In
which my journey to damnation began when I was swallowed by the beast.
“I
was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius;
which to Angels look like torment and insanity.”
―
William Blake
“See
how magnificent you are? Did he who made
the lamb make thee?”
---Hannibal
via William Blake
As perhaps the most fine
arts-obsessed narrative series on television, one in which minor characters
have achieved transcendence though being transformed into death sculpture
tableaus, in which avant-garde, often classically leaning soundscapes have
scored crises both interior and existential, and in which the central character
wields an aesthete’s sensibility both as sociological lens and weapon…it seems
only fitting that the plot machinations would eventually circle back into the
madness-dabbled fantasia of William Blake.
Touched by a Gothic sense of beauty, cross pollinated with competing
strands of Impressionism and Romanticism, Blake’s best known paintings explored
his preoccupation with the symbiotic relationship between the divine and the
obscene (a fascination that also extended into his poetry and other
writings.) As Thomas Harris took
inspiration from Blake’s Red Dragon paintings to fuel his story of the
psychosexual havoc that Francis Dolarhyde wreaks on others, so too has Bryan
Fuller carried on Blake’s musings on the split diopter of good and evil in
crafting his extended tale of a hyper-empath and an empathy vacuum inevitably
drawn into each other’s sphere of existence, both men striving to reach truths
more seraphic than secular by forming a co-dependence that blurs the lines
between malice and justice.
Aside from the Red Dragon
paintings, one of Blake’s most well-known treatises on the interdependency of
the sacred and the profane is his short poem “The Tyger”, which contemplates
the titular animal’s sleek, predatorial nature and, in a greater sense, the
authorship of this killing machine. As
he states in the fourth verse:
What
the hammer? what the chain?
In
what furnace was thy brain?
What
the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare
its deadly terrors clasp?
Blake’s companion piece to “The
Tyger” was “The Lamb”, which mused on the delicate nature of that pastoral
creature. The hidden protagonist, again,
is the creator of such an animal, one who is capable of birthing such beauty
and terror. While envisioning himself
meeting with Hannibal in his office in the intro to “And the Woman Clothed in
Sun”, Francis Dolarhyde indulges his hero worship of the cannibal while
imagining the plaudit that is quoted at the beginning of this essay. It’s a direct lift from “The Tyger”, well in
keeping with Francis’s Blake-obsessed mind and the old-time religion that
simultaneously haunts and heals him.
It’s also a precursor to what are perhaps the key scenes in this episode, on several fronts. As I mentioned in last week’s essay, Blake’s
Red Dragon paintings prominently feature the image of the Satanic beast lording
over a woman who will give birth to a child that will bear the Gospel to the
world. There are two versions/paintings
of this tableau: “And the Woman Clothed With the Sun…” and “And the Woman Clothed
in Sun.” They serve as mirror images,
one with the mighty Dragon’s back all but obscuring the woman, the other with
the woman’s divine presence front and center.
Bryan Fuller has paid tribute to this doppleganger effect by title the
second and third episodes of Season 3 as such.
But he might also be stretching into a more far-reaching Blake reference
in constructing this episode.
“The Tyger”’s opening verse
features Blake opining “What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful
symmetry?” In 1986, Alan Moore used this
couplet (and the poem’s larger philosophical thrust) as the template for “Fearful
Symmetry”, the fifth chapter of his groundbreaking, revisionist, comic book
saga Watchmen. At heart the story of the capture of
Rorschach, the series’ breakout, sub-psychopath anti-hero with a damaged child’s
heart of gold, it’s also a point of marked escalation for several of the main
characters on their path to the apocalyptic truth of the finale. By this point in the construction of the
tale, Moore and artist partner Dave Gibbons were fully exploring the creative possibilities
inherent in the form. So in a canny
decision that gives it a haunting power that grows with each subsequent reading,
they chose to structure this chapter as a mirror image unto itself, in which
the middle of the issue forms the nexus point from which springs two strands
that reflect each other. From the shape
and organization of panels to the blocking of the characters to the plot
elements themselves, each strand serves as a near doppleganger of the
other. This structure also reflects the
very nature of Rorschach himself, whose mask bears the iconic mirror-image blot
from whence he takes his name, and whose concept of justice entails a highly
refined sense of the morally trepidatious path he must trod to battle the
weakness of the good and the tyranny of evil men.
