Hannibal Lecter and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy)
Page 20
The ACME Question
Part of what makes Hannibal Lecter a compelling, even archetypal, character is that we can’t quite figure him out. He can figure out what makes us tick—those in his various peer groups: serial killers, psychiatrists, profilers—but we can’t, it seems, figure out what makes him tick, whatever we learn of his formative years in Hannibal Rising. He’s an enigma. Or as Will(iam Petersen’s) Graham puts it in Manhunter, when asked what was diagnosed as wrong with Lecter, “Psychologists call him a psychopath. They don’t know what else to call him.” But he’s also, even among other psychopathic killers, a most unusual case, which we see with crystal clarity when we’re introduced to him in Silence, last cell on the left. He’s a completely different beast from the other criminally insane inmates: “They don’t have a name for what he is.” Nor is this just a matter of education, intelligence, or decorum. Lecter defies analysis. He’s too smart, too unusual, for conventional understanding and techniques: “He’s much too sophisticated for the standard tests” (Demme, Silence). As Manhunter’s Graham puts it, “We tried sodium amytal on him three years ago to find where he buried a Princeton student; he gave ’em a recipe for potato chip dip.” As serial killers go, Lecter is clearly a cut above.
Now I’m not suggesting that we can necessarily fully plumb Dr. Lecter’s psyche, not at all. Although we might, but perhaps never should, resolve the enigma he presents, it may prove insightful to seek at least a partial account of his character by considering what I’m calling here the ACME question. Specifically, if there is some hypothesis we can make about Lecter that can help explain different, seemingly incongruous, but essential aspects of his personality, that fact will give us good reason to accept that hypothesis: a curve that best fits a set of data points will be justified for that reason. This principle of “inference to the best explanation” is familiar both in philosophy and in science, and applies even in the case of fictional entities like Hannibal Lecter. The ACME question concerns and comprises four of these essential and ill-fitting aspects of Dr. Lecter’s personality: ‘A’ for art, ‘C’ for cannibalism, ‘M’ for murder, ‘E’ for etiquette—each of which is vitally important to Lecter, though the set seems ill-matched. Why would someone who values brutal murder care about fine art? How could a cannibal’s decorum give Emily Post a run for her money? Is there anything about Lecter that integrates and explains this apparently ragtag collection of tendencies?
Of course: the aesthetic. It’s Lecter’s aesthetic sensibility that underlies and unifies these different aspects of his concern and personality, at once ultra-civilized and ultra-savage. Lecter’s appreciation for art isn’t at all motivated by financial investment or cocktail-party snobbery. His art-scholar expertise rather expresses and facilitates his appreciation of works of art as works of art: for what they represent, what they express, for the skill and style with which they’re created, and for the aesthetic pleasure that comes from interpreting and creating them. His cannibalism is no less refined. He’s a gourmet, after all, a cannibal gourmet—both as a chef, where he exhibits a subtle creativity adapting Cordon Bleu techniques to preparing human tissue, and as an epicure, where he demonstrates an appreciative and discerning palate. Though he sometimes, in the form of attack, tears into live unprepared flesh with his teeth, this is not the aesthetic Lecter aspires to and often achieves. He prefers a slow burn. Lecter’s attitude toward serial murder is similar, as he’s quite at home adopting the posture of both artist and critic. As an artist he creates difficult, often symbolically rich tableaux using his victims as raw material. As a critic he often demeans the imperfect efforts—as psychologically shallow, forensically clumsy, interpretively trite—of other serial killers.
But how does Dr. Lecter’s odd obsession with etiquette fit in here? His first murder, we see in Hannibal Rising, is spurred by the victim’s bad behavior toward Lecter’s aunt: menacing but essentially disrespectful. In Silence, after his escape, Starling is convinced that Lecter won’t come after her because “he would consider that rude.” In general—that is, when he’s not killing or eating anyone—except for occasional bouts of provocative rudeness, he’s scrupulously polite and decorous. Those like Graham and Starling who respect him, in both senses, likewise refer to him, title intact, as “Dr. Lecter.” To them, and up to a point, Lecter responds in kind. If we think of etiquette as a set of arbitrary conventions which are essential to culture, part of the order that civilization imposes on nature, then we can see how someone like Lecter who’s fastidious about etiquette may be that way because in a world of chaos such politesse can provide deep aesthetic satisfaction. “Discourtesy,” says Lecter, “is unspeakably ugly to me”—an aesthetic complaint (Demme, Silence).
