Hannibal Lecter Is From Faerie Land

(But first, merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and happy statutory holiday to those who do not!)

In case you missed the title, let me repeat it: Hannibal Lecter is from faerie land.

No, seriously. Think about it for a second.

I was thinking about it — how you might consider Hannibal Lecter, the epicurean cannibal from Silence of the Lambs, to be a modern incarnation of traditional faerie myths — because I was watching the first season of Hannibal, Bryan Fuller’s gorgeous prequel featuring the characters from Thomas Harris’s original series of books.

Hannibal Lecter’s most iconic incarnation is, of course, that of Sir Anthony Hopkins. Ask anyone to do a Hannibal impression, and they’ll probably mimic a “Hello, Clarice” or talk about the census taker whose liver the good doctor ate with “fava beans and a nice chianti.” But Mads Mikkelsen’s Lecter is just as suave, cool, and sophisticated as his predecessor. Or is it successor?

Anyway, one’s first temptation might be to compare Hannibal to that most elegant of supernatural predators, the vampire. He’s classy. He devours his victims. He exercises psychological magnetism on those he encounters. Other than a tux, a cape, and a pair of fangs, what more could you ask for?

But I think there’s more to the good doctor than that. In Hannibal, we see the character’s draw isn’t just his sensuality and domination, which are key traits associated with, say, Dracula. Hannibal is also about the fluidity of appearance versus reality, the difference between exquisite inhumanity and animal humanity, and the over-importance of courtesy. In short, Hannibal Lecter belongs in Faerie.

I don’t mean the Disneyfied Tinkerbell fairies or even the original Peter Pan ones who aren’t above attempted murder. I mean the legends of little people: the inhuman changeling babies, the ugly household brownies whom one never sees but for whom one must never leave clothes as a gift, the Seelie and Unseelie Courts who wander at night.

Like Hannibal Lecter, the faeries of these myths are interesting because it is difficult to predict if or when even the ones most inclined to harm and evil will do good. Like Hannibal, they are often said to present the outer appearance of humanity without possessing the empathy or ethical sense of the truly human. And like Hannibal Lecter, they prize beauty and aesthetic concepts like honour over all else and to preserve it, exercise a tortuous set of rules whose violation invites drastic consequences.

Hannibal shows the cannibalistic Dr. Lecter as a man of literal and figurative taste. His apartment is impeccably decorated. He’s always fashionably dressed. He appreciates fine opera music and other traditionally intellectual, high-class Western pleasures. His culinary skills rival those of the finest Western chefs. Even his slight European accent implies Old World breeding and charm to his North American audience and colleagues.

Each of these attributes can be seen as his dedication to intellectual beauty over emotional morality. Lecter has no sentimental attachment to individual human beings, no emotional, animalistic foibles like a weakness for the fat-and-carb bomb of chili cheese fries or a love of the Backstreet Boys’s syrupy dance beats. Of course, in real life, one can be a maudlin fan of both Lord Byron and Stephenie Meyer; one can be intellectually fascinated by both Chris Columbus and Federico Fellini. But in the world of Hannibal, “elitist” tastes are shorthand for the victory of col

Similarly, the aristocratic faeries of myth don’t kidnap the writers of dirty tavern songs; they steal away great poets like Thomas the Rhymer. The lords and ladies of Faerie are often described as inhumanly beautiful: not sexually desirable like an attractive human being or with features that grow on one like those of a good friend, but beautiful in the way works of art and nature are beautiful.

What makes both Hannibal Lecter and these aristocratic faeries exciting characters is the contrast between the appearance of friendly humanity they wear and shed with seeming unpredictability. The faeries do so more literally: they swap themselves for human babies, identical in appearance except for a crankier nature. They appear in the guise of attractive ladies who turn into old crones (thanks, Chaucer). They disguise inhuman parts with long aprons or skirts, fooling all but the formidable few who think to scatter flour on the ground to reveal the prints of hooves or backwards talons.

As the faeries do literally, Hannibal Lecter does metaphorically. He disguises his sociopathy with pretended empathy and uses it as a tool to further his crimes. That most warm and human of events — a dinner party — becomes an immoral mockery, a banquet on the flesh of neighbours and friends. In Silence of the Lambs, he hides his violence in sham human emotion just long enough to lure his guards within his deadly reach. And in Hannibal, he uses a pretense of concern and sympathy to manipulate his many acquaintances and victims into doing exactly what he wants.

And how do you stop Hannibal Lecter from wanting you to do something awful, like die horribly and feed his guests as human foie gras? Last but not least, like faeries, Hannibal has his own arcane rules not of ethics but of etiquette.

Being one of the annoyances of modern life (a telemarketer, a business-minded person in the service industry, a census-taker) is rude. Having an unwarranted high opinion of oneself (like Dr. Chilton, the arrogant criminal psychologist) is rude. Not appreciating the beauty Hannibal sees — or worse, appreciating alongside other, lesser pleasures, as Jack Crawford does, showing that he doesn’t really appreciate beauty, not like Dr. Lecter — is rude.

Likewise, if you meet up with a faerie, you’d better not offer thanks. Make sure to call them the “Good People” or the “Fair Folk,” especially when they’re not, so you won’t offend them. They don’t like rowan or clothes turned inside-out. And unless you are fae yourself, you’ll never understand all the intricacies of their seemingly arbitrary courtesy system.

So watch yourself around that Lecter guy. If you must speak with him, take precautions. Learn his rules, and learn that the most basic of all is not to rely on them. And if he offers you a ride — well, garlic and stakes aren’t going to help.

Try cold iron instead.