This is my design: The horror of 'Hannibal'

This is why I didn’t watch NBC’s Hannibal at first. I’d read the Thomas Harris novels and seen the movies. Anthony Hopkins played Dr. Lecter with scenery-chewing flamboyance. I was over it. What could be new about this show? And did I want to watch a show about a cannibal week after week?

The short answer is: yes. If you like watching from between your fingers, mouth agape, unable to look away, I highly recommend this show. Hannibal’s genius lies in the ways it blurs the line between body horror and psychological terror by playing to a deep-rooted fear of disintegration.

Varieties of horror

Body horror is defined by graphic destruction or degradation of the body, such as by disease, parasitism, mutation, or disfigurement. We treasure our physical integrity. That seems to go without saying, though it’s unavoidable that we will suffer incursions throughout our lives. We have accidents. We get sick. In truly unfortunate instances, someone else hurts us, or we hurt ourselves. Even those with the most charmed lives must endure the slow process of growing old, with the long-term, low-grade, inevitable dissolution it brings. By watching overblown depictions of bodily defilement, we can achieve catharsis about our own decline. Everyone, even the toughest person you know, has some modification to the human form that freaks him out, which explains everything from The Walking Dead to Twilight to Alien.

Hand in hand with body horror comes psychological horror, which taps into universal fears, insecurities, and vulnerabilities. At its heart is self-doubt and the paranoia that the real monster actually lies within us. Who can gaslight you better than your inner demons?

Hannibal Lecter is that inner demon made manifest.

The Thomas Harris version of Hannibal Lecter, while extraordinary, could conceivably be a real person. The Bryan Fuller version of him is much more interesting. Fuller is the mind behind such bizarre but engaging shows as Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, and Dead Like Me. His world is hyperbolically stylized and surrealistic; he plays with the idea of death in creative ways. He’s outdone himself creating the lush nightmare-scape of Hannibal.

The show works best when you are willing to suspend your disbelief. Most episodes feature the FBI’s behavioral science unit pursuing serial killers so fantastical that even one of them would make national news for months, if not years: a killer who hollows out human heads to serve as beehives; one who uses living, comatose humans as mushroom incubators; a man grown into a living tree, with live plants growing in his empty chest cavity. Each of these tableaux is rendered with such lyrical beauty that the viewer can’t bear to cringe away in horror. If you’re too squeamish to be fascinated, this ain’t the show for you.

An unforgiving deity

Then there’s Lecter himself. Fuller’s Hannibal isn’t a human being but a dark god. To the world, he’s an urbane surgeon turned psychiatrist (and noted gourmand). But he’s also the Chesapeake Ripper, an elaborately vicious serial killer. His human facade is so impenetrable that no one suspects him; on the contrary, he is a trusted friend, therapist, and FBI consultant.

Will Graham (portrayed with quiet intensity by Hugh Dancy) suffers from an empathy disorder, which helps him suss out the motivations of serial killers. By the end of the first season, Will Graham’s preternatural insight penetrates Lecter’s mask, and he discovers that Lecter is the Ripper. When Graham thinks of Lecter’s murderous alter ego, he pictures an antlered creature furred with black features, a pagan demon who impales his victims with remorseless coldness. This is Hannibal’s true identity.

Lecter does not kill out of passion. Like an unforgiving deity, he selects his victims by removing a business card out of one Rolodex, then a recipe from another. The murders are never shown, only their results. Maybe he is skewering an excised heart or trimming the fat off a liver. Perhaps he is shaving a leg muscle to make prosciutto or grinding it to make sausage.

Cut away to Hannibal Lecter, dining with the show’s other characters. A painstakingly prepared multicourse dinner, plated with an artist’s attention to detail: a feast not only for the mouth, but also for the eye. Every meal is paired with the perfect wine or aperitif, every dish presented stylishly. The guests exclaim about how delicious it is while the viewer spasms in ecstasies of dramatic irony: Oh no, don’t eat that!

Lecter, played with icy control by Mads Mikkelsen, is motivated by amused curiosity. Godlike, removed from emotion, he manipulates not only his victim’s bodies, but also their minds. In the first season, he is fascinated by Will Graham, the only person capable of truly knowing him. By taking advantage of their friendship and Will’s illness, Lecter uses the therapeutic process to convince everyone that Will is the Ripper. Lecter’s frame job is so thorough that at first, even Will isn’t sure if he committed the crimes. No one believes his pleas of innocence.

The idea that a malignant being could enter one’s psyche and rearrange thoughts and memories like so much furniture is Kafkaesque. Maiming a man’s sense of self to convince him that he mutilated other humans offers the viewer a twofold horror: violation of the sanctity of both the body and the mind.

If the show meant the horrors it depicted to be viewed realistically, it would collapse under the weight of its own outlandishness. Instead, the viewer enters a world where the most horrifying aspects of being a human being are explored. Our bodies are fragile, our minds vulnerable. We are easy prey for a nearly omnipotent devil such as Hannibal Lecter.

That’s why watching Will Graham catch him will be all the sweeter.

For Paula Berman's thoughts after the third season, click here.