Between art and “bullshit”: exploring “Hannibal”

Now there has probably happened what I feared: that I am so far behind with my blog, because I had to squeeze in so many other things, that I have overtaken myself and might neither find it interesting nor conclusive anymore what I have written about “reading” “Hannibal” in the beginning. I still enjoy watching it, being now deep into the second series, but I have a feeling at the moment that there ISN’T really a reason for it I will ever find out about. I mean, how can you seriously bother with a series where you have to cope with sentences like “Is your social worker inside that horse?” – without even being able to find that funny! I remember that I laughed sometimes, in the beginning, watching the third series and understanding nothing. Just because it was kind of daringly absurd – which I like sometimes. And I still don’t like the way people talk – at all! – and still haven’t really got used to psychiatrist saying things like “abnormal reactions to abnormal situations are normal”, and not just to endure them but to carry them with me because there is probably some truth contained in them that will come out later … (I can tell you: the (live!) social worker inside the dead horse was harmless compared to some of the “things” that “came out” of these sentences.) I get a feeling that it might help to read the book, but I am still reluctant about that. But there is something I definitely like: the really “bad” things are psychological, not about meat and bone. And maybe that’s why this series IS good, after all. BESIDES being kind of ridiculous. I presume that the kind of people who DON’T watch this series, apart from psychopaths and vegans, are psychiatrists and forensic scientists. As I presume that medical doctors never watch hospital series and policemen never watch crime series, except to have a good laugh. I am sure they had all kinds of advisers from the intelligence services on the “Spooks” as well as I am sure that most of the things they say and do in this series are bullshit. And I am sure that most people know that, including the actors who are like politicians in this case, constantly having to talk convincingly of things they don’t have a clue about. I just hope nobody blames the bullshit on the actors who have to set aside these considerations to be able to take this seriously, like the audience if they want to enjoy series like this. And there must be a lot to enjoy – even for those like me who don’t enjoy the meat and the carnage. But they always do this in a way that I can at least look at it – I didn’t have to look away ONCE during the whole series! ( - so far, but I am rather sure by now that it won't come to that. And I have certainly managed the art of not looking too closely.) And I appreciate it very much that they don’t try to give me unpleasant surprises. Maybe the most surprising thing about watching this series is that I am feeling so safe watching it. That I am never horrified or nauseated – whatever the reason … So, I still don’t know. I am aware that one important thing about series as fictional worlds is the danger to become addicted to them FOR NO GOOD REASON. At least I know that it happens to me. (I haven’t even started on “Madmen” because I have much less of a clue why I don’t stop watching it than in the case of “Hannibal”. I have actually been bored with it for whole stretches of the series, but I have bought THIS series so … and then, towards the end of the series, it suddenly gets interesting, and plop! I am on again. It is not like “House of Cards” which is “dramatic” all the way through.) The only good reason I really feel safe about is that I always appreciate genius actors – in this case Mads Mikkelsen whom I always suspected to be one of them. But I never really “knew” until now.

Maybe all this might be changed a lot when I’ll actually publish this blog, probably months after beginning to write it, but just yesterday I had this strange experience about “Hannibal” again. This time I didn’t really want to watch anything but didn’t have anything better to do, so I watched “Madmen” first, as I usually do at the moment, and could barely watch one episode because it totally got on my nerves. Then I watched “Poirot”, just because I thought I wanted to watch something that was just entertaining, with the same effect. I don’t like them that much, though I adore David Suchet as Poirot, but I am not usually bored with them. Then I started to watch a commentary on “Hannibal” first, which was better but got on my nerves as well because there was too much “chatting” in this case, and too little “matter”. Then I started watching where I had stopped the day before, in the first series. And it didn’t take long for me to become totally calm and serene and actually enjoy seeing people who had part of their backs cut off and made into angel’s wings, and Hannibal serving meals you don’t really know where the meat comes from, but have your suspicions … And the only thing I am kind of pissed off about is that I don’t know WHY this happens.

Watching commentaries on the third series has made me discover something about the series that explains part of my fascination with it. First of all, I have now two episodes with commentaries by Richard Armitage!!! And they are certainly worth listening to, not only because he says something interesting or funny (or both) as soon as he opens his mouth, but because there is really interesting stuff there about how he created this character. And a lot of it corroborated what I had observed myself, which I was VERY pleased with … And, in this case, most of the commentaries by actors make sense, as far as I have watched them yet, because most of them were very passionate about and “aware” of what they were doing. And something one of the directors said made me discover the reason for it. Even though the first and third series is based mostly on the book “The Red Dragon” it is probably not a “literal” adaptation of the book. In the first series it says “based on characters from the novel `The Red Dragon’”, and this seems to be a very fitting description. Because the whole series is focused on CHARACTERS, and what happens to them, and one of the most important concerns was consequently to find great actors who could play these very special people. And quite often this amounted to hiring actors they had wanted to work with anyway because of how special they are, and the characters were very much shaped by what these actors brought to the set, and by the ideas they had about the characters. Especially, like in the case of Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy, when the actors are the ones who know these characters “inside out”, having played them for so long. And this is probably THE ideal situation for an actor to work in. So, this series is certainly special and kind of unusual where the acting is concerned. Parts of it, especially the “finale” about the Red Dragon, can be watched like a very long film – with the possibility to put things in that would have to be sacrificed in a cinematic version! – And the commitment to these characters, as well as the challenge involved, for example for Francis Dolarhyde and Reba, who are technically just “guest appearances” in the series, was certainly deeper than in some cases of lead characters in films.

