ABSTRACT

Broadcast on network television for a total of three seasons, Hannibal is a prequel to Thomas Harris' quartet of serial killer novels that introduced the world to the cannibal serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising. This chapter considers how this series, redefined expectations of TV horror through its reimagining of the mise-en-scene of the crime scene as a form of Gothic avant-garde, presented respectively through the points of view of the serial killer and the federal investigator/profiler. Hannibal offers a different take on this relationship between the investigator and the crime scene, destabilizing the TV genre's careful balance between evidence and horror. In Hannibal, while the body is eventually relocated to the FBI lab, its primary location is the crime scene where it is often presented by the killer with Gothic splendor and examined by Graham and the forensic team as an object of grotesque spectacle.