The Reason Why NBC’s Hannibal Found Such A Huge Female Audience Is Because Fuller’s/Mads’ Lecter

The reason why NBC’s Hannibal found such a huge female audience is because Fuller’s/Mads’ Lecter is not a male power fantasy: he’s a female power fantasy.

He’s not a broody snippy git whose appeal is assumed apriori and who in real life would drive away absolutely everyone he met (e.g. any sad manboy ever trotted out as a lead by Moffat).

He’s not an “aspirational” over-muscled hulk.

He’s not a fighter for ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ for whom bodies are just collateral on his path to heroic self-actualization

This Hannibal is the Head Bitch In Charge.

He is independent to the n-th degree. He lives to please himself and no one else. He is fabulous. He shamelessly geeks out over obscure and refined pastimes and shares them with friends. He is the Queen Bee of his social circle. He takes any excuse to treat himself, but he also has perfect self-discipline: gym is not optional. His time-management skills are superhuman. He can decorate and keep a house like Martha Stewart, hold down several jobs, and practice multiple hobbies daily.

(And what are his hobbies, aside from slaughter? Cooking, foreign languages, drawing, playing musical instruments and composing. And clearly clothes shopping. He is probably on first-name basis with the best tailors and cordwainers in town. Contrast with Will, whose hobbies are stereotypically masculine: fixing motor boats, fishing, playing outside with his dogs.)

Hannibal is not young, but he wears his age gracefully. He regrets nothing, like an embodiment of Piaf’s “Non, rien de rien”. His hair is perfect because he clearly spends time in front of the mirror styling it, not because the show’s producer wanted him to look effortlessly cool (*cough*Sherlock*cough*).

He never, ever loses his temper in public, as if he knows that the world/audience will not fawn over him for trying to assert himself through vulgarity, posturing, or volume - all the typical ways in which men like to hijack and dominate conversations.

He can dispatch a creepy stalker like Franklyn with a single neck twist, with no consequences. A sweet fantasy, indeed. If only real life stalkers were so easy to dispose of.

Hannibal’s victims - those who were not killed in self-defense or as ‘murder presents’ for Will - tend to fall into two categories: other killers who act like *they* are the baddest bitches in town (Gideon, Tobias, the mural guy) and people who disrespect him. Of those, there are surprisingly many. In fact, it seems like the very esteemed pillar of Baltimore society Dr. Lecter goes through life constantly being dissed. This is rather puzzling. Hannibal is a tall good-looking white gentleman who speaks like a professor, dresses like a count, and drives a Bentley that costs more than people’s houses. And yet something about him prompts many people, especially in the service industry, to be rude to him.

But he doesn’t confront these “pigs” (already a gender-loaded term, even though it gets applied to victims of both sexes) in a head-on, macho way. Instead, he bides his time and dispatches his prey through some kind of a sneak attack. His preferred philosophy of fighting is “feminine”: assume your opponent is physically stronger and don’t try to out-muscle them. (Even if his opponent is much smaller and weaker, like Chilton.) Subterfuge, ambush, sedatives - Hannibal wins his fights by fighting on his own terms. Nevertheless, if a man should come at him with a weapon, he defends himself with perfect adroitness: Tobias, Jack, Mason’s henchmen, etc.

Even some aspects of Hannibal’s relationship with Will would make more sense if he were female. In particular the issue of, well, issue. Hannibal is clearly Not Okay with Will having children with anyone but him. This is somewhat odd for a man, especially one who seems to have never wanted kids before this. But it makes sense for a woman just past menopause: fate finally delivered her dream partner, but it’s too late to have a family. And so Hannibal sets up the dominoes for Margot’s pregnancy to be terminated practically as soon as he learns of it. If he can’t have Will’s kids, then no one can. They may be adopted, but they have to be *theirs*.

It also makes sense that when Hannibal discovers Will’s treachery, he goes full Medea on him. Killing the man’s children is common to cultural narratives of wronged women all over the world. It’s often the only leverage they have over the men, the only way they can exact revenge. Hannibal can take much more than Abigail from Will, but she is the only thing he can take that truly matters.

Bonus exercise for the reader: imagine a version of the show where everything is the same, but Hannibal is played by Meryl Streep.

Or even just swap Mads Mikkelsen & Gillian Anderson places. Let her be Hannah Lecter; let him be Dr. Bennett Du Maurier, her wary shrink. Both the characterization and plot still work almost 100%.

