This Is a Pre-Peer Review Preprint of an Article That Has Been Published in Horror Studies. © García, 2020. the Definitive, Pe
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This is a pre-peer review preprint of an article that has been published in Horror Studies. © García, 2020. The definitive, peer reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Horror Studies, volume 11, number 1, April 2020, pp. 83-100, https://doi.org/10.1386/host_00012_1 ‘Tell me, what are you becoming?’ Hannibal and the inescapable presence of the grotesque Alberto N. García School of Communication, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain E-mail [email protected] Postal address Alberto N. García Edificio Bibliotecas Departamento de Proyectos Periodísticos Campus Universitario - Universidad de Navarra 31080-Pamplona Navarra (Spain) Bio Alberto N. García is an Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the School of Communication, University of Navarra (Spain). He has been Visiting Scholar at Fordham University, George Washington University, and Visiting Professor at the University of Stirling and the University of Queensland. He has published his work in journals such as Post Script, Palabra-Clave, Communication and Society, or Revista Latina de Comunicación. He is also co-editor of Emotions in Contemporary TV Series (Palgrave, 2016), Landscapes of the Self. The Cinema of Ross McElwee (2007) and author of El cine de no-ficción en Martín Patino (2008). Abstract Aesthetics philosopher Noël Carroll affirms that grotesque forms ‘are all violations of our standing categories or concepts; they are subversions of our common expectations of the natural and ontological order’ (2003: 307). In breaking structural boundaries, consequently, the grotesque appears as deformations, aberrations, exaggerations, metamorphosis, or startling portmanteaus. Given both its nightmarish texture and the evil ingenuity of Dr. Lecter’s murders, Hannibal (NBC, 2013-15) ploughs fertile ground in putting together conceptually distant and even contradictory elements. Hence, this article explores how the aesthetic and philosophical principles of the grotesque are a pervasive presence throughout the entire Hannibal TV series, defining its style, characters’ personality and metaphorical themes. Putting art theory in dialogue with the Hannibal televised text, this article demonstrates how the grotesque – one of the key concepts in Gothic horror – permeates every level of the show, from the opening credits to the protagonist’s inner transformation, converting the narrative into a comprehensive and cohesive liminal artistic ecosystem. Key words: Hannibal; grotesque; television studies; tv-series; aesthetics; gothic horror. Introduction ‘Fromage’, the eighth episode from Hannibal’s first season, offers one of the show’s most infamous gruesome images. Someone – an undoubtedly snobbish serial killer – has histrionically butchered an inept musician. As usual in the narrative, Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), the extremely empathetic FBI profiler, wanders around the horrendous crime scene. At the center of the concert stage, spotlighted, is a corpse whose mouth has been savagely pierced by the neck of a cello. The killer has impaled the musical instrument down the throat, so the vocal cords coincide with the cello strings. It is, literally speaking, a musical dead body. Figure 1: the cello in ‘Fromage’ [Credit: NBC]. This in-between imagery is the epitome of the grotesque, one of the aesthetic concepts that most strongly defines Hannibal, the ‘preboot’ (Scahill 2016) created by Bryan Fuller for the NBC network (2015-17). This article will evidence how the grotesque – a critical notion in Gothic horror – permeates every level of the show, transforming the story into a whole and cohesive liminal artistic ecosystem. The grotesque is not only present in the actual aesthetics of the weekly murders, such as the one described in the opening paragraph of this article, but also infuses the way the narrative is structured, the dramatic engagement with the characters, the underlying motifs, as well as the acute symbolism Hannibal exhibits. Consequently, the purpose of this essay is to examine how Fuller’s TV series employs the grotesque as a recurring feature that consistently reinforces Hannibal’s uncanny and disturbing effects. To achieve this goal, firstly, we draw on art theory and philosophy of art to define the parameters of the grotesque. Given its broad connotations in academic literature, the second part of the theoretical introduction narrows the concept down by focusing on Gothic horror, the subgenre that, given its emphasis on excess, body and transgression, most clearly includes grotesque imagery within its works. Once the theoretical ground is covered, the essay focuses on how the grotesque keeps re-appearing in Hannibal on different levels, including aesthetics, dramatic engagement, as well as several metaphors and allegories that all act as enhancers of the grotesque. Finally, the article scrutinizes how the grotesquerie is used as a way of intensifying the central dramatic conflict of the show: Will Graham’s ‘becoming’—that is, his moral transformation into someone able to participate alongside Dr. Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and who finds beauty in the savage killing of Francis Dolarhyde (Richard Armitage). The grotesque and its prominence in Gothic horror The term ‘grotesque’ is an elusive one. Theoreticians of the concept concur in highlighting how difficult the taxonomic task is. In his seminal study, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, literature scholar Wolfgang Kayser states that the name is ‘one of those quickly cheapened terms which are used to express a considerable degree of emotional involvement without providing a qualitative distinction beyond the rather vague terms “strange,” “incredible,” “unbelievable”’ (1963: 17). In a similar vein, the humanities historian Geoffrey G. Harpham, in his On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature, asserts that the grotesque is ‘a single protean idea that is capable of assuming a multitude of forms’ (1982: xv). Beyond this contemporary tenuousness, in its origin, the grotesque was a term associated with a more humorous vein than it is nowadays. Nonetheless, since the sixties, it has been settled – both by academics and the general public – as a notion related to the horror genre, next to kin concepts such as the carnivalesque, the abject, the uncanny, or, even, the macabre (Hurley 2007; Edwards 2016: 124). Lexically, ‘grotesque’ comes from ancient Roman ornamental sculptures found in small caves (grottoes). Those figures entailed human and animal forms amalgamated with all kinds of vegetation motifs displayed in fantastic shapes. Seeds, fruits, plants, flowers and leaves were assembled, challenging the logical standards of classical sculpture. In doing so, as Parrinder notes, the grotesque involved ‘a blurring of distinctions, a continual change from one type to another, a riot of incompleted forms’ (1984: 8). It is easy to find in this last quote a resonance with Will Graham’s ‘pure empathy’ sequences, where he blurs spaces, time and psyches in a moving and disturbing manner. Since the opening scene of the series, the director has established a narrative pattern defined by its interstitial condition. At any crime scene, FBI profiler Will Graham can reenact the murders down to the last detail. This ‘gift’ (a side effect of a disorder called antibody encephalitis that causes hallucinations, confusion and memory problems) is depicted in Hannibal through a mise-en-scène that highlights jumble, disorientation and weirdness in a dreamlike and mesmerizing way. Will Graham’s trance-like states exhibit two of the defining features of the grotesque: fluidity and liminality. On the one hand, the grotesque presents itself in a state of flux, in constant development, as a horrific and never-ending work-in-progress. On the other hand, regarding liminality, ‘The grotesque is defined by what it does to boundaries, transgressing, merging, overflowing, destabilizing them. Put more bluntly, the grotesque is a boundary creature and does not exist except in relation to a boundary, convention, or expectation’ (Connelly 2003: 4). Liminality and fluidity – in fact, the whole concept of the grotesque – are features associated with ‘Gothic horror’, a commonplace rubric to designate to the entire Hannibal transmedia universe.1 It seems naïve and inaccurate to establish an inflexible border that is stuffed with all the varieties and possibilities of ‘Gothic horror’. However, at least several features singularize the subgenre amidst the broader ‘horror’ label. These can be summarized in three concepts that we will flesh out: rhetorical excess, body obsession and boundary transgression. In his introduction to Gothic monstrosity, Halberstam addresses how ‘excess’ lies at the core of the sub-genre: ‘Gothic, in a way, refers to an ornamental excess (think of Gothic architecture—gargoyles and crazy loops and spirals), a rhetorical extravagance that produces, quite simply, too much’ (1995: 2). As Hubner puts it, ‘excess is a key feature of gothic aesthetically and stylistically, but also in relation to passion and sensitivity, cued by venturing dangerously into imaginary, disorderly and irrational territories’ (2018: 45). Consequently, Gothic horror narratives are not only highly aware of their own physical design, but are also usually intertwined with romance, resembling the paradoxical mix of awe, fascination and terror that Edmund Burke attributed to the sublime. This excess, understandably, also affects the depiction of the body, the second major feature of the Gothic. As Aldana Reyes has pointed