Hannibal Rising

[Cyre2067]

Saw this last weekend and wanted to comment on one thing i noticed that. In the film, Hannibal is shown as a young boy, and is traumatized by a group older men during World War II.

Gonna spoil it here, but anyway: his parents are killed infront of his eyes and later his younger sister is killed and eaten by the group of men. Hannibal half-consciously (dieing of starvation) also drinks 'broth' which was cooked up using her. Throughout the film the death of his younger sister is portrayed as the 'reason' he became demented. I found this extremely interesting as the work here done on essential psychopathy demonstrates it to be genetic and not caused by trauma.

Throughout the film hannibal's character is the protagonist, you feel sorry for him, and you enjoy seeing him get his 'revenge' on the men that killed his sister.

Overall the film was mediocre at best, and dangerous as it suggests psychopaths are normal people who have been traumatized.

 

[Keit]

Hey Cyre, thanks for the review. The only "Hannibal" movie I saw was a "silence of the lambs". But even that was enough for me
Take a look at this article:
http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/126556-Hannibal+Lecter%3A+An+oddly+appealing+psychopath
You probably felt the message they tried to convey thorugh "appealing images".

Overall the film was mediocre at best, and dangerous as it suggests psychopaths are normal people who have been traumatized.

p.s By the way, this is kind of message I get from a new "Battlestar Galactica" if you watch it, even if sci-fi concept is pretty good.

 

[OPINMYND81]

I've always been fascinated by the Hannibel Lector for many reasons. Some of them are due to the character himself, indeed you can easily get mesmerized by the way he speaks, and just his...well, psychopathic cannibalistic nature (how can someone actually be like that?). How a man so supposedly "civilized" be so "barbaric." Anthony Hopkins (who seems to really have a great deal of fun playing the character) does a great job playing him too. Then again there's the fact that hollywood would glamourize and absolve a psychopathic and make him a "lovable, misunderstood cannibal." Not surprising given Hollywood fare these past couple of decades.

The whole Hannibal prequel seems to have reffuled some fan's feathers who think the author blew the legend* by trying to "explain" Hannibal. Indeed, it's a bit like George Lucas ruining Darth Vader by showing how much of a wussy he was when he was younger. Now it seems Hannibal really has a heart of gold as demonstrated by the love of his sister. Yeah...right.

(*=not to mention ruining the timeline, how could Dr. Lector get his own practice as an adult after becoming famous for being a cannibalistic nazi hunter as a tenenager?!?)

Wikipaedia has some interesting info on this.

Lecter is portrayed to be intellectually brilliant, but at the same time, primal in his mannerisms. On several occasions in the novels, his extraordinary intellect is described as "not be measurable by any means known to man." His natural posture and stature is still and erect, and he tilts his head to one side when listening. Lecter's senses are so extreme that they are considered inhuman, his most noted trait is his animal-like sense of smell (being able to smell trace amounts of blood or semen, he is also able to identify a person by scent alone).

Hmmm, sounds almost reptilian...As for his psychological makeup...

Even though Lecter has been branded a "pure sociopath", his general behavior fails to perfectly exhibit the standard forms of the condition. In order to be diagnosed as a true sociopath, a person must exhibit all three sociopathic characteristics from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual's checklist. Lecter however, is seen to only exhibit two of the characteristics. Harris also writes in Red Dragon that Lecter did not fit any existing psychiatric condition, and physicians who examined Lecter during his stay at the Baltimore Asylum reported his brain patterns were inconsistent with those of typical sociopaths. In Red Dragon, Graham said he believed that Lecter has a neurological disability, akin to a severe congenital deformity. In The Silence of the Lambs upon his first interview with Clarice Starling, Lecter performs self diagnosis; simply labling himself as evil. He states that the nature of his actions can't be reduced to a behavioral abnormality.

In Red Dragon, Graham said that Lecter displayed the earliest sign of sociopathic behaviour: sadism towards animals. However, Hannibal Rising revealed that during his childhood in Lithuania, he had formed a strong friendship with a horse named Cesar.

So it pretty much shows that the books contradict each other. After showing how brutal he is in Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, he begins to show some "humanity" by "falling in love" with Clarice Sterling and then, by the 4th and last book, he is totally redeemed in Hannibal Rising. Nothing to see here folks, sure he killed, tortured, mutilated and eaten dozens of people but he's a really nice guy underneath all that evil...god, sounds like one of those stereotyped bleeding heart liberals we see satirzied so often. Even Lector himself states that "a rational society would have either killed him or put him to some use."

Still, I don't entirely reject the notion that someone cannot become a psychopath through severe trauma. While this is an extreme, almost absurd, example we do often see cold, heartless people suffering from severly traumatic pasts, usually that were untreated or even unacknowledged. Lector was clearly born one and the "traumatizing event" had no change on that fact. So, while I don't believe that if one experienced their family's brutal murder and experienced cannibalism as a child will "change" into a violent, sadistic, cannibalistic psychopath, at the same you never really know.

I've once heard that indulging in cannablism leads to atrophying of the brain. Perhaps in Lector's case it was the part with a conscious.

 

[Renaissance]

How a man so supposedly "civilized" be so "barbaric."

As a part of my food service job I come across a number of experiences that describes the above dynamic in (probably) infected normal people (although thankfully, at a lesser degree from cannibalism). An example is a week or so ago a man dressed in a full suit threw a full out temper-tantrum because we didn't have pure olive oil for his bread. I had to stop myself from talking to him like he was three. I see these reactions quite often and I usually feel a mixture of bewilderment, humor and disgust.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the 4th way material, but it provides a means of understanding why this is, through studying the development of the personality and essence. Ouspenski writes about it here:

Essence is the truth of man; personality is the false. But in proportion as personality grows, essence manifests itself more and more rarely and more and more feebly and it often happens that essence stops in its growth at a very early age and grows no further. It happens very often that the essence of a grown-up man, even that of a very intellectual and in the accepted meaning of the word, highly 'educated' man, stops on the level of a child of five or six. This means that everything we see in this man is in reality 'not his own.' What is his own in man, that is, his essence, is usually manifested in his instincts and in his simplest of emotions.

I imagine that people would enter into a more instinctive state while hungry and waiting for their food, so perhaps this is why there are so many instances of people revealing their true and underdeveloped essences at restaurants or during meal time (family fights at dinner time anyone?)