Relationship Spotlight: Will Graham & Hannibal Lector (Hannibal)

There’s still a couple months before Hannibal returns for its third season, but it’s never too early to write about this gorgeous, horrific show (not many series could fit both those adjectives in equal measure – Hannibal’s definitely a rare breed.)  The subject of today’s post is, of course, the most compelling reason to watch the show:  the twisted, twisted relationship between psychologically-fragile FBI profiler Will Graham and Hannibal Lector, his psychiatrist who possibly steps a smidgeon outside normal ethical practice (I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers.)

Despite the deafening alarm bells of “Run, Will – he’s a cannibal!!” dramatic irony, it’s impressive just how engrossing Will and Hannibal’s relationship is.  The irony is there, naturally.  The man who can dexterously place himself in the mind of any killer can’t see the killer sitting across from him, Hannibal’s position gives him access to all manner of FBI intel, and it’s an obvious exercise in disgust every time he invites Will over for a sumptuous dinner of human flesh.  With our insight as viewers into Hannibal’s blatant insidiousness, it would be easy just to focus on this side of things, but the series offers so much more to dig into.

In Will’s sessions with Hannibal, it’s clear that the not-so-good doctor isn’t just a murderous foodie with a taste for his own kind.  His gas-lighting manipulations are almost like another kind of cannibalism.  He consumes Will by breaking him down piece by piece, making him question everything he thinks he knows.  Part of it is utilitarian – Will is an expert with uncanny abilities, and since he’s the person most likely to get wise to Hannibal’s unsavory habits, it behooves Hannibal to throw him off his game.  However, practicality is only the tip of the iceberg.  Really, Hannibal plays with Will’s mind because he wants to.  He deceives, disorients, and dominates Will, pushing him just to see when he’ll break.  It’s absolutely sick, and it really says something that, for a character who literally kills people and eats them, this is what makes my skin crawl the most in relation to Hannibal.  At the same time, though, I like how much it hammers home his sociopathy.  Destroying Will is nothing to him because he honestly doesn’t care – it’s a necessity, or an experiment, or a game, and Will is just a thing Hannibal can use.

As part of Hannibal’s subjection of Will, he seeks to isolate him from everyone else.  Gradually, by degrees, he alienates Will from his coworkers and his few friends, wanting to position himself as the only one Will relies on.  This has both a tactical motivation – it leaves no one to help Will – and a sinister one – it makes his control of Will more complete.  Beyond that, Hannibal feels a perverse attachment to Will.  He’s fascinated by Will’s empathy disorder, which allows him to fully identify with anyone.  Not only is it the polar opposite of Hannibal’s pathology, which disallows empathy entirely, but he’s taken with the idea of Will’s dark potential.  Will can step into a killer’s head the way other people step into a room, and if Hannibal just applies the right pressure, perhaps he could be trapped there.  Through Will, Hannibal tries in part to create a playmate for himself, and he considers Will a friend in a way that only a sociopath can.  He “cares” for Will much like someone would care for a prized possession; Will is someone he owns, and any “sadness” (or facsimile thereof) that Hannibal feels over problems in their “friendship” is self-centered distress at the loss of his toy.  I like this, too – the show demonstrates that Hannibal isn’t an automaton without suggesting that he’s anything less than utterly vile.  “Connecting” with someone in his distorted way doesn’t make him salvageable.  Instead, when we see how he warps it, it only serves to highlight how despicable he really is.

Social Parallels on In the Flesh: Homophobia

In the Flesh uses its undead characters to draw allegories on many kinds of discrimination.  I don’t know if the anti-PDS sentiment in the show most resembles homophobia, but it’s the most acute comparison for me.  (Some spoilers, especially for Rick’s plot in series 1.)

