What happens in “Hannibal”?

The most important thing about STORY I have already written in my last post: that, for me, story isn’t important. So I expect this to become a very short post. But of course this is wishful thinking because I know that I am wrong about it. And I even think I actually learned something from reading Dover Wilson who thought it worthwhile to figure out what HAPPENS in “Hamlet” instead of leaning on prejudices and assumptions. But the essential part of reading where I have always been really bad at is “story”. Somehow I always get “trapped” inside the characters and lose sight of what is happening. Which can become kind of ridiculous. For example, I might be the only person in the world who can read whodunnits twice or even three times because I have forgotten who did it. In a way, I have always been bored by “classic” whodunnits like “Sherlock Holmes” or “Agatha Cristies”. But, for a time, I was an avid reader of Elizabeth George, Minette Walters, and other writers who take the structure of the whodunnit as a pretence for telling gripping stories about people and their relationships. And I got lost in these stories, completely forgetting to pay attention to who did it. And I remember that my reading of “American Beauty” was so exclusively aesthetical and character-based that I didn’t just not get it who killed Lester Burnham but didn’t even ASK myself that question! And, like in “Hamlet”, I had to admit that it actually MATTERS what happens because, failing this, I haven’t really understood the text. It actually matters much more than in a whodunnit because these stories are in fact ALIKE whereas “Hamlet” and “American Beauty” are singular texts where the information about what happens isn’t trivial. And, of course, “Hannibal” is the same. I might have considered it a minor inconvenience that, watching season three, episode 1-7 for the first time I didn’t understand ANYTHING, but of course this is kind of ridiculous. And, of course, when I made the decision to watch the series from the beginning I began to modify this single-minded perspective.

Nonetheless, it was the LAST thing I did. “Story” was the last thing I focused on, figuring out what actually happens. And the strange thing is: I think this is what made my reading so singularly enjoyable and successful in the end. The reason for this is exactly that, in “Hannibal”, what actually happens isn’t trivial but really important. I came to think that the “vortex” in “Hannibal” is not constructed through trying to tell a story but through creating these strong “force fields” which “we” are drawn into and which, by this, begin to interact. And, what I appreciate more than anything, the most important of these force fields are created by the actors. The best and most important example of this being of course Hannibal himself. It is mostly Mads Mikkelsen’s incredibly precise and resourceful acting which creates this very large force field that, like a giant magnet, achieves to orientate the other force fields to create the structure he wants. And this is what happens in “Hannibal”, or rather the first half of it. And I think it is already obvious that, to figure out what is happening EXACTLY, I needed, and could apply, a lot of input from all the other “areas” of the text. That is, from what I analyzed FIRST.

Still, this happens “naturally”, I think, when we “play along”. What I kind of struggled with watching season one and two for the second time, and then watching season three again, was the second part which basically is about Will Graham. I even kind of grasped the genius construction of this character in the beginning when I began to call him “everyman”. This was partly removing him from me because, unlike with the “bad” characters, I really, really, REALLY didn’t want to get involved with him. And it was partly underestimating him which I think “we” do, especially in the beginning, but which is part of the learning curve we have to perform. In the end I came to love it how he slowly goes from “blurry” to lethal, without being able ONCE to “nail” him and put him into one of the many categories that might apply … because this is how he “escapes” Hannibal. Being this “blurry”, permanently “unfinished” person with this kind of energy none of the other characters can identify completely – not even Hannibal! – he becomes the only one able to create a force field which can interfere with Hannibal’s. And he becomes the love of Hannibal’s life because of this: that he is unable to PREDICT him. It is of course one of these trivialities about love that we want to be SURPRISED by the person we love, but I think it is very rarely true.

