It’s been nearly ten years since Bryan Fuller’s TV show Hannibal (2013-2015) debuted. Since then, it has garnered a cult viewership and a devoted online fanbase, often referred to as “fannibals.” However, to their (and my) chagrin, the show was preemptively cancelled after Season 3. As a late-comer to Hannibal (in that I’ve only just started watching it), the past several weeks of my life have been consumed by the drama’s cinematographic beauty, eloquent writing, and, of course, its artistic depiction of cannibalism. Furthermore, as an aspiring early modernist, I’ve also been doing my fair share of comparing Hannibal with the early modern English texts I study. One of these, William Shakespeare’s 1594 play Titus Andronicus, bears particularly strong similarities to the show.

Despite the approximately 400-year gap between them, Hannibal resonates strongly with Titus. In tracing their thematic entanglement, I hope to demonstrate how Shakespeare’s gory revenge tragedy illuminates one of the more veiled elements of Fuller’s show, namely Dr. Lecter’s figurative role as a pre-Oedipal horror: the cannibalizing mother.

Before we begin, you must all be warned. Nothing here is vegetarian. Bon appetit.[i]

In Hannibal, as in many of Shakespeare’s plays, mothers seem to get left out of the picture. Take the character Abigail Hobbs, for instance, whose main story arc elapses during Season 1. The show depicts Abigail’s mother as having little to no consequence on the drama, whereas Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Abigail’s father, is spotlighted as the first serial killer that Will Graham is called on to apprehend. Likewise, Will’s character engages in a similar kind of maternal erasure, claiming that he “never knew” his mother but that his father single-handedly molded him into a drifter:

HANNIBAL
Tell me about your mother.

WILL GRAHAM
That’s some lazy psychiatry, Dr. Lecter. Low hanging fruit.

HANNIBAL
I suspect that fruit is on a high branch, very difficult to reach.

WILL GRAHAM
So’s my mother. I never knew her.

…

HANNIBAL
Did your family have money, Will?

WILL GRAHAM
We were poor. I followed my father from the boat yards in Biloxi and Greenville to lake boats on Erie.[ii]

If Hannibal’s mothers are “very difficult to reach,” to quote Dr. Lecter, then the show’s fathers seem to be the “low-hanging fruit” of Will’s metaphor. Abigail’s father is not only sensationalized as a cannibal-murderer, thus rendering his wife less important by comparison, but his hereditary influence over his progeny completely overshadows the maternal. In brief, Abigail frequently expresses concern over becoming a murderer like her father, fearing the mix of genetics and nurture that seem to have made Will into the image of his own father. What’s more, the show develops its paternal motif even further when Will subconsciously (and, in some ways, involuntarily) slips into the role of Abigail’s father:

HANNIBAL
Teaching her [Abigail] how to fish. Her father taught her how to hunt.

WILL GRAHAM
That’s why I thought better of it.

HANNIBAL
Feeling paternal, Will?[iii]

So, if Hannibal has so much to do with fathers, especially throughout Season 1, then what does it have to do with mothers? To illuminate the maternal power that figuratively lurks in the show’s shadows, I turn to a somewhat dated piece of psychoanalytic literary criticism where author Alan B. Rothenberg provides a telling (if problematic) analysis of Shakespeare’s Titus.

In Rothenberg’s view, “A strong ‘pattern of the past’ underlying [Titus] seems to be the pre-Oedipal fear of being smothered, buried alive, and eaten by the breast or mouth of a cannibalistic mother.”[iv] Drawing on Freudian Oedipal theory, Rothenberg argues that Titus is a metaphoric manifestation of Shakespeare’s infantile fear that his mother, whom (according to psychoanalysis) an infant Shakespeare would have regarded as an all-powerful life-giver, will cannibalize him. I would add that this fantasied act of maternal cannibalism seems to be coded as an inverse act of childbirth – the bringing on of death via entry into the mother’s body. Of course, psychoanalytic criticism such as this is rife with Western-heteronormative biases and erroneous claims about authorial intention. However, Rothenberg’s observations offer a compelling interpretation as to why Tamora has so often been regarded as the play’s central, most terrifying monster (whether she truly deserves this title or not).  I’d like to suggest that Rothenberg’s essay can also shed some light on the comparatively shrouded role played by maternal powers in Hannibal.

In Titus, the central antagonism exists between the Romans, that is Titus and his fellow Andronici, and the Goths, of whom Tamora is the queen. Throughout the play, the Andronici and Goths exchange blows. The Andronici incite this gory back-and-forth by sacrificing one of Tamora’s sons. In retaliation, Tamora encourages her remaining sons, Chiron and Demetrius, to rape and mutilate Titus’s daughter – “Rome’s rich ornament” (1.1.52)[v] – Lavinia. As Lavinia begs to be spared, Shakespeare engages his characters in an argument about nature versus nurture, ending with the dreadful revelation that Chiron and Demetrius are just like their mother:

LAVINIA
When did the tiger’s young ones teach the dam?
O, do not learn her wrath; she taught it thee.
The milk thou suck’st from her did turn to marble.
Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny.
Yet every mother breeds not sons alike.
Do thou entreat her show a woman’s pity.

CHIRON
What, wouldst thou have me prove myself a bastard? (2.3.142-8)

Despite Lavinia’s hopeful appeal to nurture (“O, do not learn [your mother’s] wrath; she taught it thee”), Chiron’s succinct response implies that to violate Lavinia is to prove his hereditary linkage to Tamora. Shortly thereafter, Tamora appeals to a similar logic when she goads her sons to “use [Lavinia] as you will; / The worse to her, the better loved of me” (2.3.161-7). In other words, Tamora asserts that the more violent her sons’ behavior is, the greater her maternal love for them will be. This is the key threat that Tamora poses in the early modern imaginary – a loose, volatile woman by (prude) early modern British standards, she threatens to propagate children in her corrupted image who then stand to infiltrate and debase the purity of the Roman (read British) polis.

In Hannibal, Abigail may fear her father’s influence, but I think that she and other characters ultimately face a more dangerous threat, namely Dr. Lecter’s “maternal” power to mold people’s behavior. Just as Tamora rears her sons to emulate her, Dr. Lecter psychically drives those around him – encouraging his clients to commit murder (and in one case, suicide), hypnotizing Will into (briefly) thinking he is a killer, and much more. Of course, Dr. Lecter also engages in just the sort of pre-Oedipal maternal monstrosity with which Rothenberg is concerned: cannibalism and, thus, anti-birth.

