Department of English and American Studies. Adapting the Cannibal: The Gothic Essence of Hannibal Lecter Bachelor s Diploma Thesis

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1 Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Blanka Šustrová Adapting the Cannibal: The Gothic Essence of Hannibal Lecter Bachelor s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Smith, M.F.A., Ph. D. 2015

2 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography... Blanka Šustrová

3 Let me tell you what I think. I think that the work you do here has created a sense of stability for you. Stability is good for you, Will. Stability requires strong foundations, Jack. My moorings are built on sand. I'm not sand. I am bedrock. When you doubt yourself, you don't have to doubt me too. (Hannibal, Buffet Froid ) I would like to kindly thank my supervisor Jeff Smith, a man of heavenly patience and apt witticism, who took on a thesis including murder and cannibalism despite his deep aversion towards a vivid depiction of violence, as his taste in literature and film is, unlike mine, a taste of a decent, virtuous person. His valuable advice and moral support are deeply appreciated. I would also like to thank my friends who kept me sane.

4 Table of Contents Introduction The Aspects of Gothic Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon The Plot of Red Dragon The Good, the Bad and the Other Will Graham, the Damsel in Distress Adaptation: The Art of Choosing and Transforming NBC Hannibal: The Opulent Gothic Spectacle The plot of NBC Hannibal The Cook, the Epicure, His Aesthetics and Its Manifestation The Adaptation Approach The Villain in the Kitchen The House of Uncanny Terror and the Images of God Will Graham, the Damsel in Induced Liminal Areas Conclusion Bibliography Summary Resumé Appendix... 62

5 Introduction The character of Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal psychiatrist, is well embedded in the pop-culture not only because of the tetralogy by Thomas Harris that introduced the character in the novel Red Dragon in 1981 but also thanks to the filmic adaptations, mainly the ones with Anthony Hopkins in the leading role. Lecter became an icon of an elegant, intelligent evil that is able to possess both primitive features, such as cannibalism, but also a high taste in culture, superior intelligence and vast knowledge. In Red Dragon Lecter functions only as a secondary character that appears in less than fifty pages from four hundred and twenty pages. Red Dragon is classified as a detective crime thriller as the main narrative of the novel is focused on a special FBI investigator Will Graham catching Francis Dolarhyde, a murderer of families. Lecter is not the main villain of this novel, and while incarcerated for his heinous crimes, he occupies a strange position within the hero-villain spectrum. He gives Graham advice concerning catching Dolarhyde while supporting Dolarhyde in his murderous adventures. What also differentiates Lecter from the other stock characters of lawful police and deviant criminals are his Gothic features he carries himself and is also able to impose on others, especially Will Graham. In 2013, the American commercial broadcast network television NBC started to broadcast a TV series Hannibal, developed for television by Bryan Fuller, known for other TV series like Pushing Daisies (2007) or Wonderfalls (2004). Hannibal is different from the previous filmic adaptations because it does not follows the narrative of Harris tetralogy rigidly but picks and chooses events that fit its own narrative. However, the most important feature of this serialized adaptation is the attention to Lecter s Gothic features manifested in Red Dragon. These features were the basis of the 1

6 textual, visual and aural approach to the TV series as a whole and created a genre shift of the adaptation, moving towards the Gothic spectrum. The first chapter of the thesis presents the formulaic aspects of Gothic that are needed to establish an autonomous genre and also highlights those that are needed for the textual analysis of Lecter in Red Dragon and the aural-visual film analysis of Lecter in Hannibal. The space of this chapter is dedicated mainly to the pre-byronic Gothic villain and the modern vampire archetype, as they overlap in certain ways and because Lecter (especially in the TV series) meets the requirements of both. In addition, important Gothic concepts of terror, horror, sublime, uncanny and liminality are explained for they carry a huge importance in both Red Dragon and Hannibal. Chapter two offers an analysis of the character of Hannibal Lecter in Harris novel Red Dragon in the Gothic discourse, using the established formulaic aspects from chapter one. It contains an overview of the plot for a better orientation at the beginning and then it continues with the analysis of Lecter as an archetypal pre-byronic Gothic villain and a vampire. Lecter in Red Dragon is the Gothic Other, the individual that cannot be defined and does not fit and therefore produces terror. This chapter s aim is to establish the Gothic characteristics on which the character of Lecter in the TV series is based on. The third chapter presents a bridge between the textual analysis and the film analysis as it offers a theoretical insight to the approach to filmic (meaning cinematic and serialized TV) adaptations. It discusses different sign systems that are used for literature and films and why these are important to distinguish, for if the source text is to be adapted into a different medium, it should use the potential of the new medium working within a different sign system to the fullest. In filmic adaptations it is important to analyse the source text and decide which parts of the narrative to highlight but also 2

7 ensure that the visual and aural potential of the medium will be properly employed so the adaptation can function as an autonomous piece of art. The last chapter is focused on the NBC adaptation Hannibal, particularly its heavy aural-visual approach that apart from the character of Lecter himself, constitutes the Gothic setting of the series and contributes to the genre shift from a primarily crime thriller to a Gothic adaptation. Hannibal s characters are based on the novel Red Dragon and the largest portion of the show is dedicated to Lecter himself and his abusive relationship with Will Graham that, given the space and time of three seasons, offers a great extension of the Gothic features that are only modestly described in Red Dragon. An overview of the plot is added for better orientation and the treatment of the source text is discussed. The use of the visual appendix that is referred to in the chapter is strongly advised as it helps to orientate in the analysed scenes. The filmic analysis focuses mainly on the use of camera, lighting and sound in order to pinpoint the use of the visual and aural signifying systems of the medium. It also explains how these filmic techniques are important to displaying the formulaic aspects of Gothic described in the first chapter and applied to Lecter in the second chapter. 3

8 1. The Aspects of Gothic Gothic is not a genre so easily defined as its aspects overlap with different genres, particularly quite often with the Romantic. As Anne Williams suggests, Gothic and Romantic are not two different genres but one (1). Michael Gamer in his article Gothic Fictions and Romantic writing in Britain published in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction proposes that the Gothic is a mixed genre, brought together from other discourses, assembled like Frankenstein s monster, using various possibilities of the narrative and lyric writing (86). However, when establishing a genre, it must be acknowledged that it is a study of repetition, the patterns that constitute a tradition and a way that writers imitate, learn from and modify the work of their predecessors (Lloyd-Smith 1). Gothic has its particular features that can be traced and established throughout the literature since the 18 th century, when the term gothic story was introduced by Horace Walpole and his The Castle of Otranto, marking the beginning of the interest in this initially controversial genre (Thomson 12). The Gothic, as Allan Lloyd-Smith states, is about the return of the past, of the repressed and denied, the buried secret that subverts and corrodes the present, whatever the culture does not want to know or admit, will not or dare not tell itself (1). That challenges the limits of the society, and pushes towards the exploration of the extremes, while rethinking the previously divinely ordained sanctions, the ultimate laws, that with the evolution in sciences, gaining a strong position in relation to the organized religion, appear as social agreements of a lesser importance, rather than absolute and unquestionable divine prohibitions. Therefore, the perception of the violation of the laws and norms changes and explore the limits of the society, pushing it towards extremes like cruelty, passion, rapacity and sexual degradation but also free thinking, the notion of one s own superiority and personal freedom (Lloyd-Smith 5). Free 4

9 thinking characters unbounded by the socially respected norms are a frequent aspect of the Gothic, and are up to no good, since their self-proclaimed freedom possess a great danger to the culturally prescribed doctrines of morality and propriety (Lloyd-Smith 5). These characters usually pursue the innocent (they may be women, innocent virgin heroines or generally passive, submissive, easily influenced, sensitive characters) whose trust they gained and since then abuse. The central Gothic figure, a variation on a villain, particularly the pre-byronic Gothic Villain is unsympathetic and his crimes are amplified with sadism and unnecessary cruelty (Thorslev 22). Striking in appearance, usually middle-aged, with pale complexion and piercing eyes, the Gothic Villain, rebelling against society and God (Thorslev 65), acknowledges the moral codes of society and his own wickedness in violating those codes, and he therefore never engages our sympathies with his rebellion (Thorslev 53-54). The villain s origin is often aristocratic, evoking the sense of power and the air of the fallen angel, the air of Satanic greatness perverted, covered in aura of his past secret sins (Thorslev 54). The Gothic Villain resembles Satan before he was romanticized in the literature of Romanticism (Thorslev 57). The villain, as the central Gothic figure can be a form of the undead a phantom, a ghost, a corpse or a vampire. Since the boundary between life and death (and also past and present and often even between gender) is not fixed in the Gothic aesthetics, it can overlap (Kavka 211). However, the death does not have to be a physical death of the body. It can be a spiritual death, a death of ethics, morality and religious faith. In that case, it signifies a rebirth to a new set of personal norms of the character that is potentially dangerous to the rest of the society dwelling in and following the culturally established norms of the majority. By this spiritual death, the dangerous free thinking character is born, the 5

10 boundaries and limits are broken and the hero/villain, with his own set of rules, rebelling against the society and questioning the fixed ethics, is unleashed. The Vampire, especially the modern one, possesses very similar characteristics to the Gothic villain. Starting as a horrible, undead monster embedded in folkloric beliefs, the image of vampire and its characteristics changed through time monstrosity of the modern vampire is manifested rather spiritually or ethically and not physically. An important vampire characteristics is the fact that they are dead, or rather undead forms (Hallab 4). Yet, the death does not always have to be the death of the body but also a death of the mind, soul or ethics. Death can mean a change, a life renewed with new set of values (Hallab 6). As with the Gothic villain, the concept of rebirth of values and norms carries a danger of conversion, a diversion from the majority and therefore is proclaimed dangerous, which depends on the particular cultural-historical background. To draw a similarity with the folkloric image of a vampire, a person could become a vampire only by converting from the Greek Orthodox Church to Roman Catholic Church, which was then perceived as being heretic (Hallab 34). Even Joan of Arc with no need of the institution of the church, though being very religious, could be labelled as a vampire because she differed from the majority in the understanding of the role of the church. The first creation of the modern vampire could be tracked to John Polidori s 1819 book The Vampyre, which introduces to the world the fictional character of Lord Ruthven, an aristocratic vampire modelled on the real character of Lord Byron, who set up the model for the modern vampire as an elegant rebel who rejects the dictates of man, nature and conventional religion (Hallab 77), which again draws a similarity to the Gothic villain. A modern vampire, famously represented by Bram Stoker s Dracula, is carefully choosing his victims, rather than going on a rampage like a hungry animal. 6

11 [Vampire] is not just an accident of nature, but a vast personality, who takes a personal interest in each of his victims. From Polidori s Lord Ruthven to most of the Draculas to Anne Rice s Lestat, vampires carefully select, follow, and watch their victims. Indeed, most vampires choose their prey carefully, understand them, and even absorb their minds and experiences (Hallab 136). Vampires do not breed as humans, they infect their victims in order to cause their death a physical, ethical or spiritual and create a new member of their kin. The infection of the victim is usually linked to vampire sucking blood of their victims, a penetrative and oral act. Nevertheless, this is usual only in the modern depictions of vampires, as folkloric understanding of vampirism suggests possibilities as a psychological vampirism, when the vampire feeds on energy and emotions. Matthew Beresford proposes that the idea of a psychic vampire goes far back to the ancient demons and spirits who would drain life energy from people and give them sinful ideas. At that time, diseases such as depression were thought to be the result of being attacked by a vampire, who can leave the victims drained of energy, tired, apathetic. Also, the coined term psychic vampire is used to describe those, who deviate from the normal (Beresford ). In the Gothic terms, a vampire, an undead form with different set of norms and values represents the Otherness and carries and endless potential for radical alternative behaviour (Punter 226). Hallab argues that the function of vampire is not to be mundane, ordinary, normal or well adjusted and certainly not accepted (68), a characteristic, that could be easily applicable to the character of the pre-byronic Gothic villain. Moving on to another important aspect of the Gothic, which is the setting, it can be said that usually it is a seemingly antiquated place, usually a castle, foreign palace, 7

