liberalism or conservatism. Racism is a heart condition not simply a worldview. If you don’t believe that, study the writings of Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger (a progressive white woman) and “The Negro Project”.

^All very good points! The relationship between black women and white women has been poisonous from the the very start.

nerdsagainstfandomracism diversehighfantasy

legendofcerberus-deactivated201 asked:

The only thing I don’t agree with you in your disney-is-racist explanation in Tiana. I prefer black women (including myself) to be seen as strong, someone who can do it without help. Its a better imagine to us and younger black women than someone soft, sub servant and helpless. I think that trope needs to be applied to every woman of color since we seem to be struggling with that in the media. IDK, that is how I feel as a black woman.

disneyforprincesses answered:

and that’s totally your right!! I’m not here to tell anybody how they should feel about how their own people are represented. All I can tell you is that a lot of black women have written about how the strong, independent black woman trope is damaging and I take them at their word!

blogs like lookatthewords and jhenne-bean are both blogs ran by black women who have talked about Tiana in length before if you feel like talking about it with someone who has a foot in the door, so to speak 🙂

-Lauren

jhenne-bean:

lookatthewords:

Well it’s pretty damn damaging trope considering the “strong, independent black woman” who don’t need no man, nor help, apparently is so imbedded in society that white people literally believe black people feel less pain and therefore are administered less pain medicine in need and are given less sympathy when experiencing pain because it’s assumed we’ve been hardened by this life and can “just take it.”

There’s a reason these tropes like “angry black woman” and “strong independent black women” exist, and it isn’t in our favor. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with being independent and I think it is a result of the life we’ve for the most part been forced to lead, but ya gotta realize if we’re subjected to just an independent black woman trope, always tough and always in control, then we’re the joke. We have no femininity. In fact, we’re interchangeable with Black men.

Plus I don’t see why being soft, which shouldn’t even be synonym to sub servant and helpless, is a regressive trait. Needing and relying on help does not make you weak; it makes you human. The fact that society likes to push us into this singular story of the strong and independent black woman with few other facades should make you wary as it perpetuates this idea that we’re in no need of sympathy. Empathy,

Therefore you can be a 19-year old teenage girl in need of help after a car accident, but i’m going to shot you in the back of the head because the idea of a Black woman actually needing help as opposed to being the Help is such a bizarre concept that my life feels threatened, right?

More resources:

• TV Tropes: Sassy Black Woman
• Why is the “independent Black woman” considered a racist trope?
• When Strong is a cage for Black Women
• Regarding the independent-black-woman trope stereotype
• Human Being Here; Find Your “Strong Black Woman” Stereotype Elsewhere.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

And I’d like to add this link, as it specifically regards young Black children and fantastical stories. The focus is on sci-fi, but the moral works here too, primarily the takeaway of:

Realism has become a trap for black children and they realize it.

Clutch.com had a thinkpiece on the phrase (+ the internalization of “strong” being the superior and only way for us to operate) stripping away our humanity. BuzzFeed (bear with me) has onethat dissects a few current Black women on television, which might help. Mikki Kendall (Karnythia) also has a Storify page housing some great tweets on the subject.

Lookatthewords already hit on the dangers of perpetuating the strong don’t-need-no-help Black woman as a trope, and it certainly helps no one to insist that it is the only portrayal of Black women illustrated in the media.

• Sometimes we want escapism and that is okay.
• Sometimes we want to be romanced and desired and that is okay.
• Sometimes we want to be the Princess right off the bat, without having to slave for our restaurant castle, and that is okay.
• Sometimes we just want to be saved, and that is okay.

There is nothing wrong with being soft, or being the princess, or needing help: you can be all those things and still recognized as a Black woman— as a person. Still be a good example.

Imo, it is better to imagine (and write, and portray) black women of all ages in multifaceted and rounded ways.

Source: disneyforprincesses black women representation Media RepresentationWOC Representation Disney Princesses Princess Tiana Intersectional FeminismIntersectionality Meta Reblog Mod P.

2,336 notes

Now, go read Mikki Kendall’s beautiful Twittter takedown of Strong Black Woman syndrome.

I, too, have suffered from Strong Black Woman, but I’ve since learned, in the past few years, to recognize when I’m suffering from a bout of this, and take myself off somewhere for some  self care.

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karnythia annlarimer

sourcedumal:

kyssthis16:

countessnoir:

daji-ruhu:

hellanahmean:

miss-jailbait:

dendritic-trees:

laterinthecaveoflesbians:

daji-ruhu:

The reason I label white women who are feminists as ‘white feminists’ is because womanhood has a very distinctive definition for Black women than it does for white women.

That whole edgy, dye-your-armpit-hair, shave your head, be aggressively non-feminine shit works for white/white-passing women because for centuries white women have been regulated to overtly feminine roles, stereotypes, tropes, etc.

Black women have always been made into mammy tropes/stereotypes, masculine and desexualized figures, or super strong she-beasts who can’t be hurt and therefore can never be associated with terms like ‘feminine’ or ‘delicate’ or ‘dainty’ or deigned worthy of protection.

So when I see posts railing against these ultra-feminine tropes I roll my eyes because it’s usually a white feminist behind them.

I really need white women to understand that being dainty and feminine and soft is just as radical for me as your punk, head shaving stuff.

Thank you so much.  This is such a great explanation.

I looooove this

This post is so…. Terrible? Like mammy figures are extremely feminine. And Black women have been regulated to these feminine roles just as much.

I don’t get how being feminine can remotely be radical.

Shut the fuck up, blockhead.

ROFL, how fucking dense do you have to be to let yourself even type mammy figures are extremely feminine and it be completely serious?

Mammy figures may be feminine but they are never delicate and that’s a bit of nuance that gets lost when ppl only rely on a thesaurus and no real-life application.

