Some psychopaths don’t mind helping others as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them.
Though usually the incentive is to gain trust or other favors from people, that might come in handy at some point in the future.
Lector did seem to like Clarice though, as much as he was able.
Reference: The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson.
Lecter was a sick fuck who needed killing. While his analysis of Clarice Starling was doubtless spot-on, he wasn’t doing it to be helpful; he was doing it because he enjoyed inflicting pain and eventually murdering people, and there was a glass wall preventing him from getting his hands on her. Any helpful insights she got into her psyche from his comments were, at best, collateral non-damage.
Originally. Unfortunately Harris kept revisiting him to make him more sympathetic. The last one, Hannibal Rising, was so far from the original that Harris didn’t even include his maroon eyes and 11 fingers. (Maybe they came after his teen years.)
He worked much better when he was a total psychopath with no better explanation than his own “I happened”. That said, I do think Clarice pushed the right access code to show the tiny trace amount of humanity in him (kind of like that 3 meter exhaust vent in The Death Star). Hardly makes him a nice guy, but if you were a friend or relative of the nurse whose tongue he bit out or the policemen he killed or his previous victims you might say “Hmm” for a second before you resumed while flaying him alive.
Two meters. Just a little less than your average womp-rat.
After reading Hannibal I was convinced Harris did that on purpose because he didn’t want to write any more of those books. I figured he just said “fuck it, if they want me to write more of these books I’ll just do it and laugh all the way to the bank.” In my heart of hearts I like to believe this is true.
In my view, one of Hannibal’s most basic character traits is professional pride, which he applies to everything he does. He was helpful to Clarice Starling only because it allowed him to practice his profession.
The reason Lecter becomes a psychiatrist was not to help people but because he enjoyed the power it gave him over people. He liked that people were coming to him with problems, because it made him feel superior. His patients were like his puppets. That was why he was a cannibal, it was the ultimate act of control, he possessed his victims totally by eating them.
Interacting with Starling gave him that feeling back. He was able to manipulate her and control her. It also let everybody know how smart and superior he was to them, because he had all the answers and they had to come begging to him. He was also jealous of the attention paid to Buffalo Bill who he knew to be just a pathetic guy trying to become someone else, and not the superior being Lecter thought himself to be.
The reason Lecter does not come after Starling is that kind of thing would be beneath him. He needs to kill the doctor to show his own power because the doctor had power over him at one point.
Huh… this cannibalistic serial killer is starting to sound like kind of a jerk.
I wonder if Harris writes out Crawford and turns the Justice Department into idiots is that someone from the FBI really angered him.
Heck, the current incarnation of Crawford, little more than an endless source of concerned tongue-clucks for the Will Graham character, does a disservice to both the law enforcement career of Douglas and the acting abilities of Laurence Fishburne.
One aspect of the new Will Graham which is apparently drawn from Douglas’s life is that both contracted viral encephalitis. This is, Douglas’s bout had him convulsing and near-death on a hotel room floor and spending a month in recovery, while his fictional counterpart gets the benefit of magic crime-solving powers.
Basically, I don’t like this show, but will watch because I like the Parks and Recreation lead-in, and because it’s mockability is as delicious as a census-taker’s liver, if one is into that sort of thing.
Say what?
I declined to read Hannibal Rising. Its predecessor (simply Hannibal) had already put me off Harris.
I’m not super familiar with the books… what do you mean by the maroon eyes/11 fingers?
In the books, Lecter has maroon eyes and a six-fingered right hand. Or possibly left hand. The point is that the middle fingers on one of his fingers is perfectly duplicated (“the rarest form of polydactyly,” the narrator says).
Basically, Hollywood said “Mr. Harris, on my desk is a brick of solid gold. You can take this and give us a sequel, or we can beat you to death with it and do the sequel without you.”
With Hannibal Rising and since, he pretty much interrupts them with “Just give me the brick, asshole.”
I cannot get into the series at all, and blame it completely on the actor they cast as Hannibal. While I’m sure he’s a great actor- I liked him in the Bond films and all- he doesn’t have the charisma and cat-playing-with-a-mouse sadistic Disney villain campy charm of Anthony Hopkins or Brian Cox.
I’ve only seen Hopkins and Cox. Cox was better, Hopkins was very, very good.
“Slurpslurpslurpslurp.”
Lector said something about eating a census taker as I recall.