Costuming and design in Hannibal: Bella Crawford, between life and death.

Previously: Costuming and design in Hannibal, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (Hannibal's wrist watch.), Part 4 (Abigail Hobbs).

I already mentioned in my first Hannibal costuming post that the FBI team dress like characters in a crime procedural drama, while people like Hannibal and Bedelia du Maurier seem to come from another universe entirely. The main visual difference between the FBI lab team and your average CSI character is that they wear vanishingly few monochrome outfits.

Compared to a show like Person of Interest, where two or three main characters can be wearing all-black outfits in any one episode, Hannibal's crime-fighters look positively colourful. Beverley Katz has at least three different maroon jackets, Jack Crawford loves his dark blue and purple jewel tones, and even Price and Zeller mostly wear neutral colours like navy blue or beige. (Price is characterized by his slouchy dad outfits and cardigans, while Zeller's clothes are more youthful and flattering.)

The only character in the show who habitually wears black and white is Bella Crawford. In her first appearance in "Coquilles," she's wearing a pure white dress to a dinner party with Hannibal and her husband. In the darkness of Hannibal's dining room, she stands out immediately, and the draped style of the dress makes Gina Torres look like some kind of ancient Greek deity.

Another potential meaning of these white outfits is that she is already a "ghost," in among the more colourful, healthy characters in the show. (By this metric, Hannibal's vibrant colour palette is the "healthiest" of all, which makes sense. Mads Mikkelsen loves to talk about how rather than being a "dark" character, Hannibal is almost always the happiest person in the story.)  

Screencaps via Screencapped

Bella's next outfit highlights the white dress from earlier, for reasons that don't become apparent until we see her from another angle: white at the front, but black at the back. Black and white are both associated with death, although in this context I think the stark contrast uses white to represent the healthy "front" she shows to the world, with black representing the darkness of lung cancer that hides behind her facade. Either that, or it's the shadow that will soon catch up with her, and has already overtaken some parts of her body that we don't notice at first glance.

She is half in the world of the living and half in the world of the dead, although interestingly she is one of the very few characters who isn't put in the Hades/Persephone position of eating Hannibal's "pomegranate seeds."

For obvious reasons, this show is riddled with imagery to do with death and the afterlife. However, while most of the time it's something related to the viscerality of material death (i.e. the skulls and horns decorating Hannibal's dinner table, or the crime scenes we see in every episode), Bella is the one character whose appearance uses symbolism associated with the more spiritual side of death: light and shadow, black and white. As someone who is mostly unconnected to the day-to-day events of the FBI and the world of serial killers, she is "pure," and is also the only character who is poised for a natural death.

At home with her husband in "Coquilles," she's back to wearing paler shades: a leopard-print robe and nightdress which the eagle-eyed costumesofhannibal blog pointed out could potentially resemble a pattern of "free-floating cancer cells." Her final appearance in this episode is the scene when she comes clean to Jack about her lung cancer, at which point she has transitioned over to a severe black outfit: mourning clothes.

The next time we see her is in "Takiawase," by which point she's in chemotherapy and is far less put-together than before. We already knew that Bella is very much attached to her dignity, and all of her outfits in "Coquilles" showed her to be mature and poised. Her appearance in "Takiawese" is an obvious progression from that. Although she retains the same sense of style, she's wearing a soft cardigan that would look more appropriate on an older, frumpier woman. She's also wearing pale grey: fading from life to death, or from light to darkness. She is still the only character to wear truly monochrome outfits. Even Hannibal's "grey" suits are always shot through with threads of other colours, or accessorized with a patterned tie or pocket square.

Another detail to note in this scene is the lighting. In their first session in Hannibal's office, the curtains let in far more daylight, and everything was much clearer. This time round, Hannibal's inner blinds seem to be at half-mast, giving everything a slightly murkier feel. Lighting is always used to great effect in this show, particularly in scenes that take place in Hannibal's office or Bedelia du Maurier's house, both of which have huge windows and multiple artificial light sources that can cast the characters in and out of shadow.
This progression into "old lady" outfits continues with Bella's scene at home with her husband, where she wears a terrycloth robe and what looks suspiciously similar to hospital slippers. A floral scarf holds back her thinning hair, there are white roses by the bed ("purity," once again), and for the first time we notice the somewhat funereal decor of the Crawford household. Here are some set photos from showrunner Bryan Fuller's Twitter feed:

For her suicide scene in Hannibal's office, Bella wears a softer version of her cardigan outfit from earlier on, this time with a pale beige cardigan and a shroud-like blouse. The office is in complete daylight once again, rather than the half-dark of the earlier scene.

In Bella's hospital room scene, the set design is far more important than costuming. Bella is shot like the serene corpse of a medieval saint or queen, lying in state or depicted as a marble statue on top of her final resting place. Meanwhile, Hannibal lurks in the shadows at the foot of her bed. Although Jack said in an earlier episode that Bella was trying to avoid their house looking like a hospital room with too many flowers, the colour scheme and potted plants in Bella's real hospital room bear a startling resemblance to the Crawfords' home decor. Dressed in hospital scrubs, Bella edges ever closer to the loss of dignity she feared after her first diagnosis, while Hannibal is back in control once again. As Dr Chilton said last season, sometimes saving a life is as arousing as taking one.

Previously: Costuming and design in Hannibal, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (Hannibal's wrist watch.), Part 4 (Abigail Hobbs).

Read More

Costuming and design in NBC's Hannibal: Abigail Hobbs

Previously: Costuming and design in Hannibal, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (Hannibal's wrist watch.)