Mammy was a maid, fam. She did the “woman’s work” but womanhood was never ascribed to her in a way that would let her be a part of the protected class. And that’s the point. Even the ideas of femininity are different for Black women. To ignore that is to ignore history. That’s not at all cute. Get it together.

LMFAOOOOO Mammy was absolutely NOT a fucking feminine figure AT ALL

I will direct you to the Jim Crow Museum where they break down the bullshit:

AND I FUCKING QUOTE:

Abolitionists claimed that one of the many brutal aspects of slavery was that slave owners sexually exploited their female slaves, especially light-skinned ones who approximated  the mainstream definition of female sexual attractiveness. The mammy caricature was  deliberately constructed to suggest ugliness. Mammy was portrayed as dark-skinned, often pitch black, in a society that regarded black skin as ugly, tainted. She was obese, sometimes morbidly overweight. Moreover, she was often portrayed as old, or at least middle-aged. The attempt was to desexualize mammy. The implicit assumption  was this: No reasonable white man would choose a fat, elderly black woman instead of the idealized white woman. The black mammy was portrayed as lacking all sexual and sensual qualities. The de-eroticism of mammy meant that the white wife – and by extension, the white family, was safe.

The sexual exploitation of black women by white men was unfortunately common during  the antebellum period, and this was true irrespective of the economic relationship  involved; in other words, black women were sexually exploited by rich whites, middle  class whites, and poor whites. Sexual relations between blacks and whites – whether   consensual or rapes – were taboo; yet they occurred often. All black women and girls,      regardless of their physical appearances, were vulnerable to being sexually assaulted   by white men. The mammy caricature tells many lies; in this case, the lie is that    white men did not find black women sexually desirable.  The mammy caricature implied that black women were only fit to be domestic workers;    thus, the stereotype became a rationalization for economic discrimination. During   the Jim Crow period, approximately 1877 to 1966, America’s race-based, race-segregated   job economy limited most blacks to menial, low paying, low status jobs. Black women  found themselves forced into one job category, house servant.

Read that seven or eight fucking times until you get the goddamn message.

Mammy was NOT A WOMAN. Mammy was a PACK MULE FOR WORK that was deemed fundamentally ASEXUAL so white men could excuse raping them. Because it wasn’t REAL, since she wasn’t really a woman, you see?

Dark skinned Black women shown as feminine, fragile and dainty is revolutionary in a society that explicitly puts us in the position of MONSTROUS, UGLY AND UNLOVED.

Black women as damsels in distress is RADICAL in a society that purports Black women as only WORK MULES

Daji said what she mothafuckin SAID in the damn OP.

*”I am a human being. I am not a robot. I am not a punching bag. I am not a doormat. I am not an animal. I am not a Slinky that immediately bounces back into original shape no matter how many times it is thrown down some stairs. I am flesh and blood. I am a living organism. I am alive. I weep, mourn, ache, rage, chill, giggle, smile, radiate and plenty of other emotions. People, both White and Black, have internalized the message that Black women are simultaneously deified as superheros and disrespected as never needing love and care (and both deification and disrespect are dehumanization). I will always reject this.”

—

Human Being Here; Find Your “Strong Black Woman” Stereotype Elsewhere

(via littleblackmaps)

 

 

 

 

Humor on Tumblr

So, marginalized people can, and will,  laugh at just about anything, and its okay for you to laugh with our silliness, if you get why. It helps ease the tension and alleviate some of the angst. That’s our superpower though, laughing in Death’s face. When the end of the world rolls around, I expect that Black people will just go out laughing.

i-am-the-burglar patrik-star

thirstinism:

asss-princess:

marsblackmon101:

best-seen-in-snow:

thetattedstoner:

lmao

It’s even funnier when you know everyone surrounding them is secret service lol.

Even the people taking pictures are secret service

Even the babies are secret service

The chairs too

Source: rihannasbigtoenail

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Haaaa!

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This had me chuckling for the rest of the day. It’ll probably catch me up all week.

bigskydreaming bottomfinn

bitchcicle:

My favorite misconception about bisexuality is that bi people are half straight half gay as if I walk around in my straight form but then spot a fine honey and dive behind a bush shouting “I’M GOING GAY” and roll out on the other side with a flannel on and the entire discography of Ani Difranco in my back pocket

@
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I remember doing this as a kid!

sleepynegress ilooovebutterflies

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OMG! ROTFL!!!! Black Twitter is just gonna kill me one day! I expect a BLM note to be found at the scene of my heart attack!

odinsblog:

BREAKING: Police & media are trying to demonize the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Black Twitter deeply skeptical

Source: odinsblog

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I got such a thrill out of watching this video:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/transgender-collective-beyonce-lemonade_us_579101bbe4b0bdddc4d38721?section

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This one just made me smile. Just about everything having to do with The Black Panther movie makes me smile.

Chadwick Boseman Explains Why the Black Panther Is Not the Magical Negro of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Chadwick Boseman thought he already had a sense of how significant the Black Panther is to the fans who love him. But it wasn’t until Saturday afternoon, while he was on stage at the Marvel Studios panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, that he got hit with the full weight of the love and enthusiasm surrounding T’Challa. Those same fans are trying to help Boseman embody the role in the best way possible.

Evan Narcisse

the-jla-watchtower:

He’s a king so he doesn’t necessarily have to take feedback at all so that’s a good observation. What do you think prevents T’Challa from being a Magical Negro in Civil War? Part of the formula is there: he’s an otherworldly character who could be fixing these white folks’ problems [Boseman laughs].

Boseman: Well, he’s there for his own purpose. He’s not there… usually what happens is “well, he did this in this scene and now he’s doing [something else contradictory] and that doesn’t even fit the character.” That’s the Magical Negro thing. But, I think we were very cognizant about making a character that had his own through-line, his own intent and he wasn’t going to waver for anybody else’s story. Anytime that I felt like that was about to happen, I’d be like ‘nah, this is what he wants. You can do whatever you wanna do but this is what I feel like he needs to be doing.’ I feel like that’s the key. Sometimes… I won’t say more than that. I could go into the Magical Negro and talk about that forever but…. [laughs loudly]

I’m not gonna stop you!

