The transformation of the sense of the joke—from Red Dragon to Hannibal—is characteristic of the differences in the way humor is used in the books and films, on the one hand, and the television series on the other, although not always by way of changing the point of view from which the joke is told. As we’ll continue to see, Lecter’s humor is treated by Thomas Harris and the filmmakers typically as one of his many persuasive and destructive instruments. It is, it seems, a means to an end for Dr. Lecter more than anything else, and becomes indicative primarily of his disdain for the weak, dull, and rude. It is more than this in the television series, however: in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, Lecter is hardly ever mocking. Mockery is more often than not a weapon wielded by the weak. In Hannibal, humor is power.
Are You Setting a New Standard of Care?
Although the second type of humor I’ve identified differs, I think, in some substantial ways from the first type, the jokes themselves are often in fact quite similar. While mockery is frequently used by the genuinely powerless to bring their enemies down—in the manner of a schoolyard bully—this second type of joke, humor as an expression of power, is told from a position of ostensible weakness but as a reminder of the “real” balance of power. A few such witticisms occur throughout the films. In Hannibal, for example, when captured by Mason Verger’s Sardinian henchmen, Lecter finds himself in the company of Carlo, whose brother, Matteo, Lecter killed in Florence. Carlo is understandably upset with Lecter, but by ordinary standards, Carlo is the one with power in this situation: he is unbound, an agent of the man who has masterminded the capture and planned torture of Hannibal Lecter.
Lecter, on the other hand, is bound, barefoot so that Verger’s specially raised pigs can eat his feet. Thus, it is important that, in this scene, Lecter is the apparently calm and collected one; Carlo is the agitated one. And to this combustible situation, Dr. Lecter adds the observation, “Your little brother must smell almost as badly as you do by now” (Scott, Hannibal). There is of course something mocking about such a joke—Lecter is exploiting Carlo’s weakness, the death of his brother, for his own personal and comedic gain. But at the same time, in making this joke in this situation, Dr. Lecter reminds Carlo and the viewers that, despite appearances, he is always in control. The joke appears again in the television series, when under the same circumstances, Lecter tells Carlo, “I take it Matteo didn’t make it. Did he foul himself? I imagine he smells worse than you by now” (Hannibal, Season 2, “Tome-wan”). Not only in wording but in the difference in tone the actors bring to their performances can we see that Hopkins’s Lecter is a bit more taunting, a bit more mocking, than Mikkelsen’s. But this difference—that Mikkelsen’s Lecter is apparently even more in control than Hopkins’s—seems to lend the televisual Dr. Lecter even more power. (The joke under discussion originally appears in the novel, where Lecter says to Carlo, “Your brother, Matteo, must smell worse than you by now. He shit when I cut him” [Harris, Hannibal, p. 403].)
An excellent example of this sort of humor also occurs in Peter Webber’s Hannibal Rising. In that film, the young Hannibal Lecter is being questioned about his possible involvement in the murder of a butcher who had, during the Second World War, been a supporter of the Vichy government. The French police inspector, Pascal Popil, observes that Lecter might have motive, identifying the butcher with Vichy and the Nazis. Lecter asks Inspector Popil whether he, too, suffered as a victim of war crimes perpetrated by Vichy—which Popil admits. “Then we’re both suspects,” Lecter notes. “I can say you were fishing with me, if you like” (Webber, Hannibal Rising). Here, again, we see that in an externally powerless situation—in police custody, being questioned about a murder he did in fact commit—Lecter reasserts his power, and does so through humor.