While Hannibal Lecter's suits are undoubtedly the most eyecatching costumes on the show, I found myself really warming to Abigail's costuming when rewatching season 1. Her clothes in "Potage" are particularly interesting, because they were bought for her by Alana Bloom. This means that rather than wearing her own clothes, she's actually dressed in Alana's interpretation of Abigail-clothes.

Abigail may be an emotionally fragile 17/18-year-old girl, but I'm glad to say that she's neither dressed up like a TV teen (which wouldn't remotely fit in with the overall tone of Hannibal), or styled to look more childlike and therefore ~vulnerable. Like the adult characters, she has a very specific dress sense and colour palette, which in her case is very "outdoorsy". Either she's wearing sensible hunting clothes to spend time in the forest with her father, or she's dressed in green and brown, often surrounded by natural imagery of plants and flowers. While Hannibal is a Francis Bacon painting and Will is an Edward Hopper, I think Abigail is a botanical illustration.

Screencaps via screencapped.net

Abigail's hospital room is very serene, with her butterfly-patterned nightdress matching the pale blue-green bed linen, furniture and patterned wallpaper. This delicate floral motif is directly at odds with Freddie Lounds, who shows up wearing a leopard print dress, a red-lined cape and gloves. Freddie looks practically Disney villainesque in her predatory role as Abigail's unwelcome visitor, and is the one central character in the episode who isn't wearing an outfit that fits in with Abigail's colour palette.

Compared to indoor characters like Bella and Bedelia, Abigail's scenes often take place outdoors and surrounded by plants. Her outfit for her first trip outside her hospital room is a floral scarf (matching her hospital room wallpaper) and a teal coat that complements the blue/teal outfits worn by Hannibal and Alana when they visit Abigail's family home later in the episode.

As ever, Hannibal's costume is significant. Taken on its own, Hannibal's sweater/jacket combination is already relatively unusual for him because it isn't a true three-piece suit. Along with its complementary colour scheme to Abigail's outfit, it has a couple of other possible meanings. First, the high-collared look is somewhat reminiscent of the kind of vampiric 18th/19th-century European aristocrat that Hannibal is partly modelled upon as a character. Secondly, the sweater/plaid jacket combination is basically a hunting outfit, which fits perfectly with his current role of stalking Abigail as potential prey.

When they revisit the Hobbs house later in the episode, Hannibal has changed into a brown/red version of his earlier outfit, which immediately gives him that demonic undertone we know and love. After Abigail stabs Nicholas Boyle, we get this brilliant shot of Hannibal's blood-coloured sweater and brown hunting jacket perfectly complementing the brown interior of the Hobbs house -- and the drying blood on Abigail's hands. Meanwhile Abigail and her blue-green outfit stand out from the background for the first time in the episode.

Abigail's outfit when visiting Hannibal's office has far more in common with the clothes we see in flashbacks, as opposed to the Alana Bloom coat she wore in earlier scenes. In Hannibal's office, she's dressed in earth tones once again: a brown, outdoorsy jacket, her floral scarf, and grey jeans. (N.B. I'm fairly sure that Abigail is the only main character we see wearing denim in this show, a practically unheard-of feat on American television.)

One thing I found interesting when rewatching these early episodes is that while the show makes an effort to characterise Abigail as Will and Hannibal's "daughter," she actually looks way more like Will and Alana's child, both physically and in terms of costuming. With her fair skin, dark hair and scarf/coat outfits, Abigail looks a lot like Alana, while her more outdoorsy outfits firmly put her in Will's camp. Will (an angler) and Garrett Jacob Hobbs (a hunter) both dress pretty similarly when they're not at work, with both wearing warm sweaters and pocketed gilets -- a look we see on Abigail herself during flashback scenes, and in her brief appearance in Will's fishing dream in season 2.

"Potage" is really the only episode where Hannibal and Abigail look remotely similar, although Hannibal is approaching the hunter aesthetic from the English country gentleman end of the scale, while Abigail is the daughter of a typical American working-class hunting enthusiast. Still, it means that Hannibal actually changes his own style in a way that fits in with Will and Abigail's more casual dress sense, which we never really see again for the rest of the series.

To be continued...

Read More

Costuming & design in NBC's Hannibal: Hannibal Lecter's wristwatch.

As part of my ongoing series on costume and design in Hannibal, I'm going to post my first guest blog with contributions from an outside writer. My brother is a watchmaker and an avid fan of Hannibal, and recently mentioned to me that he had some thoughts on Hannibal's watch in the show (a $176,300 white gold Patek Phillippe 5270G Chronograph, apparently). Here's what he had to say:

via weartherude

Patek Phillippe are generally seen by most watch people as the big brand leaders. They have an extremely prestigious rep, although reputation is very, very weird with watches. It doesn't just vary by brand but also by model. The Rolex worn by a particular James Bond in a particular Bond movie may be seen as some amazing piece of art, but a gold-cased Rolex of the same model but a different year could be trash. To give you an idea of Patek Phillippe's marketing brand, here's a recent advert:

Obviously this is schmaltzy as fuck. It's all about getting rich guys to buy into this notion of some noble patriarch father-son connection through this status symbol. Hannibal would think it was pathetic. That said, the aesthetics of the particular watch they have him wearing seem pretty spot-on: It's large, but not distasteful. It's also expensive, but not some horrendous diamond-encrusted monster.