Boseman: Nah, I think the main thing is just keeping it very clear that he has his own arc and his own things that he wants and desires. He only changes that when something strikes a chord at his core. It strikes a chord at what I think is his lineage and heritage and what he’s been taught, at what he’s been groomed to be. He can’t make that shift at the end of the movie unless he’s been groomed to make that shift already. And even though we don’t see that grooming, that’s actually the first glimpse into Wakanda before you see that tag at the very end.

Okay, I have a weird ask and you can turn it down if you want. I have two favorite lines of dialogue from the comics…

Boseman: Noooo, I’m not going to say them in the accent! [laughs loudly] I promised myself I wouldn’t do that.

I have a follow-up, then! Do you have a favorite moment from any of the material that you’ve read so far?

Boseman: Hmmm, wow. Let me think, because there’s a lot of different stuff. One of the moments was when he traps into his ancestral realm and all of the ancestors are standing around and they’re panthers…

So I have to stop you because one of the lines I was going to have you read was from that same exact scene. [turns laptop to show screen]

Boseman: I love that moment, mainly because before I’d even read that series—I’d read the Reginald Hudlin versions and the Kirby series…

Damn, you read the Kirby? I’m a lifelong Black Panther fan but that is some hard reading in 2016.

Boseman: Well, you have to read it, right? There was a book that had all of them collected. But that specific image of those panther ancestors came to me before ever seeing it. So, when I saw it in the book, I was like “Oh, wow.” I didn’t have the role yet but that image already manifested in my head.

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Sometimes things is just tru fax:

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wolfpratt:

imagine having masculinity so fragile, that you complain about other men playing a video game

Course, give one of those Pokemon a gun, and watch those same man-babies racing to download their copy of Grand Theft Pokemon or whatever.

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*And I am always available for Cookout humor:

Why Black People Care So Damn Much About Potato Salad, Explained

An Email To My Family About This Weekend’s Cookout

Why President Obama’s Final 4th of July White House BBQ Will Be The Blackest Thing That Ever Happened

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There’s a huge amount of cartoons and gifsets of Hannibal in my dash. So many that I had to unfollow some people, but this one stayed.  That first one though, with that smile and the head tilt…priceless!!

hannigram-hell:

sekra:

everyone else made these jokes

so i did too

I actually kinda want that dress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Red Dragon (2002) vs. Hannibal

The Red Dragon vs Hannibal

Bryan Fuller has managed to take A tiny snippet, from a three decades old book, and spin magic from it. The result is one of the most visually, emotionally, and intellectually stunning achievements ever seen  on television.

I enjoy  the movies and the book, but given a choice between a thirty-nine hour version, and a version that has to wrap up its entire plotline in two hours, I’m going to choose Hannibal the series, over the movie, The Red Dragon. Despite its all star cast, and the efficiency of its plot, the movie suffers a severe deficiency in the two areas in which television excels: depth of plot, and character progression.

This  is largely about season three of Hannibal, as that is when Fuller begins the Red Dragon arc, along with some elements of the book, Hannibal.  I’m going to focus on the major characters from the third season. But I’m also including the two other seasons as well, because the Red Dragon arc couldn’t be told without the  previous character development.

 

Anthony Hopkins vs. Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter:

Anthony Hopkins is an exemplary actor and I have absolutely no problems with his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, across the three films in which he stars, although as the movies progressed, he became  more comedic. However, because he has more time in which to do it, and the writing is much better overall, its  Mads Mikkelsen who steals this category for me. The movie definitely uses lines from the book, but the show is capable of taking Hannibal’s lines and using them to better effect.

Yes, Hopkin’s version is still arrogant, malicious, and slippery, but his performance, because of the time limitations of movies, lacks the depth of Mikkelsen’s, whose character is much more nuanced. Mads gives us a portrait of a deeply lonely man, who doesn’t realize this until he meets his match in Will Graham, a meeting that profoundly changes him. Mikkelsen’s Hannibal is given tastes and skills that are only hinted about in the films. We know that Lecter is a food connoisseur, but don’t see much evidence of that in the movies, and it is only passingly mentioned in the books. Since we don’t meet Lecter, in the movies, until after his incarceration, we’re not privy to much of  his tastes in clothing or music. We don’t have much idea what his life was on the outside, so Fuller had to spin Hannibal’s lifestyle from whole cloth. In the series he has hobbies and opinions outside of killing, while still maintaining a surprising amount of mystery.

Just as in the books, (except for Hannibal Rising) we are not given a clear reason for why Hannibal is the way he is. In the series, when he is asked what happened to him, he responds by saying nothing happened to him. He happened on his own.

Bryan Fuller has the unusual skill of taking a wholly unsympathetic character, and humanizing him to where you are actually rooting for Hannibal’s happiness, while still having that character be pantshittingly scary.

And then there is his relationship with Will Graham. From the books, we know from time to time, Hannibal will take an inexplicable  interest in certain people. In Silence of the Lambs it was Clarice Starling, but Will Graham came before her. In the Red Dragon movie, Hannibal is mostly fascinated by Graham’s capture of him. His attitude towards Graham isn’t much different from Chilton who only wishes to study  Graham.  In the movie Hannibal says the things he says out of resentment towards Will, but in the series there’s a much deeper motivation. In the series, Hannibal’s fascination is very deliberately coded by Fuller as a romance. So yeah, all of that homoerotic “subtext” you kept seeing… Fuller meant to do that.

