King Of The Void

So there was an earlier post that casually referred to Hannibal as a fairy tale, and I had to seize on it because as you may have noticed I keep coming back to Hannibal as the Fairy King/Queen. (The Queen has always interested me way more than the King, and in light of aLL THE TAM LIN parallels I can’t help but go there; plus, Hannibal Lecter definitely has some tradish feminine attributes.)

Okay, this is going to be so long that I think I have to break it up into a series. Woo! This part will deal with the general theme of liminality as a characteristic of fairies and fairy tales, and as a point of vulnerability for the human protagonists in those stories.

Fairy tales–by which I mean, the particular subset of European folklore we tend to refer to by that name, since other than that socialized geographic separation there’s no difference between fairy tales and other folklore–in their earlier incarnations were dark, scary, gross, gory things, as I’m sure plenty of the people reading this know. But what’s less known than a lot of the horror factors (body horror, falling into a twisted reality that can’t be made sense of, being trapped, stolen, condemned, held (often by means of food or sex), making a bargain that turns on you–and all of those things are HUGELY important in Hannibal and I’ll get to them later) is the deep, deep importance of borders and liminality in these stories.

Quick definition of liminality: 

In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.

Over and over again, fairies show up at borders–temporal, physical, and existential. Dawn and twilight; thresholds and doorways; birth, death, transitions from girlhood to womanhood and from unmarriage to marriage (I use feminine terms because in my experience those tropes turn up more often than male coming-of-age stories); the woods, the parts of the map on the edges of known, safe territory. The walls between fairy worlds and the “normal” world are, at least in Irish lore, weakest at the four great holidays (Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain), which mark the changing of the seasons and the passing of time.

(I owe a hell of a lot to At The Bottom of the Garden, an incredibly fantastic book that revolutionized my understanding of fairy tales, on this point. If you’re interested in the subject at all, I BEG you to read it.)

I bring all this up because Hannibal makes extensive use of liminality. Many of the focal characters have divided, near-contradictory natures: Jack is a ruthless, reckless and manipulative…do-gooder who loves his wife, takes responsibility for his mistakes, and ultimately wants to avoid harming Will beyond repair. Abigail is a vulnerable, homeless, damaged girl-child…who has been knowingly consuming human flesh and participating in murders for years, who killed again solo, and who is preserving Hannibal’s secrets. Hannibal is an elegant, courteous, helpful, nurturing host and friend who loves to feed people…and a serial killer, mental and emotional abuser, and all-around sociopath. (I’m saving Will for later in this post.) They’ve all got unstable personalities with one foot on each side of a border. In fact, I think many of the secondary characters are so comforting and more straightforwardly enjoyable because while they’re still complex and three-dimensional, they’re not quantum in the same way, constantly oscillating between two natures that seem they should never go together. (I’m thinking of Alana, Bev, and, yes, Freddie here.)

[SO HERE’S A THING: After writing further metas, I want to revise a little bit here. Hannibal himself is not liminal at all; he’s decidedly otherworldly. Fairies need not be liminal, it’s just that they appear in liminal spaces and times; those are the points of access between our world and the otherworld. Jack is also pretty consistent, though his position (as addressed in part 7) is more complex. I just thought I’d pop this note in here because otherwise the inconsistency you’ll see in later installments might get confusing.]

Moving on to the second point: murder. (MURDER!!!) Remember how I mentioned the physical, temporal, and existential forms of borders?

Garret Jacob Hobbs’ murders were about Abigail growing up and leaving home.

Mushroom man placed his victims in a permanent state of limbo on the threshold between life and death. (Yes, they died eventually, but as he saw it they lived on in the fungi. I am not going to make a vegetative state joke here, but only because fungi are not vegetables. I’m disappointed too.)

The Angelmaker’s killings were a response to his anxiety about his impending death, and his style of killing was its instrument.

Tobias (this one’s harder and so it’s a bit of a stretch) stopped his quiet, low-profile murders to announce himself with his serenade as a choice to move on in life, end one phase and begin another, fundamentally change the self he shows to and the role he plays in the world.  

