Comments | cleolinda: Hannibal 3x03: "Secondo"

cleolinda

Hannibal 3x03: "Secondo"

Aug 17, 2015 17:53

This recap is entirely ridiculous with the pictures and the book quotes and the movie references and the background research and I'm not even sorry because this third season is all we have left, you guys. The show's throwing in everything plus the kitchen sink, so I might as well follow suit ( Read more... )

hannibal, om nom nom, recaps

Comments 5

FOOTNOTE: Name background: Hannibal Lecter cleolinda August 17 2015, 16:41:09 UTC

I tend to believe that European Aristocracy wasn't a background Harris had in mind when he wrote Red Dragon; the name "Hannibal Lecter" does not sound Lithuanian in the least. (Real talk: We all know he chose it because it rhymes with "cannibal.") I've yet to hear of "Lecter" being a real-life surname, but you can surmise that it derives from words like lector, lectern, lecture--and not just in the Hannibal Lecture sense; they're all words that ultimately derive from from the Latin leggere, "to read," and Hannibal is nothing if not ridiculously erudite.

"Hannibal" is a bit more complicated etymologically--there are many very nice people, I'm sure, named "Hannibal," but I think its initial positive connotation comes from Hannibal Barca, "one of the greatest military commanders in history," famous for marching his army, complete with elephants, over the Alps to attack Italy during the Roman Republic. Because if you really looked at its meaning--who would name their kid "grace of Baal, a demon who likes child sacrifice"? Well, ( ... )

FOOTNOTE: Name background: Mischa, and likely back story inspiration cleolinda August 17 2015, 16:41:59 UTC

And then there's "Mischa." Y'all, I don't know. Misha is the diminutive nickname for the male Russian Mikhail--Michael. Mischa Barton aside, it is rarely used for girls, and apparently people get angry about this. Would you realistically name a Lithuanian-Italian girl "Mischa" in the 1930s-40s? Why would Thomas Harris choose to? If he wanted it for the Michael meaning ("Who is like God," the archangel who protects "the children of your people"), why not go with the Italian "Michela" or its diminutive, "Michelina," or... whatever the Lithuanian feminine of Michael is (I'm having a hard time nailing that down)? My only explanation as to why Harris chose a Russian name would be as a sort of homage to the childhood of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo (hat tip to Wikipedia for mentioning this:

Chikatilo was born in the Ukrainian village of Yablochnoye in 1936. His childhood was quite traumatic, particularly as the USSR was soon at war with Germany which also caused a devastating famine. At age 5, his mother told him she suspected ( ... )

FOOTNOTE: Caterina Sforza cleolinda August 17 2015, 17:00:33 UTC

As mentioned in the recap, the book Hannibal Rising states that Hannibal's mother Simonetta is descended from both the House of Visconti and the House of Sforza, two major Italian Renaissance families. A tangent too egregious to even think of including up top: you gotta hear about Caterina "The Tiger" Sforza, a lady who was 100% not fucking around. She became Regent of Forlì and Imola after her first husband's death, and immediately wiped out everyone who even knew anyone who had conspired to kill her second husband. My favorite story, however, takes place after the first husband's death:

The fortress of Ravaldino, a central part of the defensive system of the city, refused to surrender to the Orsis. Caterina offered to attempt to persuade the castellan, Tommaso Feo, to submit. The Orsis believed Caterina because she left her children as hostages, but once inside she let loose a barrage of vulgar threats and promises of vengeance against her former captors. According to a legend, when they threatened to kill her children, Caterina, ( ... )

FOOTNOTE: Death and the Maiden cleolinda August 17 2015, 17:13:23 UTC

Supposedly, the film Death and the Maiden was going to be another inspiration for the episode, based on the movies Bryan Fuller listed last summer; I don't know to what degree that actually panned out. Which is fine with me, because the play/film Death and the Maiden is not a fun time. It involves the victim of a fascist regime interrogating a man she believes to have been her captor-rapist--at her house after a chance encounter, while her husband flails in horror--posing the question of whether she's terrorizing an innocent man, or putting someone who genuinely wronged her "on trial." I must have seen the movie at least fifteen years ago, and since it's a Polanski film, I won't be seeing it again, so I can't say whether there are visual homages in "Secondo." It may be that the idea that Death and the Maiden film and this episode have in common, albeit in the vaguest way, is the general idea of a woman confronting a man about a crime he may have committed. Really, though, this episode resonates more with the medieval theme of Death ( ... )

FOOTNOTE: Mischa surrogates cleolinda August 17 2015, 17:37:04 UTC

Hannibal seems to have Mischa issues that are activated by women, often younger women, in distress. (See the medieval Death and the Maiden theme footnote.) In fact, in 3x05, Will says, "He comes in the guise of a mentor, but it's distress that excites him," a line that originally had a Clarice context, and I've gone into the whole "give my sister your place in the universe" thing before. He may 1) save the Mischa figure from violence/distress; 2) influence her to commit violence, often self-defense gone awry, convince her that she "has to" do it or that it was actually "murder," then offer to help cover it up; AND/OR 3) violently, yet tenderly, attack, kill, and/or eat her. The pattern, while variable, is definitely there ( ... )