In short, although this doesn’t and isn’t meant to dispel completely the enigma that is Dr. Hannibal Lecter, what unifies his value system, what integrates his personality, what makes him the archetype he is, is precisely the aesthetic. Yet what makes sense of Lecter makes sense of us, the audience, as well, and what we—through the horror—keep coming back for.
14
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Dinner Party
JOSEPH WESTFALL
Two cannibals are eating a clown.
One says to the other, “Does this taste funny to you?”
Hannibal Lecter is a funny guy.
To be sure, generally speaking, his sense of humor is a tad bit more refined than average. Some of his jokes and witticisms might go over all those other poor dullards’ heads. Sometimes, his humorous comments are only funny if you know certain things about Dr. Lecter, things that, at least until the time of his incarceration, he seemed quite interested in keeping private—or, at least, known only to a special few. But even if we do not always understand his humor, even if the jokes we do get seem to us sometimes more cruel than funny, we would be remiss in our accounting of the good doctor were we not to include “witty” among his essential characteristics: he is intelligent, yes, a genius, even; he is clever, and manipulative, persuasive in the extreme; he is gifted, a talented artist and composer and scholar and psychiatrist and chef. While there might be some reasonable debate about whether he’s evil or a psychopath, we can all agree that he is both a serial killer and a cannibal. As Paul Lewis notes, “Dr. Lecter draws on his impressive intellect and vast store of knowledge in both committing crimes of great brutality and in coming up with witty accounts of them” (Lewis, pp. 34–35). In short, whatever else he might be, Hannibal Lecter is a funny guy.
First Principles
What makes something funny? Although there are many competing philosophies of humor, the most widespread explanation is actually one of the simplest: something is funny when it unites within itself a contradiction between two incommensurable elements—and when, generally speaking, we experience that contradiction as amusing (rather than, say, as terrifying or inappropriate or incomprehensible). Thus, the Keystone Cops unite the orderliness presumed of police work with the production of chaos to humorous effect; Charlie Chaplin’s most famous character, the Little Tramp, unites the customs and mannerisms of bourgeois society with extreme poverty; and so on. In contemporary humor, Will Ferrell has virtually made a career of unifying the contradiction of self-importance and idiocy in his characters—the most recent incarnation of the classically comedic character, the buffoon—in a way that keeps us laughing, time and time again.
This general answer to the question, “What makes something funny?” is often called “the incongruity theory of humor,” and one of its most striking features, as the philosopher Noël Carroll has pointed out, is that it shows us that humor has a structure very similar to that of horror. Although “at first glance, horror and humor seem like opposite mental states,” Carroll points out that, just as with a funny joke which unites incongruous elements to form a self-contradictory whole, so we can see that horror—especially in its most common literary and cinematic form, the monster—similarly unites incongruous elements to form a self-contradicto
ry whole (Carroll, “Enjoying Horror Fictions,” p. 145). An undead monster like Dracula (or Frankenstein, or the mummy, or the zombies of The Walking Dead) is the self-contradictory unity of life and death; on the other hand, a more bestial monster—perhaps paradigmatically, the werewolf—is the incongruous unity of human and animal.
Carroll makes an effort to extend his analysis of the monster into discussions of humor—he uses, frighteningly enough, the example of the clown (especially as used by Stephen King in It)—but clowns seem to be either horrifying or amusing, maybe even alternating between the two, but never both at the same time. (Pennywise does not seem capable of eliciting laughter, nor Bozo genuine horror.) In any case, thinking about clowns doesn’t seem terribly useful in coming to understand the wit of Hannibal Lecter: Dr. Lecter is no clown. In addition, Carroll tries to explain how he might include someone like Dr. Lecter in his definition of monsters (he spells it “Lector,” and calls such characters—like Norman Bates from Psycho—“psychotics,” although Thomas Harris seems to have made every effort to resist identifying Lecter straightforwardly or simply as a psychopath; Carroll, “Enjoying Horror and Humor,” p. 148).1 But again, insofar as we find Dr. Lecter frightening, Carroll’s theory doesn’t explain how we might also—at the same time—find him funny.
