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“Is Hannibal In Love With Me?” – The Construction of Queerness in NBC's Hannibal MA Thesis Anna Schmieding University of Amsterdam MA Film Studies 04.07.2018 Supervisor: Dr. M. Wilkinson Second Reader: Dr. T. Laine Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Queer Theory 2 1.2 Queer Media Representations and Queer Readings 4 1.3 Detectives, Murderers, and Monsters: Hannibal 6 1.4 Corpus and Method 8 2. Narrative 10 2.1 Hannibal , Red Dragon , and Questions of Genre 10 2.2 Visuality, “Reality”, and Ambiguity 14 2.3 Failed Families and Rejecting Heteronormativity 20 3. Characters 25 3.1 Hannibal, the Paradox 25 3.2 Will's Identity in Flux 30 3.3 Stag Man and the Raven-Feathered Stag 36 3.4 Will and Hannibal Merging Into One 41 4. Actions 46 4.1 Transgressing Boundaries: Killing, Eating, Cannibalising 46 4.2 “This Is My Design” – Queer Seeing 50 4.3 Sex and Relationships: Showing and Hinting At Queerness 55 5. Conclusion 64 Bibliography 66 1. Introduction “See. This is all I ever wanted for you, Will. For both of us.” - Hannibal Lecter (3.13 “The Wrath of the Lamb”) The final episode of the NBC series Hannibal (2013-2015) shows the two main characters, Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and the titular Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), join forces to violently kill another character, before pulling each other into a blood-soaked embrace. This scene depicts the climax of the characters' relationship and at the same time summarises the careful construction of said relationship over thirty-nine episodes in three seasons. The above quote functions as a conclusion to the series, highlighting the carefully constructed, yet mostly non-explicit queerness of the characters' relationship, and of the series as a whole. The quote additionally points to the series' focus on ambiguity, since it may be read as referring to the characters' relationship on different levels: On the one hand, the quote stresses that Will, the series' primary detective figure, has enjoyed killing another character, thus fully abandoning the law, and with it the sense of order often associated with detective characters. On the other hand, the quote also directly comments on the characters' queer romantic attraction to each other, which is built up throughout the series and culminates in this scene's embrace. Hannibal offers a unique perspective on the (re-)presentation of queerness in a television series by addressing issues such as identity, morality, and (defying) normativity. These topics are approached in ways that reject “simplistic” narratives, undermine and dissolve binaries and boundaries, and instead favour ambiguity over straightforward explanations. Following the figure of a serial killer and cannibal well-known in popular culture due to Thomas Harris' novels and their filmic adaptations, Hannibal connects murder and cannibalism to queer love and sexuality in a way seldom seen in contemporary television series. Over the past century, queer representations in film and television have evolved in various directions following broader societal understandings of what it means to be queer. Villains are no longer portrayed as queer simply to underline their deviance, and attempts at providing audiences with positive queer representations have opened up new questions about how and why queer representation should be addressed (Davies, 46-70; Dyer, The Same 1-2). Mirroring queer theory's argument that identities are inherently unstable due to being constructed performatively in society, Hannibal is best understood as operating at the forefront of contemporary strategies concerning queer representation. In an examination of the construction of queerness in Hannibal , this thesis asks the 1 following questions: How are the series' narrative, characters, and character actions used in its construction of queerness? In what ways does the series mirror queer theory's argument that identities are never stable but rather fluid and constantly in flux? And how does the series' construction of queerness question and challenge heteronormative systems and associated societal boundaries? 1.1 Queer Theory Queer theory is generally understood to have developed out of Gay and Lesbian Studies in the 1990s, after Teresa de Lauretis coined the term in 1991 (Fryer, 3). Since then the term “queer” has been taken on by academics and activists alike to refer to both sexual and gender identities that fall outside the cisgender and heterosexual experience. Queer theory rejects the humanist idea that identities are stable and clearly definable. Judith Butler, one of the central figures in queer theory, argues that gender and sexuality are continuously produced rather than set in stone, and that the notion of being one's gender or sexuality is inaccurate: [G]ender proves to be performative – that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed. […] There is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results (Butler, 33). Butler questions and deconstructs the idea that the expression of one's gender is based on a fixed gender identity. In arguing that gender is performative – constructed through repeated actions 1 – Butler reverses the cause-and-effect logic often presumed about gender expression and identity, echoing Simone de Beauvoir's claim that “one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one” (qtd. in Butler, 3). If gender identity is made up of individual repeated actions, such as wearing particular clothing or makeup, then such an identity is unlikely to be fixed or stable over time. This inherent instability of any individual's gender identity also links to gender being perceived and constructed differently in different (historical) contexts, and intersecting with other social markers such as ethnicity and class (Butler, 6). Importantly, in western societies, gender and sexuality are inseparably entangled in their construction along binary axes (male-female, gay-straight) that disregard and exclude persons whose identity expression falls outside the either-or logic of these binary systems. Butler stresses 1 Butler states that gender can be defined as “the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (43-44). 2 that the understanding of sex and gender as binary requires a definition of one gender via its opposition to the other (30). Hence, women are understood to be women to the extent that they are not men. Sex, gender, and sexuality constitute each other in this system, where the perceived binary opposition of men and women is reinforced by desire for the “opposite sex”: “The institution of a compulsory and naturalized heterosexuality requires and regulates gender as a binary relation in which the masculine term is differentiated from a feminine term, and this differentiation is accomplished through the practices of heterosexual desire” (Butler, 30). According to this system, sex is given, gender follows sex, and desire follows gender and sex, so that the categories of “male” and “female” are unambiguously defined through their opposition and sexual attraction to each other (Butler, 23-24). Butler rejects this line of argumentation and states that gender is not determined by sex. Rather, gender is constructed in an ongoing process in society and is not, in any “natural” way, related to sex 2 (Butler, 10). Similarly, a person's sexual attraction cannot be deduced on the basis of their sex or gender, and the spectrum of sexual identities cannot be reduced to a heterosexual position, and a seemingly opposing homosexual position. Queer theory understands gender and sexuality as inherently unstable and in flux in their relation to historically specific contexts and intersections with other social markers. This is further supported by insights Michel Foucault provides in his examination of the historical construction of sexuality. He argues: Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct […] (105). Sexuality and how it is defined and understood is closely related to power structures that inform how a given society treats questions of gender and sexuality (Foucault, 116). These power structures are, according to Foucault, not limited to the power of the law, but function on a broader level of society, working through normalisation and control rather than punishment (89). Foucault further argues that “in the space of a few centuries, a certain inclination has led us to direct the question of what we are, to sex” (78). Referring to sexual practices rather than biological sex, Foucault highlights the importance of sex (and sexual orientation) to identity and practices of identity 2 Butler points out that, even if biological sex fit a clearly defined binary system (which is already undermined by the existence of intersex people), there is no sound reason to assume that the number of possible genders should be limited to two: “The presumption of a binary gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex” (Butler, 10). Butler continues: “When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one” (ibid., italics in original). 3 expression. Both Butler and Foucault reject the idea that gender and sexuality are fixed and expressed only in binary terms.

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