here we are, a bunch of psychopaths helping each other out.
aka: a running tally of things that I want to vocalize on tumblr but can't because I'm taking a break from it (updated as I go today and tomorrow, until about 4:30 PM US EST tomorrow).
* Raul Esparza is playing Dr. Chilton on NBC Hannibal and his voice is so similar to the guy who played Dr. Chilton in The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal (the film that we don't necessarily speak of), and Red Dragon that I keep having to check back to make sure that it's not him. And Eddie Izzard doesn't sound like himself very much but it's really flappy hands-inducing and exciting to watch him do serious work because I know that he's done it before but I've never actually seen it until watching him play Dr. Gideon.
* Mads Mikkelwhosit… I don't know if he's replacing Anthony Hopkins as my favorite Hannibal Lecter or what's going on. Because I don't think that Anthony Hopkins is the ONLY Hannibal Lecter, not by a long shot. Manhunter is terrible, but I actually really enjoy Gaspard Ulliel's version of Hannibal (though this is due in large part to how I really like Gaspard Ulliel's voice and how I'm obnoxiously picky about auditory stimuli)… but Mads Mikkelwhosit's Hannibal feels a little more fully realized than Anthony Hopkins's, as a character?
It's not really either of their faults, though, because Anthony Hopkins doesn't really get to play off of that many people. He's playing Lecter while Lecter is in captivity and as such he only gets to play primarily off of Clarice Starling (again, we primarily only acknowledge Jodie Foster's Clarice because Julianne Moore tried but she played Clarice way too much like a Strong Female Character sort of stereotype and that's not who Clarice Starling is) and Will Graham (or anyway the false neurotypical-washed nondisabled Cishet White Manpain version of Will Graham that they gave to Edward Norton and he didn't do a bad job with what he was given, but it's not Will Graham)… and even in Hannibal, when he's out and about and living in Italy, Hopkins's Lecter doesn't get much of a chance to really stretch his legs.
But Mads Mikkelwhosit gets the chance to play not just off of Hugh Dancy's Will Graham (who is perfectly perfect in every way except that Bryan Fuller has some absurd and completely incorrect ideas about whether or not Will Graham can be autistic while also being a being of pure empathy and well, spoiler alert, Bryan Fuller? but you're wrong. Autistic people are completely capable of having and displaying empathy, please stop talking about us when you know nothing, Jon Snow)… Mikkelwhosit gets to play off of more people and he gets more of a chance to show off Lecter in different contexts and this is really interesting to watch. Plus, he and Hopkins both seem to buy into the idea that Lecter is a demon wearing a finely tailored person suit or whatever the quote is but there's something about Mikkelsen's Lecter that feels more humanistic?
Like he's acknowledging on some level that Lecter is actually a human being and that's why he's so terrifying: it's not that he's nothing like us but he looks like us and he can pass for us and he can wander amongst a crowd and "he looks normal, but no one can tell what he is" (Will Graham, "Sorbet"; unwittingly talking about Hannibal Lecter by way of talking about the Chesapeake Ripper). The horror of Hannibal Lecter isn't that he's nothing like us, it's that he's exactly like us… Hannibal Lecter is the extreme far end manifestation of various social power structures and of all kinds of different psychological bits and pieces of the average human being; the price of being able to have great people in the world in the good sense of the term, the sense where people do amazing things like change the world for the better, is that we have to suffer the potential of having people like Hannibal Lecter in the world as well and he's not something that we can just blot out and ignore because he's a part of us.
* "I have conversations with a version of you and hope that the actual you gets what he needs. …Naturally, I respect its meticulous construction but you are wearing a very well tailored person suit. …Maybe it's less of a person suit and more of a human veil" (Bedelia du Maurier, Sorbet; there's the quote that I wanted, ha ha, also PERFORMATIVITY FEELS SO MANY PERFORMATIVITY FEEL).
* …I made the bad life choice of overly identifying with Hugh Dancy's Will Graham. This is going… a mixed bag of well and terribly for me. But it's still a bad life choice.
