Artistically filmed cannibalism is finally getting its proper place in the public eye at last, as The Hill reports that fan-art depicting the lead characters from Bryan Fuller’s blood-soaked NBC series Hannibal will soon be displayed in the U.S. Capitol building. That’s courtesy of teen artist Kathleen Palmer, of Medford New Jersey, about whom we know very little, except that she paints a damn fine pair of Murder Husbands.
Palmer’s artwork—titled “Dolce,” presumably a reference to the third-season episode where Hannibal Lecter comes damn close to finally getting to eat that wily Will Graham at last—was the winner of her district’s entry in the annual Congressional Art Competition, which is open to high school students nation-wide, and which secures its winners a spot in the Capitol’s halls. Palmer’s art was touted today by Rep. Andy Kim of New Jersey’s Third District, who was probably not expecting to get quite so much attention/cannibalism jokes from his district’s annual high school student art competition, but so it goes. Among other people who enjoyed Palmer’s cubist depiction of Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen, we can count Fuller himself, who posted a hearty “WOW” and a reminder that “#FANARTISART” in response to Palmer’s win for her lovely painting.
24 Comments
Hannibal fan art deserves much better than the U.S. Capitol.
I feel like this should mean we get Season 4 now.
The third season retroactively lowered my opinion of what came before it.
The third season is proof-positive that Thomas Harris wrote Hannibal Rising out of spite when the people holding the film rights threatened him with making a prequel movie. It’s all just so cheap but, even worse, so deeply stupid. Like it was purpose-made to be unadaptable.A lot of Season 3 works for me. The actual stuff adapted from Harris’ Hannibal fully aligns with Fuller’s high-camp wavelength, the take on the Red Dragon material isn’t as good as Manhunter but infinitely better than the Brett Ratner version, and I love the moment when Will realizes Hannibal’s interest in him has entered a downright romantic realm. But then I also think, “Oh yeah, we got an episode and a half of the part of Hannibal’s origin story involving his mother-waifu.”
Yeah, I mean Harris never would have written a prequel in the first place if it weren’t for Dino De Laurentiis threatening to have some one else write it. And the defining moment of Hannibal’s backstory, that which essentially made him who he is, was already detailed in “Hannibal” (the novel). And there, it is a harrowing revelation and as readers, we suddenly understand everything we need to. The character works so much better with all the rest being left a mystery, and that’s how I choose to look at it.
The third season’s take on the Leed’s murders at least brought back some semblance of horror, but that arc was still stupid. Why would Crawford bring back Will when he knew Will had tipped off Hannibal (even if it was to save Jack) and in this universe DIDN’T EVEN CATCH HANNIBAL!? Why does Dollarhyde send Reba away if he almost immediately goes to kidnap her afterward? Why would he then try to enlist Will in a scheme for him to kill Hannibal if he’s just faked his own death? Why would Crawford agree to a scheme he rejected in the book when in this universe he already knows Dollarhyde is the Tooth Fairy and could just put out an APB for him? Add to that the thematic damage done by treating death as a joke, whereas taking it seriously had been an essential part of earlier seasons:https://www.popoptiq.com/hannibal-season-3-episode-13-the-wrath-of-the-lamb/
The third season of Hannibal, which should have been the third and the fourth season, fully crystallized what Fuller was going for in his vision, a counterargument to heteronormative framing of relationships that encompasses asexuality, queer love, high romance, and non-reproduction centric family units.
Your take on “what Fuller was going for in his vision” is lacking in quotes from Fuller himself. There are some interviews you could look to, including ones with the AV Club:https://tv.avclub.com/hannibal-s-bryan-fuller-on-rebooting-season-two-halfway-1798267889I recall him saying elsewhere that Don Mancini’s addition to the writer’s room pushed the show in a different direction than his original vision.