In Titus, Tamora famously eats pies in which her children Chiron and Demetrius are baked, though, as Titus’s gloating indicates, she does not do so by choice:

TITUS
Why, there they are, both bakèd in this pie,
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
’Tis true, ’tis true! Witness my knife’s sharp point.
He stabs the Empress. (5.3.61-4)

Here, Titus forces Tamora to eat her sons, making her, in his own words, “Like to the earth swallow her own increase” (5.2.195). Finally, he stabs her, heaping injury upon the ultimate insult. I interpret this moment as, first, Titus’s oral rape of Tamora followed by his phallic-coded penetration into her body – in all, a double assault. Circling back to Hannibal, this moment in the play complicates the relationship between Tamora and Dr. Lecter. Whereas Tamora unknowingly “swallow[s] her own increase,” Dr. Lecter systematically consumes those around him whom he deems “rude.”[vi] Tamora is orally violated; Lecter has a cannibalizing philosophy. But despite these differences, both characters either willingly or forcedly come to embody a pre-Oedipal maternal monster. Not only do they “rear” and thus mold the behavior of their literal and metaphoric kin, but they also threaten and, in some cases, enact the consumption of those very kin.

Much like Titus’s Romans and Goths, Dr. Lecter and Will are Hannibal’s central adversaries. Yet, despite the show’s superficial paternal motif, analyzing it alongside Titus leads me to believe that Dr. Lecter does not become Will’s father or lover but his mother, and a pre-Oedipal monster-mother at that. As mentioned above, Dr. Lecter psychically drives Will at the same time that he offers him emotional guidance, albeit guidance that is rooted in an unequal blend of deception and affection. Maternal ambivalence, anyone? Much like Titus, I find that Hannibal (or what I’ve watched of it, anyway) engages in a thought project about identity. Among many questions, it asks, “Who are we, and how much of our identity is under our control?” Further, “Where bonds and family ties are concerned, how free are we to engage in or break free of them?” And, of course, “What is the horrific capacity of one who can consume the very being(s) that they have birthed, reared, and loved?”

Jack Crawford:
What kind of victim forgives the killer at the moment of death?

Will Graham:
A mother.[vii]

[i] “Sorbet.” Hannibal, created by Bryan Fuller, season 1, episode 7, Sony Pictures Television, 2013.

[ii] “Oeuf.” Hannibal, created by Bryan Fuller, season 1, episode 4, Sony Pictures Television, 2013.

[iii] “Oeuf.”

[iv] Rothenberg, Alan B. “Infantile Fantasies in Shakespearean Metaphor: I. The Fear of Being Smothered.” The Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 60, no. 2, 1973, pp. 205-22.

[v] Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus from The Folger Shakespeare. Ed. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine. Folger Shakespeare Library, October 1, 2021. https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/titus-andronicus/

[vi] “Tome-wan.” Hannibal, created by Bryan Fuller, season 2, episode 12, Sony Pictures Television, 2014.

[vii] “Oeuf.”

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The exploration of queer representation in Hannibal allows for a greater understanding of the conventions of gender and sexuality within the thriller genre. Highly-fictionalized thrillers such as Hannibal thrive on extreme relationships, but also rely heavily on non-traditional erotic relationships to further depict the extremes of personalities in its central characters. The cop-vs-serial killer subset of the thriller genre adds an element of intense, personal desire to what would otherwise be a genre categorized by rote sleuthing. So it is in Hannibal, where the main draw of the series (besides its stunning visuals) is the eroticly-charged cat-and-mouse game between FBI agent Will Graham and cunning killer Hannibal Lecter. Several characters of the series equate the furious obsession the two men share for each other to love. This suggestion troubles the relationship between the two men, indicating that their painful, self-destructive relationship is based simultaneously in love and hate. They are unable to pull away from each other, just as they are unable to completely become one. Instead, their relationship serves to complicate the viewer’s understanding of desire and the desire to kill.

HTo fully understand the complexity of Hannibal and Will’s relationship, we must return to one of the first incarnations of this relationship in the 2002 thriller Red Dragon.^[1] What is unique about the Silence of the Lambs trilogy is that no one film depicts Hannibal’s time before prison in great detail.^[2] Hannibal’s crimes are defined largely through rumor and his own description; Hannibal is the arbiter of his own mythos. However, there is a significant gap in the viewer’s understanding of the relationship between Hannibal and Will. This is deftly remedied in the opening scene of Red Dragon. Over the opening credits, Will Graham, here played by Edward Norton, comes to the shuddering realization that the mysterious killer is eating his victims — and that the killer is none other than his close confidante. At the crescendo of Will’s understanding, signified by the drawing of his gun, Hannibal sinks his knife into Will’s stomach. Despite the violence of the action, there is unmistakable tenderness as well. The stabbing mirrors a lover’s embrace; Hannibal rests his chin on Will’s shoulder, hushing him gently. In this scene, Hannibal gains no visible pleasure from hurting Will. Instead, he is careful, tender. “Remarkable boy,” he says. “I think I’ll eat your heart.” The reverent, intimate delivery of the line, coupled with the way Hannibal holds the fallen Will around the waist like a dance partner suggests a fond tenderness that goes beyond the bounds of homosocial friendship. Their intimacy serves to hint at a homoerotic bond that is only briefly touched upon in Red Dragon.

HThis highly-charged bond is given far more screen time and consideration in Hannibal. The two men are far closer in age, diminishing the mentor/pupil relationship present in Red Dragon^[3] and emphasizing a more equal footing. Furthermore, the first two seasons of Hannibal take place prior to the moment of understanding in Red Dragon that culminates in Will’s stabbing. The challenge of Hannibal then is to balance the painful anticipation of this “breakup” with the pleasure of watching the budding relationship between two fascinating, electric men. And a pleasure it is. Hannibal and Will have a powerful chemistry that obsesses the narrative. They share intense, longing looks, have little regard for each other’s personal space, and have many moments of strangely endearing domesticity. Hannibal is always cooking for Will, seeking to impress him with increasingly elaborate presentations. Food in Hannibal is always a matter of seduction and charm, a way for Hannibal to exert power over his guests (Will most frequently) while simultaneously providing them with nourishment and artistic pleasure.