Carroll thinks that we cannot find the same things amusing and frightening, precisely because, on his understanding of horror, we must feel like the monster (or psychopath) is dangerous—and, on his understanding of humor, we must feel safe from such dangers in order to find them amusing. Hannibal Lecter, however, is simultaneously humorous and frightening, not only both dangerous and amusing, but amusingly dangerous (and dangerously amusing?). His humor gains from the horror he inspires, and he is more frightening given his capacity for disarming us (and his “friends” and victims) with his wit and charm. Thus, if we’re going to understand what makes Dr. Lecter such a humorous fellow, we’re going to have to go beyond the dominant view among philosophers—and delve a little more deeply into Hannibal Lecter’s humor itself.
Sometimes, Lecter uses mild jokes and witty observations to gain the trust of his companions, or in the manner of a polite and engaging host. He is, as we Fannibals know, a most charming man. But I think it’s safe to say that charm is not a central component of Dr. Lecter’s sense of humor. Generally, he uses charm in more direct ways: the gift of the Scarlatti score (or the Dante sonnet, in the film version) to Signora Pazzi in Hannibal; the sympathetic ear he lends Alana Bloom in the television series; the exquisite food with which he makes friendly overtures to nearly every character in that series, as well. Even when he playfully teases Alana or engages Jack Crawford or Will Graham in witty repartee, Hannibal Lecter isn’t especially funny. No, Dr. Lecter’s humor comes from a darker place.
Much of the time, when Lecter is funny he is mocking somebody or something, and although we are amused by his mockery, we don’t find it particularly witty or charming. This is the predominant type of humor Lecter uses in the novels of Thomas Harris, as well as their film adaptations. In addition to mockery, however, there are two others. When under duress—when captured by the Sardinians in Mason Verger’s employ in Hannibal (in the novel, the film, and the television series), for example—Lecter often makes light of his tormentors and captors, or his situation. And then, on occasion, Lecter tells jokes or makes wry comments that are really only funny to the movie or TV audience—not the people around him—or (and there are obviously very few of these) other characters who are aware of the true nature of Dr. Lecter’s culinary proclivities.
We have, thus, three basic types of Hannibal Lecter humor: (1) mockery, (2) expressions of power, and (3) inside jokes. Naturally, some specific instances of Dr. Lecter’s humor will fall into more than one category, but it’s useful to examine the categories separately, I think, in any case.
I Hope You’re Not Too Ugly
The type of humor Hannibal Lecter uses most frequently in the novels is of the mocking sort. After having encouraged and enabled Francis Dolarhyde, the serial killer known to the public as “the Tooth Fairy,” to travel to Florida to attack FBI investigator Will Graham and his family—and after Will suffers a grievous facial wound, courtesy of Dolarhyde—Dr. Lecter writes Will a letter from prison, in which he notes, “My dear Will, you must be healed by now . . . on the outside, at least. I hope you’re not too ugly” (Ratner, Red Dragon).
In the novel upon which Brett Ratner’s film is based, the letter never reaches Will Graham. It is intercepted and destroyed by Jack Crawford. In the novel, the joke forms the closing line of Dr. Lecter’s note, and it reads, “I wish you a speedy convalescence and hope you won’t be very ugly. I think of you often” (Harris, Dragon, p. 335). In this way, the novel version has a somewhat more menacing tone than in the film. Neither the joke nor the letter—nor the assault on Will Graham at his home—appear in the first film adaptation of Red Dragon, Michael Mann’s Manhunter.
