Reading “Hannibal” – again!

Now that I am definitely “through” with “Hannibal”, and able to step away from it, I am still wary of drawing any conclusions – and maybe don’t like those I have already drawn. What was good, of course, was that finally watching the whole series in a row was actually the best instance of watching it. I was a bit afraid that the last part about the Red Dragon might have lost its fresh glow in the light of what I had understood by now, but on the contrary: Finally understanding “everything” it appeared even as if I could see every colour more vividly and savour every tiny bit of it. It is certainly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, maybe the most beautiful. At least I don’t remember anything of this insanely pure beauty since I watched “American Beauty”, 17 years in the past, and saw this scene with the video of the “dancing” white plastic bag. And there it was just a “bite”, whereas this is clearly a feast. But, at the same time I was overwhelmed by beauty, I kept noticing what a load of bullshit it is, and, even though I could almost SMELL the fear and every tiny drop of emotion that was there, I was constantly smiling, even laughing, at the thought of this daring and incredible bullshit. Making a long series out of one novel has to have this effect that it evolves into its own world where the insanity of the book increases … As I said, the experience was still unbelievably good – even while I was arriving at the conclusion that the whole thing is almost exclusively ABOUT KILLING.

In fact, why I spent such an insane amount of time watching it, which I totally loved, is that it took me so long to understand the relationship of Will Graham and Hannibal, or rather to ACCEPT that it is about killing. Of course there are a few other things to take your mind off killing for short periods of time, like cooking, or dying, or romance. But a lot of the cooking and the romance is “about” killing as well.

I realized for the first time that they have something like “Standards and Practices” in American television, and nobody is happy with it, of course. But when I watched the series again I became even more aware that, in this case, I am mostly grateful for it. Especially when I realized that they could show atrocious violence only for split-seconds – not long enough for somebody like me to really “take it in”. Which was good. And even the absurd “standards” about sexual activities might have turned out good in this case – though it is a pity you can’t really SEE what the actors have done. But I think it kind of forces the producers to make something special of it – if you can’t see “the real thing”. Which you can’t anyway, in television or films, so it mostly turns out boring and wouldn’t have matched the standards for aesthetics and “naturalism” which, in this series, are incredibly high.

Of course, watching horror, you have already accepted it to be about violence and killing. And I could accept it the more easily as they always made it “aesthetically acceptable” and supremely entertaining – even where it probably shouldn’t be. But at the same time I was aware that this is a means to insert the REAL horror of it in always deeper and deeper levels of consciousness – which I deliberately enjoyed. I enjoyed “being” so destructive, without letting the destructiveness get anywhere near MY life … But I became aware as well that it was now time to stop. Just when I had decided to hit the emergency brake I realized that I hadn’t even watched most of the “specials”, and I at least had to watch the “making” of the final part about the Red Dragon which was tremendously interesting. Especially when I became aware that I had been right about the fact that Richard Armitage deliberately didn’t get involved with the story “outside” his own character – partly for strategic reasons, but partly for reasons of self-preservation. It is understandable that he didn’t want to see Ralph Fiennes play Francis Dolarhyde. I always understand why actors don’t look at the former versions. (Though I became aware that I probably should – maybe finally reading the book and at least watching the film with Ralph Fiennes will make for a long Halloween next year … And I expect it to become a more genuinely painful and much less “beautiful” experience.) But he said that he had to tread carefully when he approached this character because he got into this habit of kind of DREAMING about what is in the character’s head. This was something I had suspected, and in fact I remember him having said something like this concerning “The Crucible”. I still hope that “kind of” meant DAY-dreaming, but I am afraid it doesn’t. It was appealing, and slightly uncanny, how “sane” he looked when he said this – but it was obviously something that he is aware of can become insane. There must be a set-back to always doing everything a hundred and fifty percent … Well, I think I WATCHED this a hundred and fifty percent – which I have probably never known how to do, and which was great. But it might have “done” more to me than I am currently aware of. I mean, how should I determine that I am still sane? Maybe somebody else can tell me when they read this …?