The homoeroticism of food and eating crescendos in Hannibal’s second season, when Hannibal and Will share a meal of songbirds eaten whole. In an interview with Logo, director Bryan Fuller comments on this feast below:

We really want to explore the intimacy of these two men in an unexpected way without sexualizing them, but including a perception of sexuality that the cinema is actually portraying to the audience more than the characters are. There’s a scene at dinner where we were tackling in the edit bay because it was so transparently homoerotic. They were doing something that was not sex or anywhere near sex, but it was shot so suggestively that they may as well have been …

This scene lingers lovingly over open mouths, swallowing throats, and blissful expressions. In mood, framing, and aesthetic, it is a sexual scene. And yet, everyone’s clothes remain on. The evident homoeroticism of the scene is tempered by its modesty. There is power and seduction, but the lack of sexual acts and romantic physical gestures such as kissing leaves it clear that the relationship is not a traditionally romantic one.

For LGBT audiences, representation in film and television is an obstacle course of flirtation with canon. This battle with on-screen depictions of queer couples is often waylaid by a phenomenon known as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting teases the viewer with hints to a homosexual relationship in order to entice LGBTQ viewers, but this potential relationship ultimately remains unfulfilled. (Shows such as Supernatural are notorious for queerbaiting its fans.) Despite accusations of queerbaiting when it became apparent that central characters Will and Hannibal’s relationship would never be a physical one, queer fans nonetheless rejoiced at Hannibal. While Will and Hannibal would not explore a homosexual relationship on-screen, which frustrated some fans, many others were content in the highly-aesthetic, subtext-heavy portrayal of Hannibal and Will’s relationship.

Fans of this relationship, which is affectionately dubbed “Hannigram,” are quick to admit that the relationship between the two men is certainly an abusive one. For all of the intimacies between Will and Hannibal, their relationship is one built on manipulation, violence, and entrapment. However, for many, this is part of the attraction. The intensity and darkness is appealing, especially with two lead actors with significant fanbases. Many elements of “Hannigram” are aesthetic; there are large sects of fanworks dedicated to the sheer beauty of the show and its actors. However, the appeal of “Hannigram” is not wholly artistic. The cat-and-mouse element of their relationship, emphasized by a history of serial killer/cop films with similar relationships, is characterized by danger and seduction. In a show about the art of violence, “Hannigram” dances alongside the violence, rather than shying away from it. The honesty of the appeal of “Hannigram” in (largely female) fans allows for a deeper exploration of the intimacy of violence between Will and Hannibal.

This violence culminates in a stabbing, just as in Red Dragon. In Red Dragon, the stabbing is presented as a shock. In Hannibal, however, there is great anticipation for the moment. While this could be, in part, due to lingering audience familiarity with the source material, it is more likely a reading of the tone of the scene. Red Dragon amplified the shocking element, playing off of Will’s horrified revelation about Hannibal’s guilt. In Hannibal, however, we anticipate the betrayal. Will has spent the season desperately, obsessively working to prove Hannibal’s guilt. And yet, when the time comes to make the arrest, Will balks; he reveals the ploy to Hannibal. When he finds that Hannibal has not run but instead done grave violence to Jack and Alana, Will is heartbroken. “You were supposed to leave,” he says, his voice low and devastated. Hannibal responds by touching the side of Will’s, and stabs Will like an apology, like a betrayal.

The embrace that Will and Hannibal fall into speaks to the unsustainable nature of their relationship. They are so deeply caught up in each other’s obsession that they are desperately linked. They are fated to trap each other. While their romance departs from traditional depictions, Will and Hannibal are still star-crossed, their mutual erotic obsession only just beginning.

^[1] There is also an adaptation of Red Dragon even before Silence of the Lambs, a thriller titled Manhunter released in 1986. However, this did not enjoy the same popularity as the later Harris-based film trilogy.

^[2] A later film, Hannibal Rising (2007) attempts to remedy this, but it is considered separate from the trilogy.

^[3] This is not to say that mentor/pupil relationships lack homoeroticism. Rather, this particular relationship is strengthened by a different power dynamic.

Molly Cavanaugh received an MA in English Literature with a focus on Game Studies and New Media. She uses these fields to explore her additional interests of race, gender, sexuality, and LGBT representation. She has also studied Victorian literature, the Gothic, and 19th century American literature. Her teaching interests include film, graphic novels, and popular culture.

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As highlighted in last week’s post, one of the concerns with shows that revolve around queer romance is the risk of defining what queer love is supposed to look like. To that concern I would add a danger in queer representation that attempts to answer “what queer life is supposed to look like.” However, within a seemingly bland sitcom formula that would enact these dangerous representations, Please Like Me adds a twist. Josh’s gay coming of age story is constantly interrupted by his mother’s (Debra Lawrence) mental illness. It is her constant need of care that disrupts what would be a classic coming-out narrative. Through these disruptions, a better reflection of the realities of living as a queer individual is displayed.

In the very same episode, Josh has his first queer encounter with Tom’s coworker Geoffrey (Wade Briggs) and hears of his mother’s attempted suicide. The morning after an awkward and ultimately sexless night with Geoffrey, he checks his phone to find multiple voicemails from his frantic father. But the shot itself lacks the urgency of a reaction to a suicide attempt: the camera gradually zooms in on a banal scene of Josh brushing his teeth with his phone at his ear, signifying for the audience that rather than a surprise, these calls are routine.

 This event suddenly shifts the trajectory of the narrative, denying what should have been the “coming-out” moment between Josh and his best friend Tom. As Tom drives Josh to the hospital they casually talk about the previous night and Tom says, “Just so I know, we aren’t talking about your mum because you’re all like, emotionally stunted yeah? And we are just ignoring the fact that Geoffrey is a man?”  To which Josh answers, “Yup.” Tom’s casual introduction of the two events exemplifies how Josh’s mother’s suicide acts to disrupt and expose the fiction of the singular coming out “moment”. In life, there is no true “coming out” where individuals exclaim their queerness to the world popularized in shows like Glee.