 

 

Edward Norton  vs. Hugh Dancy as Will Graham:

I have a couple of  problems with Edward Norton’s version of Will Graham. Norton is an incredible actor, saddled with a lackluster character, where all the personality has been removed. Norton plays him as serious, earnest, and determined. He will forge ahead and get his man no matter what. One could make the argument that that is a deliberate choice on the part of the writers, and actors, to pare down Will Graham’s character, as much as possible, to highlight how traumatized he is, and to illustrate how he does his job, or just to streamline the movie, but its not a very successful attempt, as Will just comes across as rather dull and plodding.

Hugh Dancy manages to imbue Will Graham with a voracious, prodigious intelligence, and an  acute vulnerability, that is entirely lacking in Norton’s workmanlike character, although this has the unintended side effect of making the series version look a little superhuman, as the viewer isn’t always certain how Graham is reaching his conclusions. One of the unintended side effects of Norton’s Graham being so lackluster, though, is that he comes across as kind of slow. It takes over half the movie for him to figure out how the Red Dragon is choosing his victims. It doesn’t help that he is  saddled with some truly horrible dialogue, as the director didn’t feel confident enough in the audience’s ability to understand what Graham’s job entails, and has the character explain, out loud, his rather slow thought processes. All of his discoveries are played as  huge “Eureka” moments , when they really shouldn’t be. I can’t help but believe that the dialogue was written by a person who isn’t very smart, trying to write how smart people think, and failing.

In  the series, we are shown how Graham’s process works, how fast it is, and that its mostly not magic. Admittedly, it is much more difficult, to convey such a character’s very different mindset, in the space of two hours. The movie version isn’t helped by Graham’s spouting of the cliched “The killer isn’t going to quit on his own. He’s got a taste for it.” dialogue.Will Graham’s signature phrase from the series is, “This is my design.” And is much more eloquent, deepening the character considerably, as the phrase becomes conflated , not only with Will Graham’s mental state, but that of the killers he investigates.

On the other hand, Norton’s rude discomfort with Hannibal’s interest in his character is well captured, especially in their initial meeting. Throughout the movie, Norton looks distinctly uncomfortable with Hannibal’s assertions about him. He never becomes completely comfortable with Hannibal’s fascination, which makes for an interesting dynamic between the two.

In the series, Will first rebuffs Hannibal’s overture but then comes to accept what Hannibal thinks of him. We know that Hannibal’s signature motto is “Eat the rude!”, so its a lot of fun watching Will Graham be very rude to him, while Hannibal smiles indulgently. (Its highly amusing for Fannibals to think of Will as Hannibal’s precious cinnamon bun.)

And yeah, Hugh Dancy is just waaay cuter.

 

Mary Louise Parker vs. Nina Arianda as Molly:  

   I think this one is a no-brainer. Parker’s version of Molly mostly comes across as a sexy, whiny, floor lamp, despite her action lady street-cred at the end of the film. Bryan Fuller stated he made a deliberate effort to NOT write his version to be like the movie version. The movie version fulfills the cliche of the selfish wife who prioritizes her feelings over the deaths of other human beings, deaths that her husband has the ability to stop, but she would rather he stayed home with her.

Now, to be fair, when you really listen to the dialogue in the film, what Molly is worried about is the same thing that Alana Bloom, much more successfully, conveys within the series, that Will Graham is too fragile to be allowed in the field as an agent. In Red Dragon, some combination of Parker’s acting, and the writing, just makes her whiny, and unlikable.

Molly doesn’t want Jack putting Will in the field because of the  danger, and Arianda makes this clear in one of  the season three opening episodes, just without the whining. Arianda’s version is specifically written to buck this trope, by having her be as supportive of Will as she can, under the circumstances. At no point does she nag Will for not being home, and when Dollarhyde comes for her and her child, she saves herself. In the movie, killing Dollarhyde is a whole family affair, but I still hated the writing for those scenes, which felt trite.

Arianda doesn’t have a huge role in the series, but what she manages to do with Molly, is still wonderfully played, and much less annoying than Parker.

 

Harvey Keitel vs. Lawrence Fishburne as Jack Crawford:

Okay, television has a leg up on the characterization, nevertheless,  though I am desperately in love with Lawrence Fishburne, I still prefer  Keitel’s Crawford. Jack Crawford isn’t very fleshed out in the movie at all,  although, Keitel’s performance is, at all times, excellent. He manages to brings a no-nonsense, world weary, and humorous quality to the character, that I just enjoy. I’m overjoyed Fuller got Fishburne for the role in Hannibal, but I’m still curious how Keitel would’ve approached the series.

Television is capable of giving whole new lives to characters who are merely sidekicks in the source narrative. I haven’t read the books in some time but I’m pretty sure that Jack’s wife is barely mentioned in them, (Fishburne’s real world wife, Gina Torres, was a wonderful addition to the show.) It is mentioned in one of the books about how Jack sat at his wife’s bedside while she lay dying, though.(Jack gets most of his mentions in Silence of the Lambs, which Fuller doesn’t have the rights to, so a lot of Jack was made up out of whole cloth.) Fishburne himself stated that he was delighted to step into the role, as it was played by one of his  “actor-father’s”, who mentored him at the beginning of his career,  Scott Glenn. (Glenn played Jack Crawford in the 1991  Silence of the Lambs.)

At one point in the series first season, Jack declares, in no uncertain terms, that he is a rock. That he is immovable. He is correct, as he is the series unfailing moral center. Even when he’s operating outside the law,  Lawrence’s Crawford acts from a centered and righteous resolve, that makes Jack one of my favorite characters. He is, in every instance, the opposite of Hannibal’s , and sometimes Will’s, moral liquidity.

Ralph Fiennes vs. Richard Armitage as Francis Dollarhyde:

I don’t even know which one of these to choose. I loved both performances. Armitage’s performance really deepens this character but its hard to find any fault with Fiennes’s pathetic, and tragic, Dollarhyde. Both performances cover the same ground, and this is a testament to the high level of acting we’re  dealing with,  their performances are both markedly different, but in a very subtle manner.

