Dr Hannibal Lecter: Modern Day Man-eater

The ideas of man-eating monster have been around as long as our recorded history. They exist in forms of legends, novels, movies, and more recently, video games. In Greek mythology, there are various monsters known to eat humans alive such as the one-eyed Cyclops and the Sphinx. In modern literature, Bram Stoker wrote about Count Dracula, who consumes the blood of living people. But there’s probably none more famous, terrifying, and monstrous than the character from Thomas Harris’s novel Red Dragon, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

            Unlike the monsters mentioned above, Dr. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter has nothing monster-like in his appearance. Introduced and now featured in various novels and movie adaptations, he is a middle aged human psychiatrist with a lot of middle aged-man feature such as balding hair and slightly wrinkled skin. But unlike most middle-aged man, he is serial killer who is known to eat the flesh of his victims. Although never actually portrayed as a primary antagonist in any of the stories he appeared in, he never fails to deliver horror and nightmares in the mind of readers and movie watchers alike. First appear on the 1986 movie Manhunter portrayed by Brian Cox, he is best remembered from Sir Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal in the 1991 movie The Silence of the Lambs and 2002 movie Red Dragon.

            Sir Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal has been known to be more terrifying than the other three actors that have portrayed him. Both the novel and the movies always portray him as a classy and highly intelligent man with a near perfect sense of manner that needs to be kept in a prison with maximum security. However, there’s a certain aspect in Sir Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal that makes Dr. Lecter becomes more terrifying than in the other media. Hopkins is able to deliver to the audience a sense of psychopathic theme whenever his name is mentioned.

            To me, it is very interesting how recent trend is able to show a simple human character to be as scary as monsters, even more terrifying than nowadays interpretation of monster where they can be cute, adorable, and “cool” as showed in many movies such as Monster Inc., How To Train Your Dragon, Twilight, and Zombieland. Traditionally, monsters that posses deformed face, horns, fangs, and claws will scare people and keep them awake during night. But nowadays, such monsters would only scare kids.

Movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13^th, The Shining, and of course, Silence of The Lambs proves to be as scary as Alien and Night of the Living Dead which feature supernatural monster. Maybe putting human as a primary antagonist in horror movies become more terrifying than previously mentioned supernatural monster because these human “monster” is closer to reality than the earlier monster. The idea that our neighbor or our neighbor’s neighbor may be a serial killer that eats other people when nobody’s looking is terrifying. How I take it, it’s not how one’s appearance that makes him a “monster”, but what he does and how he does things that makes him a monster.

by Pierre Jobel Nursewan (16714036)