In Sedgwick’s The Epistemology of the Closet, she demystifies this idea, highlighting how life institutes a plethora of closets to “come out” from, “every encounter with a new classful of students, to say nothing of a new boss, social worker, loan officer, landlord, doctor, erects new closets whose fraught and characteristic laws of optics and physics exact from at least gay people new surveys, new calculations, new draughts and requisitions of secrecy or disclosure. Even an out gay person deals daily with interlocutors about whom she doesn’t know whether they know or not.” (68) By disrupting the show’s narrative from Josh’s gay storyline to Rose’s struggle with mental health, Please Like Me illustrates the reality behind life as an “out” queer person: the daily trials of “Do they know? Should I tell them? Do they even need to know?” In fact, Josh lives in sexual identity limbo for most of the first season. There is no actual moment in which he says, “I’m gay” (he makes a quip about how coming out is so 90’s) instead he is outed multiple times by the show’s other characters: Claire’s outing of him to the audience and Geoffrey’s outing of him to his father and mother on separate occasions; these multiple outings better represent life alongside Sedgewick’s theorizations and life as an out queer person.

Please Like Me also complicates the representation of queer life through scenarios between Josh and his lovers in heteronormative and hypermasculine spaces. These scenes show how interconnected these oppressive structures are in the mindset of queer individuals, how they influence behavior, even how they influence opinions. In the first season, Geoffrey buys tickets for him and Josh to watch a rugby match. Josh, reluctant to see any sports at first, is titillated by the aggressive catharsis in engaging with the highs and lows of a rugby match. The two bond over escalating insults towards the players’ poor performance that results in emasculation, eventually calling the players faggots. They are immediately asked to leave for “homophobic language” to which Geoffrey responds, “This is my boyfriend, we’re not being homophobic” and energetically kisses Josh.

The scene leaves us with no closure other than the irony of two gay people removed from a hypermasculine space for being homophobic. But it does bring up interesting questions: is it okay to scream faggot if you’re gay? Who gets to scream faggot? Or better yet, who gets to tell whom whether they can or can’t scream faggot?

This scene is much more complex when considering queer affection in hypermasculine spaces and unearths for viewers a unique complication: queer Public Displays of Affection (PDA). After getting booted from the game, Josh and Geoffrey start fighting over the kiss. The camera angles reveal the shame that each feels for the other: as they spar the shot switches between them, cutting the face off the other, signifying their inability to “meet the other’s eyes.” Josh is ashamed of being known as queer in public, whereas Geoffrey is ashamed and frustrated with Josh’s inability to express his feelings publicly.

This scene is surely familiar to many queer people and brings up deeper questions: Is Josh really ashamed to be seen kissing a man? Or does he generally not like PDA? Queer individuals constantly wrestle with this dilemma, one that is often confused and interconnected, asking a darker question: Can I truly dislike PDA without it being part of gay shame? The interconnection here marks heteronormative structures’ infiltration into the very conceptions of our own opinions on our queer intimacies. Please Like Me offers no resolution to these questions (because there aren’t any) and in its ambivalence better reflects the reality of queer experience.

Mark Muster is a master’s candidate at Syracuse University studying the relationship between time and alternative kinship formations in American film and literature.

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Recently, there has been an uptick in the amount of “gay-centric” media created by the mainstream film and television industry. Movies like Call Me by Your Name (2017), Moonlight (2016), Carol (2015), Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), etc. mark a notable shift in LGBT narratives to being not only more mainstream—more desired—but actively produced for recognition among the Hollywood award circuit. In the wake of Moonlight’s win (or perhaps earlier with Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and the snubbed Brokeback Mountain (2005)), LGBT narratives were solidified in the slew of dramas that catch Oscar-esque attention; though notably, these narratives remain a majority gay, white, and male-centered. With multiple queer and gay narratives watchable in theaters, stream-able online, and available on network TV, there is an ostensible perception of a surplus.

With waxing LGBT representation, queer-identified people — long erased and caricatured in television and film or marginalized to the edges of the screen — finally find themselves at the center of these narratives, finally up for best-actress and actor as opposed to being ossified as the side-kick, the friend, the best supporting actress/actor. But even after the recognition of films like Moonlight, a brilliant tale of queer intimacy and intersectionality in Miami, my desire for queer media only increases. I begin to reject these new pristine studio-made representations of queer lives; I feel a guilty disappointment. They are simply not enough.

Unpacking these feelings unveils the larger and multi-tiered problem of popular queer representations in film and television — tiers that build on each other and consequently narrow the multiplicity of queer narratives. Part of this homogenized representation comes from the infrastructure of the American entertainment industry. Run mainly on viewership, products appealing to the lowest common denominator will always thrive in contrast to media that attempts to be unique. Even in the age of Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services where competition allows viewers to demand more creativity from television, “LGBT” shows and movies must constantly compete with straight media that statistically annihilates even the strongest queer fan base.

Beyond this economic obstacle, there is a problem with the very identifier of “Gay” as a genre in film and TV. Based solely on classification by the sexual binary, Gay TV as a genre becomes a sweeping conglomeration for any kind of media whose narrative crucially involves or revolves around a queer character. The trap of Gay TV then lies in being classified by a heteronormative industry, a label which itself invites a lens of tunnel vision, reducing shows to the characters’ sexual object choice rather than classifying the show as a drama, romance, comedy, game-show etc. This tunnel vision hails a specific audience that on the one hand is useful for those queer-identified people seeking representation but weakens the agency and reach with which some media have the potential to cause. Instead of exposure to these shows and movies, the algorithms of streaming services that recommend based on genre choices will never promote queer media to a wider audience, consequently stifling the ability of queer narratives to challenge heteronormative structures of intimacy, social formations, even story-telling.

The third tier, and the issue where I want to dwell, lies in my own conundrum when desiring queer representation. By scouring history for queer-leaning figures we create our own queer historiography, forge a lineage, and construct a model for future queer people. However, when binging queer photography, queer art exhibitions, queer film and TV I am also consuming in an attempt to connect: as if to say, “Ah! There I am, that’s me.” This desire may originate from the first moment one notices their asynchrony with heteronormative sexuality: the need to find oneself in a world full of images that represent a very specific type of person, relationship, body, family, etc. When I watch a gay TV show like Looking or a film like Call Me by Your Name, I am looking to recognize and connect with aspects of my queerness. In other words, when I consume these medias, I am trying to feel closer to the represented identity of “gay.”