And this is something I always enjoy to watch. But most of the characters appear very strange to me and are not “about” anything I like or am interested in. As I said, usually, serial killers and profilers are not my “turf”. I seldom watch crime-stories, or read them, because I am bored with them, most of all even BECAUSE they are getting more and more grizzly and extreme. And I don’t usually like this kind of extreme psychological situations where I cannot “follow”. Nonetheless, I am obviously fascinated with THESE characters, potentially all of them, even though I almost generally dislike them. What might be the reason for that, I am still trying to guess.

One thing is certainly that they are unusual literary “inventions” because they are so extreme that they go way beyond being believable as “real” people, though the acting is mostly naturalistic and convincing. It is rather that this strangeness and singularity of their “set-up” provides them with a second, kind of metaphorical, dimension. There are rather obvious examples of this second dimension, like the Red Dragon, or, of course, Hannibal himself. Which are both nonetheless “set up” naturalistically – as real people in a real world. But there is this “fairy-tale story” of being transformed into a dragon, where an imaginary world fuses with the real one in this incredibly complex act of filming and performance. And Hannibal might even be the extremest case I have ever seen of this kind of “uncannyness” brought to the audience THROUGH the acting. Mads Mikkelsen might have this really weird face, and it certainly helps, but still … sometimes I just cannot believe it! And something like this is, of course, always compelling to watch. But the more I am watching the more I find that this dimension somehow exists in all the permanent characters of the series. Even especially in characters “we” perceive as “normal” people. Well, Will Graham certainly isn’t normal in any way, but we somehow get the impression that he is driven by human emotions we are familiar with. Even if "we" don’t like dogs and never had the faintest wish to become a parent… But this is only the one side of the coin. And almost all the characters, like Bedelia Du Maurier, or Abigail Hobbs, have this heightened “metaphorical” dimension brought out through the acting. They all strike me as this kind of modern “fairy-tale” characters. So, almost in the same way as there is a different feeling to it when the witch captures Hansel and Gretel to eat them than there is to what real serial killers have done to little girls, there is a different feeling to what Hannibal does. So much so that it can even be entertaining and funny, though, of course, it’s an extremely dark kind of humour.

I suspect that the special “recipe” of the series lies somewhere in the tension between these two dimensions – of the extremely naturalistic and “material” (blood and bone and organs), and the “heightened” dimension of the language and the metaphorical (even kind of metaphysical) layer. Which is another reason you need very special actors because the acting of most actors would just be too “flat” and commonplace for this kind of thing. And I even suspect that the two dimensions working together produce this layer of irreality which somehow makes these atrocities “digestible”, and kind of protects me from what is happening. Because in a “real” horror film, like “Hannibal” with Antony Hopkins, I don’t have a choice. I either “endure” them or I look away. I would never come to think about what this MIGHT MEAN, or what is intended to be expressed, because what is intended is “just” horror. And as I don’t pay for cinema or for a dvd to look away, I don’t watch them. Though, of course, there are exceptions. Even one of my favourite films is horror: “The Shining”. But then I know it so well by now that I know when I don’t care to look. And of course it is such a BEAUTIFUL film – even so incredibly “sensual” as to be the only film where I can feel and smell the cold mountain air! And beauty is of course the bait that always catches the fish, I certainly don’t deceive myself about that … Maybe it’s just beauty in “Hannibal” as well? (Beauty as in “perfection”?) On the other hand I know that “just” beauty doesn’t exist – or, if it does, I don’t see it because it bores me. There always has to be something else …

