Courtenay Wright

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ideological perspective.

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Choosing a TV programme of your choice, explain how it creates its particular

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In this essay, I will argue that the television series Hannibal (Bryan Fuller, 2013) sculpts a particular ideological perspective not through the broader eyes of the protagonists or through the audience, but through the perspective of Hannibal Lecter himself. This perspective is one that is highly grounded on dominant ideology as dened in relation to the works of Karl Marx and the divine right of kings, in that the show portrays a particular ruling class who consider their rule to be denitive.!

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To examine Hannibals ideological perspective, we must rst look at the denition of the dominant ideology: there is in most societies a set of beliefs which dominates all others and which, through its incorporation in the consciousness of subordinate classes, tends to inhibit the development of radical political assent. (Abercrombie and Turner, 1978). As a show that attempts to avoid any ardent discussion of politics, we can instead interpret politics, as said in this quote, as simply thinking. The beliefs laid forth in Hannibal by the ruling class constrain the beliefs and thinking of the lower classes, preventing, essentially, the true exaction of justice. !

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The ruling class here is the titular character, Hannibal Lecter - it is his thinking and his manipulation of the other characters that shapes the majority of the show, as he uses both people and the justice system to his own ends. Mads Mikkelsen portrays Lecter as a slightly older gentleman, a former surgeon turned practicing psychiatrist. Rarely seen without a three-piece suit, he is presented to us as the pinnacle of renement not only is he formidable in his career area, but he is also procient as a gourmet chef, "1

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an avid artist, a fan of the opera, and stated to be an accomplished musician, playing the harpsichord and theremin. He is even a fan of classic art, having copies of Franois Bouchers Leda And The Swan (1740) and Jean-Honor Fragonards The Bathers (1765) in his dining room and kitchen respectively. He is a"uent, charming, and yet at his core he is evil, a serial killer and cannibal - when we look to Marxist theory, we can see Lecter as belonging to the bourgeoisie, to the class of people who own the means of production and labour.!

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To this end, we can interpret the remaining show characters as proletarians, a class of labourers, who live only so long as they nd work, and who nd work only so long as their labour increases capital (Marx and Engels, 1850). Though the principal cast consists of all intelligent university graduates, they are presented as second to the ego and intelligence of the bourgeois Lecter, and indeed the early premise of the show hangs on the fact that the labour of the FBI is not increasing their capital: agent Jack Crawford is struggling to catch a serial killer, which forces him to turn to the reclusive teacher Will Graham for assistance. In turn, Crawford goes to Lecter for help with keeping Grahams mind stable. !

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In the shows opening episode (Apritif, Hannibal), the two have a conversation that demonstrates the divide between the principal cast and the feature villain in the roles of proletarians and the bourgeois:!

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CRAWFORD: she also showed me, uh, your paper. Evolutionary uh, Evolutionary Origins of Social Exclusion?! "2

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LECTER: Yes.! CRAWFORD: Very interesting. Very interesting. Even for a layman.! LECTER: A layman?! CRAWFORD: Yeah.! LECTER: So many learned fellows going about in the halls of Behavioral Science at the FBI, and you consider yourself a layman.# CRAWFORD: I do when Im in your company, doctor.!

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We see here that the proletarian Crawford is directly subjugating himself to the presence of the bourgeois Lecter; Crawford is indoctrinated by the dominant ideology at hand, the very notion that Lecter is his better and Crawford is by nature nothing more than a layman, a labourer when in his presence.!

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It is now important to provide a grander context to this thinking. Whilst the show adheres to these principals of the dominant ideology as put forth in Marxist theory, the show also employs the Hitchcock principle of suspense, in that to create suspense you place the bomb beneath the table and let the audience see as the characters, who are unaware, do nothing about it (Hitchcock, 1985). The viewers are shown from the very rst episode that Lecter is clearly an antagonist - indeed, in our introduction to him we are shown him enjoying a ne meal in his home, and are pulled into a closeup where the light frames his face just so to make him look like a skull, and soon after this he kills a young woman to provide Will Graham with a way to solve the murders he has been investigating. Due to our knowledge superseding the knowledge of the characters, we are actually viewing the show on a slant: we are viewing it through Lecters eyes. Although the inherent wrongness in the ruling class of a cannibal is evident to us, it is

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not to Lecter, owing to his highly narcissistic personality, which brings us to the notion of the divine right of kings.!