12 large house, urban underworld, public building, prison, graveyard or a storehouse (Hogle 2), and also ancient stone buildings, secret chambers, labyrinths and cellars. The intentional darkness and bareness of these locations induces the Gothic setting (Lloyd- Smith 7), sometimes with supernatural elements and the omnipresent notion of the sublime, to stimulate terror in the characters and potentially, the reader. The sublime is a concept that is not easily representable since it moves towards the aesthetics of excess, signifies the highest of the category and rejects clarity for the pleasurable/terrifying sense that all cannot be known about a particular landscape (u.arizona.edu), meaning not only countryside but also landscape of the soul. The sublime evokes terror (an important Gothic aspect), awe and admiration as well as fear. When pain and danger press too nearby, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be and they are delightful, as we every day experience (u.arizona.edu). The sublime is therefore not a crippling condition to the setting or the characters but can in various ways broaden the experience and enrich the consciousness since the torments are more effective than pleasures (u.arizona.edu). The terror, one of the sources of the sublime, brings the anxiety and suspense about threats to life and sanity that are dwelling in the shadows or the character s hidden past (Hogle 3). Terror consists of a set of threats that cannot be physically seen, yet are somehow perceived by the characters and the reader; the omnipresent sense of obscure danger and threat, darkness, solitude, power and privation (in this sense the Freudian un/heimlich); the terror of what might happen (Lloyd Smith 8). It is an idea, a notion of an overwhelming power that is unclearly manifested as a complex fear of obscure and dreadful elements [that] stimulate the imagination and often challenge intellectual 8

13 reasoning to arrive at a somehow plausible explanation of this ambiguous fear and anxiety (Thomson 16). Unlike terror, the concept of horror, another important foundation stone of the Gothic discourse, induces fear, revulsion, shock, loss of consciousness and physical powerlessness with a concrete imagery that haunts the character, causing the paralysis of the individual (Mulvey-Roberts 124). The horror is not connected to the sublime as the cause of the fear can be recognised (for example the fear of being buried alive; ghosts, vampires and other undead forms that pose as an imminent threat to one s life). As Misha Kavka puts it, the effect of horror is our response having confronted something monstrous, [but the effect of terror] bears witness to the permeability of the boundaries, which is the point at which the monstrosity begins to arise (228). The subliminal terror includes the notion of the uncanny, which draws the terror not from something external and alien but internal and strangely familiar, yet somehow foreign and disturbing (Thomson 34). The uncanny is derived from the German adjective heimlich, which means familiar and at the same time kept from sight, concealed, withheld from others (Freud 223). The meaning of heimlich is therefore ambivalent, developing into unheimlich, which is its opposite but also a part of it, as it means the same thing (Freud 226). Freud characterizes the uncanny as something that ought to remain hidden but has come to light. A living person which is defined as uncanny, has evil intentions and the motive to harm others (Freud 243). There is a very thin line between establishing clearly the opposing forces in the Gothic. It may be the aforementioned boundary between life and death or the uncanny, meaning both familiar and foreign. It is a space, time or simply an area of liminality, a threshold, in which Gothic situates itself (Lloyd-Smith 6). The transition can be demonstrated literally between actual spaces or between individuals representing 9

14 opposite forces but it can also appear within the self, as two opposing aspects of a character, so the polarities of lightness and darkness, black and white ascriptions of evil and virtue, both outside and within the self are focused upon in this attention to the liminal (Lloyd-Smith 6). In Gothic, the good and the evil are not two distinct forces with a solid barrier between them but they are parted with the area of liminality, the threshold that can be easily stepped over, voluntarily or not, in terms of actual spaces representing the polarities or within one s mind. The Gothic is still a valid genre because of the formulaic genre aspects and mechanisms that provide the readers or the spectators with a method of shaping their hidden desires, fears and uncanny obscurities. The Gothic setting of dark, labyrinth-like, unpredictable spaces is amplifying the concepts of the ungraspable sublime, of which the terror is the main element, correlating with the threshold areas of liminality and Freud s concept of the unfamiliar within the familiar. The classic Gothic tales of Frankenstein and Dracula have been re-told many times with different elements, in different adaptations, fitting the needs of the audiences of particular decades (Hogle 6). Nevertheless, the important things that appear in every Gothic fiction are certain constant formulaic features of the Gothic that establish the genre as valuable, specific and legitimate. 10

15 2. Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal psychiatrist and the pop-culture serial killer icon made his first appearance in the second novel of the American author Thomas Harris (the first being Black Sunday published in 1975, unrelated to the Lecter novels) in Reviewed by the New York Times as An engine designed for one purpose to make the pulse pound, the heart palpitate, the fear glands secrete (Harris book cover), Red Dragon tells a primarily detective story of a retired FBI criminal profiler Will Graham brought back to service because of a dangerous criminal Francis Dolarhyde. Lecter is only a minor character featured in less than a fourth of the novel. As the characters of Bryan Fuller s TV series Hannibal are based primarily on the Red Dragon novel, the second chapter of this thesis will start with an overview of the plot for a better orientation in the rest of the chapter, which will offer an analysis of the character of Hannibal Lecter in the Gothic discourse with the evidence drawn from the Red Dragon. Although Fuller uses plotlines and minor characters from the rest of the tetralogy, namely Hannibal (1999) and Hannibal Rising (2006), Red Dragon contains the subplot of Graham and Lecter which is essential to the story. Also, the opening credits at the beginning of every episode of the TV series state: Based on the characters from Red Dragon. Lecter will be analysed in terms of the Gothic aspects presented in chapter one: as an archetypal figure of a Gothic Villain and a vampire. In addition to that, his ability to produce the Gothic effects (liminality, sublime, uncanny) and the effect of these on the character of Will Graham will be interpreted. 11

16 2.1 The Plot of Red Dragon Taking place in 1978, the novel tells a story of a retired FBI criminal profiler Will Graham, who has been brought back to service by his former superior, Jack Crawford to solve the case of serial murders of families that happen during full moon every month. Graham is a brilliant profiler with a rare sense of pure empathy that enables him to solve the crimes faster, since he is able to look at the crime scene from the criminal s perspective, which is a great advantage but also a great danger for Graham himself, as he is very sensitive to the exposure of the criminal minds. Graham retired from the job because of Hannibal Lecter, a former psychiatrist, cannibal and a murderer of nine (known), who gutted Graham during the arrest three years before the narrative of Red Dragon starts. It is not clearly explained how Graham realised that Lecter is the murder suspect, but because of his empathy and strong intuition, he somehow knew it. Nevertheless, Graham also knew that Lecter knew, which led to the attack, mutilation and Graham s leaving the FBI. However, after the second family murder, Graham decides to see Lecter in the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane to ask for help with catching the serial killer, whom the tabloid press nicknamed The Tooth Fairy. The Tooth Fairy, later referred to as the Red Dragon is a schizophrenic man working for a film processing company in St. Louis named Francis Dolarhyde, suffering from a delusion that by killing perfect families and mutilating the bodies of the mothers he will become the Great Red Dragon from the series of paintings by William Blake. In his eyes, he changes his victims which helps him to become another personality. Thomas Harris offers an extensive backstory for Dolarhyde, unveiling his childhood in flashbacks and presenting reasons that caused the transformation of Dolarhyde s adult 12

17 psyche: being born with a cleft palate and labelled as a monster, living within a dysfunctional family and being greatly abused by his grandmother. Harris, however, does not offer such a background for Lecter, whose past or mental condition is largely debated, yet unknown. Therefore, it makes him a more interesting and potentially undecipherable character than Dolarhyde. What is important in the terms of the plot for the analysis of the character of Lecter and his influence on Will Graham is the secondary storyline of Graham s meetings with the incarcerated Lecter rather than the primary storyline of Graham catching Francis Dolarhyde, the main villain of the novel. Throughout the meetings, Lecter is abusing Graham s unpleasant gift of pure empathy and trying to get into his head with the help of precisely aimed questions and comments to disrupt his sense of mental stability. One of the tactics Lecter uses is reminding Graham of an incident when Graham (lawfully) shot dead Garrett Jacob Hobbs, a murder suspect, and then was institutionalized because of depression, to trigger a different opinion on murder in his value system and ethics. Meanwhile, Dolarhyde finds a way to correspond with Lecter, whom he considers a great inspiration. Lecter gives Dolarhyde Graham s home address and tells him to kill Graham, his wife and step-son. In order to catch Dolarhyde, Graham uses a sleazy tabloid journalist Freddy Lounds, who then writes a very derogatory article about Dolarhyde which should have led him into a trap. However, Dolarhyde kidnaps Lounds, bites off his lips and sets fire to him. Lounds, mortally wounded, accuses Graham of a set up and eventually dies. Dolarhyde fakes his own death and the attacks Graham and his family in their home he has an address to. He stabs Graham in the face and disfigures him permanently. Graham s wife Molly then shoots Dolarhyde dead. While recovering, 13

18 Graham receives a letter from Lecter, in which Lecter congratulates him on the murder of Freddy Lounds and expresses his hopes about Graham not being too much disfigured. 2.2 The Good, the Bad and the Other The good and the evil in Red Dragon are represented by the FBI and Will Graham versus Francis Dolarhyde, the serial killer they are trying to catch, yet the character of Lecter does not belong unequivocally in either of these groups in this story. On the one hand, he helps Will Graham with the case although he does not have to in the words of Kathleen Murphy, Lecter is consulted by cops as an oracle (31), on the other hand he communicates with Dolarhyde on his own accord and after getting Graham s home address Lecter sends Dolarhyde to kill Graham s family (which at the end does not turn out as planned). Thomas Harris provides an extensive backstory for Francis Dolarhyde as a kind of explanation, or even justification for murders he commits. The reader is aware of Dolarhyde s character traits and what caused him to kill. However, there is no backstory to Lecter. He is surrounded by a mysterious aura, just like the Gothic Villain described in chapter one of this thesis. Every information about Lecter is drawn out from when the other characters talk about him or from dialogues with him which do not contain personal information. He did [the murders] because he liked it. Still does. Dr. Lecter is not crazy, in any common way we think of being crazy. He did some hideous things because he enjoyed them. But he can function perfectly when he wants to. [ ] They say he s a sociopath because they don t know what else to call him. [ ] He has no remorse or guilt at all (Harris 62-64). 14

19 Therefore, Lecter cannot be labelled as normal since he is a murderer, but he cannot be labelled as crazy either, because he does not meet the requirements for a mental disorder, such as psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder (Oleson I. 198) and thus it puts him into a liminal area of the Gothic Other, the undefinable enigma and as Graham simplifies it: He is a monster (Harris 64). The readers are presented with the horror that Dolarhyde is capable to cause as Will Graham investigates the crime scene. However what Lecter emits is not the horror of the exposure to the immediate threat, it is terror, the fear of the unknown and undefinable. As Stephen M. Fuller puts it: Hannibal s incarceration prevents the enacting of his cannibalism and has the effect of magnifying the torture he threatens to exact. (823). Lecter, though imprisoned, is able to find a way to get Graham s address and to communicate with Dolarhyde but is never in the novel seen to commit a crime himself. He bears the aura of his past crimes, just like the Gothic villain, and is treated like an imprisoned myth, a curiosity for psychiatrists who cannot describe him. The sublime terror Lecter emits is described in Graham s utterance about how he caught him. The sixth victim found in his workshop had an old injury that Lecter treated when he was on duty in the emergency. Graham went to his private psychiatric office to ask him about it but something unspecified bothered him and came to see Lecter again. We were talking and he was making this polite effort to help me and I looked up at some very old medical books on the shelf above his head. And I knew it was him. When I looked at him again maybe my face changed, I don t know. I knew it and he knew I knew it and while trying to reach the phone in the hall, Lecter gutted Graham, although Graham never heard him coming (Harris 65-66). In this case, Lecter s inaudible movement and strong intuition cannot be simply explained by his education in psychiatry, there is an element of an unhuman instinct. 15