The worst part of it was certainly the part about Will Graham. And there is very little about it that struck me as beautiful – though Hugh Dancy as Will Graham is certainly more beautiful than Richard Armitage as Francis Dolarhyde! But this is clearly not what the beauty is about, in this case, so the “ugly” part began to show as soon as I could myself bring to become involved with his story. That is, to get past the impression that I didn’t find the character very convincing. It probably took me some time until I could bring myself to finally find him interesting – same as for him concerning Hannibal Lecter. And it still appears more like a strategic choice. At first I thought Hugh Dancy might just be a bad actor, but it takes a bit more of becoming involved than I probably wanted to be, to “make” something of this character.

I have written something about these characters being like fairy-tale characters, but I was always aware that this was some kind of crutch to help me walk on this shifty ground. So it was something important as well as unsatisfactory, and I recently acquired the means to express it better, even though it is still just a simile. When we were at Lago Maggiore the children played a new game called “werewolf”. Everybody gets dealt a card with their character, and somebody else reads instructions as to what the characters have to do. They are always the same instructions, but the game turns out differently every time because it is about strategically eliminating the werewolves who live incognito as members of the community. They have to be brought to trial during the day, but during the night they are able to kill those who accuse them of being werewolves. The game made me aware that it was more useful to see these characters in the series as characters in an elaborate game. If the game plays out well the characters become naturalistic and believable, JUST BECAUSE what they are doing makes sense within the context of the game. It is what I usually don’t like as much as when the context is “naturalistically” embedded “in” the characters, as in “Shakespeare”, or “Austen”, or “House of Cards”. This is usually much more my thing, but, when I like the game, this set-up can create an enormous pull. And it helps to enjoy the game, even when the things we are playing with are painful and disagreeable, because “we” never take these characters completely seriously as “real people”. At least I didn’t, except the very few characters who are entirely believable as human beings AND occupy a certain function in the game.  But, having enough specific features to play with, all the principal characters turned out very special and can be taken seriously – just because we accept them as the person who fills this specific place. The only exception for me was Will Graham to whom I already assigned the category of “everyman”. He is the only instance of the unspecific characters of the game which are “just” members of the community, and whom the children disrespectfully dubbed “Dorftrottel” (=village idiots).

I liked the “village idiots” even better than “everyman” because it shows so well why these characters are not attractive, even though they may be tremendously good-looking. Nobody wants to be “just” the village idiot who has no specific “talent” which assigns him an active role in the game, and his little spot of power. Interestingly, Will Graham HAS ALL THIS. He has a very special talent, and a very specific role in the “game”, and he is supposed to have all kinds of specific features, like being exceptionally intelligent, socially inhibited to the point of being borderline autistic, at least not any good where relationships are concerned, and ARROGANT!!! This is mainly what other people say about him, but NOTHING OF THIS actually SHOWS. He should be a fascinating and strange character but he remains basically nondescript. This might very well be seen as bad acting, especially when he does things like not looking anybody in the eye in one scene where Hannibal refers to it, and in the next scene has forgotten all about it. But this is almost too obvious to be “believable” as bad acting! And the most important part about his talent of empathizing with the murderers, reconstructing the crime through empathy, is, in the way it is presented, the biggest bullshit in the whole series. Which is certainly not the fault of the actor nor probably of anybody else because it is very likely IMPOSSIBLE to present this audacious idea convincingly OUTSIDE A BOOK. And this is why I suspect that Will Graham is not a failure down to bad acting – though there were probably things that could have been dealt with more successfully. But basically Will Graham is just one of these characters who only work “on paper”. The reason for this is that what is said about him is unrelated to, or even contradicts, what he actually does or what happens to him. To play ALL THIS would mean for the actor to constantly contradict himself, and no actor can do THAT!

