Hannibal Returns

On Friday, February 28th, Hannibal will return to NBC TV for its second season. I endorse watching the show to internalize the Hannibal Lector mien, a combination of facial expression and socially dominant, unflappable, ultra-logical presentation which I have found useful when performing the amygdala hijack on Narcissists and Liberals. But the show is great in so many other ways.

First, if you are going to watch it, you should know the premise. It began last season with FBI Agent Will Graham, a brilliant FBI profiler who has an autism spectrum disorder that makes relating to people difficult. He was teaching at the Academy at Quantico, when Laurence Fishburn’s Special-Agent-in-Charge Jack Crawford asked him to consult on a case. Due to his disorder, Will is able to look at a crime scene, and feel how the killer felt as he committed the crime, based solely on imperceptible details within the scene the killer left behind. This gives him enormous insight into the killers he chases, but unbeknowns to him, it also exacerbates an inflammatory disorder in his brain which makes continuing to function normally, difficult. As the disorder progresses, Will begins to experience blackouts, nightmares, and hallucinations.

Eventually, Agent Crawford arranges for Will to be seen by the brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lector. Unaware of Will’s inflammatory illness, Crawford hopes that this psychiatric support will help Will hang on to his sanity, as he helps solve case after case. Of course Hannibal is in reality a prolific serial killer, known as the Chesapeake Ripper. Trapped in the ennui of a serial killer’s latent period between murders, Hannibal is bored with life. He is fighting the monotony by pursuing an intense interest in the culinary arts (sometimes serving human body parts from his past victims) and deriving pleasure from manipulating those around him into ever more extreme situations, just to see what will happen.

When he meets Will, Hannibal immediately recognizes his inflammatory brain disorder, and he begins to exacerbate its effects as part of a complex strategy to gaslight Will – altering Will’s perception of reality to make him think that he might be suffering from mental illness. Obviously the allure of toying with the cases being run by the very FBI that is pursuing his Ripper alter ego, and using Will to that end, is too tempting an opportunity to give up.

As Will begins taking on cases for Agent Crawford, a mysterious copycat serial killer begins creating copy-cat crime scenes of each case. These scenes are ostensibly designed to help Will solve his cases. In reality, Lector is using facts about the cases gleaned from his interviews of Will, combined with his brilliant understanding of psychology, to organize these killings himself. Although these copy-cat murders will guide Will’s thoughts on his cases and help him to solve them, they are also designed to implicate Will as the copycat killer later on. As the season closed, Lector brilliantly framed Will for all of the copycat murders, and Will was locked away in the very same home for the criminally insane which Lector is doomed to one day inhabit. In the dramatic climax, the scales fell from Will’s eyes, and he realized what Lector was, but it was all too late. In the last scene, Lector was seen on a visit to Will, triumphantly standing before him, as Will stared out helplessly from within his glass room in the dungeon.

The show places you within a fascinating fantasy world, filled with brilliant serial killers who have each perfected their murderous craft in their own unique ways. Their occasional interactions with Lector, whether they be pitting their specialized methods of carnage against each other, or simply interacting as Lector moves the human pieces on his chessboard, are immensely entertaining. There are good guys and bad guys, and each show consists of an immediate clash between the obvious ones, combined with a continued struggle with the less obvious one. The dialog is well written, the acting brilliant, and the staging of the scenes will leave you entranced. The show is really an exciting work of art, from the opening credits (with a background soundtrack that perfectly captures the descent you will experience when confronting a cunning, but damaged psychology), to each creative new serial killer’s signature, and the scenes they leave behind. But even as you ride each week’s rollercoaster of adventure, awe, suspense, and emotion, the show is so much more than mere entertainment.

Hannibal Lector, played by actor Mads Mikkelsen is the psychopath. Narcissists run from aversive stimulus – all of their illness is a flight of denial from things their amygdala cannot face. But the psychopath is freed from aversive stimulus. They are cast adrift on a sea of amoral possibilities, drawn only by a soft current of transient whims. In reality, a total lack of aversive stimulus renders many psychopath’s disordered, and unable to plan the present to suit their future – something which usually leads to outcomes such as prison. But for whatever reason, some can see forward, and plan – avoiding adverse outcomes later on. If their intellects allow, they end up as politicians, lawyers, surgeons, or financial geniuses. Lector is the worst of all. He can see the future, but every option is too boring for him, and he recognizes innately that his intellect offers him special privileges not afforded to the average psychopath.