20 When Graham goes to visit Lecter in the hospital and ask for help, he wishes to see him asleep, as he wants a time to brace himself. If he felt Lecter s madness in his head, he had to contain it quickly, like a spill (Harris 74). Lecter can penetrate the minds, he can infect the victim and can metaphorically sink his teeth in, just like a vampire can. And this vampire allusion is not the only one in the text. Lecter has a very sensitive sense of smell, his eyes are maroon and reflect the light in red points (Harris 74), he is a small and neat polite man who tilts [the head] as he asks a question, as though he were screwing an augur of curiosity into your face (Harris 77), which indicates a forceful penetration. Alex Jiao compares Lecter with the archetypal vampire Dracula. He points out that Lecter has the same gaze, with which he can hypnotize and lure his victims, and like Dracula he can change victims into monsters, his own kin (2). Dracula needs to feed on his victims blood to survive and changes his victims into vampires and Jiao claims that Lecter needs to eat his victims flesh because of a physical deformity (2), yet Lecter s cannibalism is not a sign of vampirism but a different set of ethical norms Lecter has. It is only the modern depictions of vampires that suggest one must drink blood in order to be turned into a vampire this in itself is evidence that the age-old vampire traditions, associations and folklore are lost (Beresford 166). Lecter s cannibalism could therefore be called a physical deformity but Lecter does not necessarily need to eat human flesh in order to stay alive; he eats flesh because he, just like the Gothic Villain and a vampire, despises given laws and norms and creates his own. Lecter s cannibalism is an act of dominance, not reliance. Lecter s vampirism is psychological, he feeds on people s emotions and mental strength and his strategy for transformation his victims into his own kin is destabilizing their perception of ethics and norms. Lecter s vampirism is therefore based on his need to feed on people s emotions and exploring how far he can go with infecting them with 16

21 his influence rather than eating human flesh. Lecter s cannibalism in the Red Dragon is illustrated by a story about how he bit off half of a nurse s face (and his pulse never got over eighty-five) when he faked a heart attack and was taken out of his cell (Harris 71) and put into contrast with the fact that Lecter is educated, polite, neat, and intelligent and cunning enough to write some brilliant pieces for the American Journal of Psychiatry [ ], always about problems he doesn t have (Harris 73) and impenetrable plus too sophisticated about the tests for them to register anything (Harris 72). Lecter s primitivism is put into opposition to his refined cultural tastes and his education, just as Dracula s primitivism is in opposition to his aristocratic background (which Lecter also has, but the reader gets to know it only in Harris Hannibal, which was published in 1999, eighteen years after the publishing of Red Dragon). Taking into account the important vampire characteristics of being a dead or rather an undead form, Lecter is not physically but spiritually and ethically dead. He is dead in the sense that he rejected ethical norms of the society and also organized religion. The death for Lecter, as for a vampire, means that his life is renewed but with new values (Hallab 6). He does believe in God and claims that he can kill because he is made to his image, while ignoring the Ten Commandments. Lecter s image of God is not a forgiving, patient, helpful God but more like an unrestrained pantheist entity with unlimited power. In his letter to Graham where he reminds him of Garret Jacob Hobbes, a criminal Graham shot while arresting him, Lecter says about murder: Why shouldn t it feel good? It must feel good to God He does it all the time. And are we not made in His image? [ ] God dropped a church roof on thirty-four of his worshippers in Texas Wednesday night - just as they 17

22 were grovelling through a hymn. Don t you think that felt good? Thirtyfour. He d let you have one Hobbs (Harris 321). However, Lecter does not use God as a justification of his crimes, he knows that what he does is by the majority of people perceived as wrong (Oleson II. 36), he just chooses to ignore the ethic norms and challenges Will Graham s ethics, which are the same as the society s. Lecter is the free-spirited unbound Gothic villain that, with his cannibalism and murders, rebels against the society, not because he wants to get from some kind of oppression as a Byronic hero would do, but because the opportunity is there and because he is able to execute it to his own entertainment and intent. Mary Hallab also states that a vampire s appeal stands in the rebellious assertion of personal identity against nature and the society and the vampire s frequent identification with Satan, the great tempter and rebel (14). Lecter eats people simply because he can, because it represents his dominance over the rest of the society bound by norms. He is a prototype of Nietzsche s übermensch deprived of any boundary. God has still not punished him and if God can kill his worshippers, why could Lecter not do the same. Lecter does not puts himself in the position of God, to replace him. He simply chooses not to behave according to the rules that the society adopted in a belief that they were of a divine origin. To quote Zanger in Hallab, The transformations of the vampire might be understood analogically as a shift from a monotheistic, moralistic structure to a pagan hegemony of power and pleasure (118). If the Western society s ethical norms (based on the Biblical Ten Commandments) are perceived as what makes humans distinguishable from animals, then Lecter with his free spirit, breaking cultural taboos and intentionally violating these rules is labelled as non-human or inhuman, which only adds to his description as the Gothic Other. The function of vampire is not to be accepted or perceived as normal by the society, which puts him into a marginalised 18

23 position, created by his own choice. God and theological morality do not concern the modern vampire. [ ] Vampirism is a way of life rather than a deviation (Punter 207). Lecter with his binary oppositions of the primitive murderer, hunter and cannibal versus the educated, polished and intelligent doctor fits the category of a modern vampire based on Polidori s character of Lord Ruthven rather than the folkloric type of a horrible undead monster. Like Lord Ruthven, Anne Rice s Lestat and Dracula, Lecter is carefully choosing the victims he wants to change. As a psychological vampire, the position he occupies is in his eyes exclusive and he would not let anyone get near him, only those, in whom he sees the potential to break free from the societal rules, laws and norms, to become like him, to become his kin, his family in a sense. By infecting another person with his beliefs and values, by creating an offspring, Lecter leaves a legacy, and like Dracula, the physically immortal vampire, he becomes immortal. Lecter does this because his greatest fear is being deciphered, described and then forgotten (Harris 73), therefore dead. The word immortal apart from meaning to live forever, is someone who is so famous that they are remembered for a long time after they are dead (Beresford 196). Vampires do not breed to multiply. To maintain the blood line they infect and convert others, and Lecter is doing that by causing the death of his victims ethics and resurrecting them with the set of new values. Lecter in Red Dragon represents the rebellious characteristics against society and even God typical for the Gothic villain, creating his own set of rules and therefore becoming a free-spirited person deprived of any boundaries. He also represents vampire characteristics that are closely linked to the Gothic villain: rule-breaking and a different set of ethics. Lecter also bears physical characteristics of a vampire and inhuman abilities while not fitting any of the categories of mental illnesses or known and 19

24 described deviations, which makes him the undefinable Gothic Other with an aura of mystery and impenetrability and terror. His vampirism is psychological, he drains energy from his carefully chosen victims and infects them with his twisted ethics, pushing their mental conditions to extremes in the belief that he will break them and convert them to his set of norms, to become his own kin. The most important thing for Lecter is to find a suitable, sensitive victim prone to mental instability whom he can penetrate, infect and transform. And that victim is Will Graham. 2.3 Will Graham, the Damsel in Distress 1 As has been said in the chapter describing the formulaic aspects of Gothic fiction, a Gothic villain usually pursues the passive, submissive and easily influenced characters and abuses them for his own pleasure. A vampire chooses his victims carefully in order to penetrate their bodies or minds, kill their existing ethics and infect them with his own set of values. The character of an FBI criminal profiler, Will Graham is a perfect choice for Lecter to pursue, abuse and make him uncertain about his values and behaviour, since Graham has a rather troublesome gift of pure empathy and his mind is labile and prone to influences. Lecter s vampire ability of mind penetration is a handy tool for pushing Graham into the unpleasant liminal areas between good and evil and exposing him to imminent threats he has to react to, despite being incarcerated with no possible physical contact. Lecter, a character of sublime terror is able to create a horrifying situation of concrete imagery, using Francis Dolarhyde, the main villain of the novel, as a tool. In Red Dragon, Graham not only investigates the murders 1 Graham is referred humorously and hyperbolically to a Damsel in Distress here and in chapter 4.3 to indicate Graham s vulnerability and sensibility and also the fact that he is the main victim of Lecter s monstrous behaviour. It is not to indicate Graham s need for a hero to rescue him. 20

25 committed by Francis Dolarhyde but also explores the liminal areas of his mind, the vulnerability towards Lecter s luring and his own perception of ethics. Of all the characters in Red Dragon, Will Graham is the one who is the most predisposed to be picked by Lecter as a subject suitable for the transformation as he has the aforementioned gift of pure empathy. He does not solve crimes logically but instinctively (Messent 28). As Dr. Bloom, an FBI psychiatrist says to Jack Crawford, Graham s superior: He can assume your point of view and mine and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It s an uncontrollable gift, Jack. Perception is a tool that s pointed on both ends (Harris 179). This ability helps Graham to investigate the crimes he works on faster, as he is able to assume the murderer s point of view from the available evidence, but it also puts him into a great danger in Lecter s presence because Lecter as a psychiatrist knows Graham is an empath and therefore much easier to penetrate, infect with his thoughts and change. He is very familiar with [Graham]. He s given [Graham] a lot of thought (Harris 72). Graham realizes his power can be very dangerous to him and desperately avoids to answer how he caught Lecter and if he was able to reconstruct [Lecter s] fantasies (Harris 73) because that would put him into association with Lecter and the way Lecter thinks, and Graham would therefore be considered as someone who has the mind of a killer. However, he does realise that he [understands] murder uncomfortably well (Harris in Messent 28). Graham is the key to unlocking the undecipherable character of Lecter and the institutions wish to abuse this, without realizing that they are putting Graham into great danger of being exposed to the pure evil Lecter embodies. The gift of empathy puts Graham into the aforementioned area of liminality, a threshold area between two binary forces, in this case in between two minds, two different mentalities: one of a lawful detective and the other of an illicit murderer (when exposed to). 21

26 Graham is usually aware when he mimics the mind of someone else and when he doesn t but Lecter creates a liminal area for him, in which Graham doubts his ability to clearly distinguish between his own mind and Lecter s. Graham shot Garret Jacob Hobbs and was institutionalized afterwards because of depression. Graham s greatest fear is that although he shot Hobbs lawfully as a detective, he is a killer now and Lecter is using this experience to persuade Graham there is nothing wrong with killing people because God does it all the time (see chapter 2.2). Lecter wants Graham to embrace this experience, arguing that we don t invent our natures, Will; they are issued to us along with our lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it? (Harris 321). Lecter is luring Graham into breaking the ethics and laws, not to be ashamed of the murder he committed (although lawfully, as an FBI agent) because that is his true nature he is fighting with. Lecter is the Devil, the great tempter, acting like a familiar friend to acquire another lost soul. I want to help you, Will, and I d like to start by asking you this: when you were so depressed after you shot Mr. Garrett Jacob Hobbs to death, it wasn t the act that got you down, was it? Really, didn t you feel so bad because killing him felt so good? (Harris 321). In the presence of Lecter, Graham feels Lecter looking through to the back of his skull and his hair bristle on his nape (Harris 74-75), while Lecter bombards him with personal questions about his family life to get closer to him and gain a control over him. Graham s greatest fear is that he is a killer, as Lecter suggests, that he is like Lecter. Taking the vampire allusion into account, Anne Williams states that the greatest danger of the vampire is [ ] that we become as him (126). Graham fears to be metaphorically consumed by the evil Lecter projects onto him, he dreads the invasive appetite of the other, [he is] aware of the fragility and vulnerability of [his] own bodily (and psychic) self [ ] and the loss of individual authority and control (Messent 26). 22