So I guess Hugh Dancy was in a fix, and had to find his way out of it and “into” the character. And I think he did. Something about Will Graham obviously works, otherwise the whole series wouldn’t work. What it is, I am still not sure. From what I heard Hugh Dancy say in the commentaries he strikes me as an intelligent and thoughtful person, so he is probably a more intelligent actor than I gave him credit for and wouldn’t bother with something that wouldn’t really work. He probably got rid of these “paper” features and tried to focus on the essence of Will Graham – the part that makes sense about him and which is not who he is, or what is said about him, but what HAPPENS to him. He probably just tried very hard, and somehow succeeded, to make these moments when something happens to the character very intense and kind of ruminant, and unbelievably slow – which is an aesthetical feature of the series I became very fond of, but Hugh Dancy still beats everybody else. It is minimalistic, and really big at the same time, and it works. And this is probably not intentional but what strikes me as an outcome of this process: the only feature of his character that really adheres to him is something I am very fond of, and which is best expressed by an outdated German term: Demut. It would translate as “humbleness” but that is only the smallest part of what this concept contains. It is something we have completely forgotten about, maybe best expressed by an amalgamation of my favourite “king-becoming graces” from “Macbeth”: “devotion, patience, courage, fortitude”. It is something positive and active, rather than passive like “humbleness”. It includes the ABILITY to accept our fate because we know how unimportant we are – and how important at the same time. And it is the only way to BELIEVE in being able to brave his fate for someone who has no power. And really believing in something is always the first step. I think the only thing I really ever liked about Jesus is the way he is taunting us with contradictions. For example when he says that the humble shall(!) inherit the earth. But, if we are supposed to believe it, this doesn’t mean that it will happen ANYWAY, whatever we do. It means that we damn well should be looking for a way to make it happen. And Hugh Dancy achieves it to make Will Graham somebody who is looking, and “believing” – in a crazy und destructive world. - But who says that our world is less crazy? At least it can very suddenly become a place where we cannot hide anywhere from being destroyed, and where our everyday ethics don’t work anymore. - It is certainly down to everybody what we make of the end of season three, but I think that Will Graham is finally successful. Because he is the only one who can get Hannibal on the “good” side. I am aware that this version of the events is probably naïve and over-simplifying, but it is the first time Hannibal stops a serial killer instead of helping him – and he definitely kills him at the expense of his own life. So, whatever complexity I might have missed, he does for once what HE IS SUPPOSED to do. And, I think, because Will Graham convinced him that it is what he WANTS to do.

So I probably have made up my mind about Will Graham nonetheless. I don’t know if it is an interesting conclusion, but this wasn’t why I am writing still another blog about “Hannibal”: to reach conclusions. It is because, reviewing the process of reading it, I suddenly hit on something totally amazing.

In my own estimation my blog is very much about what I am DOING when I am reading. But in fact it never really was. Saying “a hundred and fifty percent” was how I FELT about it, but it didn’t really mean anything when I wrote it. It cannot be about what I notice, or understand, or appreciate, because even noticing, understanding, or appreciating everything, if this was possible, would just be a hundred percent. It is somehow about this process becoming so intense that I noticed, understood, and appreciated things I had never noticed, understood or appreciated before – and enjoyed it in a way I never enjoyed any reading before that. I MEANT “in a way”, not “as much” because I have certainly enjoyed other texts as much as this, in a different way, for example when I was reading Shakespeare. But this was definitely a new dimension. And it shouldn’t have happened because I shouldn’t even have READ it in the first place …

So, this was something so different from what I had experienced before, FROM THE BEGINNING, and I didn’t understand why. But one reason why it turned out so amazing certainly was that the reading-process itself was so “perverse”, in a way, that I became aware of ALL THE NATURAL CATEGORIES I use when I am reading.

This was a totally amazing find, and my explanation for it at the moment is that the reading-process was so much slowed down and somehow “perverted” by the way I came to read it that I didn’t apply them all at once. Which is probably what “we” usually do. And what I noticed about it was that the joy of reading came from the active role I deliberately “assigned” myself in the process - “participating”! - and what, I think, made for the hundred and fifty percent. The fun might in fact have been mostly about becoming half-conscious of what I was doing for the first time, which enabled me to make so much more of it.

Strictly speaking, I cannot know if they are “natural” categories – which everybody applies when they are reading. But this is what I believe. And they are certainly not interesting AS SUCH, but it was extremely interesting for me to observe WHAT HAPPENED when I applied them.