* note to self based on overhearing a classmate talk about this: Scott in the eating disorders fic going out for food with some of his friends and ordering some pistachio ice cream so they won't think he's weird or sick or anything… but then Stiles, Isaac, Braeden, Danny, Kira, Lydia, and Allison all order like six or seven more desserts so everyone can share them and this goes a bit all over the place for Scott.
also… this feels like sacrilege but… I think I actually like Mads Mikkelwhosit's Lecter more than Anthony Hopkins as Lecter. like. it's sacrilege because Anthony Hopkins made the Hannibal Lecter character iconic in pop culture and it doesn't matter what other work he's done in his life or what other work he ever does, he will always be known best as Hannibal Lecter and liking someone else's Lecter better is just… but I mean. the issue with Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter is that *he* did a good job with the character… but one of the biggest failings of the movie Hannibal is that he's really phoning it in as Lecter.
(among other things because the Hannibal movie is awful on a lot of fronts, like… there's the ableism and homophobia with Mason Verger, there's the way that Julianna Moore plays Clarice Starling as this two-dimensional action girl Strong Female Character, there's the way that they turned Hannibal/Clarice into a ~beautiful love story~ which is BULLSHIT because yes, they run off to Rio together in the book too… but Thomas Harris is really quite clear about how this is a bad thing and Hannibal has psychologically manipulated Clarice and broken her into thinking that she's in love with him and the movie is all like AWW LOOK THEY REALLY LOVE EACH OTHER HANNIBAL HAS A HEART AFTER ALL and oh my god just stop that is not what happened you jack-offs, he DRUGGED HER and FED HER PIECES OF HER PARTNER'S BRAIN and then KIDNAPPED HER. WHAT THE FUCK PART OF THAT SAYS THAT HANNIBAL LOVES CLARICE. HANNIBAL IS FASCINATED WITH CLARICE BECAUSE SHE IS COMPLICATED AND HE LIKES HAVING HER AROUND BECAUSE SHE'S FASCINATED BY HIM WHICH FEEDS HIS EGO. HANNIBAL LECTER. DOES NOT. LOVE. ANYONE. EXCEPT. FOR. HANNIBAL LECTER. WHAT IS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS CONCEPT.)
then Red Dragon is pretty good as a movie, even though they neurotypical-washed Will Graham more than Bryan Fuller is doing (because like, Bryan Fuller has Will as neuroatypical but not autistic even though he's autistic in the books but Red Dragon and Edward Norton's Will Graham are just like LOL NOPE HE IS NEUROTYPICAL AND MADE OF WHITE BOY MANPAIN and like… no. nooooo. NOOOOO. there are so many things about Will Graham as a character that just don't make sense if you make him neurotypical and augh)… but that aside, Red Dragon is a pretty good movie. but… Ralph Fiennes gives a more commanding villain performance than Anthony Hopkins does, and that's not entirely his fault because Ralph Fiennes's character, Frances Dolarhyde, is out and about and killing people while Hannibal is locked up… but Hannibal was locked up in Silence of the Lambs and Hopkins did an amazing job of that performance?
and I don't blame him for getting kind of sick of being forever associated with Hannibal Lecter especially considering that Hannibal Lecter is… well. Hannibal Lecter. but like, he's magnetic and complicated and enthralling in Silence of the Lambs in ways that he just isn't in Hannibal or Red Dragon and I think there are two big reasons for that aside from Hopkins just kind of sick of the character (though that explanation does sort of explain these things in part): 1. he sort of falls back on playing this caricature of Lecter at points in Hannibal and Red Dragon, and it's possibly due to a lot of factors? like on the one hand, Hopkins is sick of Lecter but on the other hand… hack directors, basically. hack directors telling him to play a caricature of Lecter because they think that's what people want to watch; and 2. we don't really get to see Hopkins's Lecter really doing that much.