27 Lecter, a Gothic villain, does not have to pursue his chosen prey through the familiar gothic setting like deep woods, old castles and dark dungeons. He is able to emit the sublime terror, power and obscurity while sitting incarcerated in a cell. He is able to penetrate Graham s mind only by talking to him and sending him letters, he does not need any physical contact to put Graham into the liminal area of good and evil, drawing him to the dark side. Graham dreads to meet him face to face, contrary to the old legends that vampires have no reflection, we do indeed see many diverse reflections of ourselves as the vampire stands before us cloaked in metaphor (Gordon and Hollinger in Kungl 109). Lecter, himself defined as uncanny, his familiarity and safeness represented by the psychiatrist profession, bounded by a pledge of the Hippocratic Oath he ought to be following and the foreign, something that should be hidden, represented by his murders, cannibalism, exploitation and abuse in general, also imposes the concept of uncanny on Graham, who is in Lecter s presence not sure if is there is something foreign within him that should remain hidden, though it feels strangely familiar. Lecter teases Graham to think about the possibility, asking him about how he managed to catch him. Do you know how you did it, Will? It s in the transcript. What does it matter now? It doesn t matter to me, Will. (Harris 76). Lecter is implying that it takes one mad man to catch another one and he knows that Graham has some special abilities and that he differs from the rest of the detectives, since he caught him. It does not matter to Hannibal because he believes that Graham has the mind of the killer, or could have (when pushed to the right direction), but it matters to Graham who is afraid Lecter could be right, although he is rejecting the idea as much as he can. Graham s emphatic ability is familiar to him but the foreign and 23

28 disturbing elements of Graham s uncanniness are linked to the possibility that he not only can get into the mind of a killer and analyse them but then also act and behave like a killer, to become him. Although Graham, while talking to Lecter behind the bars, refuses to play Lecter s games and changes topics whenever possible, avoiding to answer Lecter s inquisitive questions, the psychiatrist does not give up and continues with his abusive inquiries, asking him out of the sudden if he dreams much (Harris 78) after which Graham says good bye and turns his back on him. Dreaming in the Gothic fiction bears a crucial importance to the character in question. As the Glossary of a Gothic Literary Terms claims: by invoking dream states within their characters, authors are able to illustrate emotions on a more unmediated and, oftentimes, terrifying level. Dreams reveal to the reader what the character is often too afraid to realize about himself or herself (7). Graham refuses to talk about himself in front of Lecter, he dismisses his personal questions, he needs to reject him in order not to be infected by his influence and Lecter starts to act aggressively towards the end of their conversation in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, asking him several times Do you how you caught me? (Harris 80) and when Graham rushes to the door, yelling: The reason you caught me is that WE RE JUST ALIKE (Harris 80). Lecter materializes the terror he embodies for Graham with a clear exclamation and assures him about his uncanniness, in order to persuade Graham about his monstrous potential and abilities and values superior to the majority of ordinary men (as Lecter egoistically perceives himself). Nevertheless, Graham, though a fitting candidate for Lecter s infection, rejects his offer, which makes Lecter s blood boil since he realizes he lost an apprentice and feels that Graham s potential is wasted. Although Lecter is incarcerated, he is cunning 24

29 enough to communicate with Francis Dolarhyde, the central villain of the novel, a schizophrenic man who murders whole families and who admires Lecter, and use him as a hitman. To show his wrath and to provoke more than to punish Graham for his refusal, he posts a cipher in newspaper (and signs himself quite obviously for the FBI as 666 ) for Dolarhyde that states Graham s home address and a simple message: Save yourself. Kill them all (Harris 151). Lecter wants to push Graham to the extremes (which is typical for the Gothic fiction) and see what he is capable of when confronted with an explicit threat. In order to catch Dolarhyde, Graham comes up with an idea to set up an unflattering, humiliating, unprofessional and rude article about the murderer, written by a nosy, sleazy journalist Freddy Lounds, working for a popular tabloid newspaper. Unfortunately, the trap to lure Dolarhyde out leads to Dolarhyde kidnapping Lounds, gluing him to a chair, making him to record a message to the FBI, biting his lips off and then setting fire to him. Lounds miraculously survives and his last lipless words before he died in the hospital are Graham set ne uh. The cunt knew it. (Harris 212). It was an act that pleased Lecter excessively, as it would be something he would have done, having been in Graham s situation. In a letter to Graham, Lecter says: A brief note of congratulations on the job you did on Mr. Lounds. I admire it enormously! What a cunning boy you are, as continues with the argument that God kills all the time, why could not we: [God] won t begrudge one measly murder. Two now. That s all right. (Harris ). Graham knew Lecter was dead wrong about Hobbes but for a halfsecond he wondered if Lecter might be a little bit right in the case of Freddy Lounds. The enemy inside Graham agreed with any accusations (Harris 322). Lecter got Graham exactly where he wanted. He was able to put him into a situation where Graham acted for himself, without being exposed to another mind that could distract 25

30 him and admitted himself he did like it. It felt righteous, since Lounds was a pesky problem to him. Graham realized that there is a dark side to him, that he crossed the liminal area that Lecter created for him, pushing him into the direction of value breaking, egoism and free thinking that led to a plan to sacrifice a human being (though irritating) to get the desired outcome, to protect his family. It was not the only option how to deal with Dolarhyde. Graham chose to sacrifice Lounds, crossing the boundary of lawfulness. Graham s journey of experiencing sublime terror in the uncanny areas of his liminal self in the novel ends with him meditating about nature and murder, whether the vicious urges we control in ourselves and the dark instinctive knowledge of those urges function like the crippled virus the body arms against. He wondered if old, awful urges are the virus that makes vaccine (Harris ). It corresponds with Lecter s recommendation to Graham to relax with himself and be comfortable (Harris 321), in which case the virus would overcome the carrier. For it is much more difficult to supress the natural urges and adapt to the values of the society than to allow the savage monstrosity to grow within oneself. Therefore, Graham does not accept Lecter s behaviour as superior (as Lecter sees himself), but as something savage, primordial, crippled and ill. Graham and Lecter are not alike, Graham was able to make a vaccine. In Red Dragon, Will Graham is in the position of the Gothic damsel in distress pursued by Hannibal Lecter, the Gothic villain, who is trying to destabilize Graham s ethics and moral values and lure him to his own lifestyle of norm breaking, extreme free-thinking and violence, as he considers Graham a perfect candidate because he is an empath who can adopt the thinking of another person, therefore he is an easy target to penetrate and infect. Graham is put into liminal position by Lecter, questioning his ethics and values, while desperately trying to avoid any sublime influence by Lecter. 26

31 Graham is exploring his uncanniness, the familiarity and unfamiliarity within himself while trying to find out what are his real values and how much is he influenced by Lecter and his reprehensible actions. Thomas Harris Will Graham is a liminal character, yet in the end, he inclines to the good spectrum, which cannot be said about Lecter. Hannibal, the TV adaptation of Red Dragon, explores Graham s mental fluidity and behaviour in the liminal areas created by Lecter in a great extent. 27

32 3. Adaptation: The Art of Choosing and Transforming Filmic adaptations of literary works have been an object of criticism from the very beginning, facing the prejudice against the new medium, being seen as a disservice to literature (Stam 3). They were endlessly judged on the premise that literature, as an older, senior art, must be inevitably a better art (Stam 4). Literature, seen as the most important form of the symbolic written word was suddenly under the threat of a new, visual medium, denoting the collapse of the symbolic order of consecrated arts (Stam 5). Accused of parasitism, plagiarism and uncreativeness, the cinematic adaptation used to bear a stigma of the secondary, derivative, and even vulgar art that feeds on and drains energy from the fetishized idea of literature as the ultimate form of text. Yet, it must be acknowledged that in the days of digital media, where in practice you almost never get a pure text anymore, nor an image, [ ] academia is in danger of becoming obsolete and irrelevant if it doesn t engage in adaptation and interdisciplinarity (Elliott). As Linda Hutcheon points out, the contemporary popular adaptations are most often put down as secondary, derivative (2) both by journalists and academics, yet art is derived from other art; stories are born of other stories (2) adapting to new audiences, cultural tastes and changing environment. Film adaptations can be seen as genetic mutations of the source text that help it to survive (Stam 3) and be understandable and relatable for contemporary audiences with current demands and aesthetic expectations. To summarize what Kamilla Elliott, an adaptation scholar, said in a personal interview on prioritizing in humanities, the prejudice against adaptation stems from values in humanities that prioritize originality, whether in the original artist s creation or the medium specificity. The humanities cling to pre-darwinian theories as if they were religious, conservative theologians. They cling to this theory of 28

33 separate species and this belief that they can t mix, [ ] that they are individually created and maintained (Elliott). In biology, adaptation means similarity combined with difference, thus keeping things the same and not paying enough attention to comparative issues means to be doomed to extinction. In order to survive, one needs to repeat certain aspects but also need the variation that ensures the survival of the piece of art (Elliott). One of the issues of cinematic adaptation of novels is that in the scope of semiotics, literature and film operate within two different signifying systems the novel uses verbal system, with its low iconicity and high symbolism that works conceptually (abstractly), while the film uses verbal system in numerous variations with visual and aural systems which have high iconicity and uncertain symbolism and work primarily perceptually (one absorbs them through eyesight and hearing and then processes them) (McFarlane 26-27). What an adapter does is a transition of information between these two signifying systems. Film, as the most synthesizing performance form, must in case of adapting a text dramatize description, narration, and represented thoughts [that] must be transcoded into speech, actions, sounds and visual images. Conflicts and ideological differences between characters must be made visible and audible (Hutcheon 40). The adapted text cannot stay faithful to the source text for several reasons. As has been already said, the film and the novel differ in their signifying systems the text goes through an intersemiotic transposition that applies a new set of conventions to the source text (Hutcheon 16). The adapter has to interpret the source text and then write a screenplay, which, although operating in the verbal system, is an adaptation itself already, as any text can generate an infinity of readings (Stam 25). Moreover, the distance from the source text is increasing as the process moves from writing a screenplay to the actual shooting, where actors move into the development and 29

34 interpret their characters from the screenplay. As Stam states, the adapted characters from a novel may lose the slowly evolving complexity, yet once on the screen they gain an automatic thickness through bodily presence, posture, dress, and facial expression (22), which is amplified by the formal cinematic aspects such as lightning of the scene and the work of camera. The lightning and camera, apart from establishing the scene and recording what is chosen by the director can also cause shifts in focalization (Hutcheon 11) that may create a considerable difference in what is presented to the audience from the text source. Another step away from the source is then editing with special effects, sound and music which gives the film final appearance. The cinema can alter the point of view, fragmentally decompose the scene and intensify certain aspects and objects in ways that correspond with the adapter s interpretation of the source text. Taking into account all these steps that have to be taken between the source text and the adapted text, it is clear that there is no real equivalence between the source text and the adaptation, as there are specific aesthetic and formal norms that film follows (Stam 18). Adaptations cannot be completely faithful to the source texts and this approach is even undesirable because it would suppress the potential of the media change (Stam 17) and also the literary criticism, the different reading of the source text embodied in the film. In relation to the source text, it should not only be discussed what has been lost but also what has been gained through the change of medium and its signifying system, as the adaptation is always a hybrid construction of different media (Stam 3, 9), which chooses topics and themes from the source text and presents them in a different point of view which fits a particular cultural environment (Hutcheon 31). What adaptations offer to the interdisciplinary studies of text is transtextuality with the ability to present the text in endless creative permutations (Stam 8). These are 30