The return of Rick, a soldier killed overseas, really cements this parallel for me.  His dad Bill leads the zombie-killing HVF, and by the time Rick comes home, Bill has already shot a woman with PDS (medicated) in the street.  It’s easy to assume Rick’s homecoming won’t be comfortable.  However, before Rick arrives, Bill makes it clear that he won’t abide intolerance of his son.  A new leaf?  Far from it – rather than becoming a PDS ally through Rick, Bill is willfully blind to the fact that Rick even has PDS.  To him, Rick never died at all, let alone ate anyone’s brain, and with Bill’s clout in the village, everyone uneasily plays along.  This greatly resembles a man who can’t come out to a father refusing to see the evidence before his eyes – if no one mentions it, it needn’t be true.  And more than just keeping quiet, Rick actively indulges the fantasy.  When Bill takes him to the pub, Rick drains glass after glass even though eating and drinking makes his undead body physically ill.  Like those whose internalized homophobia runs so deep that they force themselves into sexual encounters they don’t want, Rick damages his own well-being, goes against his own nature, for the façade.  Furthermore, he condones Bill’s hatred for people with PDS and even goes on patrol with Bill to find/kill untreated rabids in the woods.

Rick is the series’ strongest example of PDS folk making themselves more palatable to the living.  Flesh-colored makeup and colored contacts are standard-issue, no one should speak of their time as a rabid, and Kieren mimes knife-and-fork motions at each family meal; unlike Rick, he doesn’t eat anything, but the illusion, however flimsy, is important to his parents.  All this reminds me of those who profess LGBTQ tolerance provided they “don’t have to see it.”  You can be queer, but don’t look or act queer – no one wants to see that.  When Kieren comes home, his relationship with his family is shaky, yet things don’t really go south until he discusses his untreated experiences and removes his makeup/contacts in series 2.  Suddenly, they “don’t know who he is” anymore.  Plus, though Bill’s strong-arming gains Rick acceptance when Kieren is openly hated, this idea of being but not looking queer touches on effeminophobia.    Kieren isn’t effeminate, but he’s no macho ideal, and it’s striking to see muscular, gun-toting Rick get a seat at the table while soft-spoken, artistic Kieren is segregated.  Rick is acceptable in a way that Kieren isn’t, and there’s a sense that Rick is like Kieren but not like Kieren.  To crib from Animal Farm, if all gay men are marginalized, some are less marginalized than others.

Lastly, I love that the show doesn’t stick with metaphor alone.  Lots of supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi stories discuss diversity allegorically but sidestep the actual diversity they discuss.  In the Flesh, though, offers several LGBTQ characters, including Kieren.  Since he’s both queer and undead in a post-zombie-apocalypse society, the main focus in on the prejudice he faces as an undead person, but non-metaphorical homophobia comes up as well.  There’s the odd pejorative remark, he admits to being barred from the local pub even before dying (he’s “not like them,”) and it’s implied that Rick joined the army – and subsequently died – after a bout of gay panic from Bill.  However, with Kieren’s PDS doing most of the discrimination heavy lifting, his sexuality is largely allowed to just be, and even when others don’t like him falling in love with boys, he fully owns and accepts that part of himself – fully-realized LGBTQ characters for the win!

Five Iron Frenzy: The End is Near (2004)

A while back, I reviewed Brave Saint Saturn’s trilogy of albums, but I’ve never written about Five Iron Frenzy, the band from which Brave Saint Saturn was a spin-off.  Though massively different in both style and sensibility, I love Five Iron Frenzy pretty much equally for altogether different reason.  During their nine years together, the Christian ska/rock group made a lot of great music, but for my maiden post on their stuff, I’m writing about their final release.  (‘Cause I’m sensical like that.)

It really makes a difference that Five Iron created this album knowing that they were disbanding.  It’s not just the last there is – it’s a farewell, and notes of that farewell echo through the entire record.  Some songs are explicitly about the demise of the band.  “It was Beautiful” looks back on memories of the opportunities they had together and everything they saw/did while touring.  “See the Flames Begin to Crawl” essentially throws a Viking funeral for the band, offering up images of smashed guitars and drum kits before setting it all ablaze; although the fans “demand [their] survival,” the song rhapsodizes them as the ones to carry on the legacy.  And “That’s How the Story Ends” spins every crazy, goofy ditty Five Iron ever concocted into a Poe-esque tale charged with finality and tongue-in-cheek melodrama.

