Hannibal S2e13 "Mizumono"

Hannibal s2e13 "Mizumono"

“There’s a sort of strange surrender for Will Graham at that moment. He allows the gutting. He almost feels as if he deserves it in light of what he’s done, he’s betrayed Hannibal."

—Bryan Fuller

It took me probably close to 30 hours but I finally finished this drawing of the arm squeeze because I'm still not over that moment :')

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EMPATHY AS A FORM OF CANNIBALISM

Okay okay, so cannibalism can be understood either literally (physical consumption of the flesh of another person) or metaphorically (incorporating another within the self). This dual notion of cannibalism has been omnipresent across contexts (cannibalism as a form of grieving or as a way to gain the strength of the consumed enemy).

Now what if Will and Hannibal represent this dual notion of cannibalism?

Hannibal is obviously cooking and eating human flesh but he makes sure he does it only in the literal sense - he does not even think about it as cannibalism because “it’s only cannibalism if we are equals” and he considers his victims to be pigs, beneath him. He always keeps a psychological distance from his victims (represented by his murder suit).

Will, on the other hand, does not (at the beginning) eat human flesh but nevertheless, engages in cannibalism in the metaphorical sense through his amazing ability to fully empathise with the murderers. At a crime scene, he literally becomes them, he sometimes acts like them (“had to open you up to get a decent sound out of you”) and there are instances where he struggles with finding a clear separation between himself and the killer. This is most obvious with Garret Jacob Hobbs but happens with other killers too. He literally incorporates them within his mind and they “haunt” him even after he leaves the crime scene.

This separation of two forms of cannibalism is clearly visible in the first season but my theory is that the moment Will realises what Hannibal is, the lines between the two men start to blur and so the two forms of cannibalism become one.

Obviously, this can be demonstrated on several moments in season two. First, Will willingly starts to engage in literal cannibalism with Hannibal. Second, Hannibal starts to emphasise with Will (he says things like “you have been applying yourself to my perspective as I’ve been applying myself to yours”). They basically start engaging in the other’s form of cannibalism.

This climaxes in the third season. Will needs to complete his understanding of Hannibal, and so he goes to Lithuania to meet with his past. Chiyoh recognises this blurring of lines between the two men by saying to Will that “you're afraid you're going to become him”.

Meanwhile, Hannibal literally eats a Will-lookalike (Antony Dimmond) and decides that he needs to eat Will too. Then they meet in the Uffizi gallery, where Will says that they “have become to blurr”. This is a pivotal moment because they acknowledge that they are conjoined, they have become one. Hannibal says: “Freeing yourself from me and... me freeing myself from you, they're the same”. And so, their representations of cannibalism become one too.

Inspiration from: “The Empath and the Psychopath: Ethics, Imagination, and Intercorporeality in Bryan Fuller's Hannibal” by Jane Stadler

YOUNG MAN!

There's no need to feel down,

I MEAN YOUNG THEY!

I forgot your pronoun,