Armitage has an opportunity to flesh his version out more, but its not just that. He imbues Dollarhyde with a level of competence, strength, and intelligence, that is much more subtly engaged by Fiennes, who adds just a touch of resentment, and shame, at a world that’s treated him so badly. Armitage’s version also manages to be deeply, disturbingly, sexy, and frightening, as well. Armitage says he made a point of not watching any of the films, so as not to pick up any mannerisms of the other two actors who played Dollarhyde, in both Red Dragon and Manhunter.

Yeah okay, Armitage has a better butt, too.

Philip Seymour Hoffman vs. Lara Jean Chorostecki as Freddie Lounds:

It is difficult to top Hoffman as Freddie Lounds, and Chorostecki, for the most part doesn’t try. I actually really love the film version of this character, although I do not object to Fuller’s  genderswapping, at all.  I think the series version makes Freddie too sympathetic a character, and Chorostecki’s version has a tendency  to be too  calculating, and sharply intelligent, although her performance is excellent.

Hoffman’s version of Lounds is dirty, messy, disgusting, and horribly rude. He is an opportunistic vulture, who isn’t too bright. You love to hate him, and almost applaud his horrific death, at Dollarhyde’s hands.

In all fairness though, only Chorostecki’s version would ever refer to Will and Hannibal as “Murder Husbands”, so we love her just for that. Sorry, but  I can’t choose either one of  these, as my absolute favorite.

 

Anthony Heald vs Raul Esparza as Frederick Chilton:

Of the two, I prefer the movie version. Anthony Heald manages to capture just the right amount of sleaze for this character. The movie version of Chilton is cheesy and not too bright, but not sleazy. Movie Chilton tries, unsuccessfully, to put the make on Starling, and when she politely turns him down, he acts subtly pissy afterwards, which I found hilarious, as if he thinks she wouldn’t notice.

Heald’s Chilton had a quality of obliviousness about him, whereas Esparza’s version seems just a bit too aware. In The Red Dragon, he  showed an interest in interviewing Will Graham, but only as regards Will’s capture and insight into Hannibal.When Raul’s version shows an interest in studying Will Graham, it comes across as extremely distasteful. I like that Heald’s Chilton thinks of Hannibal as his intellectual equal and rival, when we all know he is anything but. In the series he was just a little too cozy with Hannibal’s company, as if he were trying to impress Hannibal.

I love Raul as an actor but I didn’t really like him as Chilton. Chilton was just a little too intentionally comedic, whereas the movie version was more gruesomely funny, with little effort from Heald. Raul’s Chilton is really just too smart for his own good, and had a pathological inability to keep his mouth shut around Hannibal, which made him deeply annoying. This is not the fault of Raul, whose acting is top notch, but the writers.

But really, at this level of acting, whichever one you like, is  really just a matter of personal taste. Both the movie and the series deeply mined the source material, and Raul Esparza said he made a point of copying some of Heald’s mannerisms from the films.

 

Emily Watson  vs. Rutina Wesley as Reba McClane:

This is where Fuller really did a wonderful job in his choice of actors. In changing Reba’s race, he really deepened this character, who is operating under multiple axis of oppression, as a black woman with a disability, who is in an interracial relationship. When Dollarhyde imagines her as The Woman Clothed In the Sun, its a very powerful image of a black woman as  being worshiped by this severely damaged man.

Fuller did state that part of the reason he chose Rutina is for the scene where  Dollarhyde takes her to visit a sedated tiger at the local zoo. Its a gorgeously shot scene. The brilliance of the tiger’s skin, Reba’s behavior, and Dollarhyde’s reaction make it an emotionally intense, and deeply erotic moment. Fuller takes full advantage of the contrast in skin tones between Reba and Dollarhyde. I’ve never seen an interracial love scene look so beautiful.

There’s nothing wrong with Emily Watson’s performance, and I really like that actress, just not as Reba. Watson’s Reba comes across as innocent, fragile, and delicate. She hits all the correct acting points, but its Rutina who really stands out, and not just because she has more screen time. Rutina simply has more force of personality and is  more memorable. Rutina gets several opportunities to about her character’s disability, how people treat her, and how she prefers to be treated.

Emily Watson’s performance relies too heavily on her looks. The blonde hair and the wide blue eyes, that stare fixedly into space, give her an ethereal, and angelic quality, but Rutina’s physical approach to the role, is a warm, graceful earthiness. She is so very human next to Dollarhyde’s godlike behavior. This is exactly the type of princess who could capture a dragon’s attention.

Fuller uses his platform to have his character speak on what its like to be disabled and  make us understand that that’s not all she is. Rutina’s Reba is strong minded, knows what she wants, (Dollarhyde) and pursues it. She stands up to Dollarhyde when he angers her and makes an effort to save herself when he kidnaps her. At no time does she ever passively accept victimhood. She is a beautiful representation for disability, and I don’t like that so many of the fans ignore that she was a part of the show, in  their celebrations of the women of Hannibal.

 

Margot and Mason Verger:

There is so much to be said about these two characters and their depictions between the film, the books, and the shows. Mason and Margot are first introduced in the book Hannibal, and in the movie of the same name, but Fuller decided to introduce both characters late in season two, before his rendition of the Red Dragon storyline.

In Hannibal, the events at Muskrat Farm occur after The Silence of the Lambs, after Hannibal has escaped prison and traveled to Europe. In the series, he hasn’t yet escaped because he hasn’t been captured yet. In the series, he won’t be kidnapped by Mason until after his sojourn in Europe. Neither the movies, nor the books, show exactly what happened when Margot, Mason and Hannibal first met, but Fuller shows us how and why Hannibal did  to Mason what was mentioned, only in passing, in the book.

