Clueless Lecter Fans call Critics "Clueless"

Gary Percesepe and Frederick Barthelme seem typical of a certain breed of fan that only sees the movie and doesn't ever bother to read the book. Barthelme shows his perversity in many ways: He admits he "was no big fan of Silence of the Lambs" which is so much better than Hannibal that the two books don't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. Then he says that he thinks "Brian Cox easily a better Hannibal Lecter than Anthony Hopkins." (Brian Cox played Lecter in Manhunter.) Finally, he loses all credibility when he says Julianne Moore "much more a pleasure to watch than Jodie Foster, who was maybe too butch in the role (or were they saying that's characteristic of female FBI folk?) but less a player than this Clarice, and nowhere near as cinematically supple." A "critic" with all these characteristics: (1) didn't read the book, (2) didn't like Silence, (3) didn't like Anthony Hopkins and (4) didn't like Jodie Foster may well like Hannibal. To me, such a person is perverted and clueless 9 times 90.

Moore's "Clarice is in the game as an equal from the start. She's fascinated, enthralled, engaged and every inch his equal." Give me a break! Clarice Lecter's equal? Even the watered-down Lecter of Hannibal (Harris' fault, not Hopkins') is more than a match for any Clarice. This same writer also adored the wrist-chopping scene which isn't even in the book but, then, he hasn't read the book, has he? I guess people like this consider a book only the scaffolding upon which the movie makers build their art.

Percesepe says of the hand-chopping, "I mean, I was reeling with the perfection of it. An Aristotelian finish, in the sense that once having imagined this ending, you realize that aesthetically there could be no other ending at all." Does this man even know how the book ended? Not that I thought much of that ending either. Clarice Starling would never have abandoned the law and social conventions to become Lecter's consort. However, it was what Harris wrote. Percesepe does redeem himself to an extent when he writes, "I try to imagine myself as Clarice -- the attraction to this strange and powerful mind, this erect man, this measured, clipped, perfect machine for killing, for knowing what is in her head. Hannibal is the perfect lover, in the sense that he knows exactly what you are thinking; he is able to stay with you when he is not present; his absence fills your room, your house, your heart, with an aching to know the depths of the perfect evil he has achieved, and to know him is to have an alternate universe revealed to you, a Nietzschean one perhaps, where all so-called values have been transvalued." That captures very well the attraction of Lecter. But then he says, "Clarice is unique in her ability to comprehend this -- everyone else, including the audience, misses this point, because we are culturally coded to see the big EVIL, the monster...." This member of the audience didn't "miss the point." I understand her attraction to Lecter but I don't think she would ever give in to it. Of course, in the movie, she didn't.

Barthelme, easily the more clueless of the two, also harps on the wrist cutting theme and says, "And here you do have a touch of beauty/beast in the abject adoration of the object of desire." Gross me out the door! Lecter abjectly adores Clarice? I can accept the wrist-cutting as possible with the idea that Lecter, being so transcendent to ordinary attachments, doesn't regard it as too great a sacrifice. He would never abjectly adore anyone (except maybe Bach). Let's leave the character with some of his integrity intact.

Yes, someone is clueless here. Percesepe and Barthelme. They speak of redemption and self-sacrifice, thus diminishing Lecter to something merely human. They touch upon the mystery of evil but back off from it's implications, retreating to a safe world of love and romance. They are, in this way, the perfect fans of the revisionist Lecter of the movie, Hannibal.

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