The totem builder was about not only his own passage into old age (change of life stage) but also birth, death, marriage, the family cycle–he didn’t know it, but we did, and as so many brilliant people have pointed out, the fourth wall is people exists to be played with on this show.

Georgia Mädchen was in another limbo between life and death; she also very literally came in from the edge of the map, from the wild. If existential transformations are about a change of identity, and if their liminal moments are like a ball’s moment of suspension at the top of its arc before the next stage takes hold, then you could say she’s trapped there: not only does she not know who she is, she can’t even define herself by her relationships. (On, say, a girl’s wedding night–and I say this in an old-timey and essentialist context–suddenly her existing familial relationships are being renegotiated, while her future ones have yet to take shape. She’s at a moment of disconnection, untouched by the gravitational pull of relationships.) No one around Georgia is recognizable. She’s nowhere (“we’re in Wolf Trap, Virginia”) and nothing; limbo, again. 

The significance of these borders in fairy stories is that it’s in those spaces that a person becomes vulnerable to fairy intervention and seduction. Don’t linger at the wrong times, don’t pause too long in a doorway, and certainly don’t go to the edge of the map, because it’s in those places that you’re in the greatest danger of incursion from the Other. Ward your windows and doors; the chimney, too, if you’re smart. Certainly don’t open the door to strangers and invite them in. This is especially important for Will.

Will exists in a kind of permanent borderland, suspended between his own identity and the myriad others with whom he empathizes; while we spend most of our time on the serial killers, we have to assume he’s experiencing the effects of that empathy to one degree or another in any interaction he participates in. Furthermore, the degree to which we participate in his reenactments means we perceive him as literally two people at once every time we go there.

When we consider that Will is, in fairy terms, permanently vulnerable, both Jack and Hannibal can be read as a kind of fairy incursion. Jack is like a brownie or hob/hobgoblin, bargaining fairies that will help a person with domestic or farm work in exchange for what seems a modest price–but that price often comes with a hidden cost. (I recall one story in which a hob did all of a man’s farm work, but did it so well that his neighbors became suspicious and burned him as a witch. The man had begged the hob to stop or at least slack off; it refused. A deal’s a deal.) Jack offered Will a chance to do good, to do the kind of work he wants and needs to do, but with help: Jack will take care of the logistics and, supposedly, act as a handler to “cover him,” in exchange for Will’s cooperation. All he has to do, supposedly, is walk onto a scene, do his empathy thing, and walk out. But the price, as we’re seeing, turns out to be far higher than Will expected.

Hannibal, on the other hand, is absolutely the ruler of a fairy court. He gains power over people by feeding them his otherworldly food; he owns and dominates his space in a pretty explicitly regal fashion; he’s already been described (unwittingly) as “exotic”; he works by different rules than we do; his favor is a gift and a blow at the same time. He’s seducing Will out of the human world and into a kind of a dream world under the hill where time passes differently. (Usually these places are underground as much as they can be said to be anywhere, though I know of one adaptation where it was a college Classics department). He’s consuming him as a kind of fuel, an entertainment, but it’s a connection nonetheless born of a kind of admiration. 

I have strong feelings about why Hannibal is a fairy Queen and not a King, but they’re going to have to wait for later in the series. I plan to do one on the otherworldly qualities of the show’s environment, one on Abigail as a changeling, one on Will’s story as a pretty direct parallel to the Tam Lin ballad, one on Hannibal’s feminine aspects in this context, and one on broader feminine themes of life changes. At least, off the top of my head that’s what I want to do; probably I’ll think of more, sigh.

I’ll update this post with links as I write!