I mean, he does a lot for a cannibalistic serial killing ex-surgeon turned psychiatrist who's locked up in a criminal psychiatric hospital and primarily playing evil mentor to Clarice and Will (then faffing around in Italy and pretending to be an art history scholar and then some other stuff that I don't remember because the Hannibal movie is stupid and its plot is crap) but we mostly only get to see him interacting… with Clarice and Will. we don't really get to see any other facets of the character and when you put that together with the way that Hopkins and his directors sort of treat Hannibal as this mustache-twirling people-eating caricature after Silence of the Lambs, it's just… it's basically blasphemy to say so because he's *the* iconic Lecter.
(not that that's hard though because Manhunter's Lecter was awful and Gaspard Ulliel did the best he could in Hannibal Rising… but Hannibal Rising is really REALLY stupid, like. I told my dad the plot earlier because he was eavesdropping on me watching show!Hannibal and… none of it makes any sense, giving Hannibal Lecter a ~tragic backstory~ never made any sense, and Thomas Harris never even wanted to do the thing in the first place, his agent made him do it for some ridiculous reason involving copyright, and like. I like Gaspard Ulliel's Hannibal Lecter? but his movie is ridiculous and he made a prom dress out of carpet remnants at best. like… Gaspard Ulliel tried. He did a good job with what he had to work with. but what he had to work with wasn't that great and Hannibal Rising is patently ridiculous and makes no sense and Thomas Harris only wrote it because his agent told him to, I think he's even disavowed the book because it's that fucking stupid.)
…but then on the other hand? Mads Mikkelsen really seems like he GETS Hannibal Lecter in a way that no one else who's ever played the character does (except for the kid who plays bb!Hannibal in Hannibal Rising, he doesn't count because… he was nine, he had maybe five minutes of screen time tops, and it's not fair to put a kid in the same discussion as grown ass men who've played Hannibal Lecter).
like, Mads Mikkelsen (at least based on his performance as Lecter) seems like he really gets the point that Hannibal Lecter ISN'T some demon let loose from the deepest pits of Hell to wreak havoc on mankind and also eat people, which is a misconception that a lot of people have about the character. like, the true horror of Hannibal Lecter is that he's a person just like the rest of us and it's kind of like this one lyric from a Sufjan Stevens song? "And on my best behavior, I am really just like him." (amusingly, said song is also about a famous serial killer but the serial killer is John Wayne Gacy Jr, not Hannibal Lecter.)
like… Thomas Harris never wanted to give Hannibal Lecter a backstory because on a meta level and on a symbolic level? it doesn't really matter where the Hell Hannibal Lecter came from or why he does the things he does. The Dark Knight's take on the Joker embodies pure chaos in all of its destructive potential because he comes from freaking nowhere and he has no motivation for what he does beyond, "I want to fuck stuff up" and similarly, Lecter embodies the extreme far end manifestation of a lot of the less savory parts of human psychology and of white Western culture and what Hannibal Lecter DOES, as a character, is that he holds a mirror up to the rest of us and reminds us that we all have the potential to be exactly like him and to do the things that he does buried inside of us. a lot of ~monsters~ are horrifying because of their Otherness and how it's played up and emphasized as a reason why it's justified to fear them and hate them.
but Hannibal Lecter fits the idealized white Western normative subject in almost all of the ways in which he could possibly fit into that box and that's kind of the important thing to keep in mind about him: Lecter isn't an outsider, Lecter isn't an Other, Lecter is ridiculously freaking privileged and he abuses his power over everyone and their mom as a matter of course. Lecter isn't a demon and he's not wearing a person suit; Hannibal Lecter is a person just like the rest of us and he still murders people in cold blood and eats them and/or feeds them to other people because he doesn't have to be a demon in order to do those things. everyone has the potential to do the thing inside them as a person and Hannibal Lecter makes that truth manifest but he never stops being a person as he does the thing.
and Mads Mikkelsen's Lecter… admittedly, he has more to work with and he actually gets to interact with more characters than Hopkins does? but Mads Mikkelsen never dehumanizes Lecter. he never tries to run from the truth of Hannibal Lecter, which is that yes, he's a far extreme end manifestation of various aspects of human psychology and Western culture… but Hannibal Lecter is just like the rest of us. Hannibal Lecter lives inside all of us, or at least the potential to be like Hannibal Lecter is lurking inside all of us. …I'm just really emotional about Hannibal Lecter right now oh my god.