Mads Mikkelsen’s portrayal is brilliant. From his presentation being just normal enough to escape notice as aberrant, to his motivation for his crimes being the banality of boredom, it could not be better written or acted. When Lector says, “Will is my friend, I am loyal to him,” you know Lector is a psychopath, you know he feels nothing of the sort, and yet emotionally, you will feel as if he might be telling the truth. The alternative just seems less likely. Even though you know the character, you know he feels nothing, and you know he is evil incarnate, you still are sucked in – left feeling that he may have some spark of empathy, and would do the right thing for Will, if the need arose. It is exactly like that in real life, when you encounter a damaged psychology, and listen to their protestations of normalcy. It will just seem more likely that they are normal. That you can still feel sucked in, in a television milieu where you unquestioningly know the reality, is both amazing, and sobering.

Even how the relationship between Will and Hannibal formed is haunting. Con men will often target marks through friends of the mark. This was how the Sun Gym Gang operated. If a person you don’t know approaches you cold, you will treat them cautiously, but if a friend introduces you to them, you will often feel as if it would be disloyal to the friend, to not trust their acquaintance.

That is why Will’s blind trust of Lector, and his complete inability to apply his gifts to unraveling the psychopath before him are so logical, and so tragic Once Agent Crawford introduced them, Will allowed Lector access to his inner circle because he trusted Agent Crawford. Once Lector gained access to that trust, Will could not begin to fathom that someone in that inner circle would not reciprocate the loyalty that he extended to them. It is just haunting, to see Will taught the lesson that you can only really learn one way. It is those closest to us who elude us the most.

As Season Two begins, Will is going to be incarcerated for all of the copycat murders, and his goal now will be to bring Hannibal to justice.

Some may not see the utility of the Hannibal Lector mien in the amygdala hijack. To understand, you must go back to this post showing a video fo an amygdala hijack. In it, Gary Busey triggered an amygdala hijack in singer Meatloaf while exhibiting the emotionless facial expression below, to exacerbate the hijack.

Although we can only speculate as to why unemotional countenances so fiercely exacerbate the hijack, it is beyond doubt that they do. I once attempted to hijack my Narcissist, and seeing him hijacked, I tried to enhance the effect with a very emotional, excited display of body language and expression. He immediately, visibly gained his composure back. It was bizarre. When I hijacked him later, and went hyper-unemotional, his hijack went stratospheric.

I am not a fan of the Gary Busey mien, because it looks “off,” (though it may have an enhanced effect, due to that “awkwardly staring” quality). You can get away with it in a hijack, mainly because if you do the hijack right, everybody will be looking at your target, and ignoring you. Nobody on that video remembers what Busey looked like as the hijack was going down. Indeed, do a Google search on “Meatloaf Gary Busey,” and just about every post you see will talk about what a psycho Meatloaf is, and how he just went off on Gary, despite the fact that Meatloaf seems to be, to me, the decent guy. Regardless, political amygdala hijacking is about socially out-grouping your opponent, something best done while looking as sane as possible yourself.

For that reason, when I hijack, I prefer to be less obvious to observers, and the Hannibal Lector mien is the best compromise I have found that will allow you to facilitate direct eye-contact, remain suitably unemotional to avoid flagging the target’s amygdala with emotional cues, maintain a perception in the target that they are being intensely stared at and examined fearlessly by a superior, yet still seem plausibly normal to anyone who happens to glance at you. Not only is it devoid enough of amygdala flags to be amenable to being employed as part of the hypnotic-focusing aspect of amygdala-hijacking, but it also has a suitably Alpha aura about it, which will appeal to those who are synthesizing game and political amygdala-hijacking into one art.

Combine it with various theme presentations, dogwhistles, intense eye contact, squaring of the body, occasional bemusement at your opponent’s shortcomings, and if possible, space invasion and uncomfortable physical contact, and you will have their amygdala struggling to keep up with all the stimuli striving for its attention. If that amygdala is weak to begin with, you can seize enormous control over the interaction, and maybe even make your target look insane.

Enjoy the show, but don’t get swept away by it, and forget to internalize Hannibal’s presentation.