Sauntering Vaguely Downwards

we found each other hungry: andimprouvaire: fireofspring: cthonical: balphesian: cthonical replied...

andimprouvaire:

fireofspring:

cthonical:

balphesian:

cthonical replied to your post:

I really want to write a bit of meta about how Hannibal is a dark horror/fantasy, NOT a procedural/crime drama or whatever people seem to be expecting of it. it makes a lot more sense when you look at it in the context of the right tropes.

OH GOD YES PLEASE DO. it’s definitely not your typical crime drama at all, and so far removed from a typical procedural that it’s weird to think of it in that context. I’ve been referring to it as a fairytale because it’s not only structured like one, it feels like one — like it’s straight out of some horrifically dusty lovecraftian tome or something, a strange and dripping alternate universe, much like our own, but where serial killers are normal fare and their murder tableus are all Goya paintings come to life and men like Hannibal Lecter are allowed to exist. like you said — dark horror & fantasy. it’s too surreal to be anything else.

emphasis mine because this, THIS, thissssss. i’m leaving for nearly a month away tomorrow night & i’m hoping to get lots of fic writing done, i’ll try to get all my notes for this meta ordered into something coherent too. i don’t have balph’s way with words, but i can try. ;) 

The phrase Bryan Fuller and a lot of show-related people have used to describe it is “elegant horror”, and Fuller is clearly a fan of the genre (he’s a great admirer of American Horror Story). Hence: all the Shining references, the surrealist imagery, the creepy and/or melodramatic musical cues, the excessively rich and opulent tonal palette, the logic-and-physics-defying “monsters” of the week, etc.

direct confirmation from Fuller, in reference to Buffet Froid

Hannibal is “elegant horror;” it’s horror in elegance, it’s sullen southern gothic, the shuddering obscenity of freud and lacan 

#this show is southern gothicism and horror and operatic spectacle all wrapped up     #the monsters are mirrors of the heros and the mirrors are built with the fabric and liminal spaces of society and who we monsterize     #and who we lionize     #and strips down and exposes the thin line between them     #beauty is made terror; the food of hannibal’s table roils with unease; the artful murder scenes quake with such design     #that we cannot ignore our terror of the minds that devised them     #our hero has a mind built to see horrors in greater detail and comprehension and feeling     #than even our most shameless voyeurism     #and his horror of those horrors     #tears strips off our disconnect between the fabric of the show and reality

Just going to add the beautiful tags here

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