Would it be going too far to
suggest that “And the Woman Clothed in Sun”, an episode swarming with Blake
references in the midst of a series swarming in cultural references, is Bryan
Fuller’s sly nod to Alan Moore’s “Fearful Symmetry”? Examined closely, the plot stretches across
six main scenes, all of which seem to form a mirror that folds into itself
(Hannibal’s manipulative phone call is more of a side tangent, although one
with great significance….more on that in a bit.) At the heart of the episode are those two
aforementioned key scenes, in which Francis and Reba visit the zoo and then
return to his house. In an attempt to
transfer his inner beastly feelings onto a more accessible form, Francis
arranges for Reba to pet a sedated tiger.
As she caresses the powerful creature’s fur, Francis is taken aback by
his identification with the beast, none more so than when she gently strokes
the tiger’s massive canine tooth (which is on the same side of its face as
Francis’s hairlip.) The image of Reba’s
dark skin against the near-fluorescent glow of the tiger’s pelt is somewhat
reminiscent of Will’s painterly vision of Mrs. Leeds’s corpse from the previous
episode, a reference that’s hammered home in the next scene, when a mid-coitus
Francis envisions Reba as the divine manifestation of the Woman Clothed in
Sun. When she pets the tiger, Reba is
moved to tears, and during his moment of sexual ecstasy with her, Francis also
sheds tears. Fuller has called this
romantic entangling “one of the most beautifully tragic in modern literature,
and the soul of Red Dragon”, as two
wayward souls blessed (or cursed) with visions beyond their ostensible limits
find solace and each other. It’s a
modern take on Beauty and the Beast, but one in which the monster lurks within
the confines of a generally handsome man.
Francis Dolarhyde isn’t the only Hannibal character whose struggle with
their inner beast is masked by an alluring veneer. Indeed, the bifurcation of mannered civility
and primal urges has formed the backbone for much of this show’s ongoing
narrative, its most notorious monster also its most debonair bon vivant. And the dual scenes that form the middle of
this episode’s mirrored structure feature two of the most prominent symbols of
the beauty/beast dichotomy. Though he
may be oft disheveled in appearance, Will Graham still carries Hugh Dancy’s
Brit heartthrob allure with him wherever he goes. It’s a huge part of what elicits such
audience sympathy for his tortured psyche; he’s the archetypical dashing
gentleman trapped by the curse of feeling too much. In this regard, Gillian Anderson’s Bedelia
DuMaurier is his twin, her refined porcelain beauty a cover for a moral and
ethical philosophy that deals in ambiguous cruelty.
Their initial standoff in this
episode features some spectacular verbal parrying, as Will chides her for
hiding behind the veneer of victimhood while she slyly refutes his tagging her
as the Bride of Frankenstein by noting that “We’ve both been his bride” and
that “I was with him behind the veil; you were always on the other side.” In a show that has featured some of the most
mature explorations of the intangibles of sexuality and moral intent, Bedelia
has always stood out as both cipher and femme fatale. Though she was not entirely complicit in her
faux marriage to Hannibal, her explanation for how she came to be swallowed by
the beast (“He never called me my name.
That was strange at first. And
then it wasn’t strange. And then…I was
Lydia Fell”) is just mannered enough, especially compared to what we’ve been
privileged to witness, that her follow up to it (“What we take for granted
about our sense of self, everything we see, everything we remember, is nothing
more than a construct of the mind”) carries with it the distinct whiff of
craven self-exoneration.
That same lack of culpability
comes to the forefront in this scene’s mirror image later in the episode, in
which Will and Bedelia’s second confrontation (this time in her office) is
deftly intercut with her sessions with Neal Frank (Zachary Quinto), whose
corpse we briefly saw in a flashback in “Antipasto.” When Will once again accuses her of lying
about her time with Hannibal, she replies “I obfuscate”, a perfect description
of the verbal slight of hand she pulls during the earlier lecture. It’s intriguing to note how Hannibal’s two foremost psychiatrists utilize
obfuscation with rapier precision, the irony of their treachery set in the
world of the talking cure hanging heavy over the proceedings. That irony is even heavier in the context of
Neal’s revelations about his failed sessions with Hannibal, and his subsequent
fate. His tales of phototherapy and of
being subjected to a flashing light that caused him to enter a fugue state are
a direct parallel to the expert manipulation that led to Will’s framing as a
murderer in Season 1. Later in the
scene, Bedelia tells Will that “One thing I learned from Hannibal is the
alchemy of lies and truths. It’s how he
convinced you that you were a killer.” And
just as Hannibal used his mental and verbal dexterity to seduce Will (and, for
that matter, everyone around him for a time) into his preferred version of
reality, so too does he plant the seed in Neal’s mind to swallow his
tongue. Fuller has stated that this
death is meant to give context to the final exit of Multiple Miggs in Silence of the Lambs. It’s also a perfectly Lecterian bit of ironic
wordplay made manifest in physical violence.
