03/15/2011

Having just watched the movie Hannibal again, I had a thought I decided to share.

The particular aspect of the character of Hannibal Lecter that renders him so terrifying is that he is a manifestation and embodiment of a far more abstract concept--the horror of ironic fate. A few examples should suffice to elucidate this point.

Just as Macbeth's own struggle against his fate predicted of the three witches ironically resulted in his demise, or as Minos' substitution of the sacrificial bull was repaid by divine justice with his queen's conception of the Minotaur, or as Icarus and Phaëton's hubris despite the warnings of their associates resulted in their deaths, so too Renaldo Pazzi is persuaded by his own avarice, Mason Verger by his lust for vengeance, Paul Krendler by his penchant for rudeness, and Frederick Chilton by his psychological vampirism, all unto their own ironic destinies which are both preconceived and fulfilled by Lecter. Lecter's particular attention to the case of Renaldo Pazzi is of interest, as the irony in this situation is compounded both by the prior event of Francesco de'Pazzi's identical hanging and by the presence of Renaldo Pazzi at Lecter's lecture on the ancient imperative of an association between avarice and hanging, Judas Iscariot and Pier della Vigna serving as examples of the syntax. Even in situations in which Lecter's murder of another does not seem to be preceded by an ironic circumstance, Lecter often creates one following the murder, as evidenced in the cases of Benjamin Raspail, who was fed to his own board of directors, and Officer Pembry, the security guard whose corpse served in Lecter's escape to freedom. Thus, in every case, Lecter assumes, in the mantle and guise of human form and human action, that dreaded function elsewhere ascribed to witches, deities, or the cosmos itself.

The intriguing thing about Lecter's portrayal as the determinant of ironic fate is that, although his power in this regard seems limitless in the consideration of those cases in which his victims attempt to flee or overcome their fate through external actions, yet he is apparently powerless to influence the internal resolve and willpower of Clarice Starling.

At least, such is the case in the film. I shall have to read the novel at some point to compare this function of Lecter's mythos to its counterpart therein, or perhaps I should say its original form therein. I suspect it may even render his character more disturbing in a particular sense--the monster that is master even over individual will or conviction; the monster that is at once infallibly lethal and irresistibly mesmerizing.