theories about hannibal lecter

is lecter sexual at all in the novels, at least until the end of hannibal? i think it's constantly implied that he's somehow above desire, hence his scary power (yes, he wants freedom, but he isn't *driven* to eat people, he just does it because why not?)

That this isn't the case in Hannibal (he does it because of oh no! CHILDHOOD TRAUMA! oh NO!) is why I found that book an incredible let-down, and almost a "fuck you" to the reader.

btw what is a 'Rico warrant'?

why do you ask?

Hannibal is a black comedy. because a thriller it certainly ain't!

i mean the scene with ray liotta being fed his own brains...come on!

i know he means 'analogous' but for a wee split second i thought he meant 'analingus'.

apologies. carry on.

I don't think Hannibal is 'queer'...just hypercivilized, and I think he 'pursues' Clarice because no other woman meets his standards. She probably wouldn't either, only he thinks he knows her better than he does. Of course I didn't read the books, but that's what I got from 'Silence of the Lambs'. It's a variation on the 'final girl' theme, where the last girl gets to live because she's not like all the rest - typical obsessive's logic.

'Hannibal' the movie didn't deal with this in depth - in fact it was a superficial grotesque comedy, but wasn't all that psychological. I guess in that book they ran off together in the end, which makes no sense.

Guess whom I identify with, and why it creeps me out.

Ridley Scott's "Hannibal" film ... all gay cast?

No theories, but I rewatched both Red Dragon and Hannibal over the weekend (cable channel). Hannibal's pretty good for the most part, but I really wish they hadn't included that cartoonish stuff with Ray Liotta and his detachable scalp. Norton and Keitel are good in Red Dragon. Hopkins' fondness for "okey dokey" kills me.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/richard-walter-criminal-profiler-fraud.html

it may well be true (as this good piece suggests) that the success of the film silence of the lambs helped boost profiling in the early 90s: but the book in particular is extremely hostile to and scathing about the practice -- for example when lecter describes a key-characteristic-to-be-sought-and-logged aspect as something only a "real bottom-feeder" could have dreamed up.

nothing is achieved via profiling except misdirection. insofaras the feds actually attempt any, they very quickly end up outsourcing it to their pet consultant-psychologist-serial-killer-cannibal lecter -- who has of course literally met jame gumb and is trading snippets of gleaned "profile" (some correct but several of them totally misleading prank-lies: "billy rubin") purely for the enablement of his escape. to those impressed by profiling he thus comes to seem amazingly clever -- tho the careful reader is in on the deception.

the closest to a main character whose actual profession is "profiler" is frederick chilton -- and as we iris out on the movie he is stumbling into some undisclosed tropical safe haven, not spotting lecter right there on his tail, shortly to eat him for being both stupid and rude (viz a profiler)

given chilton's other job (he's director of a small prison for the criminally insane in baltimore) you do have to wonder if harris was (a) aware of richard walter when writing the book and (b) in fact literally modelling chilton on him? walter first appears red dragon, which came out too early for walter's star to have risen, but by the end of the 80s (when harris was doing a fvckton of research in and around the fbi, for silence) it *had* risen. harris will certainly have met and chatted to feds who had *opinions* abt this guy

aspect

Never read Silence of the Lambs but the other (purely fictional) profiler that I have come across is Fitz in Cracker. And the writer is also possibly scathing about it in terms of what profiling/psychology brings to an investigation, but there was a lot of other elements to that show: police corruption, engaging performances, an ep featuring Hillsborough..

Fitz in Cracker partly based on Prof Paul Britton, 'Britain's foremost criminal profiler' etc, who didn't exactly cover himself in glory in the Rachel Nickell case, and later suffered the indignity of being portrayed by Eddie Marsan in a docudrama abt the case:

https://www.scotsman.com/news/character-assassination-how-profilers-got-it-wrong-2442068

Isn’t Will Graham a profiler as well?