Such wordplay runs rampant
throughout the show’s character progression; in an episode devoted so heavily
to oral imagery (from the grotesque shot of Bedelia plunging her hand into Neal’s
throat to the tiger’s mouth to Francis’s hairlip to all sorts of talk of being
swallowed by a beast), it’s interesting to note how verbal diction serves as a
sign of power. Both Will and Bedelia
speak in perfectly articulated tones (Anderson’s almost absurdly practiced
diction is a hallmark of her portrayal), all the while hiding their tumultuous
inner conflict behind this mask of respectability. Despite being a handsome man, Francis sees
his inarticulate nature as an irrevocable deformity; it’s only through intense
rehearsal that he’s able to assume the polished diction of lawyer Byron Metcalf
(the mantle of normalcy that gets him past the hospital security), before
breaking down into mush mouthed adoration when speaking with Hannibal on the phone. And what is Francis’s talisman of power but a
set of malformed false teeth, an exaggeration of his speech defect as weapon against
his perceived oppressors in the straight world.
Such aggression might be accurately assigned if Hannibal’s phone call to
Chilton’s weekend secretary is any indication.
It’s a scene that both Bryan Cox and Anthony Hopkins also played well
with their soothing British tones (the gold standard for authority for much of
the Western world), but Mads Mikkelsen makes the interesting choice to hold the
conversation completely in his native Danish lilt. On one hand, it’s a wry bit of comedy, the
most well-known Danish-inflected serial killer in the country fooling someone
who should probably be well-acquainted with him. But this might also be the point, a testament
to Lecter’s skills as a smooth talker extraordinaire, and another bit of
meta-commentary on the power of authoritative diction in normal society.
When Bedelia asks Will if his
wife knows how intimately he and Hannibal know each other, it’s a shot across
the bow at his attempt to cloak his dark side behind the veil of a socially and
sexually normal family unit. Will’s
response (“She’s aware enough”) is tenuous in the moment, and even shakier in
the context of his brief meeting with Hannibal near episode’s end (during which
Dancy and Mikkelsen are lit from below in expressionist chiaroscuro lighting
that gives them the appearance, respectively, of a hollowed out ghost and
darkness incarnate). We’ve seen Will
reveal his true self (or what he perceives to be true) several times before,
but that looming aspect of the story is writ large in the two mirrored scenes
that open and close this episode, in which Francis reveals himself to Hannibal
and Will. In the former case, his actual
revelation is only by phone, his dream unveiling a phantasmagoric image of his
full transfiguration as the mythical beast that is the Red Dragon. At episode’s end, his revealing to Will is
involuntary and much less grandiose. But
the subtle power of his devouring of Blake’s original painting is, in many
ways, much more powerful. We’ve seen
Francis’s fantasies of power and heard the echoing sounds that haunt his
psyche, but eating the painting is his final acceptance of the demons that
plague him, a literal internalization of the beast. And when he locks eyes with Will in the
elevator (before brutally tossing him against the wall), it’s almost as if our
empath in peril himself is looking in the mirror. Bedelia asked him if he was
trying to save Francis, and there’s more than a hint of an alternate future for
Will in the visage of this Blake fetishist.
The destroyer of the family unit has come face to face with the man who
seeks refuge in it, and (unwittingly) with his rival for Hannibal’s acceptance
and affection. Truly, the center cannot
hold. The beast in all of these
characters stalks around it, waiting for the collapse.
And now, for the leftovers:
*If we follow the Bride of
Frankenstein motif to its logical extreme, does this mean that Francis is the
inarticulate Monster in search of a mate, Will is Dr. Frankenstein, and
Hannibal is Dr. Pretorius, the coded gay scientist who lures Henry Frankenstein
into even greater danger? I guess that
Reba would be the Bride, but Bedelia strikes me as capturing much more of that
character’s cold pragmatism (and Will does
call her the Bride….even though that would make Hannibal the titular doctor…..yeah,
this is getting confusing.)
*“Extreme acts of cruelty require
a high level of empathy” (Bedelia)
*“Paula, I have another visitor
for the Great Red Dragon” (A Brooklyn museum tour guide, pulling off one of the
episode’s great dry humor lines.)
*“This is why Scientologists hate
psychiatry!” (Neal, to Bedelia)
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