While these songs all provide overt references to the End in the album’s name, the death of Five Iron peeks through in other, subtler ways.  The opening track, “Cannonball,” is almost funereal in its recklessness.  In the song, the speaker – who describes himself as the titular cannonball – knows he’s plummeting to the earth and won’t survive, but he’s accepts it calmly as “what [he] was made for.”  And if we look to the other bookend, “On Distant Shores” ends the album on a further contemplation of mortality.  The chorus of course seems to allude to Heaven, pledging to meet God “on distant shores,” and the song also samples Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” one of the most blatant death poems ever, or at least among those not written by Emily Dickinson.  (Incidentally, Thomas wrote the poem, not about impending death, but impending blindness.  The literary world has spoken, however, and since any published work no longer belongs solely to the author, society at large has made their own ideas about the poem’s meaning.)  Yet, like the songs I discussed in the previous paragraph, “On Distant Shores” doesn’t only look ahead to the end; it also looks back, ending in an impassioned reprise of the last stanza of “Every New Day,” one of Five Iron’s best-regarded songs.

And okay, can we just take a second to talk about “On Distant Shores”?  It’s not so much a song as an experience.  It builds like an 11 o’clock number in a musical – starting slowly, building itself to a fever pitch, and ending in an outpouring of melodic ecstasy.  The bridge is especially stunning.  It takes front man Reese Roper to such a place of brokenness, acknowledging all his failings and unworthiness through Five Iron’s usual unflinching honesty.  If I had to pick a single lyric from the entire album, it’d be, “When grace was easy to admit, / I’d denounce the hypocrites - / Casting first stones, killing my own.”  It’s not often that you see Christian musicians so thoroughly exploring their own transgressions, which makes the song all the more powerful when it comes around to the ultimate theme:  that God loves beyond all reason, beyond what anyone deserves, beyond what anyone believes can possibly be true.  In the midst of sin, shortcomings, and self-loathing, the love continues, and it’s that love that Five Iron Frenzy captures better than most Christian music I’ve heard.

A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1987-1992, 1995)

Though Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry have acted together in all sorts of projects they haven’t written (like Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster, and Peter’s Friends,) this is what comes to mind when I think “Fry & Laurie humor.”  Their comic chemistry is evident in any shared project, but this series has a particular spark and savvy that’s all theirs.  There’s nothing quite like the comedy they make here.

A Bit of Fry and Laurie was a sketch comedy show packed to the gills with the duo’s trademark wordplay, absurd situations, bonkers characters, and inventive subject matter.  The tendency is to crow about “sophisticated comedy,” and some of the jokes are indeed masterful, but it’s not all high-brow all the time.  It also includes outrageous sexual humor and, what Extras would call the death-knell of comedy, “wigs and silly glasses.”  Dirty jokes and goofy costuming doesn’t discount the intelligence, doesn’t mean the funny gents at the helm aren’t whip-smart.  The humor is low and high, often both at the same time.  And really, the cruder jokes are generally just as well-written as the classier stuff.  This isn’t a show that goes dirty instead of being funny – the two go hand in hand.

So what’s on the docket?  There’s fantastically funny music lampooning various genres.  I adore “I’m in Love with Steffi Graf,” but my favorite would have to be the mock-protest song “All We Gotta Do,” which goes especially Dylan-esque (read:  mumbly and unintelligible) whenever the lyrics are poised to explain how to solve the world’s problems.  There’s over-the-top social satire, like the man who storms into his son’s school, outraged that they’ve been teaching lies like “Sexual intercourse can often bring about pregnancy in the adult female.”  They do fake talk shows, infomercials, and telethons, and they play insufferable TV critics and lambast their own sketches.  Stephen, without a hint of makeup, costume change, or acting, “plays” special guest Michael Jackson, and It’s a Wonderful Life is retold with Rupert Murdoch in the starring role.  They share end-of-episode cocktail recipes with such enticing names as “A Slow Snog with a Distant Relative” or “Everything in the Till and No Sudden Movements.”  Some sketches are just nonstop wordplay, like Stephen’s overenthusiastic linguist character or the sketch in which bartender Stephen keeps interrupting Hugh’s monologue to offer eerily-apt snacks.  (“She takes no interest in my friends, she laughs at my…” – “Peanuts?” – “…hobbies.”)