35 able to make the adaptation an autonomous piece of art. Adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing (Hutcheon 9). What is valued in adaptation is creativity, complexity and the ability to use the potential of the media resources to the fullest. Adaptations will never lose their connection to the source texts but at the same time they are not faithful copies of the source texts and it is impossible and undesirable for them to be so. An adaptation of a text that the audience knows is bringing together the comfort of ritual and recognition together with the delight of surprise and novelty [ ] it invokes both memory and change, persistence and variation (Hutcheon 173), which is the reason for its popularity since the cinema emerged as a new medium. A valuable adaptation, using the potential of its medium to the fullest, represents a living organism that evolves with every new permutation of the source text to help the source text to survive amid the rapidly changing development of new technologies, media and cultural environment. However, with a different signifying system than the novel has, the filmic adaptation works as an independent piece of art. It is derived from the source text, yet it is not a derivative piece of work. 31

36 4. NBC Hannibal: The Opulent Gothic Spectacle All the novels containing the character of Hannibal Lecter have been already adapted into films. The first, although not very memorable was Michael Mann s 1986 adaptation of Red Dragon called Manhunter, starring William Petersen as Graham and Brian Cox as Lecter. In 1991 emerged probably the most valued filmic adaptation of Harris work The Silence of the Lambs, with Anthony Hopkins (who won the Academy Award despite being on the screen just for about sixteen minutes) as Lecter, directed by Jonathan Demme. Hopkins portrayal of the serial killer popularized the Lecter franchise and adaptations of Hannibal (2001, directed by Ridley Scott) and Red Dragon (2003, directed by Brett Ratner) followed. In 2007, Peter Webber shot an adaptation of Harris Hannibal: Rising. The book was not acclaimed by critics and the film with Gaspard Ulliel as Lecter did undergo a similar judgment. However, on April 4, 2013, the American commercial broadcast television NBC broadcast Apéritif, the first episode of Hannibal, a show developed for television by Bryan Fuller. Characters in Hannibal are based on Harris Red Dragon and the narrative is inspired by events often only mentioned yet not depicted in Red Dragon. Especially the time when Graham was an active profiler working for the FBI and Lecter was not yet incarcerated and worked actively as a psychiatrist. Avoiding the all-too-familiar Hannibal-in-prison scenario and expanding on intriguing, unexplored events, the show manages to nail the best qualities of Harris work: the psychological nuance, the beautiful horror, and the black, black comedy (Peters). Fuller s adaptation does not rigidly follow the narrative of Red Dragon or any other of Harris books. The producers of Hannibal have rights to every character appearing in the tetralogy with the exception of The Silence of the Lambs (Fuller for Time Out). For example Mason Verger from Hannibal (novel) appears in the adaptation of events that took place in Red Dragon. 32

37 Fuller works with the whole world created by Harris, conveniently shifting events and bringing new characters to the scene. Shooting Hannibal as a serialized adaptation brings the advantage of a slower exposure of the characters complexities and building up the dramatic effect, just like a novel does. In words of Matt Zoller Seitz: [Novel] can adopt different points of view and slip back and forth between past and present, not just from chapter to chapter, but within the context of a page, a paragraph, even a sentence. Hannibal makes almost every other TV series seem aesthetically impoverished in comparison because it takes these freedoms and actually plays with them, to make the story and its telling more surprising, confounding, and multilayered. Hannibal is episodic, to an extent (the first series always includes a murder of the week ) but also carries a larger story arc of exploring the relationship between Lecter and Graham. 4.1 The plot of NBC Hannibal The first season presents the audience with events that happened before the main story arc of Red Dragon. Special agent Jack Crawford (Lawrence Fishburne), the head of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, pulls Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), a special investigator and teacher, out of the classroom because he needs his abilities of a criminal profiler to help him with the case of missing college girls. Graham, gifted with pure empathy, is able to mentally re-create the crimes in a great detail and adopt the thinking of the criminal which helps him to solve the case quickly than others but also drains him mentally, as he wanders between his mind and the mind of the criminal. Although aware of Graham s condition and mental instability, Crawford pushes him 33

38 into work Graham is not comfortable with because he is saving lives. In order to ensure Graham will not break down, Dr Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) suggests Crawford to ask Dr Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), a renowned Baltimore psychiatrist, to evaluate Graham s mental condition and to keep him functioning. Lecter immediately takes interest in Graham and makes a false evaluation record for Crawford, stating that Graham is a healthy man and can carry a gun. During the investigation of the missing college girls, one of the victims breaks the established pattern, being theatrically mounted on deer antlers in the middle of a field, which disturbs Graham and he realizes it s a copycat murder. Some of her vital organs are removed. Lecter is later seen cooking human lungs. Further evidence leads Graham who takes Lecter with him to a construction site. Graham finds an employee file of Garrett Jacob Hobbs, who fits the killer profile. Lecter makes a secret phone call to Hobbs and warns him the FBI knows. Graham and Lecter arrive to Hobbs house just as Hobbs kills his wife and tries to cut his daughter Abigail s throat, which he does but Graham shoots him dead and Abigail survives. This is Will Graham s first killing experience and also Lecter s starting point for psychological abuse and exploring the limits of Graham s mind. During the rest of the first series, the FBI team is working on the murder of the week cases, Lecter cooks opulent dinners for Crawford and Graham is being gradually brought to the brink of madness and breakdown by both of them. As the illness combined with Lecter s suggestive methods starts to overwhelm Graham, he has difficulties to determine what is real and what is not, suffers from nightmares, hallucinations and often gets lost in re-creating the crime scenes, imagining himself as the killer, having problems to separate his own mind from the criminal s one. Lecter is also manipulating Graham into a belief that the FBI, precisely Jack Crawford, 34

39 are not the stability they were meant to be and alienates both Graham and Crawford from each other. Lecter, who continuously destabilizes Graham s mind, becomes the only source his stability and Graham gradually loses his own identity. He still feels Hobbs influence in his mind while trying to rationally solve the case of the copycat killer, who is Lecter, cooperating with the FBI, walking around crime scenes and politely offering advice in the Behavioral Science Unit headquarters. Lecter successfully frames Graham for the copycat murders and the murder of Abigail Hobbs (who disappeared at the end of season one and was declared dead). As the evidence carefully planted by Lecter speaks against Graham, he is incarcerated in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and treated like a psychopathic mass murderer. In the second season Graham is slowly recovering his memories of Lecter s manipulation and tries to convince Crawford that Lecter is the copycat killer that framed him. Crawford starts to suspect Lecter but evidence also point on Dr Frederick Chilton (Raúl Esparza), the head of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Lecter steps in and successfully frames Chilton. Graham is out of the prison as the evidence against him turns out to be insufficient and asks Lecter to resume therapy sessions in order to reveal his crimes and arrest him. Graham is positioned between Crawford and Lecter, realizing that Lecter is extremely hard to catch so he plays on both sides and to earn Lecter s trust, he phones him to tell him Crawford knows that Lecter is guilty. A fight between Crawford and Lecter breaks out, Crawford is wounded. Alana Bloom tries to shoot Lecter but her gun is not loaded, so she runs away to be pushed out of the window by Abigail Hobbs, who is not dead at all, but brainwashed by Hannibal who held her hostage. Graham arrives, Lecter stabs him with a knife, forgives him for betraying his trust and cuts Abigail s 35

40 throat. Then he kidnaps his therapist Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) and flies with her to Florence. In the third season, Lecter and Du Maurier live in Florence as Dr Fell and his wife. Lecter works as a museum curator. Graham finds Lecter and exclaims that he got to know himself perfectly when he was with him. When he takes out a knife to stab Lecter, he is shot in the shoulder by another Lecter s brainwashed protégé, Chiyoh. Lecter comes to a conclusion that the only way to forgive Graham is to eat him. Crawford attempts to save Graham but Lecter ties him to a chair, drugs him and starts to open Graham s head with a cranial saw to eat his brain. Lecter and Graham (who is still alive) are a short while after that abducted to a farm of Lecter s former patient Mason Verger (Michael Pitt and later Joe Anderson) who wants Lecter to be eaten alive by pigs. Alana Bloom frees Lecter and he then saves Graham and carries him home in his arms. Graham expresses a wish to never see Lecter again. Lecter willingly surrenders to FBI, knowing that he will be placed in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where Graham can always find him. Although Graham wants Lecter s incarceration, he is strongly drawn to him. Episodes eight to thirteen finally tell the story of Francis Dolarhyde, The Great Red Dragon and Graham as an investigator consulting with Lecter, copying the narrative and visual style of the first season. Du Maurier tells Graham that Lecter is in love with him and asks if the feelings are reciprocated. Graham does not answer. Lecter sends Dolarhyde to kill Graham s family which does not work out eventually. Graham, at this point unsure on whose side he is, suggests to use Lecter as a lure for Dolarhyde, which would mean to transport him out of the asylum. During the transport, Dolarhyde kills the police officers and lets Graham and Lecter go. Lecter offers Graham to go with him and he accepts. They drive to a house near a cliff where 36

41 Lecter kept his victims, open a bottle of wine and then Dolarhyde shoots Lecter and stabs Graham in the face with intention to kill them both. Lecter and Graham kill Dolarhyde together. Graham then embraces Lecter in a gentle hug and pulls them both over the cliff into the sea. 4.2 The Cook, the Epicure, His Aesthetics and Its Manifestation Despite his appearance in the Red Dragon as a minor character, Hannibal Lecter is the centre of the NBC adaptation. Without this uncanny character around whom the whole show revolves, Hannibal would not have enough formulaic aspects to be labelled as Gothic. Lecter s character, the pivotal point, creates the most Gothic aspects that he imposes on other characters, especially Will Graham, whom he mentally destabilizes and pushes to the extremes. The Gothic aspects such as terror, horror and the uncanny are not created just by the narrative and Mikkelsen s acting, but also by the settings Lecter dwells in, particularly his house and by the filming techniques developing a certain mood The Adaptation Approach What differentiates Hannibal from other detective thriller series is the formalist approach of filming, a great emphasis on the visual and aural and exploring the mental state and reactions of the characters, rather than a fast progress of the storyline that ends in a clear definition between good and evil and an explicitly defined criminal. While nominally driven by the teleology of the detective story, Hannibal derives its force and originality from its unique focus on intense, sustained emotional states rooted in lyricism and spectacle. It uses, in other words an operatic narrative drive (Ionita 24). Hannibal uses dark colour palettes, there is more shadow than light, the episodes take 37

42 place mostly in autumn or winter. The grim, bleak, often secluded surroundings are combined with the horror of the exposed crime scenes and the terror of Lecter s uncanny house, particularly kitchen and the dining room, where he serves opulent, overthe-top dinners which no one knows what are made of. The music composed by Brian Reitzell also contributes largely to the Gothic atmosphere established by the visual components of the series. Classical music alternates with restless, tense and edgy ambient music that gives the show a very unsettling vibe. Bryan Fuller labels the style as a pretentious art film (Tallerico) and follows its requirements. Fuller acknowledges the influences of Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock throughout the whole series, some scenes seem almost ripped from the films of the aforementioned directors. Everything is exaggerated, distorted, reframed so that it feels at once figurative and real (Zoller Seitz). Hannibal combines horrific with the romantic, violent, and aesthetic. A large portion of the show is dreams, hallucinations, artificiality and distorted reality influencing not only the characters in question but also the audience. With its consciously heavy aural-visual approach, Fuller is using the medium to the fullest. Harris s style is an odd mix of dry proceduralism and poetic grandiloquence inflected with Romantic visions (William Blake features prominently in the plot of Red Dragon). Fuller trims most of the procedural elements while keeping the poetry (Ionita 26). Hannibal is intertextual, it refers textually to Harris tetralogy as well as to the previous adaptations, directly quoting the novels or the scripts, and sometimes mimicking the visual style of certain shots. It sometimes puts the quotes in a different context and ascribes them to different characters, thus creating a comical pastiche (Casey 554). An example of a textual reference to Red Dragon is in the last episode of the third season. In the novel, Lecter writes a letter to Graham where he is trying to 38