However, I'm still on the fence about it thanks to Patek's image as a brand. If Hannibal is into his mad expensive watches enough to shell out that kind of cash,  I reckon he would either go for one of these:

Source: Lang und Heyne

Or this:

Source: A. Lange & Sohne

The first is a HANDMADE GERMAN MAMMOTH IVORY WRISTWATCH. WTF PERFECT. The second is a watch which occupies to same kind of price bracket and technical style as the Patek but is from a brand that Hannibal would probably like more, the gravitas-laden A. Lange & Sohne Datographe. This watch is generally seen as one of the best designs to come out of the industry in the last 10 years. There are also other options from that brand, including this brown/gold model, and the circular watch in this photo, which I think is the right kind of fussy for Hannibal. 

Hannibal's Patek Phillippe, via weartherude

So, in summary: The watch Hannibal wears is a good choice in terms of characterisation: luxurious yet reserved, with incredibly expensive material (platinum) and a billion complicated extra functions (moonphase, a calendar that doesn't need correcting, etc). BUT it's from a brand I personally think he would sneer at. Honestly, if it weren't for the advertising, the Patek Phillippe one would be nearly perfect. But if it were a choice between the Lange and the Patek I think he would get the Lange, as it's more "niche."

THAT BEING SAID, WHAT CANNIBAL WOULD PASS UP A WATCH MADE OUT OF BONES, AMIRITE?

HelloTailor: Perhaps this is just my own personal taste coming into play here, but I can't really imagine why Hannibal would bother to spend $176,300 on a wristwatch. Taking into account things like accuracy, raw materials and craftsmanship, there is still NO WAY that this price tag serves any purpose other than to indicate that the watch's owner is Very Rich. In fact, my opinion on almost all high-end watches of this type is that they all seem like obnoxious status symbols for men who want to wear something super expensive and sparkly, and see overpriced watches as the only socially acceptable outlet for this desire.

Considering Hannibal's dislike of classless displays of wealth and bad taste, my instinct is that he'd be pretty scornful of the super-rich culture of buying ostentatiously pricy designer watches. Hannibal may be a master of conspicious consumption, but it's always towards a very specific goal. Super-expensive timepieces are altogether a different flavour of connoisseurship than a bespoke suit or an art collection, particularly since they all seem to include these functionally useless extra features like the ability to work in zero gravity or ten miles underwater. I like the idea of Hannibal with an antique watch, perhaps an heirloom from his uncle. I pitched this idea to my brother and he came back with this:

Good point. The least expensive watch I listed is (I think) the mammoth ivory one at around 30,000 Euro:

Source: ablogtowatch

One of the reasons why I was put off by the Patek is it was a little TOO expensive. I can see Hannibal shelling out maybe $50k at maximum if he found something that really tickled his materialism tastebuds, but Patek are infamous for being aggressively highly priced. They kind of rely on being more expensive than their competitors, which is part of the con of "exclusive" luxury products. 

Regarding your more specific issues about jewel-encrusted watches and pointless zero gravity stuff: the brands I listed are considered to be the conservative elegant options. Part of their branding is focussed on them being restrained as opposed to the really ostentatious stuff you see from people like Rolex. Brands like Patek and Lange & Soehne make their name on not being jewel-encrusted. Each kind of mechanism has a different market audience, so for example, Chronograph functions are marketed at "practically minded" clients (i.e. playboys with yachts), while Minute Repeaters (which sound out the hours and minutes on musical gongs inside the watch) are seen as the haute couture complication, and are a source of prestige for any brand.

Ultimately I was only speaking in the context of wristwatches that I would substitute into that modern, posh, exclusive bracket that the show dictated with the Patek. If I were to pick any watch for Hannibal I would agree that an heirloom would be the best choice.

In an antique heirloom context we are limited to wristwatches from around 1930 to 1960. Early men's wristwatches were very small by modern standards, and non-military watches from the '30s and '40s might actually be too small for showy Mads Hannibal with his big ties. I'd probably recommend a classic Jaeger Lecoultre Reverso. Why? It's the perfect murder watch: you can flip the case around to protect the glass from being damaged. It's also just as classy and refined and exclusive as the other watches, but less expensive. Modern Reversos retail at around £10k I believe: much more comfortable.

Source

If we were talking about something really old-school, Hannibal might conceivably have what is known as a "montre-a-tact." In many ways this is the polar opposite to some of the watches I originally listed. It's a pocket watch designed to be both as luxurious and discreet as possible. In early 19th century France the famous maker Breguet made a few of these. The watch is designed to have a hand on the outer case that you can feel in your pocket to tell the time without looking rude by checking your watch in front of your guest. It's the ultimate rich asshole watch. 

[Note from HelloTailor: I particularly appreciate this choice because it plays into the tactility of Hannibal the character and Hannibal the show, which always attempts to engage all five senses rather than just concentrating on sight and sound. Hannibal's sense of smell is often in the foreground, and we regularly characters discussing and experiencing the taste of his cooking. Plus, Hannibal clearly appreciates the sensual pleasure of high-quality clothes, furniture, and so on. It's also worth noting that Will Graham has the habit of touching and stroking things all the time. A watch that works partly by touch wouldn't be a bad choice for Will, either.]

Source

One last thing: Bone clocks. There is a subgenre of clocks called "skeleton clocks," which despite the name are not typically made out of dead things. The descriptor is visual, as in a skeleton leaf. They are clocks where the brass plates have been finely cut away into patterns and swirls. In the mid 19th century a few (and by "a few" I mean only a handful as showpieces by famous or skilled makers) were made in papier mache, ivory, and bone. Bone is a poor material for clock wheels due to humidity issues and it isn't very tough, hence the mammoth ivory watch having all the important bits made out of metal. For obvious reasons, a bone clock would be absolutely ideal for Hannibal Lecter.

