rambly ruin

I didn’t watch it because I wasn’t interested in a non-canon prequel about Will either way, but I remain eternally pissed about them strip mining the canon and cobbling together a Frankenstein’s monster of random moments using the most iconic elements totally devoid of their context and impact. Throwing portentous, memorable shit from the original away on villains of the week for who can imagine what reason.

The misogyny doesn’t surprise me at all considering the central mission of the series was apparently to take Clarice’s challenging empowerment arc about overthrowing the patriarchal forces which were stifling her and embracing her own desires while engaging in the first relationship of true equality and mutual respect she’s ever had with a man, and transform that ending of triumphant transcendence for a female protagonist into the story of the victimisation of a man. Appropriating the emotional foundations of the arc (Dr Lecter’s admiration for Clarice and their special connection) and ransacking its genuinely romantic, sincerely supportive content to repurpose into manipulation and abuse.

And then the fandom talk about how that was a beautiful dark love story. The same fandom which wanks endlessly about how Hannibal the novel is unacceptable and dangerous and shouldn't be read. Two dudes destroying themselves literally and psychologically, totally fucked up and profoundly unhealthy, that’s fine. That’s Real Art. But when it was a man and a woman who set each other free from the chains of their trauma and willingly chose each other, when it’s a woman who abandons the social status quo with open eyes- that’s problematic and terrible and how dare.