43 persuade Graham to let his true identity of a killer out. The exclamation You know, Will, you worry too much. You d be so much comfortable if you relaxed with yourself, (Harris 321) sounds like a serious fatherly advice. However, in the TV series, Lecter says the exact words to Graham in a dialogue in a very relaxed manner, like a tip from a magazine, while removing a dead police officer from a car and driving away (The Wrath of the Lamb s03e13 30:38 30:50) 2. As for the adaptation of Harris characters themselves, Bryan Fuller and the directors of Hannibal made sure they have enough time and space to focus on individual characters and elaborate on their sometimes textually limited depiction in the novel (which is exactly the case of Lecter in Red Dragon). They based the characters on the literary source and according to the change from a verbal medium to verbal-visualaural medium, they took advantage of what filming techniques can offer in terms of camera, lighting, editing, music and the actors who give the characters an automatic thickness on the screen. With its careful intertextuality, a novel-like approach to treat the characters in serialized television and a heavy reliance on what the filmic medium offers, it is literary and cinematic at the same time, in such a way as to suggest that one mode can be the continuation of the other, without falsifying or oversimplifying the uniqueness of either form. It represents a major step forward in scripted TV s artistic evolution (Zoller Seitz). Harris characters depicted in the genre of a detective thriller were newly brought to life in an extravagant, opulent, pretentiously aesthetic and terrifying Gothic spectacle. Especially the space made for exploring the characters Lecter and Graham contributed to a genre shift, or rather, put Hannibal on a whole spectrum of genres, 2 In the in-text citations of the episodes that follow, this format will be used to indicate the name of the episode, the season and the episode number and the time (minutes and seconds) in which the described event occurred. If the name of the episode appears as the part of the text, the intext citation will include only the season and episode number and the time. 39

44 featuring criminal thriller but also explicit horror, sublime terror and romance the formulaic aspects of Gothic The Villain in the Kitchen Mikkelsen s portrayal of Lecter differentiates from the casual, civil acting of Brian Cox and the famous playfully freaky depiction by Anthony Hopkins. Mikkelsen s Lecter is very calm, polite, courteous and behaving uncannily friendly, radiating composure. His utterance is mild and his accent sounds foreign (given that Mikkelsen is Danish), which is a nice touch to the whole appearance as Lecter is of Lithuanian ancestry. It also gives him an aura of a person who does not perfectly fit in the environment and differentiates from the rest, which is an important feature of the Gothic villain and a vampire as well. Mikkelsen is of a lithe figure and fair complexion, his facial features are sharp and the lighting of the scene is often done in a way to create more shadows in his face, making him either double faced (Apéritif s01e01 32:40) as a half of his face is lit and the other is dark, creating an uncanny effect, or making his face to look like a skull with empty eye sockets and sunken cheeks (Apéritif s01e01 21:29). In this lighting he looks somehow undead or even representing the death itself. Apart from creating shadows on his face to indicate a mysterious, crooked, dangerous and evil character, a symbolically apparent visual technique of blending Lecter s face with a drawing of Lucifer projected behind him was used (Antipasto s03e01 32:19-32:22), to create a clear message. Lecter also wears expensive suits and surrounds himself with luxury, demonstrating his power and social status. His looks and accent together with his neat and elegant appearance give a clear impression of an aristocratic vampire. 40

45 The audience gets a first glimpse of Lecter through a cut that is humorously dark. In the first episode, Apéritif, Graham investigates a murder of a young girl whose organs have been removed and in the autopsy room says: [The killer] is eating them (s01e01 21:26). A cut to Lecter having neatly arranged meat for dinner accompanied with Bach s Goldberg Variations, Lecter s trademark piece from both the novels and the adaptations with Anthony Hopkins, follows. The background of this close-up shot is very dark, almost black. The lighting makes Mikkelsen s eyes look hollow, like empty eye sockets and give his sharp-cheekbone face a look of a skull, as he slowly chews on the meat and breaks the fourth wall with the audience, looking directly into the camera (see Fig. 1) (s01e01 21:19 21:31). From the very beginning of the series, the audience is given the visual description of Lecter as an uncanny man who is hiding in the shadows and embodies the main source of terror in the whole show. The Hannibal-Cannibal reference is embedded in the pop-culture enough for the audience to assume that Lecter is eating human flesh in this particular scene, yet Lecter here produces more terror than horror, as the dinner he is eating resembles an ordinary meal, which is very nicely served. It is the uncanny terror audience experiences, knowing something is not right but unable to define exactly what it is, while being exposed to the fantastically arranged dishes. Lecter s food fetish represents his twisted ethics, self-proclaimed superiority of a Gothic villain but also a sense of camp aesthetics, manifesting itself as grandiose cooking scenes and opulently arranged banquets and dinners for his guests (mainly from the FBI). Whatever Lecter cooks, looks tasty, and the guests (especially Jack Crawford, for example in Amuse Bouche s01e02, 22:59 23:41) enjoy it tremendously, while the audience salivates and dwells in terror in the same time for it may all be human flesh and most importantly because 41

46 Crawford, who is supposed to be ethically and morally clean, enjoys it as well with an absolute trust to Lecter s culinary experiments (see Fig. 2). The scenes where Lecter cooks have almost a visual TV advertisement-like quality with close-ups, classical music and slow pace. They are supposed to attract the audience s senses while representing the terror of ethical border crossing. In Antipasto, the first episode of the third season, Lecter cooks the liver of Roman Fell, a man whose identity he then steals so he can work in a Capponi Library in Florence. The scene starts with a close-up shot of a red wine pouring into glass, accompanied by Reitzell s unsettling soundtrack, which is a metaphor for the actual murder of Fell. Then, the spinning LP with opera slowly blends into a shot of sauce pan with melting butter, while other ingredients are being added slowly, with pace. An extreme close up of the fried liver on a golden-rimmed plate shows residual juice with blood slowly leaving the meat as the last reminder of Fell s existence just before Lecter self-indulgently carves the first slice, bloody inside (05:12 05:46). Lecter s cannibalism, in Red Dragon manifested as a brutal act of biting a bit of a nurse s face and eating it, is in Hannibal very refined, cultured and uncannily normallooking. Most of the scenes where Lecter is hosting a dinner include a cannibal joke, such as Lecter saying to Crawford You promised to deliver your wife to my dinner table (Oeuf s01e04 15:49) or I d love to have [Crawford and his wife] for dinner (Amuse-Bouche s01e02 23:40), providing a dark, twisted comic relief. Another unsettling, yet comical fact is that Lecter pairs business cards of his victims with particular recipes (Sorbet s01e07 20:20). Lecter sees people as pigs (Apéritif s01e01 28:20) and claims that It s only cannibalism if we re equals (Antipasto s03e01 08:15), clearly stating he holds a higher status than the rest of the society and that he is not bothered by the majority s concept of 42

47 ethics, just like a Gothic villain. With the visually pleasing aesthetic approach to depict Lecter s cannibalism and Lecter himself as an excellent chef, his cannibalism seems less brutal and horror-like. However, by the uncanniness of the horrifying act wrapped up in an exquisite presentation, the terror qualities prevail, making Lecter a darker character and more cunning villain that hides in the middle of the crowd (usually at the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI, innocently consulting on his own crimes), unnoticed and free to do whatever he likes The House of Uncanny Terror and the Images of God One of the important tropes of the Gothic discourse is the house of a particular character that mirrors the character s mental and sometimes even physical state. In Red Dragon, Lecter lives in a small cell, being reduced to something others come to look at. In Hannibal, Lecter inhabits a house built in the Gothic revival architectural style in the middle of the pulsing city of Baltimore, right next to a church. The house seems oldfashioned and empty, as there is no light coming out of the windows. The camera has a slightly lower angle, portraying the house bigger than it actually is, giving it an appearance of a fort or even a castle (Oeuf s01e04 00:56), that contribute to characteristics of a vampire s residence. In the third series, when Graham goes to Lithuania to explore the place where Lecter was born, the vampire metaphor for Lecter s house becomes a comical camp. Graham enters an excessively Gothic scenery - Lecter s spacious estate in a mist with an actual medieval castle, wild forest and old cemetery (Secondo s03e03 04:33 05:31). Lecter s office in Baltimore is spacious, in dark colours of grey, black, brown and red, filled with books, paintings, and sculptures (Apéritif s01e01 22:57 23:25). Lecter s office where his patients and visitors have access to, is filled with artificial art. 43

48 There is nothing living in there, nothing natural. In a room he hosts diner parties, there is a decoration of animal skulls (Futamono s02e06 12:13), a luxurious embellishment but also an unsettling memento mori. It is the exact way how Lecter wants to present himself to the society rich, upper-class, untouchable and superior. His office represents his superego, the sense for aesthetics, the love of high culture and art. His kitchen with stainless steel preparation desks and kitchen units that look like autopsy tables and where he cooks so elegantly (Apéritif s01e01 27:51) together with his dining room where he serves dinners to his friends, represent his ego, with a bit of both the refined superego and the animalistic id, that is eating human flesh. Lecter s id, the lowest part of the self, is expectably represented by his cellar. When Beverly Katz (Hettienne Park), an FBI forensics specialist who works with Crawford, starts to suspect Lecter from the copycat crimes and breaks into Lecter s house against Graham s advice to look for evidence against Lecter and enters the cellar, she is surrounded by darkness and various dangerously-looking kitchen utensils. She finds a human kidney in the fridge and then a spacious freezer full of human bodies mounted on hooks. The cellar turns into a murder dungeon. The terror Lecter emits turns into an imminent display of a tangible horror. As she stands there, amazed, Lecter is already standing still behind her in the darkness. When she turns on the light, she notices Lecter, who swiftly, almost superhumanly fast turns off the lights and darts out to the darkness. Beverly then pays the highest price for entering Lecter s id, his true, sadistic self, which he meticulously conceals. (Takiawase s02e04 40:07 41:04). Lecter s God complex and self-proclaimed superiority is clearly manifested by the camera angles which put the audience into the position of the prey. In Sakizuke, the murder of the week narrative tells a story of a man who is sawing together people into an ornament that resembles an eye on the floor of an empty silo. Curious Lecter puts on 44

49 his plastic see-through murder suit over his expensive garments (s02e02 21:43) and climbs the silo from the outside to look from the top down at the ornament. The silo from the inside looks like a chapel with a round fresco on the ceiling with God (or rather Lecter) in the middle (Sakizuke s02e02 22:43). The low angle shot of Lecter looking at the murderer (and the audience) from heaven, with a halo created by sun is not hard to decode. And when he says to the murderer I love your work (Sakizuke s02e02 22:55), the brutal art gets the God s blessing (see Fig. 7). Lecter perceives God as both creative good and destructive evil. In a scene where Lecter manipulates with evidence and frames Chilton from murders he did not commit, the audience gets to see the sinister depiction of God s power. Chilton trips over suitcases and falls on the floor. Lecter comes in front of him, dressed in his plastic murder suit. The camera is positioned on the floor, on the same level as Chilton. The shot makes Lecter seem taller than he is, towering over his victim. Chilton slowly raises his head up in a timorous awe and looks at Lecter, exclaiming rather simply: Oh, my God (see Fig. 8) (Yakimono s02e07 29:31 29:42). Lecter then proceeds to etherize Chilton and theatrically arrange dead bodies all over his house. Thanks to the space and time that is devoted to the character of Lecter himself, all his character traits briefly described in Red Dragon did with the help of lighting, camera and carefully chosen settings develop into a monstrous demonstration of Lecter s abilities, character traits and the formulaic aspects of the Gothic genre. However, Lecter s Gothic features, such as the ability to cause liminality, impose sublime terror and illustrate vampire characteristics are manifesting themselves through the visual and aural approach to the character of Will Graham, a man in Lecter s care. 45

