making sense of Hannibal
Oct. 31st, 2015 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI'm going back in to rewatch and finish Bryan Fuller's Hannibal. I watched through the second season previously, but stopped tracking around the fourth episode - I couldn't figure out where the story was going, and thus couldn't identify hopes or fears to propel me through the matter of the story. I followed recaps and discussion of the third season, because I wanted to know what kind of a thing Hannibal was going to turn out to be. And now we know.
I feel like I approach narratives really differently based on where I think they're going. It has to do with how much I'm willing to let myself hope, and also with what the narrative is positing as the highest good. For example, one of the reasons why White Collar lost me was that it couldn't decide if it was Neal needed leashed or Peter needed freed, what kind of an ending would count as a "good one," and things got stretched tight across the polarity. So: there isn't going to be a happy ending in Hannibal; this is a study of a downfall. Will is to be empathized with, but not hoped for.
Hannibal is a story where nothing is going to get better. Characters Cassandra themselves, voicing fears that then come horribly to pass. Innocence consistently rests on a base of brainwashing, if it exists at all.
Abigail Hobbs was always lost; she was never going to survive. What is poignant is that she wants to, others want her to, and she can't. Doing the job that he's good at is going to cost Will Graham everything, including his soul.
I think that all the reality-bending in the show is about the surreal way that trauma prevents repair. You can see yourself, see what you are, what you're doing, but you can't do anything about it. Time passes in weird blurs and oversharp moments as you struggle not to become the thing that you're becoming. You scream that you won't become the monster but your face changed a long time ago.
Hannibal is a nasty spider, but he latches onto and interferes with people who are already breaking or infected; he doesn't start with whole ones, he encourages the chaos and entropy around extant fracturings. Will sustains damage from his contact with Hannibal, but he was not alright from the very beginning. Abigail was not alright from the very beginning.
Hannibal does the predator thing where Will's life situation is actually not okay, but still within the realm of salvageability with good communication and some therapy - and Hannibal repeatedly draws Will's attention to the problems while steering him away from the solutions. By raising questions about Will's situation with the FBI, Hannibal makes it effectively impossible for Will to stand up for himself with the FBI, to communicate with his coworkers about his impending burnout, to look level-headedly at the situation at all. Because Will needs to prove Hannibal wrong and wants to accept that Hannibal is right, and at that point Will is displaced as the protagonist of his own life.
Jack and Alana in S1 are like people who don't know what to say when a friend shows signs of being abused. Jack reminds me of a thing my father does with me, that he thinks is bracing: he'll brusquely state the naked truth of whatever the bad thing is, all "what are we going to do about it?" and then wait for your answer. And sometimes all you can think of to say is "yes that's very bad, what do you suggest I do about it, change the nature of the world?"
I wish the first episodes hadn't cued the show up as a procedural; although maybe the genre confusion is meant to be part of the effect?
I feel like I approach narratives really differently based on where I think they're going. It has to do with how much I'm willing to let myself hope, and also with what the narrative is positing as the highest good. For example, one of the reasons why White Collar lost me was that it couldn't decide if it was Neal needed leashed or Peter needed freed, what kind of an ending would count as a "good one," and things got stretched tight across the polarity. So: there isn't going to be a happy ending in Hannibal; this is a study of a downfall. Will is to be empathized with, but not hoped for.
Hannibal is a story where nothing is going to get better. Characters Cassandra themselves, voicing fears that then come horribly to pass. Innocence consistently rests on a base of brainwashing, if it exists at all.
Abigail Hobbs was always lost; she was never going to survive. What is poignant is that she wants to, others want her to, and she can't. Doing the job that he's good at is going to cost Will Graham everything, including his soul.
I think that all the reality-bending in the show is about the surreal way that trauma prevents repair. You can see yourself, see what you are, what you're doing, but you can't do anything about it. Time passes in weird blurs and oversharp moments as you struggle not to become the thing that you're becoming. You scream that you won't become the monster but your face changed a long time ago.
Hannibal is a nasty spider, but he latches onto and interferes with people who are already breaking or infected; he doesn't start with whole ones, he encourages the chaos and entropy around extant fracturings. Will sustains damage from his contact with Hannibal, but he was not alright from the very beginning. Abigail was not alright from the very beginning.
Hannibal does the predator thing where Will's life situation is actually not okay, but still within the realm of salvageability with good communication and some therapy - and Hannibal repeatedly draws Will's attention to the problems while steering him away from the solutions. By raising questions about Will's situation with the FBI, Hannibal makes it effectively impossible for Will to stand up for himself with the FBI, to communicate with his coworkers about his impending burnout, to look level-headedly at the situation at all. Because Will needs to prove Hannibal wrong and wants to accept that Hannibal is right, and at that point Will is displaced as the protagonist of his own life.
Jack and Alana in S1 are like people who don't know what to say when a friend shows signs of being abused. Jack reminds me of a thing my father does with me, that he thinks is bracing: he'll brusquely state the naked truth of whatever the bad thing is, all "what are we going to do about it?" and then wait for your answer. And sometimes all you can think of to say is "yes that's very bad, what do you suggest I do about it, change the nature of the world?"
I wish the first episodes hadn't cued the show up as a procedural; although maybe the genre confusion is meant to be part of the effect?
no subject
Date: 2015-11-01 08:33 am (UTC)I think reading the show as a downfall definitely works, but it's also very possible to read the show as a (very dark) transformation, of Will's sea change into something rich and strange.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-01 04:18 pm (UTC)The second has to do with Will staying with his abuser, and is personal for me. I can't be doing with the storyline that you can gain something from staying with your abuser. If Will had killed Hannibal at the end, it would be different for me. But that's not where the show is going. It is what I wanted to happened when I first started watching; it's why I had to leave off for a while and get an ending, because I was getting caught up in an excitement about Will's becoming that was not good for me/the clarity of my thinking.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-01 06:28 pm (UTC)But I really, really hate the ending Clarice got, and while Will's ending in the show wasn't quite as explicitly bad, it still sets it up that he is alive and with Hannibal and they're about to eat someone, and that is just so not the ending I wanted that I'm really, really glad I dropped the show when I did.
It's not that I don't like dark stuff or bad endings, but it really bothers me that the whole first season was about people being scared/put off by Will and eventually even thinking he was a killer, and Will saying "I'm not a killer, I'm not evil" and then for it to end with "oops, yeah, you guys were right, I'm totes a killer cannibal now" is just...ugh. DNW.