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Jul. 7th, 2015 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionWe rewatched season 1 of Hannibal, which held up better than we'd have thought (Seinfeld not so much, eh?).
Hannibal's reactions to the other serial killers were very amusing - he demonstrates an entirely straightforward competitiveness ("How many people have you killed?" "More than your father ever did.") and otherwise just finds them irritating. His lack of interest in Tobias, the music shop owner, was most vividly highlighted. Tobias was by far the most like him of all the killers, but he has no interest in meeting him beyond self-preservation, once it's clear Tobias is onto him. The killing of Franklyn is about neutralizing one more threat, since any reaction Tobias is likely to have will make Franklyn aware Hannibal is more than a psychiatrist, but even more than that it's an assertion of dominance. He all but brags about drinking Tobias' milkshake when saying "I saved you the trouble."
It's Will he gives a damn about because Will has the capacity to understand him but doesn't seem to agree with his view of the world. He is thus the most profound threat and the greatest opportunity for vindication Hannibal could encounter. His fucking with Will is ultimately a form of argument, so as to get Will to contemplate the act of killing. Since he's unlikely to kill again Hannibal has to make him think he has, but all that's just to actualize the thought problem. The others are unreal (to you), so why not kill them when it pleases you?
Hannibal wants to think he's above empathy rather than below it, but he has a hilarious mirror version of the problem ethicists do with psychopaths, where it seems impossible to refute them on their own terms. But Hannibal needs Will refuted - he wants his own way of seeing to be the rational one, and not just one of two or more that are viable. (One looks in vain for hat tips to Dancy's father - perhaps there was something in season 2?). He doesn't want to be either forever alone or merely one of the brotherhood of psychos. As a psychiatrist he's aware that the latter all got fucked up early on, hence are superior by accident if at all, and he refuses that for his own autobiography (Will seems to be investigating the plausibility of that in season 3).
When push comes to shove he's about domination, but he has his unvoiced doubts. These dovetail neatly with his emotional attachments to Will and Abigail (for which does he cry, after her disappearance? Is he contemplating killing her but wants a way out? Or has he already decided to do what we find out about much later, and is instead crying for his failure to turn Will - which he at least on a conscious level considers altruistic, since if Will could be convinced then he too will become ubermanly?).
Will is gradually, if initially inadvertently, teaching Hannibal to empathize, by making him feel his loneliness. The God stuff in season 2 is mostly Hannibal's attempt to solve the problem Will presents, since there's a (fictional) precedent for dominant uniqueness finding itself nonetheless incomplete. How Will might generalize Hannibal's fixation for him onto other people seems like the tougher nut to crack, but maybe psychoanalysis will pay off.
Hannibal's reactions to the other serial killers were very amusing - he demonstrates an entirely straightforward competitiveness ("How many people have you killed?" "More than your father ever did.") and otherwise just finds them irritating. His lack of interest in Tobias, the music shop owner, was most vividly highlighted. Tobias was by far the most like him of all the killers, but he has no interest in meeting him beyond self-preservation, once it's clear Tobias is onto him. The killing of Franklyn is about neutralizing one more threat, since any reaction Tobias is likely to have will make Franklyn aware Hannibal is more than a psychiatrist, but even more than that it's an assertion of dominance. He all but brags about drinking Tobias' milkshake when saying "I saved you the trouble."
It's Will he gives a damn about because Will has the capacity to understand him but doesn't seem to agree with his view of the world. He is thus the most profound threat and the greatest opportunity for vindication Hannibal could encounter. His fucking with Will is ultimately a form of argument, so as to get Will to contemplate the act of killing. Since he's unlikely to kill again Hannibal has to make him think he has, but all that's just to actualize the thought problem. The others are unreal (to you), so why not kill them when it pleases you?
Hannibal wants to think he's above empathy rather than below it, but he has a hilarious mirror version of the problem ethicists do with psychopaths, where it seems impossible to refute them on their own terms. But Hannibal needs Will refuted - he wants his own way of seeing to be the rational one, and not just one of two or more that are viable. (One looks in vain for hat tips to Dancy's father - perhaps there was something in season 2?). He doesn't want to be either forever alone or merely one of the brotherhood of psychos. As a psychiatrist he's aware that the latter all got fucked up early on, hence are superior by accident if at all, and he refuses that for his own autobiography (Will seems to be investigating the plausibility of that in season 3).
When push comes to shove he's about domination, but he has his unvoiced doubts. These dovetail neatly with his emotional attachments to Will and Abigail (for which does he cry, after her disappearance? Is he contemplating killing her but wants a way out? Or has he already decided to do what we find out about much later, and is instead crying for his failure to turn Will - which he at least on a conscious level considers altruistic, since if Will could be convinced then he too will become ubermanly?).
Will is gradually, if initially inadvertently, teaching Hannibal to empathize, by making him feel his loneliness. The God stuff in season 2 is mostly Hannibal's attempt to solve the problem Will presents, since there's a (fictional) precedent for dominant uniqueness finding itself nonetheless incomplete. How Will might generalize Hannibal's fixation for him onto other people seems like the tougher nut to crack, but maybe psychoanalysis will pay off.
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Date: 2015-07-07 06:22 pm (UTC)Wasn't Seinfeld always destined to evaporate like that? I still have my memories of my father laughing at that show, but, wow is it ever everything that came before 9/11 or what?
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