(If you want to read more where that came from, my brother has a Tumblr blog all about watches and watchmaking: Practical Horology.)

Next: Costuming and design in NBC's Hannibal: Abigail Hobbs.

Previously: Costumes and design in NBC's Hannibal, Part 1 and Part 2.

Read More

Costumes and design in NBC's Hannibal, Part 2.

Previously: Part 1

Rewatching the first few episodes so close together, I quickly began to notice the many instances where characters are wearing colours that either match or complement each other. Part of the reason I picked up on this is because the transition between the pilot ("Aperitif") and second episode ("Amuse-Bouche") is so noticeable.

In "Aperitif" there's still no overarching colour scheme linking the cast together, but as soon as Hannibal switches from his normal-person disguise of beige and brown sweaters to his own "real" clothing in episode two, everything begins to come together. After this, there are moments in every episode where certain characters are seen wearing complementary outfits or somehow fit in with the colour scheme of their surroundings. This is surely no accident, either as an aesthetic choice or as one of the many moments of visual symbolism in the show.

Before we move onto the rest of the season, I'd just like to spend a moment on Hannibal's uncharacteristically bland outfits in "Aperitif." Someone else has already written about Franklyn's habit of "mirroring" Hannibal's dress sense so I won't go into too much detail here, but as Hannibal's most obsessive patient, it's possible to theorise that Franklyn is attempting to copy Hannibal's style. There are several scenes throughout the series where we see Franklyn wearing layered outfits and "loud" ties that seem like a pale simulacrum of Hannibal's costumes, but in the instance of "Aperitif," I think the reverse may be true: Hannibal is mirroring Franklyn.

Screencaps from screencapped.net

Take a look at Franklyn's outfit in his introductory scene. Brown everything, and an open-necked shirt. Meanwhile, as I pointed out last week, Hannibal is dressed like a bright summer sunrise, and looks like the millionaire that he is. Jack Crawford looks between the two of them and shakes hands with the man who looks most like his mental image of a celebrated forensic psychiatrist. My theory is that Hannibal, inspired (and somewhat tickled) by this mistake, decides that the best way to fly under the radar at the FBI is to cosplay Franklyn, thus fitting into the expected visual mold for a consulting specialist. He shows up the next day wearing the blandest outfit he could conceivably cobble together out of his own wardrobe, and his next outfit after that is another brown/beige jacket/sweater combo. Significantly, for the rest of the series he is dressed almost exclusively in three-piece suits.

This rare visual hint towards what Bedelia du Maurier refers to as Hannibal's "people suit" actually serves to make him stand out more to us, the audience, because he's the only central character who is wearing beige and brown. It's only in episode two that we see his costumes begin to gel with the rest of the cast.

In "Amuse-Bouche," we see a lot of blue with dark red accents, both in the costumes (including the widespread use of blue crime scene gloves) and in the overall colour scheme of lighting and set design. We're also introduced to one of the snappiest dressers in the show, Freddie Lounds, who appears in Hannibal's office wearing an extremely ostentatious raspberry-coloured outfit. This provides us with one of the most memorable tableaux of the episode: Freddie and Hannibal posed together on the couch, offset by Hannibal's blood-red wall in the background.

Personally, I think that Freddie's first costume in this episode is one of the many little cannibalism/murder jokes we see throughout the series. To put it bluntly, she looks like meat. In this scene with Hannibal, she thinks she's the hunter (note her plaid/tweed blazer with suede elbow patches: a hunter's jacket), but we know that she's really the prey. While she's wandering into Hannibal's office, pretending to be a harmless client, Hannibal is prowling around behind her, waiting for her to make her move. The difference between them is that Freddie thinks of herself as a predator, whereas Hannibal actually is one. To stretch the metaphor a little, Freddie is more of a scavenger.
Freddie's outfits are always full of little cues that tell us she's "aggressive," such as leather, fur, and animal print. In this scene she's playing innocent, with her hands folded demurely over her handbag (which hides a tape recorder), and wearing lace patterned tights. But a secondary effect of the red leather dress is that it almost looks as if it's slick with blood. Particularly when combined with the imagery of the next scene, a cheerful jump-cut to Hannibal pouring red Cumberland sauce over a plate of sliced meat. New viewers are left to assume that Freddie has just been added to Hannibal Lecter's meat fridge, although we now know that she lived to spy another day.

One final thought about Hannibal's costumes in this episode: it's the first explicit sign that he's a very deliberate, thematic dresser. This is one of my very favourite characterization details because there are plenty of TV shows where characters are shown wearing beautiful and/or expensive clothes, but with no real explanation as to why. If you take a closer look at Hannibal in "Amuse-Bouche" and "Potage," you'll notice that he's actually wearing two very similar grey-blue suits, not one. In his scene with Freddie Lounds he's wearing a slightly glossier suit with a brighter tie, whereas in other scenes we see him in this tweedier suit with a darker tie and a different cream striped shirt -- although to a casual viewer, they seem like practically the same outfit. Not only does this show the depth of his wardrobe (two near-identical, probably bespoke suits!?), but it indicates that he chooses very specific visual themes for his outfits on any given day, and sticks to them.
One of the most consistent aspects of Hannibal Lecter's character throughout the books, movies and TV series is his love of "good taste." Vulgarity is punishable by death while Hannibal surrounds himself with objects of beauty, but in the end, "good taste" is an incredibly soulless form of self-expression.Will's collection of stray dogs tells us more about his emotional life and personality than Hannibal's office and wardrobe, which mostly serve to tell us that he's very rich and well-informed about menswear and interior design. This brings us back to the "people suit" once again. Give Hannibal a mask and he will tell you the truth: Without all these obnoxious displays of wealth and good taste, people might begin to realise that underneath the many layers of expensive tailoring lies the cold, unbeating heart of a vampire.