* Raul Esparza is playing Dr. Chilton on NBC Hannibal and his voice is so similar to the guy who played Dr. Chilton in The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal (the film that we don't necessarily speak of), and Red Dragon that I keep having to check back to make sure that it's not him. And Eddie Izzard doesn't sound like himself very much but it's really flappy hands-inducing and exciting to watch him do serious work because I know that he's done it before but I've never actually seen it until watching him play Dr. Gideon.
* Mads Mikkelwhosit… I don't know if he's replacing Anthony Hopkins as my favorite Hannibal Lecter or what's going on. Because I don't think that Anthony Hopkins is the ONLY Hannibal Lecter, not by a long shot. Manhunter is terrible, but I actually really enjoy Gaspard Ulliel's version of Hannibal (though this is due in large part to how I really like Gaspard Ulliel's voice and how I'm obnoxiously picky about auditory stimuli)… but Mads Mikkelwhosit's Hannibal feels a little more fully realized than Anthony Hopkins's, as a character?
It's not really either of their faults, though, because Anthony Hopkins doesn't really get to play off of that many people. He's playing Lecter while Lecter is in captivity and as such he only gets to play primarily off of Clarice Starling (again, we primarily only acknowledge Jodie Foster's Clarice because Julianne Moore tried but she played Clarice way too much like a Strong Female Character sort of stereotype and that's not who Clarice Starling is) and Will Graham (or anyway the false neurotypical-washed nondisabled Cishet White Manpain version of Will Graham that they gave to Edward Norton and he didn't do a bad job with what he was given, but it's not Will Graham)… and even in Hannibal, when he's out and about and living in Italy, Hopkins's Lecter doesn't get much of a chance to really stretch his legs.
But Mads Mikkelwhosit gets the chance to play not just off of Hugh Dancy's Will Graham (who is perfectly perfect in every way except that Bryan Fuller has some absurd and completely incorrect ideas about whether or not Will Graham can be autistic while also being a being of pure empathy and well, spoiler alert, Bryan Fuller? but you're wrong. Autistic people are completely capable of having and displaying empathy, please stop talking about us when you know nothing, Jon Snow)… Mikkelwhosit gets to play off of more people and he gets more of a chance to show off Lecter in different contexts and this is really interesting to watch. Plus, he and Hopkins both seem to buy into the idea that Lecter is a demon wearing a finely tailored person suit or whatever the quote is but there's something about Mikkelsen's Lecter that feels more humanistic?
Like he's acknowledging on some level that Lecter is actually a human being and that's why he's so terrifying: it's not that he's nothing like us but he looks like us and he can pass for us and he can wander amongst a crowd and "he looks normal, but no one can tell what he is" (Will Graham, "Sorbet"; unwittingly talking about Hannibal Lecter by way of talking about the Chesapeake Ripper). The horror of Hannibal Lecter isn't that he's nothing like us, it's that he's exactly like us… Hannibal Lecter is the extreme far end manifestation of various social power structures and of all kinds of different psychological bits and pieces of the average human being; the price of being able to have great people in the world in the good sense of the term, the sense where people do amazing things like change the world for the better, is that we have to suffer the potential of having people like Hannibal Lecter in the world as well and he's not something that we can just blot out and ignore because he's a part of us.
* "I have conversations with a version of you and hope that the actual you gets what he needs. …Naturally, I respect its meticulous construction but you are wearing a very well tailored person suit. …Maybe it's less of a person suit and more of a human veil" (Bedelia du Maurier, Sorbet; there's the quote that I wanted, ha ha, also PERFORMATIVITY FEELS SO MANY PERFORMATIVITY FEEL).
* …I made the bad life choice of overly identifying with Hugh Dancy's Will Graham. This is going… a mixed bag of well and terribly for me. But it's still a bad life choice.