So, through this description, I have entered still another category which is a big creator of force fields, and which I’d call CONCEPTS or SEMANTICS. And it is of course another level of the text which I was constantly about to figure out. In this case usually characters dropping one of these “big” concepts, and I taking up the ball and trying to figure out what it might mean. Which is obviously a game I love to play, but never quite like this. I never became aware of it as something where I, as a reader, call the shots. I already mentioned that I didn’t BELIEVE Hannibal. And I had in fact a lot more work and trouble to figure out what I chose to “believe” and what I chose to discard as bullshit than usual, but I came to like this very much. And, in the end, it might have become the second most important reason why I loved “Hannibal”. I had always thought that I preferred texts which somehow get rid of the bullshit, kind of cleanse their semantic world of it and emerge as a world of pure truth … Bullshit! I thought “Shakespeare” was such a world, or carelessly assumed it was. But there is a lot of bullshit in “Shakespeare” as well. I assume it is kind of like we need the bad to actually see the good, or the ridiculous as a background for what we take seriously. The bullshit is imminent, it is part of our world, especially every fictional world. What makes them different in my eyes, better or worse, is kind of how they deal with the bullshit. And this is that “the text” isn’t “trying” to infect us with it but kind of makes us responsible for identifying it and for deciding what we want to do with it. And, in this respect, “Hannibal” is just incredible. I actually WATCHED MYSELF moving about, picking up balls and following leads, dodging bullshit … and, actually, getting smarter! And I liked getting smarter, I love GETTING BETTER at what I am already good at!

And I am still not talking about story. In this respect I was right about myself: story, in the classical sense, is boring. It is the boring part when we already HAVE the story. And, in fact, it is so in maybe eighty percent of the “mainstream” stuff I watch: you just need to guess once or twice, and in each case of guessing there are only these two possibilities – so, what kind of an occupation is this? It is even more boring than watching football. In “Hannibal”, once I had become involved with it, I never stopped figuring out what was REALLY happening, not even when I had already seen it (- as I watched everything at least three times, probably more often). It appears that story, as a “living” part of reading, has in fact these two extreme poles: as a preconceived structure of events, and as something we DO, trying to make sense of unrelated events and observations in the same way we do in real life. In real life there are no “stories” but we rarely become aware of this because we aren’t even used to live without them. What we do with unrelated, shocking, or unusual events is to put them into the structure of prejudices or patterns of events we are used to. Which quite often means to “clothe” them in bullshit. And somehow playing with this occupation in a fictional context can achieve what we usually are unable to do in real life: make us aware of what we are actually doing and identify the bullshit.

This might have something to do with the reality of “force fields” within texts, which is something that ISN’T THERE in real life. There actually ARE people revealed and exposed by the actors where they are concealed and removed from us in real life, and there are these concepts which are thrown into our way for us to use. I have already identified some of them in “Hannibal”, namely LOVE and ART, and probably a few more, but there is one which I mentioned in passing and then threw into one of these “drawers” to examine it later – which, in the case of “Hannibal”, is even more strange than doing it with “story”. I meant: HORROR. But because of what I have just written I came to understand how this worked. In fact, “horror” was always there, as a concept, IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD. I always considered it but was not overwhelmed or even greatly affected by it, and this is because “they” actually leave you a choice. This might not be true for everybody, but I can rarely be the only person who felt like this about it. In the same way the “bullshit” didn’t turn my reading into bullshit, the horror didn’t turn my reading into something I didn’t enjoy anymore, or didn’t really want. Which means that MY FOCUS didn’t HAVE to be where the bullshit was, or where the horror was. Nonetheless it became extremely important as something that HELPED ME FOCUS. I think this will become clearer when I come to my conclusions about what “Hannibal” actually was about for me. I came to these conclusions reviewing my reading, and that was when I opened that drawer and examined “horror”, and came to realize how important it has been. So, for now, I’ll try a simile: I don’t listen to music that is just horrible noise that jars my nerves, I only listen to something with a tune or identifiable pattern I like. But the kind of music which only consists of a tune is not great music either. It is what stays in my head, with what I am able to sing along. But only the “background” of accompanying instruments really turns a tune into music, something I actually LISTEN to. And this was kind of like horror worked. It very rarely compelled me to focus on the things “highlighted” by horror, it rather changed the “tune” of the whole text so that I ACTUALLY LISTENED to a lot of what I probably thought I already knew. And discovered that I didn’t … It wasn’t important as something I focused on, it just changed force fields, and the pattern of evaluation I applied to the text, completely. It changed EVERYTHING. And it is strange: I knew from the beginning that it would be important, I just never knew in which way until I had finished reading.