 

Fullers’s approach to Margot is interesting. I prefer the series version because the book version is rather problematic and has a very trans-phobic understanding of Margot. I also love Isabelle’s portrayal of Margot. She’s smart, sexy and more than a little conniving. She’s certainly smarter than the book version, who seemed to rely more on brute strength rather than brains,  and unapologetic about her Bi-sexuality. In the books, her father disowned her when she came out as a Lesbian, but in the series, her father leaves her out of his will because she is a she.(The depiction of Margot leads me to believe that in many ways Fuller is a lot smarter than Harris. He writes smarter characters.)

I also love , and love to hate, the TV version of Mason. Joe Anderson and Michael Pitt are absolutely outstanding in the role of pre- incident, and aftermath, Mason. Their performance really will make you forget about Oldman, and is so seamless, that at first I couldn’t tell that two different actors were playing this role. In the movies, and books ,we are only told about Mason’s depravity, but in the show,we get the full monty, as it were. We, unfortunately, get to see Mason emotionally abusing children and Margot, and listen to the entirely self-serving drivel he spouts in his sessions with Hannibal. Just as in the books, his predilection for children lands him on Hannibal’s couch.

Most of these characters stories hew as close to the events in the books as possible. There is no Margot Verger in the movies at all. Although in sidestepping the transphobia in the books, Fuller had Margot sleep with Will Graham to have a baby, and angered LGBTQIA fans by suggesting that Lesbians can turn their sexuality on and off just  to  get pregnant, and the stereotype that Lesbians are deceitful by tricking men into getting them pregnant.

 

Alana Bloom:

In the books and movies, Alana gets only a passing mention from the other characters, is and largely an entirely made up, and gender-swapped character, as a result, there’s nothing to compare between the two.

In the season one, Alana is Will’s protectoress, and a mother figure for Abigail. She goes to bat for Will, against the manipulations of Jack Crawford. She’s the one person who recognizes, in season two, that Will is sick with encephalitis, and the only friend he has left, adopting his dogs, and filing a formal complaint against Crawford, for putting Will in the field.

When Alana begins a relationship with Hannibal, she comes to his defense against Will, which damages herrelationship with Will until season three, although Will still cares deeply for her. Alana’s loyalty to a person completely blinds her to that person’s negative aspects, which is how she was able to miss what Hannibal was, despite Will’s accusations.

Having been nearly  paralyzed in the season two finale, Mizunomo, she comes back with a literal vengeance, with a new haircut and wardrobe, in season three, going so far as to help Mason Verger capture Hannibal, so he can torture him. She begins a relationship with Margot Verger, and eventually helps Margot milk her brother for his sperm before killing him, after which she  gives birth to the next Verger heir.

After Hannibal’s escape from custody, she pretty much gets to ride off into the sunset with her wife, Margot, and their child. This is really  the only successful relationship in the show.

 

 

Hannibal Season One : Potage and Ceuf

I’m reviewing these two episodes together because the second is largely a continuation of the theme from the first. The episode after these two will begin a new theme to be addressed this season and all of the themes introduced in the first half will culminate in the final four episodes.

Up til now, I haven’t really discussed the relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. As the season continues though, things start to come into a bit more focus regarding what exactly is it that Hannibal wants from Will, why he wants it, and how Will Graham Will cope with it.

Most of these themes aren’t explicitly stated but implied by  things the characters say to to each other, usually regarding some topic other than themselves. For example, we know Hannibal is the Chesapeake Ripper, so we can infer that anything Hannibal has to say about the Ripper is really about himself. Will being empathic makes anything he says about the Ripper, about Hannibal, and most of the things he says about Garrett Jacob Hobbes can  be applied to himself, since that’s the killer, right now, with whom he most identifies. Since Will is losing his sense of self to his mental version of Garrett Hobbes,  and slowly being guided by Lecter into the Ripper’s mindset, he begins to speak less and less of how he actually feels and more  often begins to speak for Hannibal or the killers he hunts, sometimes even voicing the killer’s  thoughts out loud.

Its not that Will isn’t speaking for himself. He is. But who he is has become  blurred, although he doesn’t seem  to become aware of this until season two. Once again those “Forts he keeps building, in the bone area of his skull”, aren’t being built fast enough to contain his perceptions, and his perceptions are bleeding into who he is and what he feels.  Hannibal is fascinated with Will Graham, not just because of Will’s unique disorder, but because he can look at Will and talk to a potential reflection of himself.

The theme in these episodes  is Family, and its one of the first episodes where the focus is almost entirely on the relationships we see unfolding, and not on the the homicide case being studied.  In this episode ,Will and Hannibal attempt to provide closure to Abigail Hobbes, for the trauma of nearly being killed by her father. The cases are  still important but now the characters are starting to speak for themselves rather than only the  murders being stand-ins for their thoughts and feelings.

This episode is also very Abigail-centric, and I hesitate to discuss this character because I find her to be one of the least compelling characters in the show. I recognize her importance to the narrative and that often discussions about, to, and around her are often stand ins for Will and Hannibal’s feelings for each other. Nevertheless, I have a really difficult time paying attention to her scenes.

I’m not sure if its because Abigail is so much  younger than me, if its the actress, the writing, or because I just don’t identify or understand character’s like her. She’s difficult for me to see clearly, so I only partially understand her  motivations for doing anything. This character has struck some deep chords in the fandom but I seem to be immune. As a result there’s a lot about Abigail, even after repeated viewings of these episodes, I just don’t see, and as a result, can’t speak on. If you have a better understanding of her than I do please feel free to leave a comment. I welcome discussion. (These posts might appear to be me proclamating from on high, but it’s really just me thinking out loud.)

The episode opens with a dream sequence  of Abigail and her father hunting, where Garret tries to impress upon Abigail the importance of using the whole animal. That not doing so is basically murder. Hunting is a motif that works its way into every relationship and conversation on this show. Abigail, Will, Lecter and Jack are all “Hunters”, and what they hunt are people, who also hunt other people. Abigail helped her father lure  his female victims to their deaths, although this is an accusation she manages to sidestep through most of the season. Will hunts serial killers. Later, in season two, Lecter refers to Will as Jack’s Bloodhound.  And, of course, Hannibal is the ultimate predator, killing and eating his victims with impunity, but unlike Hobbes, he doesn’t honor his victims. Unlike Hobbes, Lecter believes the sole purpose of his victim’s lives are to serve his own desires.