1. Let’s start off with a goofy one. In the scene where moonjo rips the photo with jongwoo and jieun, moonjo was supposed to reenact the last (& best) scene of the kwill - “please don’t” mv. Watch the mv if you don’t know what i’m talking about i aint giving spoilers

2. Moonjo creeping out jongwoo on the rooftop and jongwoo being saved by his mom’s phone call: in the script, jongwoo asks if he can leave if moonjo’s done talking. Moonjo says “No, i’m not done talking yet.” So jongwoo shows his phone screen and says “My mother is calling. Look, i’m not lying.” To which moonjo mutters with a cold look, “My mom... I hated my mom.”

3. Script says they couldn’t find moonjo’s body in the end. Like the drama, jieun says jongwoo was talking to himself in the goshiwon, but she also adds that he was saying things like “we’re always going to be together” and “your life won’t be the same ever again,” which are the exact words moonjo apparently said to jongwoo before he died.

4. Seokyoon’s rap:

Fuck Mother! Fuck Father! Fuck Money!

Fuck Mother! Fuck Father! Fuck Money!

At age 5, i stole my mom’s money and ran.

At age 13, i stole my dad’s money and ran.

Although my mom and dad put their lives on the line

Trying to protect their baby lion, baby alligator, their own son

(baby is often used as a cuss word in korean. also seokyoon’s not very talented)

5. Everyone is just more cranky and cusses more in the script ig?? They say “fuck” a few times which isn’t allowed on tv lmao.. it also describes moonjo as having “thin and white/pale fingers” a lot, to the point where kfans found it to be kinda funny

Bonus (from a q&a with the director):

- Moonjo was abused as a child and killed his parents before going to boksoon’s orphanage (the “killed his parents” part was from the last ep of the drama)

- Looking at his behavior towards Jongwoo, Moonjo’s not a psychopath? He feels emotions like normal people & can relate to others’ pain and feelings, but his lust for blood is stronger so he just does his thing ig 🤷‍♀️

- Seo Moonjo may be a fake name

- Kihyuk wore long sleeves to imitate Moonjo (& he’s always cold), moonjo wore long sleeves to hide his scars. He’s also not affected by the weather a whole lot, but lee dong wook was sweating a ton in his long black shirt in the middle of august

Because he’s a serial killer ? Because Jung Woo finds him creepy ? He’s too overbearing for Jung Woo ? No none of them…

Moon Jo is the manifestation of Jung Woo’s darkest desires. Jung Woo wrote the main character of his novel to be cold, calculative and have a certain psychology. And then, that main character manifested into an actual human being and came in front of Jung Woo. In the form of a ravishingly handsome man. As clever as Devil, twice as pretty. Jung Woo’s dream became a reality in Seo Moon Jo. So when it became too real, Jung Woo went “oh shit !! Too real !! Abort mission !! Abort mission !! Why isn’t it stopping ??? Somebody make it stop !!!”

In a fashion it’s like Frankenstein’s Monster. Dr Frankenstein always dreamt of creating life. But when he actually created it, when it became real then he saw that it’s a monster. He got scared and abandoned everything. He ran away.

so if Moonjo is the manifestation of the main character in Jongwoo's novel, then he ended up pulling Jongwoo inside his own novel made up of his own demons and violent fantasies, making it his reality.

And Hannibal is something like this

I saw this on pintrest and I wonder what would be moon joo' s reaction if Jung woo dies (sorry i know it's so sad 😞)

It's even sadder when you look up what he's saying:

[When you wake up,

I'll do whatever you like, jagi. I'll do it all.]

[Shall we wake up tomorrow and run away?]

[Early on (in the morning)]

[If possible, to a place with a view of the sea...]

[So you can stop this now.

Wake up.]

[Please...]

And it's even even sadder when you listen to the pronunciation of the words, then combine it with Moonjo's voice in your head. The whole thing begins to border on torture, really.

:)

—

In my analysis, it comes down to three variables: 1. Moonjo’s conception of death; 2. Jongwoo’s cause of death; 3. Moonjo’s relationship with Jongwoo (at the time of his death).

