Understanding Hannibal as a love story about morality. WILL AND HANNIBAL-understanding What makes Hannibal so good is how it accentuates it’s themes of understanding and masculinity. We see this through the context and contrast of will graham and Hannibal Lecter. Will has an empathy disorder which allows him to connect with and understand serial killers without realizing his therapist himself is a serial killer. What makes the combination of these two characters so unique is how they complement each other. Will doesn’t remember his mom. On the other hand Hannibal was an orphan who lost his sister whom he loved. It’s this shared family trauma and lack of identity that relates both characters and their ability to murder. Through themselves they understand each other. Hannibal learns vulnerability and Will learns violence. But how does understanding begin to happen, love? MORAL IDEALIZATION Idealization is the key to understanding specifically moral understanding. Its clear Will and Hannibal both share the same capacity to enjoy killing but exist on opposite ends of their concieved moral spectrum. Will wants to work with the police to catch serial killers but Hannibal secretly is a serial killer. What complicates this idea of what’s right and wrong is how other characters are defined. Jack for example whilst is a good cop only serves to idealize morality and selfishly pushes Will into the force even when he doesn’t want to. Hannibal on the other hand pushes Will to kill people and distance him from Jack. The difference is that Hannibal wants the best for Will as a murderer but Jack wants the best for himself. One would conceive Murder as a selfish act but Hannibal sees it as just as he think god does:forgivingly. ROMANTIC IDEALIZATION Most romantic relationships are built off the foundation of idealization and ideals. What makes this story interesting is how it blurs moral and romantic idealization together. Hannibal kills by a code of people and pigs akin to Nietzches’s Ubermensch. He believes himself a superhuman above other men which gives him the right to kill them. Romantic relationships are built off whether or not people can meet realistic and shared expectations of each other. Similar to the way Hannibal kills is the way he perceives relationships. The reason he loves Will is because he sees him not necessarily as someone equal but with potential to be an equal. This is why he treats him morally and hence, not others like Alana Bloom. Likewise, Jack idealizes the love of his wife in Will which causes him to treat him selfishly. Relationships platonic or not are only met when people are treated morally, as equals. ROMANCE SUBPLOTS What further accentuated Hannibal most as a love story was it’s 9 different romance subplots. Will and Margot pursue a realtionshop but Margot is a lesbian and it’s the worst part of the show as Margot attempts to have a child (tying into the shows themes of rebirth in the most problematic way possible.) This is built on lies. There is the unequal relationship between Alana and Lecter also built off someone’s lies:Hannibals. Then there is the semi platonic-romantic relationship with Hannibal and Bedelia where Hannibal only sees Bedelia as an observer and never a true equal. There was also the relationship between Will and Alana, with some potential which went nowhere because Alana couldn’t see him as a professional equal in order to be with him. There is the lesbian relationship between Alana and Margot where they love each other equally and work together. Then the final three straight relationships that all end tragically:Jack’s, The Red Dragons, and Molly’s with Will all due to the lack of equality and commitment of both characters. QUEER/CHRISTIAN/NIETZCHIAN SUBTEXT Hannibals a show obsessed with religious/philosophical subtext. Hannibals interpretation of Nietzsche isn’t an agnostic one, but an implied Christian one. Hannibal believes God enjoys murder and evil because he’s the one responsible for talking life away. Evil exists but it’s justifiable which ironically is similar to the same idea as the Ubermensch, an extraordinary man surpassing morality in order to be above others which can also be seen the same way as Christianity trumping over other religions or moreso Hannibals interpretation of it. Now, anytime I see media with queerness and religion in it I also have to note the real life relationship. Christianity and religion has often been used to be homophobic due to mistranslations of the original testament. If Hannibal is an explicit queer love story, maybe not an explicit romance itself, then the story itself can be seen as a reframed version of Christianity that accepts evil and homosexuality. Hannibal often sees himsef as an Ubermensch naming a fish Nietchzian and superimposing himself above others as pigs but also says God enjoys dropping a roof on a church. Does Hannibal believe in both? Is it a foolish thing to believe in both? Are our philosophies nothing more than the rationalizations of the unthinkable? MALE VULNERABILITY/POWER DYNAMICS Hannibal critiques masculinty and provides positive male representation amazingly. From before male vulnerability is just as important as destroying idealization. Will can’t love Hannibal because he won’t shed his masculinity, he won’t go to therapy. Through therapy we learn how emotionally repressed these characters and most men are. Hannibals therapy with Bedelia reveal Hannibals “person suit.” He can’t be his true self because he‘s a gay cannibal hiding his emotions. “I have let you know me, see me. Do you believe you can change me the way I’ve changed you.” “I already did.” Any form of vulnerability brings pain regardless of the consequences. The whole show Hannibal tries to bring Will to his same level as a murderer to love him. It isn’t until Hannibal surrenders to prison that he reaches Wills level, not by bringing Will up, but by bringing himself down to the same level of power. GUILT AS A CONSTRUCT/ACCEPTING SHAME Guilt often comes from the social construct of pre determined beliefs of what we believe society expects from us to feel guilt for. Hannibal is a story obsessed with guilt and shame. The shame that comes with Murder and with love. In society evil is seen as something bad and to feel guilty for the same way that love can be seen as something to feel bad and guilty for. Will Graham constantly grapples with the guilt of his enjoyment of Murder and how much he enjoys Hannibals company. It isn’t until he rejects police institutionalization and social norms that he breaks free from his guilt. Instead of accepting his evil and feeling bad Will accepts it and feels good both about murder and about love. Guilt and shame are real but culturally influenced and only when we have the strength to accept our individuality and accept our guilt and ourselves as a good thing does the guilt and pain ever go away. ACCEPTING AESTHETIC VIRTUE/REJECTING BEHAVIOURISM AND GUILT Of the most antiquated moral philsiosphies is that of aesthetic ethics, or the idea that morality or behavior should be based off of what’s deemed attractive or beautiful. The biggest part of Wills arc is seeing murder and love as “the ugliest thing in the world” only to them deem it “beautiful.” The idea revolves around serving the beautiful as a code of ethics but what’s beautiful if beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty itself like shame can often also be seen as a sign of behaviorism. Once in the show will states hes given up good and evil for behaviorism, or the idea that human behavior can be determined by what’s socially conditioned through the environment. Will says that Hannibals destructive, the same thing as evil which Hannibal refutes claiming that’s subjective and evil is not just destructive which Will slowly begins to realize. Eventually Will rejects his notions of behaviorism induced shame and realizes and buys into the idea that his ethics are to be determined by what he sees alone as beautiful:Hannibal, evil itself. ROMANCE SUBPLOTS/THE BECOMING Hannibal is a love story that combines 9 different romance subplots, each a different conception of morality that pushes it’s relationship forward. Morality defines the basis of all our relationships. Will Graham cant be violent enough and Hannibal not empathetic enough. Once they understand each other they can love. Hannibal murders beautifully, portraying victims as artworks of beauty and romance. Gradually Will recognizes the beauty of this evil. All the other failed relationships push away from the act of evil and of moral/romantic commitment. For Hannibal the idea of romance is portrayed as something queer, toxic, and self destructive because it isn’t associated with the norms considered good by society and meshed with the ugly morality which cannibalism calls for. The relationship between them In the end is always something co-dependent and messy but It embraces it owns faults and ultimately finds beauty in it instead of shying away from its darkest faults. Whats more terrifying:that every man has the capacity for “evil” or every man has the capacity for “love?” To Hannibal, the question doesn’t seem to matter so much because it seems beauty and evil or queerness are all one and the same. “This is my becoming.