This is often reflected in the character clothing choices, early in the season, as Hannibal wears jackets with a hunting style to them and Abigail wears outdoorsy, hunting style jackets with a more feminine silhouette. Will dresses not unlike a fisherman or dock worker.

(“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” – Matthew 4:19)

 

Will is advised against going to see Abigail. Alana says the first person Abigail should see when waking from her coma, is NOT the person who was present during her trauma. Alana goes to meet Abigail and finds her manipulative and evasive. Jack  insists that Abigail aided and abetted her father in his murders and he wants Will to speak to her instead. There is nothing wrong with Jack’s instincts, generally. But Will is compromised by his empathy. As with Hannibal, he is too close to the subject to see things clearly. Will’s empathy becomes an endless mirror. Looking into another’s head only reinforces that reflection in his own, until he ends up in a fun-house of images that reflect everyone but him. As he starts to blur his sense of self with that of the killers he hunts,  he ends up staring into his own mind, too close to it to  see his own face.

Will and Hannibal interrupt Freddie Lounds unsuccessful interview of Abigail, who manages to get information out of Freddie without giving her anything in return. Freddie gives Abigail Will Graham’s name and tells Abby that Will is insane. Abigail tells Will she remembers him shooting her Dad and Will accepts that with some difficulty. You can already see Will’s and Lecter’s fatherly dynamic begin to assert itself as Lecter intervenes whenever Abigail rebuffs Will’s  overtures. In this dynamic, Will is the mother-figure attempting to bond with his angry daughter and Lecter is the indulgent father figure, stepping between the two of them to keep the peace, protecting his daughter’s secrets, offering solace and stability, and remaining  neutral in their arguments, while offering support to them both.

After the meeting with Abigail, Lounds attempts to bargain with the two of them and Will delivers one of my favorite quotes: “Its not very smart to piss off a guy who thinks about killing people for a living.” And later gets chastised for this remark by Jack Crawford, while Will sits sullenly in front of his desk as if he’d just been called to the principle’s office.

Abigail expresses a wish to visit her home and Jack grants her request. Alana in her role as the Protector of everyone is often cast the part of the Naysayer. She is often “noping” someone’s ideas of what to do  or how to behave. This is probably the reason I identify with her so much. Having often been the sole arbiter of caution for  my younger siblings, I got to say “No”, a lot.

Freddie Lounds meets with Nicholas Boyle, the brother of Cassie Boyle, the victim of the copycat “field kabuki” killer. She alerts Nicholas that Abigail has awakened from her coma. Nicholas Boyle decides to swing into action. (Freddie Lounds likes to engage in, what’s known as, “shit stirring”.)

Back at Abigail’s home, she wants to reenact the crime and alerts Hannibal to the fact that she knows he was the man on the phone. How she deduced  that is unclear, but there is a domino effect where she also determines Lecter is a serial killer when Will tells her the phone call her father received, was likely from the copycat. Watch Lecter’s face while Will makes that connection. He looks at Will with smug pride.

Abigail asks if “crazy” is contagious. Alana explains “Folie A Deux”, which is a word I recognize mostly from re-runs of the X-Files, and means “madness shared by two people”. I know that the writers are talking about Will and Hannibal and not Abigail and her father. I think the idea of folie a deux is one of the things that fascinates Lecter about Will. If he can share his madness with Will, than that makes Lecter not mad, possibly even  normalizes him and he wouldn’t be so alone.

Abigail and Will discuss what its like to kill someone. He tells her its the worse thing in the world. You can almost feel Lecter’s exasperation with Will whenever he expresses such feelings. His job now is to supplant Will’s disgust with killing, with his own feelings of power and euphoria. Just when he thinks Will is truly beginning to understand him, Will asserts himself and expresses his own actual feelings, and that’s frustrating for Lecter.

While home, Abigail is visited by her friend, Marissa Schurr. They are both confronted by Nicholas Boyle. When Marissa hits Nicholas with a stone, Abigail witnesses Lecter hide the rock in a pile of leaves. Marissa’s mother appears and she and Marissa fight over visiting with Abigail. I get the distinct impression that Lecter chooses to kill Marissa  not just because she’s Abigail’s friend but because he found Marissa’s public, family fighting to be rude and  distasteful. In Lecter’s mind, this is not proper family behavior, at all.

That night we get our first clear glimpse of Will’s nightmare Dire RavenStag, which is an amalgamation of the deer’s head and the  crows found with the body of the copycat victim, Cassie Boyle. Most people do not see The RavenStag as a benign creature, but I’ve come across some people who do. They feel that the Stag represents Will, and is trying to safeguard him from Hannibal, but I respectfully disagree.

The next day, at Hobbes cabin, Abigail figures out that her dad was feeding the victims to her and using the victims body parts for various household items (like the serial killer,  Ed Gein). The four of them find the body of Marissa Schurr, impaled on antlers, like Cassie Boyle. Lecter attempts to deflect blame to Nicholas Boyle for Marissa’s murder, and suggests Abigail might be his future victim. This is not the first time we will see Lecter do this. He is a master of deflection.

 

 

Back at her own house again and  overcome with grief, Abigail discovers a pillow full of matted hair, and is  confronted again by Nicholas Boyle, whom she stabs with a hunting knife. Lecter advises her to cover up Nicholas’ murder and helps her hide the evidence and bury the body. So now they’re beholden to each other by their secrets, Lecter’s secret warning to Garrett Hobbes and Abigail’s murder of Nicholas.