Continued in a guest blog on Hannibal Lecter's wristwatch. (Yes, seriously.)

OR, Costuming & design: Abigail Hobbs.

Read More

Costumes and design in NBC's Hannibal, Part 1.

I probably should've been writing about the costumes of Hannibal from the very start, but I confess to feeling a little overwhelmed. The quality of the costume design (and set design, and food design, and soundtrack...) in Hannibal is so incredible that not only does every episode deserve its own post, but lots of other people have already been analysing it since day one. Is there even room for another reviewer? But as luck would have it, I just moved in with someone who has never seen the show, and we decided to watch season 1 from the beginning. I can now verify that it's one of those rare TV shows whose rich detail means that it actually improves when you watch it for a second time.
In "Aperitif," Hannibal's costumes are far more varied than in later episodes, mostly because he's wearing a kind of everyday camouflage half the time. A more literal version of what Bedelia du Maurier refers to as his "people suit," if you will.

At home and in his own office, we see Hannibal in his typical uniform of luxurious three-piece suits. But whenever he has to go to the FBI, he wears what basically amounts to normal-person drag: a scruffy blazer, brown sweater, and unbuttoned shirt. The colours complement each other, but it isn't the kind of daring fashion choice we see him making in most other scenarios. I suspect this was him testing the waters at the FBI, attempting to fade into the background until he's scoped things out. Hannibal doesn't actually make much effort to disguise his eccentricities in day-to-day life, but he does ease people into them. That's how he gets away with making so many cannibalism puns during his dinner parties, I suppose. But while Hannibal's uncharacteristically scruffy FBI outfit was something I noticed when I first watched this episode, the moment that I found most visually arresting this time round was his first appearance onscreen.

The first thing we see from Hannibal Lecter is his hands, cutting into some meat as he eats alone in the dark of his house. Virtually all reviews of Hannibal comment on the way the show concentrates on the journey rather than the inevitable outcome of Hannibal's arrest and incarceration. We know that Hannibal is a cannibal, and the writers know that we know. There's very little suspense in that regard. So the show can cheerful jump-cut from Will Graham saying, face twisted into a grimace, "He's eating them!" to a lingering shot of Hannibal tucking into his first sumptuous meal of the series. We're all in on the joke, which makes Hannibal's frequent "I'm having an old friend for dinner," puns all the more delicious.

This introductory shot of Hannibal uses a darker and more muted colour palette than any other scene in the episode. It's almost like we're viewing him through smoke, or through the glaze of an antique oil painting. This is Hannibal at his most satanic, with the shadows accentuating the planes and hollows of Mads Mikkelsen's skull. Plus -- dare I say it -- Hannibal's hair is kind of edging into Hitler territory here. His suit, shirt and tie are all similar shades of murky brown, with the overall effect looking rather similar to the poster for the original Hannibal movie.

There's a very noticeable contrast between this and the daytime suit he wears in the next scene. When Jack Crawford visits Hannibal's office, Hannibal is dressed like a spring sunrise. His collar is as wide as you can get, his white-gold necktie is almost cravat-like in proportion, and his suit may be the palest he wears in the entire series. He's also very pleased to see Jack, almost eager to confront the possibility that he might be under investigation by the FBI. Comparing the Hannibal we see at the beginning of season 2, I found it striking how much the Hannibal of "Aperitif" is craving the stimulation of interesting human contact. He's not "lonely" in the usual sense of the word, but there's a certain ritualised boredom to that first scene where we see him cooking and eating alone. Soon enough, he will discover that manipulating Will Graham and his colleagues is far more entertaining than sitting home alone, or listening to all those Franklyn-ish patients whine about their lives.

This is also our first look at the marvel that is Hannibal's office. Blood-red walls, gorgeous furniture, a collection of slyly meaningful pictures (next to Will at the top of the ladder is a framed photo of human ears), and those hilarious surgeon's-pole curtains. Hannibal has read and white striped barber/surgeon's pole curtains in his office. I can't get over this. However, my favourite aspect of the office set is the second-storey walkway.

Hannibal isn't the kind of show where people stand around quipping at each other or exchanging expository dialogue. Any conversation that includes Hannibal Lecter is more like a teasing exchange between predator and prey, or perhaps a duel. The therapist's office set is perfect to facilitate this kind of scene, particularly when it's with Will Graham.

A lot of viewers have picked up on the way Will and Hannibal's chairs move closer and closer together as the series progresses, but to me the most effective detail in "Aperitif" is the way Will immediately makes for the upstairs walkway. Not only does this allow him to avoid the awkwardness of a traditional face-to-face conversation, but it also highlights Hannibal's predatorial role. Although Hannibal, looking up to watch Will, is technically in what might be interpreted as a submissive position, he's actually more like a cheetah waiting in the long grass. Twitchy, frenetically nervous Will Graham scurries around upstairs like a frightened squirrel, while Hannibal expends almost no energy at all, just turning slightly from his position in the middle of the office, keeping his eyes on the prize.

