parallel landscapes: image and language in hannibal

Watercooler Journal 2.9 (2014) 1

Parallel Landscapes Image and Language in Hannibal

weirdymcweirder

Contributor of the Month

When I first watched “Aperitif,” I had a feeling there was something wrong. I loved the visuals

and the premise and the acting, sure, but there was just something “off” about it. A need to

pinpoint what was wrong, rather than a desire to enjoy what was right, drove me to watch the

episode again. As a fan of Fuller’s previous work, I was shocked to discover that the problem

was the dialogue. It was the language that was “wrong.” However, this second time around, I

also remembered that I had had this feeling before: after watching the first episodes of

Deadwood and Justified, two of my favourite shows. And it dawned on me.

The language wasn’t wrong. The language was just right. It was my perception of what

language should sound like on television that was wrong. For all the excellent shows on TV this


past decade, very few have their own distinctive voice, but those that do stand out, surprise,

and confuse us. Because we are not used to brothel owners delivering soliloquies while getting

a blowjob, or miners quoting literature before they shoot, and, of course, we have never seen a

psychiatrist and a profiler lock horns in a battle of similes before.

“Hannibal’s words are contract killers. In contrast, Will’s words are pack hunters.”

This has nothing to do with general eloquence. This is not about crafting beautiful turns of

phrase. It is about giving each character an individual voice and arranging these voices on the

page, like a choir singing—sometimes in unison, others in counterpoint. For example, both

Hannibal and Will use figurative language masterfully, and never more so than when they speak

to each other. What I would like to point out is that they don’t do it for the same reasons, as

becomes evident by this exchange in “Sorbet”:

HANNIBAL. Sum up the Ripper in so many words?

WILL GRAHAM. Choose them wisely.

HANNIBAL. Oh, I always do. Words are living things. They have personality, point

of view, agenda.

WILL GRAHAM. They’re pack hunters.

For Hannibal, the use of language is an aesthetic endeavor, like cooking or music. But even as

he strives for beauty, his language is calculated, methodical, insidious. Hannibal’s words are

contract killers. In contrast, Will’s words are pack hunters. They are wolves (or dogs) hunting for

food. They need the sustenance to stay alive. His words are always running after a truth so

elusive that literal language would be too heavy and too slow to catch up with it.

So I believe that the use of figurative language in Hannibal is not just a vacuous exercise in

aesthetics. The extensive use of excerpts from Red Dragon informs the rest of the dialogue,

and Harris’s tone of heightened realism spills over and blends with Fuller’s obvious love for

language, making Hannibal not just a visual but a literary experience. It also makes it very

difficult to follow.


Parts of the Screen

This is why—and I know I might be alone in this—I love captions. Apart from the practical

considerations for us non-native speakers of English, captions help visualize the language. They

clearly divide the screen in two: the top part is a visual landscape, shaped by mise-en-scene,

cinematography, production design. The bottom part is a verbal landscape, inhabited by verbs,

nouns, adjectives lined with imagery and metaphor. In Hannibal, the two landscapes exist

parallel to each other in a symbiotic relationship where image feeds off language and vice-

versa.

There are two episodes where this symbiosis is clear. In “Fromage,” on the top part of the

screen, a dead body becomes a cello. On the bottom part, a brutal murder becomes a

serenade. On the top part, stringed instruments line the interior of Tobias’s shop. On the

bottom part, a profiler is played like a fiddle by a free-form psychiatrist who plays between

conventional notes. On the top, the notes from a perfectly tuned harpsichord mark the end of a

killer’s quest for companionship. On the bottom, some people’s lives are pieces of music not

worth hearing again.


In “Roti,” on the screen, a man sees a tidal wave wash a totem of bodies away. He then sees

his own body turn into water. In the captions, he feels fluid, like he’s spilling. On the screen, a

sweating, melting man is trapped in a thicket of antlers. In the captions, his psychiatrist wants

to contain his madness like an oil spill. Apart from these two episodes, the two landscapes, the

visual and the verbal, exist in parallel throughout the series.

Bryan Fuller must love animals. They dominate the screen and roam the captions. A stag struts

around Will’s nightmares in the visual landscape. Jack Crawford keeps a broken pony in his

stable in the verbal. Dogs jump around happily waiting for more sausage, as a madness-

smelling bloodhound is being groomed to catch killers. Maggots eat away at a family’s last

supper and Hobbs is just a swarm of black flies, temporarily assuming the shape of a man.

Ravens peck at dead bodies, while screams are perched under chins. And a lion is in every

room that Hannibal enters.

A similar parallel can be drawn between other themes in the series. As Will looks at his little

house from a distance, seeing a floating boat and feeling safe, a certain psychiatrist becomes a

paddle and a gauge, eager to steer him through troubled waters. Will fishes, but it is a young

girl who is used as a lure. Hobbs hunts, but so do words. On the screen, a cannibal cooks


human flesh and serves it on fancy china. In the captions, a good man kills a bad one with a

sprig of zest and is treated like a fragile little teacup, but feels like an old mug. And for all the

well-tailored suits Hannibal wears in the visual landscape, the most meticulously constructed

one is the person-suit he wears in the verbal landscape. In contrast, Will considers the concept

of family to be an ill-fitting suit. On the screen, it is the concept of suit that is ill-fitting for him.