50 4.3 Will Graham, the Damsel in Induced Liminal Areas Will Graham, the criminal profiler with an ability of pure empathy, is the character whom Lecter in Hannibal influences the most. At the beginning of the first season, Graham is portrayed as a vulnerable, nervous and sensitive character, whose gift of solving crimes by mentally recreating the criminal s actions by adopting their point of view is abused by the authorities to solve the cases quickly and later by Lecter, but definitely not for saving lives. Lecter skilfully penetrates Graham s mind and creates an area of liminality, a fluid area for Graham to be able to switch between perspectives more fluently, to implant his own way of thinking into Graham, to infect him and elevate him to his level. Graham s skill to switch between his own mind and the criminal s mind has a clear visual and aural distinction, meaning that he can sharply differentiate between these two states. The first scene of Apéritif demonstrates it. Graham stands in the middle of the shot. When he closes his eyes and prepares himself for entering another mind, Reitzell s electronic rhythmical music changes into a screechy sound. The colour scheme changes from cold to warm colours and the camera establishes a more intimate close-up with Graham. The screeching sound cuts to a fast heartbeat and a few swings of a silver pendulum on a black background. Graham is now in the other man s mind. He walks backwards from the crime scene and then recreates the whole crime as if it was him who committed it, with absolute precision and determination. Every move he makes, every action, he comments on in a first person narrative which contributes to the fact he is in the killer s mind. But this brutal simplicity of his cold procedural narrative and his possessive quote This is my design, also gives the impression that he not only copies the murderer s actions, but is the murderer (s01e01 00:43 03:38). 46

51 Graham s ability of permeable consciousness is extremely tempting for Lecter, who, as a Gothic villain and a vampire archetype, sees an opportunity in breaking the walls between Graham s mind of a lawful authority and his own, of an epicurean, freespirited über-mensch. Throughout the series, Lecter creates the area of liminality for Graham, destabilizes his identity and tries to make him one of his kin, as he sees a great potential in him. The crime scenes Graham investigates represent the horror aspects of the Gothic but his therapy sessions with Lecter and following dreams and hallucinations that are Lecter s work, produce the sublime terror, the uncanny and the fear of the loss of control. Lecter keeps Graham close, the intimacy he is trying to establish and the uncanny feeling the audience is exposed to, knowing Lecter is dangerous, can be seen in very intrusive close-up shots (Oeuf s01e04 14:31) and the fact Graham is allowed to move freely in Lecter s office, touching his books and sitting in his chair (Coquilles s01e05 17:48, Fromage s01e08 13:13). The more is Graham s mind being destabilized, the more possessive Lecter acts towards Graham. In Trou Normand, Lecter reassuringly puts his hand on Graham s shoulder. Both of them have partly shadowed faces, which indicates Lecter s influence over Graham (see Fig. 4) (s01e09 35:45, 39:59). Lecter s unethical therapy methods of psychic driving and implanting his personality into Graham s unstable mind are effective. In Shiizakana, Graham has a therapy session, where he talks to Lecter. An extreme close-up of Graham s eyes cuts into an extreme close up of Lecter s mouth. Graham sees what Lecter tells him to. Graham loses his individuality and self-control, as Lecter lures him with his words to cross the liminal area between the authentic self and the deviant other (s02e09 09:34 09:36). Lecter the vampire does not only drain Graham emotionally throughout his therapy but there are several campy depictions of Lecter physically penetrating Graham. 47

52 The first moment when Graham is in a submissive, vulnerable position, looking like a fair maiden just about to faint is in Buffet Froid. Graham suffers from encephalitis but Lecter, who finds out by smelling him (a strengthened sense of smell as well as the other senses is typical for vampires) conceals the fact from him and the FBI. Lecter persuades Graham that his cognitive malfunctions such as loosing great amounts of time, general disorientation and the loss of memories are a mental illness, a part of himself, and he has to accept it. Weak and in fevers, Graham is leaning against Lecter s library staircase (see Fig. 3). Lecter comes closer to him, the proxemics pattern 3 is personal, with a medium-close shot Lecter is invading Graham s personal space. In 00:12:49, Graham even opens up his pose and somehow exposes his whole body to the dominant Lecter, as an invitation (s01e10 12:46 12:50). The example of an actual, physical, forceful penetration (it could be said even rape) is depicted in Kaiseki, where incarcerated Graham tries to restore his memories Lecter skilfully blocked by hypnosis, induced seizures and untreated encephalitis. In a black and white analepsis the audience sees a blurry Lecter in his plastic murder suit in the middle of the frame upside down, to establish the audience s point of view with Graham s, who is drugged and powerless. Lecter then pushes a plastic tube down Graham s throat to his stomach, to implant evidence there (particularly the ear of Abigail Hobbs) (see Fig. 5). Every thrust changes rhythmically from blurry to clear. The clear shot is using high dynamic range imaging, which creates an oscillating effect between the imagined and the hyper-real. The images are accompanied by an irregular sound of drums, high pitched wailing and Graham s choking. Graham s memories are 3 The proxemics patterns are the relationships of organisms within a given space which can be influenced by external considerations such as light, noise or climate. People use four major proxemics patterns the intimate (ranges from skin contact to eighteen inches), the personal (ranges from eighteen inches to four feet), the social (ranges from four feet to twelve feet) and the public (ranges from twelve feet to twenty five feet and more). The intimate and the personal proxemics pattern indicate physical closeness, intimacy. They can be also read as intrusive (Giannetti 81-82). 48

53 therefore somewhere in the liminal area between implanted and real (s02e01 34:12 35:14). As Jeff Casey aptly argues: In their relationship, Lecter is the dominant, phallic personality who seeks to implant his self-image into Graham s plastic and receptive psyche. Graham, thus, assumes a stereotypical feminine position in the relationship, becoming the passive material that Lecter may shape (559). Graham s psychic fluidity (Casey 558) amplified by Lecter s treatment and the concept of liminality is depicted as water throughout the show. Graham has a nightmare where an iceberg wall cracks and collapses into the ocean. It creates waves that cause floods. Graham s clock melts, he drowns in his bed and at the end dissolves into the water (see Fig. 6) (Rôti s01e11 03:00 04:07). With the collapsing iceberg, Graham s mental boundary also collapses and creates the liminal area he dwells in since, unable to clearly define his own self, which is his greatest concern - I fear not knowing who I am (Rôti s01e11 14:55). Lecter, gradually poisoning Graham with his twisted ethics and abnormal values, is depicted in Graham s subconscious images as a black feathered stag (as the first copycat murder Lecter committed to provoke Graham s imagination was mounting a girl on a pair of antlers), who either follows Graham or leads him somewhere. In Savoreux, Graham s hallucinations of crimes Lecter committed but framed Graham for, materialize as stone sculptures, as trophies in Lecter s office. The whole scene has a very low-key lighting and Reitzell s ambient music completes the mood with unpleasing sounds. Lecter is calmly trying to convince Graham that these murders were his. Graham sees the stag transformed into a monstrous stag-man creature that has a face of Lecter, standing behind one of the statues, curiously observing Graham who is denying Lecter s accusations (s01e13 27:12 28:47). Lecter s identification with the stag and later the monster is fully established when Graham (and the audience), lying on 49

54 the ground, sees Lecter and Crawford through a low angle in a low-key setting and in an instant the monster and Crawford in the same setting within a shaking frame, given Graham s point of view (see Fig. 9) (Savoreux s01e13 36:21). Graham finally realizes that the mild-mannered, polite Lecter is the true source of evil that has him in his power. The metaphor of Lecter infecting and violently intruding Graham s mind and gradually changing him reaches its peak in Mukozuke. Graham sits alone in his damp, dark prison cell in the dungeons of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, suddenly starts to panic and feels antlers growing from his back. As the antlers grow larger, he falls on all four and bends his back, looking frightened but powerful. This hallucination then cuts to normal when Alana Bloom comes and interrupts his stream of thoughts (s02e05 30:30 30:58). Towards the end of the second season and with the beginning of the third, Lecter and Graham s equality, a complete fluidity of the two minds acting like one is described through close proxemics patterns, equal camera angles and lighting of the two men. Lecter blends into Graham and Graham blends into Lecter (Ko No Mono s02e11 27:10 27:14, 27:20 27:22). Lecter s scene of visually TV advert-like cooking accompanied by classical music harmonically merges with Graham s cooking shot in the same way, except Graham is about to feed his dogs (Ko No Mono s02e11 22:49 23:33). Graham is able to differentiate between his mind and a mind of an unknown criminal but he is not able to separate his mind from Lecter s. While reconstructing Lecter s crime scene in the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, there is no pendulum to remind him (and the audience) of entering another mind (Primavera s03e02 25:26 26:45). When Graham comes to visit Lecter, finally incarcerated and ask him for advice concerning Francis Dolarhyde, the thin glass wall that divides Lecter and Graham is reflecting the image of each of them on the other side Lecter standing next to Graham 50

55 and vice versa (And the Woman Clothed with the Sun... s03e09 00:54 01:00). Lecter also mirrors Graham s movement, to create a perfect image of the double to think the same way and to move the same way, to be one body, one mind (see Fig. 10) (And the Woman Clothed with the Sun... s02e09 03:20 03:25,...And the Beast from the Sea s03e11 39:47 39:55). Graham s fragile and easily abusive ability of pure empathy, which allows him to fully adopt other man s perspective is an irresistible lure to Lecter s agency of infecting, transforming and elevating suitable individuals on his level. Lecter uses various methods of mental and physical penetration to destabilize Graham s mental state and to create for him a liminal area between his own self and Lecter s self that can be easily crossed. Graham s fear of losing control over his behaviour and the inability to tell what is real and what is implanted comes true under the meticulous care of uncanny Lecter. The terror of the possibility of not being one s true self changes into a horror of being someone other. Lecter, the embodiment of evil, metaphorically grows inside unaware Graham, gradually erasing his perception of a true self. 51

56 Conclusion When studying filmic adaptations of novels, or rather, a character in this case, it must be acknowledged that both the source text and the filmic adaptation work within different signifying systems and therefore the final result must be inevitably different than the source it is based on. The purpose of the adaptation is to present a particular interpretation of the source text, which in itself contains an infinite number of readings. Adaptations represent texts adapted to a particular environment, culture and the tastes of the audience. By these mutations adaptations help the source text survive. The filmic adaptation that works within the verbal, aural and visual signifying system has to use the potential of its medium to the fullest in order to become an autonomous piece of art, derived from the source text but not a being derivative itself. Hannibal, the serialized NBC adaptation of Thomas Harris character of Hannibal Lecter which was first introduced in the novel Red Dragon, is an example of how to choose potent features from the source text and intensify them with the use of the right filming techniques. Lecter, who works only as a secondary character in Red Dragon, a crime thriller novel, manifests the formulaic features of the Gothic. In Hannibal, Lecter is the centre of the whole TV adaptation which gives the creators enough time and space to slowly develop his characteristics, therefore the treatment of the TV series is novel-like. The narrative of the adaptation does not follow the novel rigidly, it takes place before the main plot of Red Dragon and also borrows characters and plotlines from the rest of the tetralogy to create a compact, detailed description of Lecter and his Gothic features. The formulaic aspects of Gothic described in the first chapter that were applied to the character of Lecter in Red Dragon throughout the second chapter state that Lecter, although his space in Red Dragon is very limited, embodies the archetype of the 52