Now I think I am finally done with examining the preliminaries: laying down in what way exactly STORY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART of a text. It is when figuring out what actually happens means trying to make sense of this world the reading got us into. Even if this world might still basically be a load of bullshit. Watching the second half of season three for the last time, I had this revelation: It is STILL bullshit, and there is STILL MORE beauty and truth than there was when I watched it the last time. Which just means there must be a REASON that I never stopped trying to make sense of it. If, for whatever reason, we have come to love a text, that is what we do. And, as I said, does “average” life, with its pointless cruelty and vague sadness of endless repetition, really make that much more SENSE …? It is WE who are trying to make sense of it, that’s what we are bound for. And there is actually a lot about this in “Hannibal”. It is obviously not “just” about killing, cannibalism, and cruelty. Hannibal himself is certainly extremely successful at making sense of what is “in” him. He just has an unusually “literal” way of expressing it. I think he knows how successful he is, but this is obviously not enough …

Of course, like most great stories, “Hannibal” is about LOVE as well. But here it is particularly disagreeable to even become aware of this universal truth. I think I deliberately blocked it for some time in order to understand it better when the whole thing would make more sense. And, as in other cases, this was probably a good idea. And I think I begin to understand now because, writing about this, I have begun to see a PATTERN …

I detected this pattern writing about humour in my last post. Humour and irony stripped of everything about it that we enjoy, or even recognize as humour. When I finally became involved with Will Graham I was of course mainly interested in his relationship with Hannibal. And I confirmed my impression time and again: there is certainly hatred, fascination probably, but it is certainly not a “love-hate relationship”. THERE IS NO LOVE in any sense “we” might understand love. But it is still love, even more so because it is love stripped to the bone. It is even about the reason why “we” are so obsessed with the CONCEPT of love. So much so that it can never hold what it “promised” in a real-life context. It is the part of love that is ABOUT US – not the other person. We HAVE to love the person that makes us see ourselves in a TRUE light, EVEN IF we hate him or her. It just so happens that it is THIS person who does this for us.

And this doesn’t even have to be a good thing! – even though Hannibal thinks that it is under any circumstances. Or maybe “good” doesn’t exist or, at least, becomes extremely volatile. ALL these deeply rooted notions get shifted about but in a way that definitely makes sense. And finally HORROR reveals itself as an epistemological concept. Kind of like humour did, only, in this case, it is much more important. It is the main tool to create this kind of “estrangement effect” that makes us SEE things “as they are”. Or makes us SEE THINGS, full stop.

I think I already wrote that I kind of liked the sex scenes. (There are about … four of them - in the whole series! And I think I said as well that I kind of liked “Standards and Practices” …?) The reason is that I dislike POINTLESS sex-scenes and feel that they are humiliating for the actors. But in “Hannibal” there is always a point to it. And in at least three of them there is definitely an epistemological impact. They are about people coming to know themselves. So sex can be used like this as well, epistemologically, when it comes into a text. But, at least in “Hannibal”, horror is a much stronger tool to reveal the meaning of love. It couldn’t be if it was the kind of horror that blinds us with blood and drowns our thoughts in screams and our feelings in terror. The kind of horror I hate. As I said, it works epistemologically, shifting deep-set notions, until everything becomes crystal-clear. It makes us perceive Hannibal as somebody who CANNOT be loved or give love in a sense that we understand as love. Instead the harsh and unemotional “mechanics” of the NECESSITY of love is laid bare in this relationship – the part of life that makes us REAL people.