* note to self based on overhearing a classmate talk about this: Scott in the eating disorders fic going out for food with some of his friends and ordering some pistachio ice cream so they won't think he's weird or sick or anything… but then Stiles, Isaac, Braeden, Danny, Kira, Lydia, and Allison all order like six or seven more desserts so everyone can share them and this goes a bit all over the place for Scott.
also… this feels like sacrilege but… I think I actually like Mads Mikkelwhosit's Lecter more than Anthony Hopkins as Lecter. like. it's sacrilege because Anthony Hopkins made the Hannibal Lecter character iconic in pop culture and it doesn't matter what other work he's done in his life or what other work he ever does, he will always be known best as Hannibal Lecter and liking someone else's Lecter better is just… but I mean. the issue with Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter is that *he* did a good job with the character… but one of the biggest failings of the movie Hannibal is that he's really phoning it in as Lecter.
(among other things because the Hannibal movie is awful on a lot of fronts, like… there's the ableism and homophobia with Mason Verger, there's the way that Julianna Moore plays Clarice Starling as this two-dimensional action girl Strong Female Character, there's the way that they turned Hannibal/Clarice into a ~beautiful love story~ which is BULLSHIT because yes, they run off to Rio together in the book too… but Thomas Harris is really quite clear about how this is a bad thing and Hannibal has psychologically manipulated Clarice and broken her into thinking that she's in love with him and the movie is all like AWW LOOK THEY REALLY LOVE EACH OTHER HANNIBAL HAS A HEART AFTER ALL and oh my god just stop that is not what happened you jack-offs, he DRUGGED HER and FED HER PIECES OF HER PARTNER'S BRAIN and then KIDNAPPED HER. WHAT THE FUCK PART OF THAT SAYS THAT HANNIBAL LOVES CLARICE. HANNIBAL IS FASCINATED WITH CLARICE BECAUSE SHE IS COMPLICATED AND HE LIKES HAVING HER AROUND BECAUSE SHE'S FASCINATED BY HIM WHICH FEEDS HIS EGO. HANNIBAL LECTER. DOES NOT. LOVE. ANYONE. EXCEPT. FOR. HANNIBAL LECTER. WHAT IS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS CONCEPT.)
then Red Dragon is pretty good as a movie, even though they neurotypical-washed Will Graham more than Bryan Fuller is doing (because like, Bryan Fuller has Will as neuroatypical but not autistic even though he's autistic in the books but Red Dragon and Edward Norton's Will Graham are just like LOL NOPE HE IS NEUROTYPICAL AND MADE OF WHITE BOY MANPAIN and like… no. nooooo. NOOOOO. there are so many things about Will Graham as a character that just don't make sense if you make him neurotypical and augh)… but that aside, Red Dragon is a pretty good movie. but… Ralph Fiennes gives a more commanding villain performance than Anthony Hopkins does, and that's not entirely his fault because Ralph Fiennes's character, Frances Dolarhyde, is out and about and killing people while Hannibal is locked up… but Hannibal was locked up in Silence of the Lambs and Hopkins did an amazing job of that performance?
and I don't blame him for getting kind of sick of being forever associated with Hannibal Lecter especially considering that Hannibal Lecter is… well. Hannibal Lecter. but like, he's magnetic and complicated and enthralling in Silence of the Lambs in ways that he just isn't in Hannibal or Red Dragon and I think there are two big reasons for that aside from Hopkins just kind of sick of the character (though that explanation does sort of explain these things in part): 1. he sort of falls back on playing this caricature of Lecter at points in Hannibal and Red Dragon, and it's possibly due to a lot of factors? like on the one hand, Hopkins is sick of Lecter but on the other hand… hack directors, basically. hack directors telling him to play a caricature of Lecter because they think that's what people want to watch; and 2. we don't really get to see Hopkins's Lecter really doing that much.
I mean, he does a lot for a cannibalistic serial killing ex-surgeon turned psychiatrist who's locked up in a criminal psychiatric hospital and primarily playing evil mentor to Clarice and Will (then faffing around in Italy and pretending to be an art history scholar and then some other stuff that I don't remember because the Hannibal movie is stupid and its plot is crap) but we mostly only get to see him interacting… with Clarice and Will. we don't really get to see any other facets of the character and when you put that together with the way that Hopkins and his directors sort of treat Hannibal as this mustache-twirling people-eating caricature after Silence of the Lambs, it's just… it's basically blasphemy to say so because he's *the* iconic Lecter.