But, the endeavor to identify with these narratives inevitably fails. No matter how close I want to connect to a character like Patrick (Johnathon Groff) in Looking, he is not me, and his queer experience is not my queer experience. Therefore, I wonder how we might envision alternative ways to consume LGBT representations that relocates this desire? Instead of focusing energy on how I might recognize parts of myself in these characters, it might be better to look for queerness in content, form, or style. How do certain aesthetic choices reflect queer experience and queer life in a heteronormative time and space?

This set of posts is deeply inspired by José Muñoz’s Disidentifications, in which he traces a cogent methodology of disidentifying with harmful or problematic representations and discourses in order to utilize aspects of these works for minoritarian subjects as a matter of survival and a method of resistance. These posts work alongside Muñoz within the process of identification attempting to reconfigure the moment of connection within these representations from the characters or works, to acts and techniques. For the next three weeks I will explore three different queer representations. Focusing on aesthetics, I hope to show how these films and TV connect with us by commenting on contemporary queer experience. Tune in next week for my thoughts on My Beautiful Launderette.

Mark Muster is a master’s candidate at Syracuse University studying the relationship between time and alternative kinship formations in American film and literature.

The post What is Wrong with “Gay TV”? appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

-Machiavelli

As we’ve been considering the seemingly timeless quality of the figure of the stage Machiavel, it is worth remembering that the archetype is drawn from a series of highly specific moments in history.   The quote at the top of the page reminds us that Machiavelli is writing during a period of intense civil unrest in Italy, following a major foreign invasion and the dissolution of a number of seemingly stable governments and it was written as a gift for a single man—Lorenzo de’ Medici.[1]  Even so, while English audiences found themselves largely disinterested with Machiavelli’s specific appeals to Italian cultural history or his interest in the maintenance of armies and auxiliaries, there was something about the Florentine that caught fire in the cultural imagination of England.  Through stage representations, his political ideas were spread to a population that would have otherwise had little access to them,[2] and the staging tropes that helped to disseminate a basic overview of Machiavellian thought have remained with us ever since.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been looking at popular representations of Machiavellian politics with an eye turned towards the ways in which contemporary audiences share the same fascination with Machiavelli that defined early modern representations.  For the last 400 years, Anglophonic audiences have been fascinated by attempts to understand Machiavelli’s political beliefs, and I have only touched upon a small sample of the most popular contemporary representations.  The goal here has been less to say anything about Machiavelli’s actual politics than to examine the process by which cultural understandings of those politics end up in our popular fiction.  The stage Machiavel offers an interesting case study for examining the ways in which popular representations of political philosophy can make those theories more accessible and the ways in which those same representations can participate in shaping public discourse concerning those theories.   While printers would eventually receive license to legally print The Prince in England, decades of being represented as a ruthless stage villain certainly colored the reading practices of English audiences.

This in turned has dramatically impacted our cultural perception of virtually everything connected to Machiavelli.  Period fiction set during the early 16^th century frequently turns to him as a ready-made villain in the same way that Christopher Marlowe utilized Machiavelli to introduce The Jew of Malta.[3]  He has appeared as a character in texts ranging from Showtime’s The Borgias to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II.

Machiavelli in The Borgias

Just as his name became shorthand for a duplicitous schemer, his person has entered into the stable of stock historical villains.  Just as stage representations of Machiavellianism would brand any act that was remotely morally questionable as Machiavellian, modern pop culture representations label any act of political scheming as inherently connected to Machiavellian thought.  Even though the characters that I examined in the last few weeks of posts frequently display a number of profoundly non-Machiavellian beliefs,[4] the image of the stage Machiavel still informs the way in which we understand those characters.

In closing up my month of blog posts, I hope to have demonstrated the ways in which the tropes of the early modern stage have remained with us throughout the past five centuries.  In the wake of the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, it becomes worth considering the ways in which it isn’t simply the texts of the early modern theatre that have stuck in our imaginations.  While we certainly imagine Machiavellianism differently than audiences did in the 16^th century, many of the same questions and concerns still exist in the fiction that we create.  We may not be interested in the complex history of English kingship that exists in The History of Henry IV part 1, but we do still have an investment in the questions that the play asks about how a ruler should act.  While representations of Machiavellianism are not the only entry point into understanding the continuities that exist between early modern and contemporary practices of representation, the stage Machiavel does provide a fairly clear example of an early modern stage trope that continues to capture our imagination well into the 21^st century.

[1] The Prince was not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli’s death.

[2] The Prince could not be legally published in England during the 16^th century and literacy rates were fairly low.

[3] This habit of making Machiavelli a central character in narratives about 16^th century Florence dates back to the mid-19^th century at the latest, as George Eliot’s Romola features extended cameos by a pre-Prince Machiavelli.

[4] I noted last week that Machiavelli would likely have hated Frank Underwood for being a self-invested conspirator.  Beyond this, Cersei Lannister would likely be chided for her absolute disregard for the opinions of the populace and the fact that so few people actual trust Peytr Baelish suggests that he lacks the fox-like qualities that Machiavelli lauds in his schemers.

Evan Hixon is a first year PhD student in the English Department.  His studies focus on Early Modern British theater with an emphasis on Shakespeare, political theory and Anglo-Italian relations.  His current research work examines the rise of English Machiavellian political thought during the reign of Elizabeth I.

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-Machiavelli

At the conclusion of Act 4, Scene 3 of Hamlet, after convincing Hamlet to sail to England, the stage is cleared for Claudius to address the audience.  Though not marked as an aside, Claudius uses these 11 lines to announce that he has sealed letters “conjuring to that effect/The present death of Hamlet” (4.3.62-63).  By this point in the play, audiences have little reason to trust the words of Claudius, but at this moment, he utilizes the empty stage as an opportunity to pull back the curtain of his deception to reveal to the audience the machinations of his plot.  This was a common theatrical device on the early modern stage, in which the soliloquy or the aside would offer characters a chance to directly address the audience.  In this particular example, Claudius drops the façade of the Machiavellian liar to reveal his true intentions.  In doing so, he reveals truths about himself to the audience that he had kept hidden from the rest of the characters within the play, confirming what they already knew—that Claudius could not be trusted.

Turning to modern representations of Machiavellian villains, this is a device employed with frequency by Frank Underwood in Netflix’s House of Cards, a political thriller that owes a great deal to the tradition of the stage Machiavel.