In one final example of Hannibal Lecter’s humorous power, at one point in the second season of Hannibal, Will Graham asks an orderly at the Baltimore State Hospital, where he is being kept, to kill Hannibal Lecter. The orderly—Matthew Brown—finds and captures Lecter at a swimming pool. After rendering the good doctor unconscious, Brown suspends him from a noose around his neck. He has slit both of Lecter’s wrists, and stands Lecter atop a wobbly bucket. At any time, Lecter could give up, kick the bucket (haha!), and allow himself to be hanged. If he doesn’t, he’ll bleed out. Brown then engages Lecter in conversation. As the young man speaks, Dr. Lecter recognizes him: “You’re a nurse at the hospital.” Following a brief, non-verbal acknowledgment by Brown, Lecter then asks: “Are you setting a new standard of care?” (Hannibal, Season 2, “Mukōzuke”). Lecter has a noose tightening around his neck, and is literally fighting for his life. His question is not snide or condescending; it is reminiscent of Hopkins’s Lecter in almost no way. And yet . . . it’s exceedingly funny, not in spite of but because of its lack of a mocking tone. That Dr. Lecter can make a joke in such dire circumstances is, again, a strong reminder of how powerful he really is. One need only compare such quiet mastery of himself and his situation to the frequent belittling threats made by Dr. Chilton to see the power differential in stark contrast. Lecter, hanging and bleeding to death, demonstrates more power than Chilton—keeper of the keys—will ever have.
It’s Nice to Have an Old Friend for Dinner
The last type of humor employed by Hannibal Lecter—the “inside joke”—is admittedly more characteristic of the television series than it is any of the films. It is almost totally absent from the novels. And the reason for this difference is not difficult to discern: one of the things that a good in-joke requires is that all parties involved be sufficiently familiar with the matter at hand to understand the references and get the joke. Harris’s novels lay the groundwork for the entire Hannibal Lecter phenomenon, and each introduces something new about the character to readers. As a novelist, Harris does not presume the same cultural familiarity of his audience that, say, Bryan Fuller does of his own. But some of Lecter’s in-jokes are humorous, or meant to be humorous, to other characters in his fictional world, as well. As such, we find ourselves with two sorts of inside jokes.
The first sort of in-joke that has become characteristic of Hannibal Lecter is the joke that makes sense to some characters in the fictional world Lecter inhabits but not to others. This is the sort of joke, say, that you share with your friends but not with acquaintances; when you’re in a mixed gathering and a certain sort of reference is made, only you and your friends are going to think it’s funny (everyone else is likely to be confused). The first and most famous of these occurs as the very last line of the film version of Silence: on the telephone with Clarice Starling from an undisclosed South American country, Dr. Lecter sees the oblivious Dr. Chilton disembark a small aircraft. Lecter sees Chilton, and so do we; obviously, Starling does not. Nevertheless, she is “in” on the joke, aware as she is of Lecter’s cannibalism, when he bids her farewell: “I’m having an old friend for dinner.” This may be the oldest cannibal pun there is, and it recurs in the television series on a few occasions—occasions I’ll mention again shortly.
There are a couple of other instances of in-jokes that Dr. Lecter shares with other characters in the television series. At dinner, again with Jack Crawford, Lecter presents his guest with kholodets, an incredible fish aspic that depicts a nature scene suspended in gelatin: in this case, fish pursuing each other, which Crawford dubs “the eternal chase,” wherein pursuer and pursuant are ever unclear. At this point in the story, Jack knows Lecter is a cannibal, and Lecter knows that Jack knows. And so, Dr. Lecter responds, “Whomever is pursuing whom in this very moment, I intend to eat them” (Hannibal, Season 2, “Tome-wan”). The humor in this moment is lost on neither man, but both see its humor only because both are aware of the fact that, given the opportunity, Hannibal Lecter would readily kill and eat Jack Crawford.
A final example of the in-character in-joke occurs earlier in the second season, after Freddie Lounds, the voluminously redheaded journalist, has gone missing—presumably murdered by Will Graham (a presumption Hann
ibal Lecter appears to share). Will arrives in Lecter’s kitchen with a bag of groceries, offering to provide the ingredients if Lecter decides how to prepare them. And the first thing Will removes from the bag is a paper-wrapped packet of meat. Both men quietly acknowledge that the meat they are about to prepare is not only human flesh (which it probably is), but also that it is specifically the product of butchering Freddie Lounds (which it isn’t—but Lecter doesn’t know that). Lecter determines that they will make lomo saltado, a Peruvian stir fry, hands a knife to Will, and says, “Will, you slice the ginger” (Hannibal, Season 2, “Naka-Choko”). Hannibal’s food stylist, Janice Poon, notes on her blog that, in an earlier draft of the script, Will responds, “I already have”—making explicit the much-funnier-when-merely-implied joke, that their meal is the result of Will’s having killed and butchered (“sliced”) the red-haired Lounds (“the ginger”). Will gets the joke, but no one else—no one without knowledge of Will’s involvement in Lounds’s “death”—would.