In the Red Dragon film, the line, read to us in the inimitably snide voice so much a part of Anthony Hopkins’s interpretation of the character, is in fact rather funny—despite its lack of cleverness (as far as humor goes, it’s more a jeer than a joke), and the violence of which it makes light. But these elements—the crass directness of the joke, as well as the cruelty of the barb—are characteristic of a large percentage of the humorous things Hannibal Lecter says or does in the novels, as well as in the films based upon them. In addition to killing and eating people, Dr. Lecter appears to be quite fond of cruelly mocking people; we might say he skewers them (ba-dum-tss!). This is especially true of people who have suffered violence, great tragedy, or loss, as Will Graham has at the end of Red Dragon; as Clarice Starling has in the opening chapters of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, when Paul Krendler has basically assured the end of her career at the FBI after the shootout at the Feliciana Fish Market; or as Senator Ruth Martin has in her meeting with Dr. Lecter in Memphis in The Silence of the Lambs, where he has promised to help in the search for her daughter, Catherine Martin, the last woman abducted by the serial killer Jame Gumb (also known as Buffalo Bill or, in the novel, Mr. Hide). Recall Lecter’s obscene references to Senator Martin having breastfed her daughter—“Tell me, mum, when your little girl is on the slab, where will it tickle you?”—and then his parting shot: “Oh, and Senator, just one more thing: love your suit” (Demme, Silence). Generally speaking, Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s primary response to weakness is a snide and cruel but humorous one: “mock the weak” is perhaps a milder correlate of his more infamous dictum, “eat the rude.”
Mockery is not the highest form of humor, to be sure, and although it can be genuinely funny, the laughs are usually short-lived—and always at someone else’s expense. Thus, despite his proclamations to the contrary (“Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me”—uttered by Lecter in both the book and film versions of Silence, as well as in the TV series), it would seem that Dr. Lecter is in some ways and at some times—again, almost exclusively in the novels and films—quite rude. This is true despite the narrator’s musing in The Silence of the Lambs (and Will’s in Hannibal), that “it was as if the murders had purged him of lesser rudeness” (Harris, Silence, p. 22; Hannibal, Season 2, “Tome-wan”). And this, also despite Clarice Starling’s insight, in conversation with the ex-orderly, Barney, that “she recognized for the first time the compliment implied in the monster’s ridicule” (Harris, Hannibal, p. 90). While Lecter does mock those whom he seems genuinely to respect—Will and Clarice chief among them—he also turns his biting mockery on lesser figures, perhaps most notably (and least respectfully) his former patient and victim, Mason Verger, and his “keeper” while he is incarcerated in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Dr. Frederick Chilton.
One of the most telling moments of mockery in the Hannibal Lecter series appears in the film version of Hannibal. Dr. Lecter has left Europe and returned to the United States, and he is in telephone conversation with Clarice Starling, goading her on but
refusing to remand himself into FBI custody. Clarice notes that Mason Verger, a former patient whom Hannibal Lecter had drugged and then persuaded to cut off his own face (and feed it to his dogs) and, in the film, Lecter’s only surviving victim, is intent on killing him. Lecter notes that, on the contrary, Verger wants to see him “suffer in some unimaginable way,” and then asks, “Have you had the pleasure of meeting him . . . face-to-face, so to speak?” When she responds in the affirmative, Dr. Lecter adds, with what seems like more than a little relish, “Attractive, isn’t he?” (Scott, Hannibal). His mockery—one of the funniest lines in the film—draws attention to Verger’s disfigurement, while at the same time, by taking the form of a rhetorical question, makes Clarice complicit in the mocking observation. Just as he will attempt to persuade Clarice later in the film to join him in his eating of the rude Paul Krendler’s brain (successfully, in the novel), here he attempts to implicate her in the mocking of the most obvious weakness of Mason Verger, his lack of a face.
Lecter is speaking of Frederick Chilton when he observes to Will Graham, “Gruesome, isn’t he? He fumbles at your head like a freshman pulling at a panty girdle” (Ratner, Red Dragon; the jibe originally appears at Harris, Dragon, p. 60). It is, as so many of the best lines in Harris’s novels and the films are, recycled in the television series—where, however, it is taken out of Lecter’s mouth and put into Chilton’s own: “The irony is that [Will Graham] is my patient, but he refuses to speak to me. It makes me feel like I’m fumbling with his head, like a freshman pulling at a panty girdle” (Hannibal, Season 2, “Kaiseki”). Of course, once it is Chilton himself making the “panty girdle” reference, it isn’t really mockery any longer—Chilton isn’t mocking anyone, he’s making a self-deprecating confession about the difficulty of treating Will Graham. What was once an indication of Lecter’s disdain for Chilton, and which helped the reader and moviegoer to cultivate some Lecter-like disdain for Chilton, as well, becomes instead one of Dr. Chilton’s most human moments—and helps us to see him in a more sympathetic light.