Hannibal is a multisensory experience. Hannibal Lecter himself is gifted with very acute senses and a love of luxury, and the show caters to these characteristics by forcing the audience to identify with them. The visual language of Hannibal is unusually rich and complex for what seems on the surface to be a network TV crime show, but we are also gifted with a sumptious feast of sounds, tastes and smells to experience alongside the visual design. In a typical horror show the audience would expect to hear some suspenseful music in the background and see a few gruesome murders, but Hannibal requires a far more creative view. The costume and set designers have to achieve Hannibal's own level of aesthetic snobbery -- plus, of course, anyone who's seen Pushing Daisies will already be aware of showrunner Bryan Fuller's love of colour.

It's not uncommon to see a procedural crime drama where every single character is outfitted in generic neutral-toned leather jackets and suits. Which is, you know, not totally unrealistic. But I enjoy the fact that in Hannibal, the FBI characters are effectively dressed like the cast of a crime procedural... while everyone else has a very distinctive sense of style. Even Alana and Will, the two characters who bridge the gap between the FBI and civilian life, have very individual fashion tastes, with Alana wearing all those colourful wrap dresses, and Will wearing wrinkled khakis and flannel shirts practically every single day.

The strength of Hannibal's costume design is that you can easily imagine how and why each character dresses the way they do. Hannibal is obviously the focal point (and should be, because one of his central characteristics is a love of style and beauty), but side characters like Abigail Hobbs and Freddie Lounds are never neglected. But considering how many words have just been eaten up by looking at Hannibal's costumes in the very first episode, I think the other characters will have to be discussed in a later post.

Continued in Part 2.

Read More

Supernatural Season 7: Why would you even do that?

It's no secret that I watch some seriously terrible shit. But while I enjoy a so-bad-it's-good movie as much as the next guy, I can't sustain that kind of interest for an entire TV series. Not unless Tommy Wiseau finally gets funding for his sitcom, that is.

Supernatural is my one exception to the "no awful television" rule, because it's in the unique position of being simultaneously terrible and brilliant. Its attitude to women (or anyone who isn't a straight white man) is atrocious, its episodic storylines are quite often shitty or ridiculous to the point of offensiveness, and it relies heavily on a very formulaic storyline cycle -- although as I'll explain later, its formulaic nature is actually one of its greatest strengths. But somehow, two years after abandoning it at the season 6 finale ("CASTIEL DID WHAT!?") I found myself crawling back to this godawful show, masochistically enthralled once again. 23 episodes in less than a month, you guys. Twenty-three episodes.

I suspect I have a pretty similar attitude to many Supernatural fans, in that I'm fully aware of the show's painfully obvious flaws, and yet keep coming back for more. Ordinarily I'm quite picky about TV shows, and will drop them as soon as they look like they've jumped the shark. But Supernatural is so goddamn addictive (not to mention un-shark-jumpable) that I went so far as to avoid spoilers for the two years I wasn't watching, on the realistic assumption that I'd eventually be lured back into the fold. And lo, I was.

"So, after watching three seasons of Supernatural in three months, do you feel any different?" "Well, now I hate and distrust all women..."
— Hello, Tailor (@Hello_Tailor) January 19, 2014

For the past few weeks I've been watching and live-tweeting season 7, mostly to responses like "Why are you doing this to yourself?" and "You sound like an alcoholic falling off the wagon." Well, at least I'm not alone in that regard. Over the years I've seen plenty of people do exactly the same thing: drop Supernatural, only to succumb to its dubious charms after months or years away. My condolences, friends. I've often noticed it being referred to as the unpleasant ex-boyfriend of fandom: you know it's terrible and will end up hurting you all over again, but you just can't help yourself. This is the kind of gallows humour that bubbles to the top of your brain after watching 23 consecutive episodes of Sam and Dean repeating the same conversation over and over again, defeating yet another an implausible villain with some kind of maguffin device, and violently murdering several evil sexy women. So, why the hell did I put myself through it all over again? Why do any of us do it?

Season 7 was definitely the worst season so far, and yet I was weirdly captivated. By the time I reached the end, I was desperate to continue. Morbid fascination had struck again. But really, how can you resist a show that features all these elements over the course of just one season?

• The main characters' father-figure dying, becoming a ghost, and then haunting a hip flask. (And eventually going on to possess the body of a motel maid.)
• The main antagonists being an evil corporate network of flesh-eating monsters who can only be killed using borax (!!!), and who plan to take over the USA by using modified high-fructose corn syrup to turn everyone into zombies.
• I REPEAT, HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP ZOMBIES.
• One of the main characters dying, coming back to life as an amnesiac, getting married to the woman who fished him out of a river, then regaining his memories, moving into a mental institution, and finally deciding that he wants to dedicate his life to "watching the bees". This character is an angel. We don't hear anything about his wife after the first time she's mentioned on the show.
• An episode that involves not only evil clowns and a vampire octopus, but a unicorn that farts rainbows.
• A supervillain whose name is literally Dick, meaning that there are actual canonical lines like "The rise of Dick" and "Dick is coming."

Women and Supernatural

This may sound like an odd attitude to have, but as someone who is highly critical of sexism on TV, I find Supernatural strangely relaxing to watch. The reason why I write so much about the role of female characters in stuff like Doctor Who and Sherlock (and to a lesser extent, Teen Wolf) is because there are still so many people labouring under the baffling misapprehension that those shows are feminist masterpieces. Steven Moffat's followers are particularly depressing to me, because there seems to be a large number of self-proclaimed feminists who think that both Sherlock and recent seasons of Doctor Who are a high bar for female representation on TV. I've lost count of the number of well-meaning questions I've answered from people who still need a nudge to notice that beneath the shiny veneer of "strong female characters" in Sherlock, lies a roiling cesspool of misogyny.