(not that that's hard though because Manhunter's Lecter was awful and Gaspard Ulliel did the best he could in Hannibal Rising… but Hannibal Rising is really REALLY stupid, like. I told my dad the plot earlier because he was eavesdropping on me watching show!Hannibal and… none of it makes any sense, giving Hannibal Lecter a ~tragic backstory~ never made any sense, and Thomas Harris never even wanted to do the thing in the first place, his agent made him do it for some ridiculous reason involving copyright, and like. I like Gaspard Ulliel's Hannibal Lecter? but his movie is ridiculous and he made a prom dress out of carpet remnants at best. like… Gaspard Ulliel tried. He did a good job with what he had to work with. but what he had to work with wasn't that great and Hannibal Rising is patently ridiculous and makes no sense and Thomas Harris only wrote it because his agent told him to, I think he's even disavowed the book because it's that fucking stupid.)
…but then on the other hand? Mads Mikkelsen really seems like he GETS Hannibal Lecter in a way that no one else who's ever played the character does (except for the kid who plays bb!Hannibal in Hannibal Rising, he doesn't count because… he was nine, he had maybe five minutes of screen time tops, and it's not fair to put a kid in the same discussion as grown ass men who've played Hannibal Lecter).
like, Mads Mikkelsen (at least based on his performance as Lecter) seems like he really gets the point that Hannibal Lecter ISN'T some demon let loose from the deepest pits of Hell to wreak havoc on mankind and also eat people, which is a misconception that a lot of people have about the character. like, the true horror of Hannibal Lecter is that he's a person just like the rest of us and it's kind of like this one lyric from a Sufjan Stevens song? "And on my best behavior, I am really just like him." (amusingly, said song is also about a famous serial killer but the serial killer is John Wayne Gacy Jr, not Hannibal Lecter.)
like… Thomas Harris never wanted to give Hannibal Lecter a backstory because on a meta level and on a symbolic level? it doesn't really matter where the Hell Hannibal Lecter came from or why he does the things he does. The Dark Knight's take on the Joker embodies pure chaos in all of its destructive potential because he comes from freaking nowhere and he has no motivation for what he does beyond, "I want to fuck stuff up" and similarly, Lecter embodies the extreme far end manifestation of a lot of the less savory parts of human psychology and of white Western culture and what Hannibal Lecter DOES, as a character, is that he holds a mirror up to the rest of us and reminds us that we all have the potential to be exactly like him and to do the things that he does buried inside of us. a lot of ~monsters~ are horrifying because of their Otherness and how it's played up and emphasized as a reason why it's justified to fear them and hate them.
but Hannibal Lecter fits the idealized white Western normative subject in almost all of the ways in which he could possibly fit into that box and that's kind of the important thing to keep in mind about him: Lecter isn't an outsider, Lecter isn't an Other, Lecter is ridiculously freaking privileged and he abuses his power over everyone and their mom as a matter of course. Lecter isn't a demon and he's not wearing a person suit; Hannibal Lecter is a person just like the rest of us and he still murders people in cold blood and eats them and/or feeds them to other people because he doesn't have to be a demon in order to do those things. everyone has the potential to do the thing inside them as a person and Hannibal Lecter makes that truth manifest but he never stops being a person as he does the thing.
and Mads Mikkelsen's Lecter… admittedly, he has more to work with and he actually gets to interact with more characters than Hopkins does? but Mads Mikkelsen never dehumanizes Lecter. he never tries to run from the truth of Hannibal Lecter, which is that yes, he's a far extreme end manifestation of various aspects of human psychology and Western culture… but Hannibal Lecter is just like the rest of us. Hannibal Lecter lives inside all of us, or at least the potential to be like Hannibal Lecter is lurking inside all of us. …I'm just really emotional about Hannibal Lecter right now oh my god.