Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Blanka Šustrová Adapting the Cannibal: The Gothic Essence of Hannibal Lecter Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Smith, M.F.A., Ph. D. 2015 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. ……………………………………………….. Blanka Šustrová “Let me tell you what I think. I think that the work you do here has created a sense of stability for you. Stability is good for you, Will.” “Stability requires strong foundations, Jack. My moorings are built on sand.” “I'm not sand. I am bedrock. When you doubt yourself, you don't have to doubt me too.” (Hannibal, “Buffet Froid”) I would like to kindly thank my supervisor Jeff Smith, a man of heavenly patience and apt witticism, who took on a thesis including murder and cannibalism despite his deep aversion towards a vivid depiction of violence, as his taste in literature and film is, unlike mine, a taste of a decent, virtuous person. His valuable advice and moral support are deeply appreciated. I would also like to thank my friends who kept me sane. Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................ 9 1. The Aspects of Gothic .......................................................................................... 12 2. Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon .......................................................................... 19 2.1 The Plot of Red Dragon .................................................................................. 20 2.2 The Good, the Bad and the “Other” ............................................................ 22 2.3 Will Graham, the Damsel in Distress ........................................................... 28 3. Adaptation: The Art of Choosing and Transforming ...................................... 36 4. NBC Hannibal: The Opulent Gothic Spectacle ................................................. 40 4.1 The plot of NBC Hannibal ............................................................................. 41 4.2 The Cook, the Epicure, His Aesthetics and Its Manifestation ................... 45 4.2.1 The Adaptation Approach ......................................................................... 45 4.2.2 The Villain in the Kitchen ......................................................................... 48 4.2.3 The House of Uncanny Terror and the Images of God ............................. 51 4.3 Will Graham, the Damsel in Induced Liminal Areas ................................. 54 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 60 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 62 Summary ................................................................................................................... 68 Resumé ...................................................................................................................... 69 Appendix ................................................................................................................... 70 Introduction The character of Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal psychiatrist, is well embedded in the pop-culture not only because of the tetralogy by Thomas Harris that introduced the character in the novel Red Dragon in 1981 but also thanks to the filmic adaptations, mainly the ones with Anthony Hopkins in the leading role. Lecter became an icon of an elegant, intelligent evil that is able to possess both primitive features, such as cannibalism, but also a high taste in culture, superior intelligence and vast knowledge. In Red Dragon Lecter functions only as a secondary character that appears in less than fifty pages from four hundred and twenty pages. Red Dragon is classified as a detective crime thriller as the main narrative of the novel is focused on a special FBI investigator Will Graham catching Francis Dolarhyde, a murderer of families. Lecter is not the main villain of this novel, and while incarcerated for his heinous crimes, he occupies a strange position within the hero-villain spectrum. He gives Graham advice concerning catching Dolarhyde while supporting Dolarhyde in his murderous adventures. What also differentiates Lecter from the other “stock” characters of lawful police and deviant criminals are his Gothic features he carries himself and is also able to impose on others, especially Will Graham. In 2013, the American commercial broadcast network television NBC started to broadcast a TV series Hannibal, developed for television by Bryan Fuller, known for other TV series like Pushing Daisies (2007) or Wonderfalls (2004). Hannibal is different from the previous filmic adaptations because it does not follows the narrative of Harris’ tetralogy rigidly but picks and chooses events that fit its own narrative. However, the most important feature of this serialized adaptation is the attention to Lecter’s Gothic features manifested in Red Dragon. These features were the basis of the 9 textual, visual and aural approach to the TV series as a whole and created a genre shift of the adaptation, moving towards the Gothic spectrum. The first chapter of the thesis presents the formulaic aspects of Gothic that are needed to establish an autonomous genre and also highlights those that are needed for the textual analysis of Lecter in Red Dragon and the aural-visual film analysis of Lecter in Hannibal. The space of this chapter is dedicated mainly to the pre-Byronic Gothic villain and the modern vampire archetype, as they overlap in certain ways and because Lecter (especially in the TV series) meets the requirements of both. In addition, important Gothic concepts of terror, horror, sublime, uncanny and liminality are explained for they carry a huge importance in both Red Dragon and Hannibal. Chapter two offers an analysis of the character of Hannibal Lecter in Harris’ novel Red Dragon in the Gothic discourse, using the established formulaic aspects from chapter one. It contains an overview of the plot for a better orientation at the beginning and then it continues with the analysis of Lecter as an archetypal pre-Byronic Gothic villain and a vampire. Lecter in Red Dragon is the Gothic “Other”, the individual that cannot be defined and does not fit and therefore produces terror. This chapter’s aim is to establish the Gothic characteristics on which the character of Lecter in the TV series is based on. The third chapter presents a bridge between the textual analysis and the film analysis as it offers a theoretical insight to the approach to filmic (meaning cinematic and serialized TV) adaptations. It discusses different sign systems that are used for literature and films and why these are important to distinguish, for if the source text is to be adapted into a different medium, it should use the potential of the new medium working within a different sign system to the fullest. In filmic adaptations it is important to analyse the source text and decide which parts of the narrative to highlight but also 10 ensure that the visual and aural potential of the medium will be properly employed so the adaptation can function as an autonomous piece of art. The last chapter is focused on the NBC adaptation Hannibal, particularly its heavy aural-visual approach that apart from the character of Lecter himself, constitutes the Gothic setting of the series and contributes to the genre shift from a primarily crime thriller to a Gothic adaptation. Hannibal’s characters are based on the novel Red Dragon and the largest portion of the show is dedicated to Lecter himself and his abusive relationship with Will Graham that, given the space and time of three seasons, offers a great extension of the Gothic features that are only modestly described in Red Dragon. An overview of the plot is added for better orientation and the treatment of the source text is discussed. The use of the visual appendix that is referred to in the chapter is strongly advised as it helps to orientate in the analysed scenes. The filmic analysis focuses mainly on the use of camera, lighting and sound in order to pinpoint the use of the visual and aural signifying systems of the medium. It also explains how these filmic techniques are important to displaying the formulaic aspects of Gothic described in the first chapter and applied to Lecter in the second chapter. 11 1. The Aspects of Gothic Gothic is not a genre so easily defined as its aspects overlap with different genres, particularly quite often with the Romantic. As Anne Williams suggests, Gothic and Romantic are not two different genres but one (1). Michael Gamer in his article “Gothic Fictions and Romantic writing in Britain” published in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction proposes that the Gothic is a “mixed genre”, brought together from other discourses, assembled like “Frankenstein’s monster”, using various possibilities of the narrative and lyric writing (86). However, when establishing a genre, it must be acknowledged that it is “a study of repetition, the patterns that constitute a tradition and a way that writers imitate, learn from and modify the work of their predecessors” (Lloyd-Smith 1). Gothic has its particular features that can be traced and established throughout the literature since the 18th century, when the term “gothic story” was introduced by Horace