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The divine right of kings is the theory that kings are exempt from all mortal authorities as their right to rule comes directly from God. It was said that Kings are justly called gods for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of Divine power upon earth; for if you will consider the attributes to God you shall see how they agree in the person of a king (Tanner, 1930). In this quote we can see Lecters view of himself summarised. A narcissist with sadistic psychopathic habits, Lecter views himself as king, even as the judge, jury and executioner. In a psychological prole, Lecter is described by proxy as nding saving lives just as arousing as ending them. He likes to play god. (Hassun, Hannibal). In his previous career as a surgeon, Lecter lived the dichotomy described here - a surgeon on one side and a killer on the other - and mentions at one point that he quit surgery because a patient died: I argue that Lecter found it frustrating that he did not have complete and total control over the lives of his patients as well as his victims, and resigned because he could not allow such blows to his ego. In his current career, when he is not treating patients with therapy, he engages with the FBI in catching police o$cers, saving lives in a di%erent fashion, arguably in one he nds more thrilling: now he is well placed to manipulate the law itself, in a manner that means he can cover up his crimes even as he is supposedly helping them nd the person responsible for them. It is evident from his numerous murders and the games of cat and mouse he plays with law enforcement, and by the way he dances so close to the line by engaging in careers that can easily be scrutinised, that Lecter truly believes himself to be above earthly retribution: he is untouchable, divine.!

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In line with the view of himself as a king or a god, Lecter plays with a modus operandi of only eating those who are distasteful or rude. It is by himself that he measures the actions of his victims and judges whether they are worth killing or saving, and yet to the eye of those who discover his secrets, he is perhaps the most repulsive of all truly, Hannibal is an example of a narcissism so pure that he cannot see a single fault in himself, only faults that he constructs in the line of manipulating others. He views people as puppets or pieces for himself to move around, to decide to execute or allow to live, and this is where things come back to Marxist theory: as one of the bourgeoisie, Lecter doesnt aim to really help anyone whose lives he comes into, even those he allows to live. Rather, it is all for his benet, to feed his narcissistic ego and sadism: far from wanting to transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, [the bourgeoisie] only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible. (Marx and Engels, 1850)!

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To conclude, Hannibal is a television show that constructs an ideological perspective that is reective of Marxist theory and the divine right doctrine, yet slanted through the eyes of its titular cannibal so that we see him as he sees himself. It uses this ideology as a means of promoting Lecter as the villain that he is, serving him up as an upper-class, almost angelical kind of evil that sets him apart from not only the roster of characters but from other villains.!

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BIBLIOGRAPHY! Apritif Hannibal. Writ. Bryan Fuller. Dir. David Slade. NBC, 2013. DVD.! Hassun. Hannibal. Writ. Bryan Fuller. Dir. Peter Medak. NBC. 14 Mar. 2014. Television.! Abercrombie, Nicholas, and Bryan S. Turner. "The dominant ideology thesis." The ! British Journal of Sociology. Vol. 29, No 2. (June 1978), p. 149-170!

Hitchcock, Alfred, and Francois Tru%aut. Hitchcock. Simon and Schuster, 1985. p. 73. & eBook.!

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1850), Address of the Central Committee to the & & Communist League'Marx Engels Collected Works.'Volume 10, p. 277!

Tanner, J. R. The Kings Speech to the Parliament, 1610. Constitutional Documents of ! & the Reign of James I A.D. 1603-1625: With an Historical Commentary. CUP & Archive, 1930. p. 15

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