As I expect this to become really long, I will stretch it out over more than one blog. This is just about the beginning:

The first category I became aware of was GENRE. I became aware of it as a category for CHOOSING texts I would want to read precisely because it worked in a negative way. Or it should have done. I wouldn’t have read anything which had the label “horror” attached to it BECAUSE of this label. And this is how I became aware of the first category that triggered my choice, and which has become an extremely important category for me to choose texts that contain some kind of performance. I obviously came upon the text because I learned that Richard Armitage had played the Red Dragon in this series. So, PERFORMING ARTIST is obviously an important category for dealing with this kind of texts, as it is probably for many people who are fond of a certain kind of performance. So important that it can overrule “genre” – or “threatened” to do so, in this case. And I am usually aware of this happening, and very cautious that wanting to see certain actors won’t make me buy something I don’t really want to watch. I didn’t really WANT to believe that this might be the case, but I couldn’t know. There was another performing artist though I was interested in: Mads Mikkelsen playing Hannibal. And I didn’t know what the Red Dragon was, but I knew who Hannibal was, and I could at least be certain that I wouldn’t be bored or disgusted by this. So I think I kind of “displaced” my choice. And, evidently, this choice, and this conflict, was very important for HOW I watched it as well. I’ll probably come to that.

There is another thing about genre, or rather about what I’d call “FORMAT”, that became tremendously important for how the reading-process played out. I’d say it obstructed it completely, distorted it – but not necessarily in a bad way. It certainly made it last much longer. I usually love to buy series, and I hate it, because I always have to buy the sequel for one or the other reason. In this case I couldn’t watch the first season first because it is horror, and I didn’t really expect I would enjoy anything about it apart from maybe Richard Armitage and Mads Mikkelsen acting. In fact, it doesn’t make ANY SENSE to watch the third season first: So I didn’t UNDERSTAND anything at first. And I think this was what made the whole process complicated and obstructive and slower than it needed to be. And that was why everything happened the way it happened. And I really can’t say that I regret it!

The strangest thing about it was probably that, understanding nothing, I couldn’t apply any of the categories I usually apply, except of what comes “by itself”. I didn’t understand what happened, I didn’t know who these characters were, or what they were about. And, if I did, I didn’t like what I saw. I felt that these characters were strange and that they talked strange, and that they were probably talking bullshit all the time. And I think that, because I couldn’t read any of this or didn’t really see the point of reading, I applied the categories that come “naturally” – without any conscious efforts of “putting” the text “together”. And these are, strange as this might seem, AESTHETICAL CATEGORIES.

The effect was striking. Maybe even more striking because of what I EXPECTED. I expected horror, and I saw beauty. I think that, after I had seen the first episode, I was so relieved that it didn’t “hurt” that I became particularly receptive for everything that was beautiful. Because, being able to see the whole thing “objectively” now, there is as much horror as there is beauty, probably more. But it is of course the first piece of chocolate I should have resisted: the beauty made the horror kind of easy to swallow. I kind of dissolved it into aesthetical categories.

Well, maybe I should have been more critical – but I am glad that I wasn’t. And an almost funny thing I became aware of is that, when I finally understood something, which was from episode eight to the end, I continued to apply mainly aesthetical categories, probably because I was in this vein anyway, and because I had come to like it so much. I don’t really remember this but I infer it from how I described my first impression of Richard Armitage as the Red Dragon in my blog. As I mainly described his performance, and the aesthetical categories adhering to the character, I suppose that is what I noticed first. I am sure I noticed other things but I was still very suspicious of these characters, so I probably left this in limbo until I could somehow confirm that I was “right” to feel what I felt. Very strange – but I think that it was basically a good thing.

I know I watched the third season probably three times or more before I started on season one. And my perception didn’t really change – except for the “Red Dragon”-story which is more coherent without the complete context. But I fully appreciated it only when I watched the complete series in a row – and this was great! As I said, I fully noticed how beautiful it was – and what a load of bullshit it was at the same time! – only just now. And, if possible, I noticed every aesthetical bit even more than before. There were definitely things I noticed for the first time that were quite obvious. But I didn’t notice them because I didn’t understand the context completely – which I do now.

So it definitely became a success-story – and my next blog will probably be about what happened when I finally started with season one.