And it must even be something that I particularly like, or which is important to me. I don’t even think that all this works in the same way for most people, even if they are prepared to leave their prejudices behind. And this is because “horror” is different for everybody whereas, I think, we agree more readily on what is pleasant, or great. For example, many people really dislike large amounts of blood, or mutilations on dead people, at least I infer this from what “horror” is usually made of. Whereas I care much less about the blood than about actually seeing people experiencing fear and agony, or being violated while they are still alive. And these moments, when they are shown, are mercifully short and very rarely come as a surprise. (And, in this case, the strange restrictions that the “genre” of American television imposes on any kind of sexual activities or cruelty to animals (not people!) might not be such a bad thing … It would just draw the attention from the real “matter”.) I certainly had to get used to people eating human body parts and organs, but I know that I am usually good at controlling nausea from real-life situations, and probably did the same – though it is rather important, at the same time, that I “recall” the feeling. And I found it amusing that obviously many people were unsettled by Francis Dolarhyde eating the Blake painting, even more than by anything else he does. For me this was one of the funnier moments, if this term can be used at all. But there is a lot of “fun” involved in the process of always looking for the meaning of what is happening, especially between people, but also on an aesthetical and material level. It parallels the “double” nature of the characters, which I think I noticed first, before I even understood who they were. (Which is another interesting point, by the way, because “you” don’t know who they are - like THEY don’t! - before they have gone there. Which is probably the non-bullshit part of all that therapy going on.) One of the first things I noticed, and appreciated, is that there is so much in this series about art, and artifice, and life-style. It is probably always tempting and beautiful for film-makers, but in this case there is always this layer of the grizzly, dangerous, and material nature of objects “beneath” the artificial layer of creation and beauty. In the first part of the third series there are a lot of “works of art” of a questionable nature, culminating in the “valentine” made by Hannibal for Will Graham out of the body of someone he killed. Well, there is probably very little beauty in that – unlike in the body with butterfly wings and living snails which looked great as well as grizzly - but the way it is displayed in a church lets us perceive the symbolic and artistic value of it very strongly. And there ought to be a special chapter about gorgeous food, and what it is actually made of … This special kind of double meaning EMBODIED in one object might be the reason as well that I really enjoyed the act of the Blake painting being EATEN – apart from the symbolic value of the scene – SETTING ASIDE the horrible fact that it is irretrievably destroyed.

But this is still only an explanation for why I am not inhibited from “enjoying” this world by the grizzly und unacceptable things that happen there. I am still almost totally in the dark about WHAT it is that I enjoy. What might be the cause that I am currently kind of glued to it, even potentially aggressive about things that keep me away from it. Although, I suspect, I won’t be so sad, and feel so deprived, when I am finally “through” with it as in other cases. I don’t really have an answer yet, but I think that it has probably something to do with the way it makes me deal with my own feelings. Because most of what happens has more to do with how people are feeling about it, what it does to them, which is of course the task of great actors to reveal to us, or even to “conceal” from us in a way that we are drawn into guessing. I suppose it is probably this multifaceted manner I use my feelings to understand what is happening that creates such a singular experience for me. I just heard that song - I don’t remember the title, nor did I know the singer - where it says “I want the sky coloured in emotions“. And I thought about how many colours and emotions that might be, and how poor I am where they are concerned: I only “have” a few. Though, watching “Hannibal”, I became aware that this is probably not true. At least I CAN have more than these – under certain circumstances – here, of course, mostly emotions I don’t really want to have. I can have emotions I never would dream of having, even when I am day-dreaming – because, WHO would??? But, nonetheless, I obviously enjoy that I am able to have them, without being “damaged” by them. And it is again something I knew already. That I somehow need to widen my scope of feelings towards the “forbidden” or uncanny. For example, I made a sampler of pop music called “Arschloch” (asshole) of songs that are about “asshole” feelings – basically, feelings “we” are not supposed to have. And I need this sampler much more often than my sampler of love songs. Like the one called “Live on Mars” with songs which I think are great, but I don’t understand at all what they are about, apart from these uncanny feelings. And now I have even begun to make a sampler for Halloween.  But I think that “Hannibal” surpasses all that, as there are probably even emotions that I would never have guessed are there – up in the sky where they cannot haunt me, but where I can see the glorious colours nonetheless.

MAYBE IT’S ART?

Maybe, just maybe, the series itself IS art, just because I am treating it in the same way … I don’t know because I certainly have a lot of prejudices about art and very little knowledge. (I am afraid I don’t appreciate the Blake painting because of its aesthetical value but solely because of what they have done with it. Accordingly it’s not surprising that I wasn’t shocked …) But maybe “we” are too much used to the notion of art being “static” and generally impenetrable to the common mind – not something that can actually survive outside a museum. Which might as well be entertaining, or even just AN OBJECT OF SERIOUS PLAYING … Though the question remains, I think, as a serious question, even exactly because it is not “just” horror – which, like porn, doesn’t require any explanation or “excuse”. It is the question about the “absolute evil” which deserves an answer: Can everything be made “right” or acceptable by this label of art? It appears so, but I am not so sure. Of course it isn’t a question about its right to exist (even in an environment where “normal” sexual activities are censured!) but if I should get involved with it. Which has already happened anyway and probably just proves another time that everybody can be lured on the evil side if you find out about their needs.