Machiavellianism, American style

Frank Underwood, the Democratic House Majority whip, is introduced to audiences as a ruthless pragmatist, directly addressing his audience to explain the principles that guide his philosophy. In this moment of revelation, it is not only important that audiences witness Underwood’s actions, but also that he shows himself capable of pulling back the veil that is assumed to exist between his character and his viewing audience.

Here, he, like Claudius, is revealing truths about himself to which only his audience will have access.  Through the later use of these asides, Underwood is presented as a consummate liar, a man capable of sabotaging the administration in which works from within and he is often heralded as a prime example of a modern Machiavel.[1]  He represents what modern writers understand to be an idealized form of Machiavelli’s Fox-Lion politician, capable of crushing those he feels have wronged him while deceiving the world into believing that he remains loyal to their cause.

Frank Underwood, like Claudius, participates in affirming for audiences what they already believe to be true.  In Hamlet, the moments in which Claudius reveals himself to be a treacherous usurper affirm that which audiences could only speculate upon prior to his confession.  In a similar vein, Underwood’s casual asides become revelatory for audiences, but what they reveal is political rather than personal. These tiny acts of revelation say a great deal about how House of Cards conceptualizes the modern political landscape.  Underwood is able to speak truths to the audience as if he were a kind of omniscient chorus, well versed in the inner workings of Washington politics and able to speak with an authority which other characters lack.  As the Machiavellian fox, capable of lying to and manipulating those around him, Underwood’s monologues seem to remove the veil of calculated dissimulation and therefore come as unfiltered truths about the political system, and in a sense they simply affirm what audiences already believe about the operation of power.  Even though we may know that they are presented through the voice of a liar, by framing them as asides directly to the audience, they are granted a significant measure of authority.  In these brief asides, the figure of the liar takes off his mask, but instead of revealing guilt, he reveals how easily he is able take the reins of the political system to his own advantage.

Similarly, this device places audiences in a privileged position of knowing what other characters do not.  In Hamlet, the titular character is never given the clarity of truth concerning his uncle that audiences receive thanks to the decision to stage Claudius’s confessions as spoken upon an empty stage.  Likewise, none of Underwood’s victims are given the privileged knowledge that we as spectators enjoy thanks to our frequent glimpses into Underwood’s rationale for his actions.   In essence, by revealing his status as a Machiavellian dissimulator, Underwood affirms the value of Machiavellian dissimulation.  By announcing himself as Machiavelli’s fox and granting audiences a privileged glimpse into the rationale of the fox, we affirm the maxim that a man must be like a fox if he is to succeed in the world of politics.  House of Cards, like Game of Thrones, utilizes Machiavellian thought to demonstrate the ruthlessness and dissimulation that these programs believe underscore successful politicking.  While certainly not an affirmation of the political beliefs of its characters, our introduction to Frank Underwood in House of Cards breaks the 4^th wall to convince audiences of what they already believed to be true:  Washington politics is a game of deception and ambition where ruthlessness trumps idealism.

[1] It is worth noting that Machiavelli would likely despise men like Frank Underwood.  Much of The Prince is presented as a guidebook for ways in which a ruling prince can avoid being undermined by duplicitous schemers like Underwood.

Evan Hixon is a first year PhD student in the English Department.  His studies focus on Early Modern British theater with an emphasis on Shakespeare, political theory and Anglo-Italian relations.  His current research work examines the rise of English Machiavellian political thought during the reign of Elizabeth I.

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It’s no wonder that I get in a rut sometimes as I encounter more staggering statistics and tragic stories. I tend to feel debilitated in these moments when I must confront the fact that I’m just one individual who does not have the time, talent, or resources to combat all evil at once, and so it will be time calm down.   So I go out of doors and, when it’s too cold to appreciate nature, I will go to a grocery store looking for comfort food, clearing my head by distracting myself with, ironically, more stacks of stuff.

It’s not a habit I’m proud of and that I want to remediate, and so the first thing I have to do is understand it.  It seems to me that what is tantalizing about the experience of shopping is the ability to exercise some kind of control through the act of consumer choice.  Perhaps as someone who constantly feels like her life is barely under control, the ability to swipe a card to pay for stuff somehow is empowering, inevitably stemming from the sordid allure of ownership.  But of course it’s only a temporary feeling.  Once the chocolate bar is gone, it’s back to square one, and I then realize I don’t own the things that I buy:  the things that I buy own me…

*

It’s not very often that one can turn to a network television show in order to illustrate just how vice-like global capitalism’s grip is on everyday life, at least in any way that’s meaningful, yet this is exactly what I have recently discovered in USA’s new show Mr. Robot.  Its main character, Elliot, is a genius hacker who suffers from social anxiety and craves world revolution.  Although he works as a techie at a cybersecurity firm to pay the bills, in his free time he hacks into the various accounts of people he suspects to be petty criminals and, like a digital Batman, anonymously tips the police or blackmails the evil-doers into righting their wrongs if he stumbles across illegal or immoral conduct.  But what the entirety of the show is predominately about is Elliot and a group of other hacker individuals known as “fsociety” who are attempting to do the impossible:  completely overthrow the corporate overlords, redistribute the wealth entirely, and usher in a new era freed from the systemic acts of injustice perpetrated by the greed of the excessively wealthy.

It would be impossible for me to summarize here even just the main plot points of the first season, and at any rate what I want to talk about is the second episode in particular in which Elliot grapples with the question all progressively-minded millennials like yours truly battle with daily: Do any of our choices really matter?  At this point in the show, Elliot has already been inducted into fsociety but remains timid and wary of the revolutionary candor of its leader, Mr. Robot, who has proposed that their next exploit involve blowing up a facility where all of the crucial servers for E Corps (also derogatorily referred to as “Evil Corps”) are located.  The problem with the plan, like so many violent acts of rebellion, is that the destruction from the blast would also inevitably entail the deaths of many people in the town adjacent to the facility, something Mr. Robot insists is merely a price they have to pay for the revolutionary cause. Elliot refuses to endanger the lives of innocent civilians.  Mr. Robot rolls his eyes.  He tells Elliot that in life, like in computer code, there are people who are “ones” and people who are “zeroes”––people who act vs. people who don’t; heroes vs. cowards. Elliot shrugs him off in the moment but clearly remains vexed as he attempts to return to a normal life. While sitting through a therapy session in which he usually remains silent, when asked how he’s feeling Elliot uncharacteristically decides to oblige his therapist’s request for specifics by launching into a slow, melancholy monologue:

How do we know if we’re in control? That we’re not just making the best of what comes at us and that’s it and trying to constantly to pick between two shitty options… Coke and Pepsi. McDonald’s or Burger King. Hyundai or Honda…It’s all part of the same blur, right? Just out of focus enough.  The illusion of choice.  And half of us can’t even pick our own cable––our gas, electric, the water we drink, our health insurance.  Even if we did, would it matter?  Our only option is Blue Cross or Blue Shield.  What the fuck is the difference?  Aren’t they the same? Nah, man… Our choices are prepaid for us.  A long time ago…

What’s the point, right?  Might as well do nothing. This is not an unfamiliar attitude; articles are written about millennial malaise more and more these days as moments of activism like Occupy Wall Street rear their heads for an exciting moment only to dissipate and the status quo continue.  Scholars have weighed in on the cause of hesitation among young people like Elliot who know that injustice exists but nevertheless believe there’s little to nothing they can do about it.  There are many explanations, primary among them the fact that fear and anxiety is at an all-time high for millennials for whom “student debt is at its highest” with a “fear of unemployment and poverty” as a result.  It’s no wonder America’s youth is afraid of challenging the establishment when what they’re worried most about is putting food on a table for one.  I myself have suffered from similar fears, although my own therapy via career counseling has begin to allay some of my anxiety about entering soon into “the real world”––but the fact that I, and so many others, need reassurance is telling in itself.  My counselor has told me time and again “I wish you would be more confident.” I wish I could too.

Enough said.

What Elliot expresses above and continuously throughout Mr. Robot is an implicit awareness of existing within what the critical theorist Jean Baudrillard called “simulacra”–– that is, when “reality” disappears as it is subsumed by the models or maps that seek to not only represent reality, but to overtake it, in effect becoming “hyperreal.” What was once the representation of reality becomes reality, and this then means the two cannot be separated nor distinguished from one another.  We no longer travel, for example, without consulting Google Maps. In fact, we locate ourselves in relation to this digital representation of streets and addresses to the point that we can no longer navigate without it; the little red pin on the map and the actual place are one and the same.  When Elliot laments that the choices we make are “illusions” already predetermined for us, he is expressing the anxiety of living within simulacra wherein “we are confronted with a precession of simulacra; that is, the representation [that] precedes and determines the real.”  How many of us choose to deviate from the path determined by GPS or feel anxious when we seemed to have taken the wrong turn?  We only go where maps will lead us. Ergo, Elliot’s comment that, in reality, our options are limited and so is our power, which is the reason why Elliot concludes that one “might as well do nothing.”

Yet because we are implicated in a system, there is no choice that can be made that will not impact another person somewhere in the world. If Elliot decides to “do nothing” and let the corporations continue to exist with impunity, he will likewise have agreed to others’ lives be negatively affected when he had the option (as his therapist reminds him) to do something. Contrary to Mr. Robot’s dismissal of his moral compass, Elliot’s fear of hurting others in the pursuit of revolution is a real fear that should be taken seriously, for it is the quintessential dilemma for people of conscience throughout the world who are painfully aware and wary of the fact that their actions will inevitably affect someone, somewhere, somehow.  For example, in the election season right now, though I am a die-hard supporter of Bernie Sanders’s campaign, I nevertheless wonder what might happen if we tax Wall Street speculation so ruthlessly.  Will they move their operations elsewhere to countries whose government’s have abysmal labor laws, thus exploiting potentially even more third-world workers than we already do now? The answer seems to me to be, honestly, “Maybe.”

In fact, there are infinite possibilities when it comes to the consequences of our actions, which is what makes the precautionary contemplation of worst-case scenarios cease to be useful after a certain point, especially when it inhibits further action.  In Absolute Recoil, Slavoj Žižek discusses the notion of “radical acts of freedom,” which he insists “are possible only under the condition of predestination” wherein we “know we are predestined, but we don’t know how we are predestined, i.e., which of our choices is predetermined,” and yet paradoxically it is in “this terrifying situation in which we have to decide what to do, knowing that our decision is decided in advance, [which] is perhaps the only case of real freedom, of the unbearable burden of a really free choice––we know that what we will do is predestined, but we still have to take a risk and subjectively choose what is predestined” or, if considering the “simulacra,” what is predetermined (68).

Oxymorons are popular in critical theory, as is staring gravely into space.

The beauty of Mr. Robot and critical theory is that it forces us to see our incessant anxieties about the efficacy or consequences of our own actions as ultimately ones that come from fear of our own freedom.  To run in the other direction, to “do nothing,” or to do what is safe or neutral, inevitably perpetuates the violence that, today, is mostly hidden from us as the simulacra distorts the reality lying just underneath its veil.  The question of whether or not anything we do actually “matters” often comes from the fearful question, as it does for Elliot, that what we will do will matter in harmful way.  While the simulacra may predetermine the parameters of our reality, it does not mean we are without power to intervene.

Which leads me back to my own initial questions for my blog series as I wrap up my time with Metathesis this month:  Do they “matter,” the messages popular culture send us? Do we need to spend our time deciphering texts or television shows for hidden ideologies?  Why should we keep English departments around? Why bother with critical theory?  With the help of Mr. Robot, I’ve come to the following conclusion: To be able to decipher cultural “codes” is itself a kind of hacking.  It is a project that when done seriously, and with the intention of changing the world, has real power just as Elliot does so long as he chooses to recognize it.  There is one crucial difference though: Whereas not all of us have the gift of deciphering code and understanding complex data, we do have the gift of thought and critical thinking.  The most tantalizing belief of our global capitalist, “post-modern” world is that our choices do not matter, a belief that prevents thinking too much out of fear of futility––i.e., “What’s the point, right? Might as well do nothing…”

But if there’s one thing critical theory teaches us it is that what is “true” is not objective, nor is it relative, nor is it a given.  What is “true” is tied to power relations and therefore to systems that create logics.  If all there is, then, is power, and if we are here to empower the disempowered, then that must mean we have to begin to interrupt the program to bring a more important message and, most importantly of all, not be afraid to.  We are in control of more than what we choose to eat or wear, maybe more in control than many of us want to admit. But if that’s the price we pay for our freedom, might as well do something.