A: the actual real paul britton is noxiously dumber even than the fictional chilton IMO: long past time for someone to be eating *him*
B: the trope of the quasi-scientific intuitive magicman who understands criminals better than the police is not new (sherlock holmes was making lestrade looking like an idiot back in the 1880s) but i feel that the psychologists-are-a-new-kind-of-scientist *was* new in the 90s (with cracker an excellent example of this)
C: gil grissom in o/g CSI (2000-2015) was at first *literally based* on the character william petersen played in the first film based on red dragon (viz will graham in manhunter) -- who solved crime by being "like" the criminals (tho grissom only does this very early on i feel, the series switched to impossi-tech fairly quickly). harris dispensed with graham after just one book, i suspect bcz he realised you would have to dial back the tensions he was interested in as soon as the second case arrived (viz of a cop whose identity was collasping into psychopatholgy) (= he did not wish simply to be writing dexter)
D: i feel like cracker was riding the wave more than it predated or created the wave? esp as it's a jimmy mcgovern joint so in the end it's basically "about" ppl shouting at each other, for REASONS, and fitz is largely a device for dramatising police corruption, whose "science" can bring apolitical authority to the charge of corruption? i'd have to watch again to confirm this tho (it also had a much better cast than it had stories IMO, at least after the hillsborough one) (unless you take them ultra-gothickal a la hannibal, serial killer stories are all kind of the same warmed-over garbage -- IRL these are not "interesting" ppl, still less charming ppl)

(xpost and apologies gyac, this was already written up so i'm firing it off to get it out of the way)

The canonical Will Graham tweet is something like:

WILL GRAHAM: *enters crime scene of a mound of corpses*
WILL GRAHAM:
WILL GRAHAM: these people didn’t die peacefully

Is Chilton a profiler? I thought he was a psychiatrist.

will is a *kind* of a profiler yes, tho he operates much more by radical empathy and basically visions than e.g. psychological tests and forensic theory -- and harris's book-plot for red dragon treats him as intrinsically flawed and suffering for it, hence (IMO) harris switching away from him in subsequent books (where he's only really mentioned as a sad broken figure)

also manhunter wasn't a big hit the way silence was -- its latterday glow was very retroactive

the franchise has since very much returned to graham and found a lot of watchable use for him! but i don't think this much matches how harris felt about him (not that harris shd be our touchstone -- i was really more just saying that i think harris himself is extremely sceptical of profiling, and i don't feel his written deployment of graham runs against that scepticism)

i forget if this appears in the films but in the book chilton publishes a paper dissecting lecter -- which is i guess proto-profiling, in the sense that it's material to be used by actual-real profilers for chasing other murderers. lecter then demolishes it in a follow-up paper and humilates chilton.

my contention is that chilton in silence is the closest the book gets to featuring a profiler -- and in fact he's a fraud. he only really poses as one publicly in the brief moment when he's puffing himself up on air (while hannibal is escaping and also skinning cops right and left) and we only really hear about this puffing at secondhand

I read this thing on Jonathan Creek, which sounds like the comedy version of profiling. Someone who sees the crime in the way no one else can.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/apr/10/jonathan-creek-alan-davies-caroline-quentin-alan-yentob

xp

Will is literally a profiler? It’s his job? And Harris is really blunt about the way this takes its toll on him.

Chilton is a psychiatrist (and I forget if this is book or show only?) who is hinted at being kind of a sicko who is fascinated by monsters. Whereas the guy whose actual job it is gets torn apart by it.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/character-assassination-how-profilers-got-it-wrong-2442068

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 12 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Ah ok. I actually filed away that Stagg did commit the murder. What an awful investigation.

gyac, you're right: i'm confusing myself (and everyone else) by making a distinction between the FBI role of profiler (which is of course as you say will graham's actual job) and the role that frauds like richard walters take for themselves, parachuting in to gobble up publicity and ruin ppl's lives with irresponsible pseudo-scientific theories -- and then trying to convince ppl that will graham isn't a "real" profiler (because he's *not* a fake) while walters (and maybe chilton if he's modelled on walters, which was a flash of speculation fired up by the piece xyz linked) are the "real" profilers (because they are fakes). and then claim that this is also harris's considered position.

unsurprisingly this way of approaching it has been clear to no one but me and is not very helpful. i *am* interested in harris's own changing attitudes across the books (i read red dragon after silence of the lambs and never thought it was as good). does silence of the lambs (the book) has a scepticism towards what profiling was beginning to become (as a publicity industry *outside* the FBI)? i think it probably does but i'd have to do much harder work to turn this from thinking out loud into actual useable analysis