Sensory Attack Hannibal is a feast for the senses. But it is also a show about the senses. Vision haunts Will.

Taste drives Hannibal. Images of Will taking off his glasses to “see” a crime scene and of

Hannibal indulging in a meal run through the whole season “like a thread through pearls.”

Some episodes appear dedicated to each of the other senses. “Coquilles” is an episode of

smell where Hannibal exhibits his almost supernatural olfactory abilities by smelling disease on

Bella and Will. “Fromage” is an episode of hearing, where people are killed to make music and

their killer ends up with half of his ear shot off. It is also the episode where Will’s hearing is

impaired, both by auditory hallucinations and the noise of a gun. “Trou Normand” is an

episode of touch where Hannibal ensures confidence and establishes trust by touching Will and

Abigail.

In the captions, senses are less like threads and more like neurons, diverging, intersecting, or

firing all at once. Seeing might be terrifying for Will, but so is being blind—especially because

someone has moved all the furniture around. When the scales fall from his eyes, that’s when he

truly sees who he is—and who Hannibal is. In this verbal landscape, senses are the chemical

elements that nightmares are made of. Nerves click, spaces speak with noise, serenades are

heard behind closed eyes. Thoughts are not tasty, bloodhounds smell madness, and screams

are smeared on the air. Through the first season, this sensory attack sandblasts Will, causing

the light and colour that make him alive to fade.

Colours Fade This dimming of light is evident in both the visual landscape and the verbal. The three scenes

set in Hobbs’s kitchen in season one become progressively darker. In “Aperitif,” when Will

enters the kitchen, it’s early morning, and light comes in through the curtains. Everything is

clear and open. In “Potage,” it’s an early autumn evening and everything is darker. Still, there

is enough light in the kitchen for Will to talk to a shadow suspended on dust. There can’t be

shadow without light. Unless, of course, your world is made of shadow. By the time Will enters


Hobbs’s kitchen for a third time in “Savoureux,” his world has been overrun by the shadows of

Hannibal’s crimes. In the world of images, it is right before dawn and everything is dark.

Appropriately, in the world of words, Hobbs has also become darker, a shape made of

swarming flies, black and vibrant and crawling with life. How else would we be able to see him

now that the light everywhere has dimmed?


“Madness Humming in the Background” Parallel to these two landscapes, the visual and the verbal, runs a third one: an auditory

landscape, or “soundscape,” as Fuller called it in an interview. Much has been written about

Brian Reitzell’s work in the show. The sounds coming from the screen are an integral part of the

feel of the show and add texture and depth to the images and the characters. But there’s also a

soundscape in the caption world, eager to be discovered, sometimes shouting in assonance

(the repetition of vowels) and other times whispering in consonance (the repetition of

consonants).


When the mongoose under the house sees the snakes slither by, we hear their threatening

hisses. When Will talks to shadows suspended on dust, we hear the shadows speaking softly in

his ear. When a killer finds peace in the pieces disassembled, we hear them fall into place, flesh

on flesh, bone on bone. When Will hears his heart dim but fast, like footsteps fleeing into

silence, we hear it too, fluttering with fear. Of course, in moderation, madness can be a

medicine for the modern world, but all we hear is Hannibal’s madness humming in the

background like an old fridge in the silence of the night.

There is one last instance of “verbal soundscaping” I would like to mention and it comes,

rather fittingly, from the first season finale, “Savoureux.” Will is standing in the kitchen where

he killed Hobbs and looks at the wall, reliving the moment when he shot Hobbs. He sees the

space opposite him assume Hobbs’s shape, filled with black and swarming flies. And then he

shoots him. Not with a gun, but with a word. By spitting out hard and fast the strong syllable of

the word “scattered,” while essentially eliminating the weak syllable, Will shoots Hobbs one

last time—not with a gun, but with a word.

“He sees the space opposite him assume Hobbs’s shape, filled with black and swarming flies. And then he shoots

him. Not with a gun, but with a word.”

I would like to close with words from Alyssa Rosenberg’s “Five Things the Season Finale of

Justified Tells Us About What Television Needs More Of”: “If television aspires to act like

literature, then it shouldn’t be afraid to sound like literature.” It’s a good thing Hannibal

appears fearless in this respect.


originally published http://nothinghereisvegetarian.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/parallel-landscapes-image-and-language-in-hannibal/ image credits, in order: ©NBCUniversal ©NBCUniversal ©NBCUniversal ©NBCUniversal ©NBCUniversal ©NBCUniversal

parallel landscapes: image and language in hannibal

Documents

use of language

literal language

use of figurative language

language wasnt wrong

wills words

hannibals words

watercooler journal

theyre pack hunters