This is a tactic that works very well for Lecter throughout the series, compromising his accomplices (Abigail and Bedelia) through a combination of murderous activities, coercion, lies and implication that he might harm them.

 

 

Oeuf or Ceuf

The theme of this episode is also Family, continuing from  the episode Potage. We watch as Lecter works to create a family dynamic between him, Will Graham and Abigail Hobbes. Once again, using a combination of transference, assertions, and suggestions to Will and Abigail to accept him as their emotional stability. In their latest session, Will talks about his home as his emotional safety net. We will see Hannibal transferring Will’s sense of safety in his home, to himself, and more blatantly in the case of Abigail.

 

The murderer this time is a woman who kidnaps children and coerces them into accepting her as their mother,  and killing their old family, which is a surface description of what Hannibal is doing this episode, destroying Abigail’s and Will’s old associations and supplanting them with his own. He wants to become their entire focus. I think Lecter is a man who is deeply, deeply lonely, but doesn’t seem to realize it until he meets Will Graham and Abigail Hobbes.

Abigail and Alana have another session. Alana suggests Abigail  join a support group. She tells Abigail to find someone to relate to about her experience, but unknown to her, Abigail has already chosen Lecter. Alana meets with Lecter that evening and they discuss Abigail’s case, which gives Hannibal the idea for what he does with Abigail later in the episode.

Lecter visits Will’s house, feeds his dogs and finishes one of Will’s fishing lures. One can see this as an act of dominance over Will and his pack. He is invading all of Will’s safe spaces, although later we find that, like a vampire, Lecter was invited. Later, Will and Lecter discuss their families and Will confesses that he never  really understood the concept. Lecter also neglects to mention he had a sister, telling Will he was an orphan. Will is ambivalent about forming a family dynamic with Abigail while Lecter becomes more certain that’s what he wants. Is this another of Lecter’s experiments?

Crawford and his forensic crew do some basic  detection work and Crawford invites Will to another crime scene, another dead family. They discuss why someone would turn on their own family, for their kidnapper and Will mentions The Capture-Bond, also known as Stockholm Syndrome wherein hostages often develop positive feelings for their captors, often empathizing, and sympathizing with them as a means of survival, sometimes so much, they refuse to leave them.

This may be the case between Abigail and her father. Last episode she came to the horrifying realization that her father was killing victims in lieu of her and came to the conclusion that if he’d just killed her, there would’ve been no others, although that’s not necessarily true. Could her father have, at some point, implied he would kill her if she didn’t comply with his wishes? She lured these women to her father’s clutches. On some level, she had to know she could be next, for whatever her father was doing to the girls. I think she at least suspected, if not outright knew, what her father was doing. This would explain the massive weight of guilt that Alana senses underneath Abigail’s manipulative exterior.

In their next session, Will is exasperated with himself because he bought Abigail a Christmas gift of fishing lures (a gift that’s much too appropriate for her), although Will rethinks this. Technically,she’s been a fisherman for her murderous father. Will s angry that he can’t save the children on his new case.

Abigail expresses a lot of deep concern for her murder of Nicholas Boyle, but I think this guilt is standing in for helping her father choose his victims. Lecter spirits her away from her therapy house, takes her to his home, cooks breakfast and gives her powerful drugs. This happens just after Will’s discussion of the Capture-Bond, so we know what’s happening here between Abigail and Lecter, and by the time Alana shows up to scold him for kidnapping her patient, his plan is well under way. Alana is just in time to be the stand in for Abigail’s mother.

Shoutout to:

The excellent Molly Shannon, of SNL fame, as the serial killer/kidnapper in this episode. She manages not to come across as a diabolical villain, seeming completely rational and motherly, (the kind of mom anyone would want) which is much more terrifying than maniacal laughter. Bryan Fuller has a way of getting the audience to, much like Will, identify completely with the killers on the show.

Actually we become complicit in the crimes we witness. The killer’s  motivations and artistry are given to us and beautiful and understandable things, like Lecter’s cooking. Like Will, we are meant to understand Lecter from his point of view occasionally pulling back from that identification to realize the horror of what we’ve just seen, or what we know. Every time we watch Lecter fix some gorgeous, delicious looking dish, we are meant to see the world as he does. Just like Will, we sometimes have to stop and reassert our sense of self, realizing that it’s people,  and that its a bad thing. Unlike Will, we can compartmentalize. We can shut off that identification with Lecter.

We can build forts in our skulls.

This is Bryan’s design.

Costumes:

Alana wears a lot of wrap dresses until season three when she switches to pantsuits.

 

 

Apparently, on TV, if you want to depict a man as having a working class background, plaid is the way to go. Lecter also wears lots of plaid, but it’s much more subtle than what Will wears, until season two when Will starts wearing darker, more subtly patterned clothes.

 

Will starts to adopt Lecter’s sense of style with a taller, slimmer silhouette,  more sweater/jacket combos and more blue, grey and black, in season two.  Contrast that with the lighter, rumpled beiges and plaids, from first season. I think the blue he wears later in  season two is just a callback to the blue jumpsuit he wears at the beginning of the season.  He also starts covering his neck more, with lots of scarves or high collared jackets. Is that a reference to  Abigail? 

Lecter never seems to adopt any of  Will’s sense of style. He’s still the dominant influence in this relationship, so we don’t see Lecter in more informal attire until season three, when we finally get to see him in leather jackets and white jumpsuits. He’s much more relaxed around her. She gets to see his true face, the creature underneath what she called his “person suit”.

 

Music:

There’s no classical music associated with Potage.

Oeuf : Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

Chopin’s Nocturne in B Major Op.32, No. 1

Andante’s Nocturne in E-Flat Major Op.9, No. 2

 

Interesting Tidbit:

When the show was set to air was somewhere around the time of the bombings in Boston  and the shootings in CT. Out of concern for some of the content, Bryan Fuller pulled the entire episode, but then made a free,  edited, Molly Shannon absent version, for Hulu and iTunes.