By comparison, any fool who watches SPN should be able to tell within minutes that this show is a disaster zone. If the stereotypical gender roles (villain, victim, sex object, or tragic corpse) don't tip you off, then the huge pile of female corpses probably will. LGBT characters and people of colour barely fare any better, although they suffer more through sheer exclusion. The fact that the central characters are all white mean mean that all other demographics have to be represented in the disposable roles of single-episode monster, love interest, victim, or villain. And this all comes across even worse than usual in a show like SPN, which by necessity has an enormous body count. The only non-Winchester character who is "safe" is Castiel, because the writers have presumably worked out by now that if he left, so would a significant chunk of the show's audience.

Leviathans, AKA Why the hell would you even do that?

Thanks to my idiotic decision to avoid any and all spoilers for two solid years, I only knew three things about this season: Felicia Day showed up at some point, there was a new character named Kevin, and that this was the Bad Season. And oh boy, was that last judgement 100% accurate.

For the first six seasons, SPN stuck to loosely Biblical and occult themes, which worked out pretty well because it meant they could just recycle a ton of familiar horror/fantasy concepts. The introduction of angels was a gamble, but to my surprise it turned out to be a really interesting development. Leviathans, on the other hand? Not so much.
I do understand why season 7 was like this. The previous two seasons had been so high-stakes that the writers had to go in a different direction, leading to what basically amounted to a season-long version of Buffy's "Doublemeat Palace" episode. The villains were near-unkillable monsters (who inevitably became more and more killable as the season progressed) who planned to turn America into a giant Soylent Green factory. In some ways it's weirdly impressive that the writers decided to stretch this ridiculous plotline out to an entire season, even given the handful of familiar touches like substituting borax for holy water, or having the end-of-season maguffin be a magical ~bone. (A bone that they use to stab Dick, of course. Never let it be said that Supernatural avoids the chance to squeeze in another penis joke.)

The Leviathan-centric parody of corporate America would have worked better if the writers had spent time on it, I think. As it was, we mostly just saw distant appearances from Dick (who was, admittedly, excellent) and a few henchmen. With the ability to make copies of any person's body and memories, the Leviathans should've been the most threatening enemy in the show's history, especially since they had so much mainstream "human" power throughout America. And yet by the final episode, their destruction almost seemed like an afterthought when compared to more interesting details like the rise of Crowley, or Castiel's return to the fold. In that regard the entire season felt very similar to a comedy filler episode, with Sam and Dean easily disposing of an unfeasibly powerful enemy just because they had to move on to next week's storyline.

The road so far.

The CW recently announced that they're going to make a Supernatural spinoff series, which isn't a huge surprise considering the show's longevity. It's going to be set in Chicago, an interesting choice because it instantly removes one of the most important elements of the original show: road trips.

The basic concept of Supernatural ("saving people, hunting things") is interesting enough, but it's not exactly unique. There are multiple modern-day fantasy/horror TV shows running at any given time, and SPN's strength isn't its worldbuilding -- it's Sam and Dean's lifestyle. Relying on the formula of Winchester brothers + motels + Impala road trips + weekly infusions of new monsters to kill, the show develops at such a glacially slow pace that you barely even notice until you're a couple of seasons in, at which point you are terminally hooked. It's pretty unusual for a show to stick to a core cast of just two people, meaning that Sam & Dean's characterisation gets the kind of in-depth treatment that's usually reserved for, well, better television. Obviously when you're watching something like The Good Wife, every character is beautifully complex, but SPN is a show that devoted an entire season to a supervillain who turns people into zombies with genetically engineered fast food. The believability of Sam and Dean's character progression is what keeps everything grounded, in among all those rainbow-farting unicorns and high-fructose corn syrup conspiracies.

SPN's side-characters can often be a little two dimensional, but Sam and Dean's characterisation is perfectly balanced to create one perfect unit. In the first couple of seasons, Dean was immature and douchey, while Sam was reluctant and frustrated by the loss of his old civilian life. But by season 7, Dean seems almost suicidally depressed, while Sam has resigned himself to the inevitability of being a hunter for the rest of his life. One of my favourite developments this season was the way they actually started to acknowledge Dean's alcoholism, although I think they should've taken it a little further.

Manly antiheroes often tend to be heavy drinkers, and it was always kind of hilarious that Dean, who lives on a diet of fast food and liquor, could be played by the inhumanly beautiful Jensen Ackles. This season, they finally began to point out that Dean's constant drinking was less about him being a lonesome cowboy badass, and more about him being an honest-to-god drunk. I loved that he was basically just like, "Why are we even bothering to save the world again? WE DO THIS EVERY FUCKING YEAR." Which he quickly followed up by saying that maybe the world wants to end -- a thinly disguised hint that Dean no longer had much to live for himself. Dean's life is hell, maybe even moreso than Sam's because unlike Sam, he can't even choose not to be a hunter. At least Sam got a few years of practise at being a normal person.

