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all the deepest parts of the id
Mar. 29th, 2014 02:32 pmAlthough I may be botching that particular bit of psychiatric terminology, who knows.
A few years ago, I had one of those dreams that stuck with me longer than a dream usually does. I was some sort of vampire hunter, and there was a portion of the dream where I was fighting one with long silver needles that I held between my fingers. Then a few cinematic flourishes (pretty common to how I dream) - dark forest with figures running through it in the moonlight, that sort of thing. Then the vampire, who has apparently defeated me, sitting in a carved chair as I sit next to him on the floor, my head in his lap. He's stroking my hair, and the emotion that came out of the dream with me was something along the lines of feeling protected and safe (because I was allied to the strongest thing around?) and not particularly worrying that the person I was now bonded to was potentially the evil undead. (I don't know how evil he was - my dream didn't provide any helpful info on whether he was a Bad Vampire Trope or a Good Vampire Trope.) The dream ended with me defending our children (how they happened, I have no idea) against other vampire hunters while he was trying to make his way back to us to keep us safe.
That's one of the central things about vampires that keeps us coming back to them, I think. They can be seductive on so many levels: freedom from death, the freedom from ordinary restraints, the freedom from ordinary fears that plague regular humans, the potential freedom from human ethics.
The reason I'm thinking about this now is because last night's Hannibal (and next week's in a big way, judging by the previews) is tapping into this particular id-quirk a lot. Hannibal in this show is being played explicitly as Lucifer, and while the fallen angel trope is not exactly the same as that of the vampire, they've got a lot of areas of overlap that I think the show likes to draw on. Hannibal doesn't drink blood, but he consumes his victims physically and also emotionally. We've seen in a lot of places where he needs people around him to help him perfect his human suit - he will mimic emotional responses and expressions to hide how alien he fundamentally is, and so there are certain people he cultivates as useful. This isn't the same relationship he has with Will, but it's the one he has or had with Bedelia and Alana and possibly even Jack.
I also saw a tiny bit of resonance with Hannibal learning about how the FBI works to the evil orderly telling Will that once you've been inside an asylum, you can effectively hide out in one as an orderly because you know how the system works, but that's a little off the point. But once you learn the system, you can hide more effectively, and that works for learning human behavior and using that knowledge to help hide yourself among them.
This is all an elaborate way to sum up my internal screaming at the preview scene of Hannibal and Alana, by the way. Something about deeply fucked up power dynamics is just fascinating (and what big chunks of fandom are built on) and the show is masterfully tapping into those things that swim deep down in the dark places. Everyone who is a part of the show: you are all magnificent bastards and I salute you.
A few years ago, I had one of those dreams that stuck with me longer than a dream usually does. I was some sort of vampire hunter, and there was a portion of the dream where I was fighting one with long silver needles that I held between my fingers. Then a few cinematic flourishes (pretty common to how I dream) - dark forest with figures running through it in the moonlight, that sort of thing. Then the vampire, who has apparently defeated me, sitting in a carved chair as I sit next to him on the floor, my head in his lap. He's stroking my hair, and the emotion that came out of the dream with me was something along the lines of feeling protected and safe (because I was allied to the strongest thing around?) and not particularly worrying that the person I was now bonded to was potentially the evil undead. (I don't know how evil he was - my dream didn't provide any helpful info on whether he was a Bad Vampire Trope or a Good Vampire Trope.) The dream ended with me defending our children (how they happened, I have no idea) against other vampire hunters while he was trying to make his way back to us to keep us safe.
That's one of the central things about vampires that keeps us coming back to them, I think. They can be seductive on so many levels: freedom from death, the freedom from ordinary restraints, the freedom from ordinary fears that plague regular humans, the potential freedom from human ethics.
The reason I'm thinking about this now is because last night's Hannibal (and next week's in a big way, judging by the previews) is tapping into this particular id-quirk a lot. Hannibal in this show is being played explicitly as Lucifer, and while the fallen angel trope is not exactly the same as that of the vampire, they've got a lot of areas of overlap that I think the show likes to draw on. Hannibal doesn't drink blood, but he consumes his victims physically and also emotionally. We've seen in a lot of places where he needs people around him to help him perfect his human suit - he will mimic emotional responses and expressions to hide how alien he fundamentally is, and so there are certain people he cultivates as useful. This isn't the same relationship he has with Will, but it's the one he has or had with Bedelia and Alana and possibly even Jack.
I also saw a tiny bit of resonance with Hannibal learning about how the FBI works to the evil orderly telling Will that once you've been inside an asylum, you can effectively hide out in one as an orderly because you know how the system works, but that's a little off the point. But once you learn the system, you can hide more effectively, and that works for learning human behavior and using that knowledge to help hide yourself among them.
This is all an elaborate way to sum up my internal screaming at the preview scene of Hannibal and Alana, by the way. Something about deeply fucked up power dynamics is just fascinating (and what big chunks of fandom are built on) and the show is masterfully tapping into those things that swim deep down in the dark places. Everyone who is a part of the show: you are all magnificent bastards and I salute you.