57 Gothic Other, pre-byronic Gothic villain and also a vampire. He is also able to impose Gothic features such as sublime terror, liminality and the uncanny on other characters (especially Will Graham). These Gothic characteristics of Lecter were the foundation stone for the NBC adaptation developed by Bryan Fuller and they are clearly manifesting themselves not only in the narrative but most importantly in the filming techniques used to set up a particular mood. The fourth chapter which offers a film analysis focusing mainly on the character of Lecter and Graham and the settings they are in, pinpoints the use of sound, music, low-key lighting, dark colour palettes, camera angles and the use of shadows to create terror, horror, liminality and the uncanny that Lecter, meeting the requirements for the Gothic villain and a modern vampire, produces. Hannibal, the serialized adaptation based on the characters from Red Dragon, devotes enough space and time to the Gothic aspects of the character of Hannibal Lecter to cause a genre shift between the source text and the adapted product. The creators of Hannibal chose to base their adaptation on the Gothic features Lecter in Red Dragon possesses and imposes on other characters and thanks to the awareness of the medium potential, they were able to use the aural and visual signifying systems to their advantage, creating an autonomous piece of art, working mainly on the basis of the Gothic genre. 53

58 Bibliography Primary Sources...And the Beast from the Sea. [season 3, episode 11] Hannibal: The Complete Season Three. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Michael Rymer. Lionsgate, DVD. Amuse Bouche. [season 1, episode 2] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Michael Rymer. Lionsgate, DVD. Antipasto. [season 3, episode 1] Hannibal: The Complete Season Three. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Vincenzo Natali. Lionsgate, DVD. And the Woman Clothed with the Sun... [season 3, episode 9] Hannibal: The Complete Season Three. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. John Dahl. Lionsgate, DVD. Apéritif. [season 1, episode 1] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. David Slade. Lionsgate, DVD. Buffet Froid. [season 1, episode 10] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. John Dahl. Lionsgate, DVD. Coquilles. [season 1, episode 5] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Guillermo Navarro. Lionsgate, DVD. Fromage. [season 1, episode 8] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Tim Hunter. Lionsgate, DVD. Futamono. [season 2, episode 6] Hannibal: The Complete Season Two. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Tim Hunter. Lionsgate, DVD. Harris, Thomas. Red Dragon. London: Arrow Books, Print. Kaiseki. [season 2, episode 1] Hannibal: The Complete Season Two. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Tim Hunter. Lionsgate, DVD. 54

59 Ko No Mono. [season 2, episode 11] Hannibal: The Complete Season Two. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. David Slade. Lionsgate, DVD Mukozuke. [season 2, episode 5] Hannibal: The Complete Season Two. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Michael Rymer. Lionsgate, DVD. Oeuf. [season 1, episode 4] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Peter Medak. Lionsgate, DVD. Primavera. [season 3, episode 2] Hannibal: The Complete Season Three. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Vincenzo Natali. Lionsgate, DVD. Rôti. [season 1, episode 11] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Guillermo Navarro. Lionsgate, DVD. Sakizuke. [season 2, episode 2] Hannibal: The Complete Season Two. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Tim Hunter. Lionsgate, DVD. Savoreux. [season 1, episode 13] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. David Slade. Lionsgate, DVD. Secondo. [season 3, episode 3] Hannibal: The Complete Season Three. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Vincenzo Natali. Lionsgate, DVD. Shiizakana. [season 2, episode 9] Hannibal: The Complete Season Two. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Michael Rymer. Lionsgate, DVD. Sorbet. [season 1, episode 7] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. James Foley. Lionsgate, DVD. Takiawase. [season 2, episode 4] Hannibal: The Complete Season Two. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. David Semel. Lionsgate, DVD. The Wrath of the Lamb. [season 3, episode 13] Hannibal: The Complete Season Three. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Michael Rymer. Lionsgate, DVD. 55

60 Trou Normand. [season 1, episode 9] Hannibal: The Complete Season One. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Guillermo Navarro. Lionsgate, DVD. Yakimono. [season 2, episode 7] Hannibal: The Complete Season Two. Creator Bryan Fuller. Dir. Michael Rymer. Lionsgate, DVD. Secondary Sources Beresford, Matthew. From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth. London: Reaktion Books, PDF. Bryan Fuller Interview for Hannibal. Time Out.com. Time Out, Web. 30 Oct Casey, Jeff. Queer Cannibals and Deviant Detectives: Subversion and Homosocial Desire in NBC's Hannibal. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 32.6 (2015): Taylor Francis Online. Web. 2 Nov Elliott, Kamilla. Personal interview. 22 Oct Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud: An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works. Ed. James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. Vol. XVII ( ). London: The Hogarth Press, PDF. Fuller, Stephen M. Deposing an American Cultural Totem: Clarice Starling and Postmodern Heroism in Thomas Harris s Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. Journal of Popular Culture 38.5 (2005): ProQuest. Web. 8 Oct Gamer, Michael. Gothic fictions and Romantic writing in Britain. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. New York: CUP, Print. 56

61 Giannetti, Louis. Understanding Movies. 13 th ed. n.c.: Pearson, PDF. Gothic Sublime. n.p. n.d. u.arizona.edu. Web. 8 Oct < Hallab, Mary Y. Vampire God: The Allure of the Undead in Western Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, PDF. Hogle, Jerrold E. Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. New York: CUP, Print. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routlege, Print. Ionita, Maria. Long-Form Televisual Narrative and Operatic Structure in Bryan Fuller's Hannibal. Cineaction 94 (2014): EBSCOhost. Web. 5 July Jiao, Alex. The Vampiric Mesmerism of Hannibal Lecter. academia.edu. n.d. Web. 9 Oct < Lecter> Kavka, Misha. The Gothic on screen. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. New York: CUP, Print. Kungl, Carla T, ed. Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. Oxford: Inter- Disciplinary Press, PDF. Lloyd-Smith, Allan. American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc, Print. McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. New York: OUP, Print. 57

62 Messent, Peter. American Gothic: Liminality in Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter Novels. Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 23.4 (2000): Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 July Mulvey-Roberts, Marie, ed. The Handbook to Gothic Literature. New York: New York University Press, Print. Murphy Kathleen. Communion. Film Comment 27.1 (1991): ProQuest. Web. 8 Oct Oleson, J.C. Contemporary Demonology: The Criminological Theories of Hannibal Lecter, Part Two. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 13.1 (2006): albany.edu. Web 8 Oct King of Killers: The Criminological Theories of Hannibal Lecter, Part One. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 12.3 (2005): albany.edu. Web. 8 Oct Peters, Mark. Better Than Silence. Slate.com. The Slate Group LLC, Web 30 Oct Punter, David, ed. A New Companion to the Gothic. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, PDF. Stam, Robert and Alessandra Raengo, eds. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Print. Tallerico, Brian. Emotional Logic: Bryan Fuller Redefines The Crime Drama With Hannibal. Rogerebert.com. Ebert Digital LLC, Web 31 Oct Thomson, Douglas H. A Glossary of Literary Gothic Terms. ENGL403: The Gothic Novel. saylor.org. Web. 8 Oct

63 < Glossary-of-Literary-Gothic-Terms.pdf> Thorslev Jr., Peter L. The Byronic Hero: Types and Prototypes. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Print. Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, PDF. Zoller Seitz, Matt. Hannibal Redefined How We Tell Stories on Television. Vulture.com. New York Media LLC, Web 31 Oct

64 Summary The aim of this thesis is to analyse the use of Gothic features of the character of Hannibal Lecter from the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris in Hannibal, a serialized TV adaptation based on the characters from Red Dragon. Hannibal Lecter, a villain cannibal pop-culture icon was first introduced in the novel Red Dragon as a secondary character. Although Red Dragon fulfils the requirements to be classified as a detective crime thriller novel, the character of Lecter in this novel demonstrates formulaic aspects of the Gothic genre. These Gothic features of Lecter were used as a foundation stone for Hannibal, a serialized TV adaptation developed by Bryan Fuller for the NBC television network in This adaptation is only loosely based on the narrative of Red Dragon and also using plotlines and characters from Harris novels Hannibal and Hannibal Rising. Lecter, who is the centre of this adaptation possesses the Gothic characteristics of a Gothic villain and a vampire and is able to impose the Gothic concepts of liminality, uncanny, terror and sublime on other characters, and therefore creates a heavily Gothic setting of the whole show. These Gothic features are not manifesting themselves only textually in the TV series, but most importantly through the filmic style (camera, lighting, editing, sound, music, the use of dark colour palettes). The conclusion of this thesis is that thanks to the use of Lecter s Gothic features as the basis of the adaptation and the use of heavy aural-visual filmic approach that is able to amplify the Gothic aspects, the adaptation did undergo a genre shift from a crime thriller to a Gothic adaptation and was able to create an autonomous piece of art. 60

65 Resumé Cílem této bakalářské diplomové práce je analýza gotických aspektů postavy Hannibala Lectera z románu Červený drak autora Thomase Harrise, které byly použity jako základ seriálu Hannibal, adaptace založené na postavách z Červeného draka. Hannibal Lecter, vrah, kanibal a pop-kulturní ikona se poprvé objevil jako vedlejší postava v románu Červený drak. Ačkoliv tento román naplňuje požadavky žánrového zařazení mezi detektivní krimi román až thriller, postava Lectera zde demonstruje konvenční aspekty žánru gotiky. Tyto Lecterovy aspekty byly použity jako základní kámen pro seriálovou adaptaci Hannibal, kterou pro televizi NBC vytvořil Bryan Fuller v roce Tato adaptace je pouze volně založená na dějové linii Červeného draka, jelikož používá dějové linie a postavy i z Harrisových románů Hannibal a Hannibal - Zrození. Lecter, kolem kterého je soustředěna celá adaptace, vykazuje charakteristiky záporné postavy typické pro gotický žánr, jakožto i charakteristiky upíra. Je také schopen způsobovat teror, liminalitu a freudovský koncept das Unheimliche, jež s gotickým žánrem velice úzce souvisí. Tyto Gotické aspekty, které Lecter produkuje, se v adaptaci neprokazují pouze v textové rovině scénáře, ale hlavně v použitém filmovém stylu a technikách (tzn. užití kamery, světla, střihu, zvuku, hudby a tmavých barevných palet), které dokreslují gotickou atmosféru. Závěrem této práce je, že díky užití Lecterových gotických aspektů, které byly určeny jako základ zmiňované seriálové adaptace a také velké využití toho, co vizuálně nabízí filmové médium k zesílení těchto gotických charakteristik, tato adaptace prodělala změnu žánru z krimi thrilleru na gotiku a vytvořila tak samostatně fungující dílo. 61

66 Appendix Fig. 1 Lecter lit for the undead skull effect (Apéritif 00:21:34). Fig. 2 Crawford appreciates Lecter s cooking skills in a naïve belief he has been served a rabbit (Oeuf 00:16:08). 62

67 Fig. 3 Graham (right) in a vulnerable position (Buffet Froid 00:12:50). Fig. 4 The use of shadows for an uncanny effect (Trou Normand 00:35:48). 63

68 Fig. 5 Lecter feeding unconscious Graham Abigail Hobbs ear through a plastic tube (Kaiseki 00:35:14). Fig. 6 Graham dissolving into water, the symbol of his mental fluidity (Rôti 00:04:05). 64

69 Fig. 7 Lecter with a halo looking down the silo resembling a fresco of God on a chapel s ceiling (Sakizuki 00:22:34). Fig. 8 Lecter in his plastic murder suit towering in front of powerless Chilton (Yakimono 00:29:40). 65

70 Fig. 9 Graham sees Lecter as a stag-monster (Savoreux 00:36:21). Fig. 10 Lecter s reflection stands behind Graham like a doppelgänger (And the Woman Clothed with the Sun... 00:00:54). 66

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