The first variable presents the emotional ground we’re working with. Before we reach into how Moonjo would feel about Jongwoo’s death, we should take a moment to consider how he feels about death itself. Because, I don’t know how to put this, but he, uh, well… He kills people. There is no novelty in death to him, because he grew up in its company. There is comfort in what you know and, more than anything, Moonjo knows death. Like one would know a friend, and that’s just what it might be: his longest and only friend.

Therefore, because of the (absurdly frequent) reoccurrence of it, and other psychological factors stemmed from different (but sometimes related) origins, Moonjo has unusual responses to people passing away. He’s mostly indifferent to the death of others, and presents a distinguish disregard for his own life—he seems to be more interested in how we die, than any other specification. Usually, people are interested in the when, but he doesn’t seem to particularly care if it’s a day or a decade from now, as long as he has a say in how it’s going to happen. He wants to decide. Even if he met his end by the hands of someone else, he’d like to be the one to orchestrate it; the one in control.

No one knows what’s best for Moonjo (or Moonjo’s creations) better than Moonjo himself. Not even death. So, while he’s not afraid of death, nor opposed to experiencing it (through his own or another’s), he may still present exceptionally passionate opinions on its execution.

Which brings us to the second variable: Jongwoo’s cause of death.

This one presents the scenario. How, when and where Jongwoo died. Was it of a natural cause, like a disease, or of old age (very unlikely)? Was it accidental or premeditated? Did someone kill him? Did he kill himself? Did Moonjo do it? Was Moonjo by his side when he died, or did he find out later?

Reactions change when there are different circumstances to react to, and death can come in many packages. Grief, just as well.

There is one thing I can guarantee, though: you pick any scenario for Jongwoo's death and mold it so that it has nothing to do with Moonjo, nothing whatsoever, and voilà, you just imagined the one he would despise the most.

This fact is directly related to the last variable: the nature of their relationship. What is Jongwoo to Moonjo? What does Jongwoo’s existence mean to him? How much of a difference would it make if he’s dead or alive?

When they met, Jongwoo was his passion project. He saw great potential in him. He thought Jongwoo could survive, but most importantly, he wanted Jongwoo to survive. He wanted to be right about him. He wanted Jongwoo to be the winner he envisioned in him, and he was taking no chances. Jongwoo never failed to prove himself, but he had Moonjo’s help for most of it. Moonjo was there to hold back and retaliate the challengers until he was ready. He was there to stitch him up and get him out of trouble. He was there to sever the bonds that were tying him down and ease his mind about what he was going to do.

He believed in Jongwoo, and because he did so, he would bend the whole world to make room for his fantasy—to make his belief become everyone’s reality.

That’s why we saw him become exponentially protective over Jongwoo throughout the show, until, theoretically, Jongwoo, the artwork, was finished. When he was finished, when the project was over, that should have been the end of it.

But was it the end of it?

Perhaps. But there is also a possibility that, during the course of his project, Moonjo might have tricked himself into genuinely caring about Jongwoo, as he now considers him an extension of himself—not quite as a family, but likely as a sort of additional limb. A part of him that walks the earth at its own accord.

No matter what their relationship evolves into, I believe that part wouldn’t change. Jongwoo could be living at the other side of the planet, apart from him for fifty years, and still he would never go back into being the Jongwoo he was before they met. To Moonjo, he would always be Moonjo’s Jongwoo, once treasured and held in the highest regard, to which any harm or insult was a personal offense.

They left marks on each other, and as long as Jongwoo lives, he’ll be the only one (alive) to have known Moonjo in any way that matters. Once he dies, and his memories with him, Moonjo will no longer have any significant tie to humanity. He’ll be completely alone.

That might be hard to adjust (back) into, especially because I don’t think he would have left Jongwoo’s side after Eden, and they would probably have developed a thicker bond before Jongwoo eventually died, some way or another.

“Jagiya…”

—

Tom Marvolo Riddle, Albus Dumbledore: In grey days

a little bonus to the previous post!!! ginny is alright!!!

Lord Voldemort’s request

(so call him now; his former name is heard no more)