They don’t do many recurring sketches, but the ones they have are excellent.  I especially love Control and Tony, the stiffest, most polite spies ever, and super-intense business partners Peter and John are my favorites – “Damn, double damn, with an extra pint of damn for the weekend!!”  Still, they generally keep things fresh.  A few novel goodies include an Australian soap opera (“I’ve been having an affair with you for some time now,”) a prize-winning teenage poet (“‘Unhappy bubbles of anal wind popping and winking in the mortal bath,’”) and a bookstore customer dissatisfied with Jane Eyre (“Give me something, please, to read that doesn’t go on about window seats I’ve never heard of, and doesn’t have some dead bitch calling you ‘Reader’ all the time.”)  Yep, “a league of their own” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Warnings

Language, sexual references, alcohol/drug use, comic violence, and thematic elements.

Insurgent (2014, PG-13)

I’m still trying to decide what I think of Insurgent.  While the first movie in the franchised diverged moderately from the book (see what I did there?), the second installment veers off pretty substantially.  The characters and story move to the same places, but the routes they take to get there are very different.  Good different or bad different?  Some of each, truth be told, and the big question is, which is more prominent?

As in the book, Tris and her cohorts are on the run from the Erudite leaders out for Divergent blood.  Jeanine, the head of Erudite, wants Tris for a secret project, but whereas Book!Jeanine needs a lab rat on which to test Divergent-proof serums, Movie!Jeanine has a super-special MacGuffin (sort of) box that contains vital information and can only be opened by a perfect Divergent.  The plot here is a bit more focused and streamlined, but what it gains in coherency, it loses in a fair amount of character shading.

Not that the movie is without character development.  The added plot elements offer some pretty neat insights into Tris, and some important points – like her guilt and post-traumatic stress over the events of the first movie – are maintained.  I think Four comes across better in the movie, and the film takes advantage of Miles Teller’s post-Whiplash profile to expand on Peter’s character.  However, we don’t get much into the theme of Tris’s goals and ideas going against the plans of her faction, seeing Tris wrestling with following Dauntless or doing what she thinks is right.  And while the PTSD is included, chiefly in her nightmares and some of the MacGuffin-box-induced simulations, the film completely ignores Tris’s fear/reticence of handling guns after what happens to her in Divergent. 

And of course, most of the supporting characters are glorified window dressing, if that.  As Amity leader Joanna, Octavia Spencer has shockingly little to do, and the awesome Daniel Dae Kim does what he can to bring Candor leader Jack to life with his limited screentime.  Some Dauntless members who were left out of the first film, notably Uriah and Lynn, are introduced here, and while the young actors do a fine job capturing the characters, the screenplay offers little sense of who they are and what their inner lives might involve.  Finally, I know I mentioned Maggie Q’s Tori in my Divergent review, and I still love her, but why did they go to the trouble of casting Maggie Q if they were going to excise Tori’s entire plot?  At least she had Tris’s testing in the first movie; here, she hardly has more to do than any other Dauntless member.  Boo!

Just in general, this movie feels a little tighter, a little more purposeful, than Divergent.  Some sloppiness from the book gets tidied up, the conflict between Tris and Jeanine gets central focus, and some of the fighting is pretty excellent – there’s a long combat sequence on a train that’s terrific.  Additionally, Tris’s dreams and simulations, which I already mentioned, are all fantastically rendered.  They look great, and the simulations are especially cool (well thought-out, too, which is obviously a big plus.)

Warnings

Violence, freaky images, light sexual content, swearing, and thematic elements.

Next Four Shorts: Fatty Arbuckle & Buster Keaton

I enjoyed writing about the rest of Buster Keaton’s independent comedy shorts, so I might as well keep it up.  I’ve already done my top five picks on the Arbuckle-Keaton stuff and, since I have eight to go, I’ll give you four today and four more next week.  There really is a lot of funny stuff to be had here.

The Butcher Boy (1917)

Buster’s screen debut!  Fatty works in a butcher shop/general store, where he slices cuts of meat between battling a rival for the affections of the girl he loves.  Buster plays an unsuspecting customer who causes a little havoc of his own before getting caught in the crossfire of the dueling would-be lovers.

Best Buster Bit:  Buster’s first onscreen stunt – taking a sack of flour to the face.  As Buster later described, the force of it puts his head where his feet had been.  Talk about suffering for your art!

His Wedding Night (1917)

Fatty and another man fight over the same girl (sound familiar?)  Serious (funny) business this time around, as the rival actually tries kidnapping her – little does he know, though, he’s in fact run off with Buster, who models the wedding dresses he delivers.