Writing References: Injuries

Amnesia ⚜ Bites & Stings ⚜ Bruises ⚜ Drowning ⚜ Fractures

Frostbite ⚜ Infected Gunshot Wound (GSW) ⚜ Knife Injuries

Mechanism of Injury (Head-on collision; GSW; stabbings)

Hostile Environments (Cold; heat; oxygen deprivation; vacuum exposure)

Reactions to Injury ⚜ Scars

Types & Levels of Pain ⚜ Importance of Pain

Wounds ⚜ Wound Care ⚜ Writing Realistic Injuries

Hi, here are some previous posts related to injuries. Let me know if you were looking for something more specific. Hope this helps with your writing :)

More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

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wierduff

2 years ago

cooking while chronically ill

baking with arthritis or other chronic hand pain

living with chronic migraines

adhd meal plan

chronic pain tips

getting yourself to eat

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wierduff

1 year ago

347K notes View Post

wierduff

2 years ago

someone explain the jewish holidays to me like i'm 5 years old

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wierduff

2 years ago

bad representation in the pjo-verse: a masterpost

(disclaimers under the cut)

RACISM/OFFENSIVE STEREOTYPING

general issues: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7

SAMIRAH:

- arranged marriage: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

- hijab: 1 // 2

- response to rick’s post: 1 // 2

- nickname “sam”: 1 // 2 // 3

HAZEL:

- general issues: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6

- physical appearance: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9

- fr*zel: 1

- white/lightwashing: 1

- (bonus: fancasts/faceclaims/art references)

PIPER:

- general issues: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

- physical appearance: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11

- relationship with tristan: 1

- cornucopia: 1

- response to rick’s post: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

- (bonus: resources masterpost)

SADIE:

- whitewashing: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9

LEO: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5

REYNA: 1 // 2

MALLORY: 1 // 2 // 3

PAOLO: 1

THOMAS JEFFERSON JR: 1 // 2

latine rep: 1 // 2

eastern asian rep: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

indian rep: 1

southwestern asian rep: 1 // 2

antisemitism: 1 // 2 // 3

- LAVINIA: 1 // 2

the monsters and racial coding: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

the gods and dna: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

camp jupiter and the confederacy: 1

cultural appropriation: 1 // 2

white supremacy: 1

racism centric post with additions on leo + paolo + antisemitism: 1

ANTI-LGBTQ+

- general issues: 1 // 2

- nico’s romanticized forced outing: 1 // 2

- lesbophobia: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6

- ace/aro rep: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

- transphobia: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

ABLEISM

- general issues: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9

- r-slur: 1

- clovis: 1 // 2

- solangelo: 1 // 2

ABUSE

- leo: 1 // 2 // 3

BIG AGE GAPS

- general issues: 1

- annabeth and luke: 1

- black female characters: 1 // 2

- female characters: 1

- apollo and thalia: 1

MISOGYNY/SEXISM

1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8

FATPHOBIA

1 // 2

ACNE

1 // 2

UNDERAGE ALCOHOLISM

Keep reading

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wierduff

1 year ago

i’ve been doing my homework on how to break into a writing career and honestly. there’s a Lot that i didn’t know about thats critical to a writing career in this day and age, and on the one hand, its understandable because we’re experiencing a massive cultural shift, but on the other hand, writers who do not have formal training in school or don’t have the connections to learn more via social osmosis end up extremely out of loop and working at a disadvantage.

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wierduff

2 years ago

Every artist who sees this post should do the following:

- Watch the video.

- Follow the instructions

- Reblog

I can’t stress you enough about how important these exercises are for your drawing hand. You don’t wanna get CTS of Tendonitis and similar stuff that will prevent you from making art or even hold a pencil.

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wierduff

1 year ago

I stumbled across this blog on accident, but I am intrigued and I have to ask: is there a specific best place to read the Ulster Cycle in English?

yo! welcome to the niche corner

okay so first up the “ulster cycle” is a modern term given to a huge and disparate body of texts, some of which connect obviously to each other and some of which don’t but happen to have some of the same characters. some retellings attempt to rewrite the whole thing into a single coherent narrative but those are, by necessity, retellings rather than translations since that isn’t actually... what it is.

not all the texts have been translated but most of the big ones have and some of them even have multiple translations which is great

the big, central text and the one i reference most often is táin bó cúailnge, which used to get translated as “the cattle-raid of cooley” until thomas kinsella came along and was like “hey, maybe people would take us more seriously if we called it the táin”, so that’s what it generally gets called now. kinsella’s translation is good, as is ciarán carson’s. carson’s is a bit cheaper and personally i prefer it for general reading because of the style, but kinsella’s has the big advantage that he includes a bunch of the other stories which relate to the táin

another useful book is gantz’s early irish myths and sagas, which includes a bunch of texts from the so-called “ulster” and “mythological” cycles (again, modern terms). i would... ignore 99% of what gantz says in his little textual introductions because a lot of it is now quite outdated scholarship, but the translations themselves are solid enough

there are some more texts translated in the celtic heroic age by john carey and john koch but these are more academic translations and don’t really try and smooth over the syntax or any gaps in the manuscript for a modern audience, so that’s only if you’re really keen

you can also find a lot of the texts in translation at CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts (whoever came up with that acronym must have been so proud of themselves) -- these are generally older translations but hey, they’re free and they’re online and a lot of them are very accurate, even if that can make them a bit less readable

@finnlongman makes videos about medieval irish lit and has retold several ulster cycle texts on youtube here

hope this helps! you will also find various retellings out there, many of them victorian or early 20th century (lady gregory, eleanor hull etc) but like i said, if you want the texts in their most “accurate” form, these are the best places to start

[please note that links are amazon uk affiliate links, if you buy via those i get a teeny tiny commission, but actually would advocate supporting your local bookshops if possible, they’re mostly there for illustrative purposes]

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wierduff

2 years ago