Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Unitive Mysticism and Digestive Deification in Hannibal

I’ve talked before about religious themes and undercurrents in Hannibal, so I’m returning for a second helping *food double entendre*. What I want to talk about today is the aspects of mysticism present in the show. Now, colloquially speaking, “mysticism” can be taken to mean almost anything that is vaguely spiritual—Tina the Tarot card reader down the highway may say she is a practitioner of mysticism; any New Age guru with their own faux-Indian merchandise and platitudes can claim they’re a mystic. However, in modern academic discourse, those paths and traditions termed “mysticism” have a meaning tied to transformative experiences related to a transcending of the self, typically with an end goal of a special kind of union with divinity. Examples range from the Christian ecstatics like St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross, to the practitioners of bhakti traditions in Hinduism like Ramakrishna, to the Sufi mystics of Islam, such as Mansur Al-Hallaj. Since the focus here is union with the divine object of devotion, for clarity’s sake, let’s call this strain of thought “unitive mysticism”. I believe we see examples of this particular religious/spiritual impulse in the show Hannibal, particularly in the cases of Will Graham and Francis Dolarhyde. Will and Francis are drawn to lose themselves in the identities of their objects of devotion, Hannibal and the Red Dragon personality, respectively. Join me after the jump to delve deeper.

Spoilers for the whole series after the jump.

Hannibal: “The Wrath of the Lamb” Review

It’s been a truly wild ride, fellow fannibals, and let me be the first to say I’m glad to be with you all, here at the end of all things. There was no end to my speculation last week regarding how the finale would turn out, but I’m not sure if anyone could have predicted this particular ending.

Spoilers after the jump, and a trigger warning for suicide, gore, heavily implied auto-cannibalism, and other Hannibal-typical content.

Hannibal: “The Number of the Beast is 666” Review

Holy fuckballs, kiddos, this episode was fast-paced, intense, and downright difficult to watch in places. The final pieces of the Red Dragon story are falling into place, and with only one more episode of the show to go (c’mon, internet streaming websites, there’s still time to rescue it), I’m still on the edge of my seat wondering what’s going to happen next.

Like I said, though, this ep was really hard to watch: trigger warning for cannibalism, gruesome violence, body horror, and general awfulness (and spoilers) after the jump.

Hannibal: “…And the Beast from the Sea” Review

On this week’s How I Met Your Serial Killer, we start to see the small but important ways the show differs from the source material and makes the story of Red Dragon its own. We continue on the Francis Dolarhyde/Tooth Fairy/Red Dragon saga, inching, sometimes stumbling, forward to its conclusion. Spoiler alert, and trigger warning for self-harm, harm to animals, and assorted Hannibal violence. 

Hannibal: “…And the Woman Clothed in Sun” Review

As we pointed out a couple weeks ago, there’s a bit of confusion regarding the titles of a few of Blake’s paintings in the source material. No, it’s not the same title as last week. This week we spend a lot of time with Bedelia and Reba, two contrasting women who are clothed with and in the celestial radiation of their serial killer men. Will’s still on the trail of the Tooth Fairy, and Hannibal’s up to something. So let’s dive in, shall we?

Scariness and spoilers below, as well as some violence, mild gore, and general Hannibal-ness.

Hannibal: “And the Woman Clothed with the Sun…” Review

Last week, after the conclusion of Will and Hannibal’s Most Excellent European Vacation, we jumped forward a few years and got a new antagonist, the Tooth Fairy. The episode left off on Will and Hannibal’s first reunion since Hannibal had been institutionalized three years previous. This week continued to fill in the gap of information left by that time jump, as well as hitting some satisfying emotional and storytelling notes.

Trigger warning for gore and murder, but surprisingly not cannibalism this time around. And of course, spoilers after the jump.

Hannibal: “The Great Red Dragon” Review

Well, we’ve scarcely had time to digest last week’s intense conclusion to the Verger saga, and now we’re off to the next (and final?) serving of Hannibal—the show’s take on what started it all: Red Dragon. We meet some new faces, and also see the returns of some old ones we haven’t seen in quite some time, namely Agents Price and Zeller of Team Science (sans one B. Katz *moment of silence*). Body horror and spoilers after the jump as always, kids.

Hannibal: “Digestivo” Review

Not content to simply cancel our precious show, this week NBC did us dirty by quietly moving Hannibal’s U.S. airdate to Saturdays and not, like, announcing anywhere—even on their usually on-point Tumblr—that they were doing that. However, it stayed on Thursdays in Canada, so spoilers and gifsets were floating around Tumblr willy-nilly in the meantime. So now that I’ve finally actually watched “Digestivo”, what did I think? Hit the jump to find out. Trigger warning for Hannibal-standard content, as well as some pretty gruesome medical malpractice, gore, and dead babies (yes, I’m serious) ahead.

Hannibal: “Dolce” Review

Our plot train has left the station and continues to chug along in this week’s episode of Hannibal. “Dolce” is both a meal course and a musical term: for food it means sweet, in music it means sweetly and softly. While many elements of this episode gave the illusion of sweetness and delicacy, its ending was far from it.

Spoilers, trigger warnings for gore and the usual Hannibal fare below!

Hannibal: “Contorno” Review

After a couple weeks of slow going, things are finally starting to pick up in Hannibal town. Let’s get right down to this reviewing business.

Spoilers and the requisite Hannibal-content trigger warning after the jump!