I don’t even know what you’re referring to when it comes to asexuality. As for reproduction, the third season was the first in which any of the central characters had actual children (although there was nearly that with Margot’s plotline in the second season). “In the Company of Men” didn’t contain any children either.
Fuller has repeatedly engaged with fans in instagram and twitter about Will and Hannibal’s relationship, and has talked about it being a romance, beyond a typical romance, being about attraction, but not necessarily about sex. As for the rest of the stuff about reproduction, etc, you just have to read the text to see how none of the traditional families survive: Crawford and his wife don’t; Abigail’s family certainly doesn’t. Verger’s family doesn’t. Will Graham’s attempt in the third season doesn’t. Multiple episodes in the first two seasons deal with crimes that are about destroying the family.
I’m not sure what Fuller’s vision for the second season has to do with the third, especially since he’s talked about how he did not want to do the procedural format anymore: https://collider.com/hannibal-season-3-bryan-fuller-talks-red-dragon-more/I always saw the third season as the team going full on camp in a way they couldn’t risk doing before then because they were on NBC although they pushed it far enough. Hannibal is a TV show, much like Person of Interest, that backdoored weird through a procedural crime drama gloss.
The Tooth Fairy attacking families doesn’t make the show about any kind of family unit, nor does Bella dying of cancer. Alana actually does form a family which involves her own reproduction.
When you try and slot in the third season, the show as a whole becomes incoherent. For example: Fuller had said Bedelia was “the smartest person in the room” for getting the hell out of Dodge at the first sign of trouble. But then there’s no explanation for why the same person sticks around with Hannibal after not only seeing him murder someone in front of her, but also feeding her foods specifically to make her tastier for when he eventually eats her (and a brief clip does indicate she got at least partly eaten rather than running away again after Will confronted her). In the second season she had said her claim of killing her former patient in self-defense was a “half-truth”, and when granted immunity explained that it started as that but went beyond. In the third season it’s not self-defense in the slightest. It seems like they just hadn’t thought out any actual explanations for her dead patient or why she was on the plane (I know at one point it was supposed to be Abigail), and in the third season they gave up on consistent characterization (Jack & Chiyoh are some more blatant examples) and writing that made any sense.
Definitely. The first half didn’t have any Hannibal/Will togetherness and the second half was a (comparatively) bland adaptation of Red Dragon.
To be fair, the first half of Season 3 was quite a slog to sit through, waiting and waiting for anything interesting to happen following that incredible Season 2 cliffhanger ending. I always believed that the show got cancelled because of this.That’s too bad because last half of Season 3 with Red Dragon storyline was amazingly done and pretty much tied up the series nicely with deservedly ambiguous conclusion with Hannibal and Graham silently confessing their love for one other before plunging to their “deaths.”
I think Fuller already knew it was the last season, which was why he was cramming so many books into it. The remaining one was Silence, which he didn’t have the rights to.
We’re currently finishing it (i’ve seen it before, the wife hasn’t) and while I agree a lot of the Italy stuff is lesser Hannibal, I still think on the whole it’s one of the best horror tv shows of all time.I still can’t believe it aired on network television.
The nose is a little off.
I see shades of Pie-casso and Du-chomp in that art.(Get it? Pie and chomp because of the eating theme and the cubism?)
maybe wash it down with some dry Juan Gris
I don’t think there’s any such thing as a ‘cool teen’. At least since I stopped being one.
I used to be with “it,” but then changed what “it” was. And now what I’m with isn’t “it,” and what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me!
It’s already happened to yooooooooooooooooou.
I know, Pop. Me too. Now, let’s go reminisce about back when The Simpsons was funny and MTV played music videos.
No way, man! The Simpsons is gonna be funny forever!… Forever!… Forever!… Forever!…
That’s fucking awesome!
I showed this to my husband and he was like, wow, cool! And then… wait, a teenager is watching Hannibal? ….I guess it WAS on NBC….It’s still amazing to me after all these years that they got away with so much on old-school network television.