Liana Willis is a second-year English M.A. student genuinely interested in all branches of critical theory, but in particular traditional Marxist and neo-Marxist cultural materialisms.  When not teaching, reading, consulting, or writing, she can be found somewhere nearby discreetly practicing yoga asanas and wishing she could be sleeping right now.

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Just like any form of art, good television content flows across borders as well. When I started watching The Good Wife while still in India, I was mesmerized. The last time I was that mesmerized was when I discovered gratuitous nudity and sex on the US version of Queer as Folk. What made The Good Wife good, besides the brilliant cast and their on-point acting skills, were the stories it spoke of—the flawlessness in every episode’s script, every season’s arc and in the series’ overall progression. But I also realized that good television was not just about what the show creators put on our screens. It was also about our critical appreciation of them.

As a teenager, Friends used to be my favorite show. I loved each and every thing about it. I can still repeat most of the dialogues without the slightest hesitation. But as I have grown, something changed. I still love the show and its many situations, but it’s not my favorite anymore. Throughout the series, one joke was constant: being ‘gay’ in any way was laughable and mock-worthy. Chandler had a bad childhood because of his parents and yet, somehow, it is always easier for him to forgive his cisgender straight mother than his father who came out as a transgender woman while he was still a kid, even though he is embarrassed more than once about his mother’s “promiscuous and unruly” persona. Ross has always been less than thrilled about Carol leaving him for a woman and has never hidden his discontent with her “lesbian status”; even after giving her away at her wedding, Ross consistently treats Carol’s wife, Susan, as something less than human.

And yet, Friends is also a champion of myriad social issues of the time. The show broadcast one of television’s very first lesbian weddings that transpired from a long-standing and successful relationship. It wittily showcased the awkwardness of the heteronormative concept of “coming out” when they turned the tables and made Phoebe’s presumed gay, green card husband come out as straight. Phoebe went against all sorts of societal pressures and decided to turn the stigma of surrogate motherhood of the 90s on its head by carrying her brother’s triplets in her womb. Rachel showed the world that it is not easy being a single mother, but it is definitely not impossible; she raised her daughter as a single woman and went on to have a successful career in the fashion industry. Chandler’s father showed the world that there is absolutely nothing wrong or embarrassing in being a transgender woman. You have just got to know how to own it with the right sequins and a hat to match. To tease out this tension is to appreciate, but appreciate critically—to enjoy, but to think.

After accepting her GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards this year, Kerry Washington said, “There is so much power in storytelling, and there is enormous power in inclusive storytelling, in inclusive representation.” Compound that with the skill of critical appreciation and a whole new world of perspectives comes alive. For me, graduate school and the different individuals I met on my journey here made all the difference. I mean, for God’s sake, I don’t watch Queer As Folk for the sex anymore.

Image from tv.com

Aishik Barua is a 2nd-year MBA student concentrating on media marketing. He is particularly in love with TV shows (from The Sopranos to The Flash), books (from The Little Prince to the Harry Clifton series) and a myriad number of modern era conspiracy theories. When he is not screwing his eyes at some website’s Google Analytics page, he could be found doodling with his sketch pencils, cooking a new dish or simply engaging in general goofiness.

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In the first few weeks of class, I often subtly nudge my students into taking the discussion where I want it to go. Sometimes this succeeds and sometimes it fails, but I like to use what I tend to refer to as the “breadcrumb strategy” to guarantee that we will end our conversation in the general vicinity of where I want it to go. I try to plant intellectual breadcrumbs in order to lead them to the revelation that I want them to come to on their own. One of the best ways I’ve found to do this is to show them their own responses, and get them to think closely and critically about how they have reacted to a text.

For example, a couple of weeks ago in my Reading Popular Culture course, I taught a few episodes of The Office (S1E2: “Diversity Day,” S2E12: “The Injury,” S3E1: “Gay Witch Hunt,” S3E23: “Beach Games,” S5E13: “Prince Family Paper”) in order to get them to think about how popular culture constructs its spectators and encourages certain responses. We screened the episodes together at our evening screening and, unbeknownst to them, I took careful note of all of the times that they collectively laughed at the episodes.

In class two days later, I had them talk about why they thought the show was funny. Some of the students gave vague responses, some relied on previous conceptions of the show, and some had been too swayed by the essay we had read that day for class and had forgotten exactly how they originally felt. In order to get to more specific reactions, and in order for us to think critically about ironic humor, I put my collective laughter list on the overhead. Here’s a few examples of some of the times that they laughed during “Diversity Day”:

• Michael: “Say a race you are attracted to sexually”
• Mr. Brown when Michael doesn’t believe that’s his name: “That’s my name, not a test.”
• Michael: “Abraham Lincoln once said if you’re a racist, I’ll attack you with the North”
• Michael to Kelly: “If you leave, we will only have two left… Namaste”
• Oscar: “Mexican isn’t offensive”
• When it is revealed that Stanley must wear the card that says “black”

This worked incredibly well because it jogged their memories. But, more importantly, I made them confront their own reactions to the text and asked them to give justifications for this reaction. This helped us probe the implicit racism in some of the ironic humor and also helped us to think about the ways that the show encourages us to read the humor ironically (aided in part by Eric Detweiler’s essay on irony and The Office). It’s often hard to rein in a conversation about a beloved TV show and return it back to specifics and it’s especially difficult to elicit specific examples and encourage close active reading. This activity, though, asks them to close read their own responses in a sort of self-enacted reception studies approach. Placing this activity so early in the semester primes them for further close reading exercises and also makes them hyper aware of their reactions.

While it’s easier to do this sort of activity when you have a collective group screening, this activity can be adapted to other contexts as well if you have students keep journals of his or her responses to certain texts. Ask them to take note of the points that they laughed, cried, gasped, etc. The only downside to this is that they are aware of the process when it’s happening which will slightly skew the results. But, in general, especially early on in the semester, any activity that makes them aware of their reading and watching practices is well worth it.

I encourage you to try this exercise or one similar and also share some of your ideas here–what types of things have worked extremely well in your classroom?

Staci Stutsman is a fourth year PhD student and teaching associate in the English department.  She will be taking her qualifying exam on film and television melodrama this fall.  She teaches introductory level film and popular culture courses and spends her free time binge watching TV, board gaming, and working out.

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