The other sort of in-joke, however—the sort which none of the characters, except perhaps Hannibal Lecter himself, would understand as humor—is in some ways the specialty of Hannibal’s dark humor. Only one such joke really stands out in the films, and it occurs in the prologue written for Red Dragon, depicting events only mentioned but not described in the novel. There, hosting a dinner party for the Baltimore Symphony Board of Directors, Dr. Lecter is asked what is in the “divine-looking” amuse-bouche. Of course, once Hannibal Lecter aficionados learn that the people gathered for dinner are the symphony board, we know what—or, more accurately, who—is on the menu: Benjamin Raspail, former flutist of the symphony, whose playing apparently left something to be desired. Lecter—played perfectly in this scene by Anthony Hopkins—notes, almost wistfully, “If I tell you, I’m afraid you won’t even try it” (Ratner, Red Dragon). Naturally, the humor here is lost on everyone else in the room (otherwise, as Lecter rightly notes, they wouldn’t eat; they would leave as quickly as possible, presuming Lecter didn’t do something to insure that he could savor their presence at his table whenever he wanted—teehee!). The joke is for our benefit, and Hannibal Lecter’s. Nobody else gets to partake of this one.
As early as the second episode of the first season of Hannibal, however, we begin to see these sorts of jokes dominate the humor landscape of the series. Dining with Jack Crawford, Dr. Lecter suggests, “Next time, bring your wife. I’d love to have you both for dinner” (Hannibal, Season 1, “Amuse-Bouche”). Two episodes later, at another meal with Jack, Lecter chastises him: “You promised to deliver your wife to my dinner table” (Hannibal, Season 1, “Œuf”). Later in the season—again over dinner, although this time while dining with the serial killer, Tobias Budge—Lecter makes perhaps the most sophisticated version of this joke yet. Tobias has confessed his intention to murder Lecter, and Lecter has admitted he was similarly murderously inclined toward Tobias. Tobias then glances warily at the plate from which he has been eating, to which Lecter casually but meaningfully responds, “I didn’t poison you, Tobias. I wouldn’t do that to the food” (Hannibal, Season 1, “Fromage”). This joke functions on two levels, only one of which is accessible to Tobias himself: Lecter is a famed gourmand, and it is funny to think that, although he is willing to murder someone, he is unwilling to spoil a meal. (This element of the joke works on the incongruity theory of humor I mentioned earlier.) At the same time, however, and unbeknownst to Tobias, Lecter probably intends not merely to kill—but afterwards, to eat—Tobias Budge. And knowing this is the case, “I wouldn’t do that to the food” takes on a second, deeper, darker, much more humorous meaning. No one willingly poisons an animal they intend for slaughter.
The best instance of this sort of humor in Hannibal, however, occurs in an earlier episode in the first season. Lecter is having dinner with Frederick Chilton and Alana Bloom; he has prepared for them what he claims is lamb’s tongue. Chilton, in his arrogant and studied way, notes that, “The Romans used to kill flamingos, just to eat their tongues.” Dr. Lecter smiles, looks Chilton in the eye, and responds, “Don’t give me ideas. Your tongue is very feisty. And as this evening has already proven, it’s nice to have an old friend for dinner” (Hannibal, Season 1, “Entrée”). This in-joke works on two levels, both of which are accessible (at this point in the series, at least) only to Hannibal Lecter and his loyal viewers. On the one hand, like the other jokes I’ve just mentioned, Lecter is making a joke about cannibalizing Chilton. He makes the joke overtly—it is not secretly about cannibalism—but only Lecter knows that he is actually willing to make the joke a gruesome reality. On the other hand, as we’ve seen, this is an old joke for Fannibals (and an even older joke for cannibals). It is perhaps the most famous joke Hannibal Lecter makes in The Silence of the Lambs. And, like so many other jokes from the novels and films, it finds its way beautifully—and quite humorously—onto the small screen.