Best Buster Bit:  After discovering that the wedding dress has fallen out of its box, Buster, in looking around for it, checks his pockets.  For a wedding dress.  Such glorious little moment. 

Coney Island (1917)

More of Fatty trying to woo a girl, now with Buster playing his rival.  Lots of clowning around on the rides, the midway games, and the beach.  Noteworthy for Buster’s blatant delight when Fatty accidentally winds up with a women’s bathing suit.

Best Buster Bit:  Buster gets a job as a lifeguard and, stepping out of the changing rooms, does a backflip for absolutely no reason at all – love it.

Moonshine (1918)

Fatty and Buster play a pair of revenue agents on the prowl for bootleggers.  This has a different comedy style than the other Arbuckle shorts I’ve seen, and really, most silent films I’ve seen.  It’s super meta, with the intertitles constantly breaking the fourth wall.  One of my favorites is when Buster explains that all the extras went to lunch, offering to go find them before Fatty decides they can do the explosion scene without them.

Best Buster Bit:  After Busters takes a plunge in the river, Fatty literally hangs him up to dry.  From a tree branch.  Upside-down.  By his ankles.  Ha!

Favorite Characters: Maria Jackson (The Sarah Jane Adventures)

It’s high time that I mentioned the second spin-off from the Who mother ship.  Although not as prominent as Torchwood, I really love The Sarah Jane Adventures.  It was a delightful series that frequently delivered smart and imaginative writing without condescending to its younger target audience, and the wonderfully likable characters played a big part of that.  More will follow in due time, but we’ll start with our initial eyes into the series, those of Maria Jackson.

As far as characterization is concerned, Maria isn’t as well-drawn as Luke, Clyde, or Rani, but that’s largely due to the Everygirl factor.  We don’t learn as much about Maria’s interests or ambitions outside of alien-fighting.  Instead, she remains a less-defined presence, which better allows the viewers at large to identify with her.  However, this really doesn’t detract from her appeal.  She’s hardly the first intentionally-generalized protagonist out there, and when done well, the device can be effective. 

And it’s certainly effective here.  What Maria’s characterization lacks in specificity, it makes up in overall rootability.  Her parents’ recent divorce adds some familiar color to her home life, and many can relate to being new in town and starting a new school year with trepidation.  While these normal adolescent concerns are present, she approaches both well.  Though she misses having her mom as a constant in her life, she recognizes that the divorce is a better alternative than endless fighting, and she has a lovely, warm relationship with her dad.  And she may be nervous about going to a new school, but she begins her first day with a clear, optimistic head and looks out for Luke, who’s much more out of place than she is.

But of course, that’s the boring regular-life stuff – nice, but not what we’re in it for.  No, the real draw comes when Maria wakes in the middle of the night and discovers the curt woman from next door entertaining an alien in her backyard.  This is where we see the bulk of Maria’s qualities start to shine through.  Like a companion in training, she comes alive at the sight of real alien life.  She’s bewildered, naturally, in some denial about what she’s seen, but she can’t shake the image or the wonder and excitement that came with it.  The next day, she tries her hand at more mundane activities – making a friend who likes watching TV, going into town, and admiring good-looking boys – but it’s clear that her heart’s not really in it until everything starts going all impossible and unhuman.

She takes to the mystery with relish, and we immediately learn that she’s smart (hiding in the ladies’ restroom because she knows the male guards won’t look for her there,) compassionate (taking the obviously-abnormal Luke under her wing,) and determined (resisting Sarah Jane’s initial attempts to keep her out of the whole alien-hunting lifestyle.)  She’s brave and curious, she can think on her feet, and she absolutely adores seeing everything the universe has to offer.  And while there’s no way she can just go back to ordinary life after saving the world with Sarah Jane and co., she also doesn’t let the extraordinary blind her to the trappings of home; she loves her parents to bits and fights aliens in part to protect them, both from blatant extraterrestrial hostility and the enormity of facing up to the truth about alien life.  She’s a devoted friend who proves herself time and again, even keeping up the good fight on her own when time goes screwy and all of her friends, including Sarah Jane, are out of commission.  Not bad at all for a 14-year-old.