The human need to be seen, taken to the extreme in Hannibal (2013-2015)

Photo Courtesy of JaceMerlyn- Wikimedia Commons

When you are with friends, do you feel seen? Do you feel heard? Do you wish that your friends would understand you on a deeper level? The show Hannibal (2013-2015) created by Bryan Fuller proposes these questions from the perspective of Hannibal Lecter, everyone’s favorite cannibal.

Hannibal Lecter is one of those horror icons that need little in the way of introduction; he is a sophisticated, intelligent, and highly manipulative cannibalistic psychiatrist. He kills systematically and devours those he deems rude. Upon hearing about his favorite hobby, one might automatically classify him as being a cold-blooded killer, completely unfeeling or incapable of kindness, but this is a hasty generalization of Hannibal’s character in the show.

In the show, Hannibal can be seen showing genuine empathy towards certain people.  The biggest example is Hannibal’s surrogate daughter, Abigail Hobbs. Abigail Hobbs is the daughter of The Minnesota Shriek, a serial killer who murdered girls that matched the profile of his own daughter, and hung them on deer horns after cannibalizing some part of them. After the subsequent murder of The Shriek, Hannibal, being a witness and partially responsible for the killer’s death, felt responsible for Abigail’s future and practically adopted her.

This is shown by how he treats her with familial respect, such as helping her get through the emotional and mental scars of her fathers heinous actions, and even helping her hide the body of a person Abigail murdered in self defense—at great risk to Hannibal’s own safety and cover. One would not expect a cannibalistic serial killer to sacrifice their own safety for another human being simply out of the goodness of their heart. Hannibal received nothing from helping Abigail and he did so knowing what he was risking.

If Hannibal is capable of such a degree of kindness, then where exactly is all of his violence coming from? What is the reason for it? To answer this question, we need to know about the main character of the show: Special Agent Will Graham.

Will Graham is a very talented criminal profiler with the ability to empathise and understand any serial killer by only looking at one of their crime scenes. Hannibal sees a kindred soul in Will and immediately begins to toy with and corrupt Will by creating grisly murders upon grisly murders. He never gets caught by law enforcement because of his extraordinary intelligence, leaving him to feel alone and desperate for someone to see him. Hannibal’s main purpose in his elaborate killing is to get Will to see what Hannibal truly is: a wendigo in human clothing. By season two, Will is in a fractured mental state and perceives Hannibal as a massive jet-black horned and cloven human being with pale white eyes, projecting the unique brand of monster under the guise of Hannibal Lecter.

These murders are not senseless however; all of them are art pieces on their own. One of these pieces was a depiction of The Primeavera, a famous painting by Sandro Botticelli recreated using two victims Hannibal murdered previously. This showcase represents marriage and trust, which is allegorical to the extremely strange relationship between Hannibal and Will. They have a familial/completion relationship to each other, almost like the relationship between Batman and the Joker. Will completes Hannibal because he is the only one that truly understands him. The way the show writes Hannibal allows his character to flourish and transcend our beliefs about morality and throws it into perspective.

Hannibal kills because he feels revealed and seen through violence. His mask—the “people suit” he puts on to fool other people into believing his false appearance of kindness—disappears, which is what he truly wanted.

Hannibal is a dark story that reflects the human need to be seen and understood, like how someone would look at a painting and extract all the minor nuances and messages of the artist, taken to a bloody and culinary degree.