And this is a function of literature that I find extremely important: that these “big” notions like “love”, “soul”, or “heart” have to be cleansed perpetually of the bullshit that makes them sell mainstream books and films. And that is because they are REALLY important. Maybe my favourite bit in literature at all is a small paragraph from “A Single Man” by Christopher Isherwood where he describes his notion of “soul”. Because I never knew what a soul was supposed to be until then, and I think that most people don’t. But we know that it is a name for something that makes us human. He writes that at day-time we are like the little pools at the seaside – everybody his tiny, very limited world. At night-time, when we dream, we are these pools when the flood comes in, and suddenly we are connected with everybody and EVERYTHING. And, I think, because this happens (supposedly) in our sleep it is very seldom that we really experience ourselves as being “connected” in this way. But maybe still more often than we think, for example when we are reading … And I definitely felt connected with something when I was watching “Hannibal”. Very much so. This was how I felt about it ALL THE TIME, and why I enjoyed it so much, and I didn’t know how this came about. And now I have even succeeded to explain it!

So, that’s great. But what is definitely NOT is that, for the first time, I published a post without the next one already in the making. There are few things I have written which have amazed me in the same way as this blog. I began with Shakespeare, kind of starry-eyed and curious, just PAYING ATTENTION to what actually happens when I am reading. And I couldn’t believe what happened when I did, and still cannot believe the strange place I ended up. This is great, of course, the great thing about writing for me: that I never know where I will end up. Unlike going to real places which began to turn out to be the same each time. Which isn’t so curious because what makes them different isn’t just the places. It is what is inside me to connect me with them. But what IS curious is that now, for the first time, I feel as if I was in a place where I really want to be. And of course I want to stay there …

But it might not be possible because, at the moment, it feels as if this was all there is. I cannot really face it, but what I have always dreaded most was my life becoming a sequence of meaningless repetitions. That’s why I dislike birthdays and anniversaries and this kind of thing. I hated Christmas until it began to turn out different every year and surprised me. So, this wasn’t “just” about reading … Or rather reading turned out to be about what I know about the really important things in life. And it wasn’t as little as I thought I did. (At least if I assume that they are not making money, Bayern München, and sex.) Of course it is irrelevant for any other person in the world but it is ALL I WILL EVER GET. I learned tons about beauty, how important it is for me and in what way, and about love of course – as documented in this post! Maybe the most important thing about it, which is the same for reading and love, is something quite simple. It is that I am actually DOING something when I am reading – or when I am loving (which isn’t even possible to say, staying “inside” grammatical boundaries …) That what I am DOING is the most important thing, not what I am feeling – even though feeling is tremendously important as an INDICATION of what I am doing. And as some kind of “reward” for doing something. But it doesn’t occur without having done something in the first place. So, as it turned out, to love means to do something rather than to feel something, and without my blog I can’t “do” it anymore. But even Shakespeare could write sonnet 33 only once, so, of course, it has to change. If it will live it will have to change. As it did before …

Something happened recently that I feel might be a proper ending – if it is one. My sister told me that she had watched “The Fellowship of the Ring” again (there is an anniversary, by the way, the 15^th! Which I would have missed, of course …) though she only got to the council of Elrond because then she had to cook as the kids were coming home from school. And the way things turned out there won’t be an opportunity to go on with it in the foreseeable future. Tough! – But the really important thing was that she told me that she cried – I don’t know about what exactly, maybe, as usual, there wasn’t really time to talk … But it made me remember that my absolute favourite moment of all the six films, apart from the very beginning of “The Fellowship”, is the short sequence right before the end of “The Battle of the Five Armies” where Bilbo is standing in his empty living-room. I didn’t cry, not even then, because it was such a beautiful experience to feel that “they” had understood so exactly what Tolkien’s books are about - after they had blown it in “The Return of the King” with this awful scene of the “Grey Havens”. I remember myself thinking: of course it had to come to THIS in the end! But it wasn’t the end. “The Hobbit” was kind of a second chance – and “they” took it! So there is always hope – if you pin it on the RIGHT spot. And I don’t know if Schiller would have admitted that he liked it when people were crying in the theatre, seeing his stuff, but, in principle, it is exactly what he was dreaming of, and why he knew that serious playing is one of the most important things in the world. Because it creates a space for people to meet AS WHO THEY ARE. And creating this space, making it bigger, even only within my own little world, I consider a serious occupation which will be going on in some way. At a moment like this, with my blog coming to an end and the whole world at jeopardy – I don’t really want to consider either just now! – this is the only thing I know for certain.