TY - CHAP

T1 - Its only cannibalism if we’re equals”

T2 - Consuming the lesser in hannibal

AU - Dellwing, Michael

PY - 2018/1/1

Y1 - 2018/1/1

N2 - The title character of the television show Hannibal, a psychiatrist and a cannibalistic serial killer, uses the bodies of his victims to create art installations, both as sculptures and as food. The show uses a sophisticated, high-society protagonist to juxtapose murder and art. It does so by playing with the audiences in front of which status is enacted: while crime is presented diegetically, the art is not, that is, the audience is witness to the art and the murder, while the other characters see only the murder; this happens within a frame in which, of course, the show itself as art is also (almost necessarily) a non-diegetic presentation, aimed only at us. Thus, the show manages to play with the status ascriptions around murder and art and thus shows how the front-stage talk about murder is contradicted continuously by the reception of the show: by emphasizing a putative opposition between status markers in the interplay between critical attention and production commentary, it shows a near-complete convergence of these status markers in its non-verbalized production imagery. This allows wider insights in how status is communicated in open and veiled manners.

AB - The title character of the television show Hannibal, a psychiatrist and a cannibalistic serial killer, uses the bodies of his victims to create art installations, both as sculptures and as food. The show uses a sophisticated, high-society protagonist to juxtapose murder and art. It does so by playing with the audiences in front of which status is enacted: while crime is presented diegetically, the art is not, that is, the audience is witness to the art and the murder, while the other characters see only the murder; this happens within a frame in which, of course, the show itself as art is also (almost necessarily) a non-diegetic presentation, aimed only at us. Thus, the show manages to play with the status ascriptions around murder and art and thus shows how the front-stage talk about murder is contradicted continuously by the reception of the show: by emphasizing a putative opposition between status markers in the interplay between critical attention and production commentary, it shows a near-complete convergence of these status markers in its non-verbalized production imagery. This allows wider insights in how status is communicated in open and veiled manners.

KW - Transdisciplinary studies

KW - audience

KW - television

KW - tastes

KW - dead

KW - body

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063423311&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-93656-7_14

DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-93656-7_14

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85063423311

SN - 978-3-319-93655-0

SN - 978-3-030-06700-7

SP - 289

EP - 307

BT - Globalized Eating Cultures

A2 - Dürrschmidt, Jörg

A2 - Kautt, York

PB - Palgrave Macmillan

ER -