I think the whole "Sam Girl vs. Dean Girl" thing in SPN fandom is kinda legit, because it's very difficult not to take sides during their many feuds. Given the opportunity to hang out with the Winchester brothers in real life (NO THANKS), I'd probably prefer Sam because unlike Dean he reads books, isn't a misogynist, and has a superficial veneer of emotional sensitivity. However, I'm definitely a Dean Girl at heart. As someone who consumes a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/comicbook fiction, I'm heartily tired of watching angsty antihero men slog their way through hours of grim manpain and lonesome whisky drinking. Dean Winchester is my one exception, because somehow, in amongst SPN's tangled mess of sexist storylines and revolving door to the afterlife, he managed to become a wholly convincing and compelling character. He's got it all: daddy issues, a drinking problem, survivor's guilt, the works. He should be just as dull as the zillion other noir action heroes who lurk around in the shadows, killing people in the name of Saving The World. And yet. AND YET.
Taken at face value, Dean is a bloodthirsty, immature alcoholic who lives in his car and is unconsciously obsessed with living up to some imaginary ideal of American masculinity. Meanwhile Sam, the "sensitive one", has a college education (kind of), treats women with a modicum of respect, and is slightly more likely to think before he shoots someone in the head. But within two or three seasons, Dean was by far my favourite. First of all, the show purposefully engineers Sam into situations where he proves himself to have an inner core of total asshole, after which he always springs back to acting like the ~superior brother. Basically, Dean will do terrible things in the name of ~Good, while Sam, convinced that he is doing the right thing, will make a terrible decision that fucks everything up for everyone.

The brothers' personalities are perfectly balanced in that the things that seem superficially true of Dean are actually Sam's underlying personality traits, and vice versa. For example, Dean is impulsive and thoughtles while Sam is more inclined to instigate an actual discussion about ethics, but Dean still has far stronger instincts on a moral and emotional level. And despite his general mistrust and lack of respect for 90% of the population, Dean gets attached to people (Castiel; Bobby; Ellen & Jo) to far a more intense degree. Dean may have grown up alone on the road, but I think Sam is secretly better at living independently.

Dean's feelings towards Castiel will probably get a post all to themselves (SPOILER ALERT: Supernatural turns me into an obnoxious shipper nightmare, because Destiel is written like a canon pairing but almost certainly never will be, UGH) but I had a love/hate with this season because a) NO CASTIEL, but b) Dean's gut-churningly dire emotional state was partly caused by Castiel's betrayal and subsequent death. The former, obviously, was trash garbage (although I'll excuse it, because Misha Collins was busy with his new baby). But the latter was very satisfying to me, because I'd begun to watch Dean's booze intake like a hawk, and he became noticeably less of a drunk once Castiel came back from the dead.

Overall, this was a very strange season. The first two thirds seemed riddled with some of the worst episodes in the show's entire run, and the main Leviathan storyline was very poorly handled. Conceptually, the Leviathans were terrifying, almost to the extent of being worth an entire show unto themselves. But the idea was so poorly executed that by the time we reached the finale, Dick's demise seemed even more inevitable than the previous seasons' Big Boss episodes. It just felt like the writers were getting rid of him in order to move onto bigger and better things -- probably because that's exactly what they were doing.

Like so many seasons before, this one ended on an epic cliffhanger, with Dean and Cas in Purgatory, Kevin kidnapped by demons, and Sam standing around bemusedly in a high-fructose corn syrup laboratory full exploded of monster guts. No wonder I couldn't help but start watching season 8 immediately.

To be continued...

(Season 8 is currently being watched & live-tweeted whenever I can muster the spiritual energy for another dose of nightmare garbage, @hello_tailor.)

Read More

A rough guide to Olympic figure skating.

I didn't have time to write about Supernatural this week, BUT I do have something for you, and that thing is an extremely important Guide to Olympic Figure Skating!

I'll almost certainly be writing something about figure skating during the Winter Olympics, so hopefully this will help to explain just why I love this sport so much. One of the reasons why figure skating is basically the only sport I'm interested in is because the narrative of each competitor is such an integral part of the entertainment experience, even moreso than other solo sports like tennis. I mean, obviously I love to watch it as a sport and as an art form, but it also has unbeatable levels of melodrama, feuding, and scandal. (And, needless to say, the costumes are fantastic.) In this article, I touch on the basics: things to watch out for at Sochi, the strange nature of institutionalised homophobia in the figure skating establishment, recent controversies, and more.

A rough guide to Olympic figure skating and its fandom.

When you get right down to it, sports fan culture and online fandom are pretty similar. After all, is it really any less nerdy to blog obsessively about baseball stats, as opposed to collecting comic books or cataloging all of the gay subtext in Teen Wolf?

Yet oddly enough, the two types of fandom rarely overlap. Out of the hundred million or so people who watched the Super Bowl, pretty much none of them sat down to draw some Seahawks fan art afterwards.

Figure skating is one of the very few exceptions to online fandom’s geek/jock divide. Basically, if your tastes run more to Sherlock and Supernatural than snowboarding and ski jumping, then figure skating is the one sport at the Sochi Olympics that you might actually find interesting.

Drama, drama, drama

While most sports do thrive on media narratives, from underdog comebacks to epic struggles between rival teams, figure skating is more familiar with what can only be described as “drama.”

In the ‘90s, Olympic skater Tonya Harding was embroiled in a scandal when her ex-husband hired a hitman to kneecap her competition, Nancy Kerrigan. Then in 2002, the entire judging system had to be revamped after an Olympic official was bribed to give a pair of Russian skaters the gold medal over the Canadian favorites. But it was the 2010 Olympics that turned figure skating drama into an online fanfic phenomenon, and that was mostly thanks to the rivalry between Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek... 

[READ MORE]

Read More