ABSTRACT
Hannibal Lecter is simultaneously defined through his conspicuous consumption and his ability to operate invisibly on the periphery of law. Unlike the filmic adaptations of Lecter or their literary forebears by Thomas Harris, Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal immerses its audience in a sumptuously detailed and sustained interrogation of Lecter’s tastes, crimes, and relationship to the authorities, wherein each relationship informs the next. This chapter explores Lecter’s relationship with the law and, more specifically, how he supplements and then overturns legality in his dual role as Federal Bureau of Investigation consultant psychiatrist and serial killer, assuming the sovereign power to create “new law” predicated on the motto: "Eat the rude". Lecter’s relationship with law was first sketched out in his previous filmic appearances in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs and Brett Ratner’s 2002 Red Dragon. Lecter’s reason for appropriating sovereign power is relatively simple: killing, or causing others to kill and remaining undiscovered, allows him to demonstrate his inherent superiority.