Following this trend, of bringing the audience closer and closer to Dr. Lecter (and Dr. Lecter, closer and closer to us) through humor, we see him interacting ever more frequently with the audience. Although this is never done in the extremely explicit manner of such characters as Frank Underwood in Netflix’s House of Cards or Deadpool of the eponymous Marvel Comics series, where the anti-heroic character addresses the viewing audience or readers directly (“breaking the fourth wall,” as they say in the theater), there are subtle hints in this direction, one of the most obvious being the closing lines of the seventh episode of Season 1. There, hosting a dinner party, Lecter announces: “Before we begin, you must all be warned: nothing here is vegetarian.” The gathered diners laugh and raise their glasses, to which Lecter responds by looking into the camera, raising his own glass, smiling, and saying—to us?—“Bon appétit” (Hannibal, Season 1, “Sorbet”). In making jokes only he and we can be expected to understand, Hannibal Lecter comes closer to us than ever before. And that—as in the cases of Frank Underwood and Deadpool, and even less diabolical comic characters, like Alvy Singer in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and Groucho Marx’s Captain Spaulding in Animal Crackers (both of whom address the cinema audience directly from the screen)—is not only indicative of a very modern understanding of the relationship between the character and the audience. It’s an expression of power.
Humorous Power
Hannibal Lecter has appeared before us now in five different guises: as a character in Thomas Harris’s novels, and in the performances of Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins, Gaspard Ulliel, and Mads Mikkelsen. I think the realization that humor, telling a joke, can be a demonstration of power that bridges the gap between the fiction of Hannibal Lecter and our reality helps us to see why we might think Mads Mikkelsen’s Dr. Lecter is the funniest of the five. This is of course a controversial claim. Mikkelsen plays Lecter with an equanimity and lack of expression that is far from Hopkins’s snide, glaring, sometimes even ravenous interpretation. One of the first criticisms of Mikkelsen’s take on the character (and, after Hopkins’s inspired performance, there were bound to be criticisms) was that he is humorless: “Attempting, perhaps, to distance this version from the iconic portrayal by Anthony Hopkins, Mikkelsen plays Lecter almost completely devoid of humor. Which is a huge problem” (McNamara). Naturally, I don’t want to get into a debate about whose portrayal is superior: both Hopkins and Mikkelsen bring a great deal to Harris’s character. But what they bring is different. And, for whatever reason, Mikkelsen’s Lecter tells more jokes, and more jokes of a different kind, than Hopkins’s—more inside jokes, even, than Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter. Which helps to make Mikkelsen’s Lecter a somewhat more powerful character than Hopkins’s Lecter was or could be.
Perhaps this is due to the nature of television as a medium, with the greater intimacy and more extended storylines it affords us. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the pre-Red Dragon Lecter we see in Hannibal is genuinely more free, and thus able to exercise his power more freely, than the mostly imprisoned Lecter of the Hopkins films. I don’t kno
w. What I do know is that Hannibal Lecter is a funny guy—and he is more so in the television series than he has ever been before. Which isn’t to say that Hopkins’s Lecter isn’t funny, just that his jokes are less frequent and of a different sort. It’s almost as if Hopkins’s Lecter and Mikkelsen’s Lecter are a comedy duo, with Hopkins as the straight man. Hopkins gives us the set-up in Silence: “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti” (Demme, Silence). In 1991? Just terror, and the thrill of terror. But let the set-up percolate for twenty-two years . . . and then Mikkelsen’s Lecter can respond, in bed with Alana Bloom after the doorbell rings: “Last time someone rang my doorbell this early, it was a census taker” (Hannibal, Season 2, “Futamono”). No explanation, no explicit references, no mentioning of livers or fava beans or Chiantis, definitely no vampire-inspired sucking of the teeth. Just Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter—and us—bound together in the memory of something that, from Mikkelsen’s Lecter’s fictional perspective, hasn’t happened yet.
Now, that’s funny.
1 For more on the suitability of Carroll’s notion of the monster to considerations of Hannibal Lecter, see Chapter 17 of this volume.—Ed.
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