ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the show Hannibal employs images of meat procurement, preparation, and consumption to undermine comfortable, traditional assumptions about what makes human and the “proper” human role in the natural order. Food itself is an inherently liminal object because it transgresses the borderlines between the inside and the outside, the Self and the Other. One emerging form of resistance to the blind consumption of mass-produced meat is a movement that advocates only eating the meat of animals one kills oneself. While some of its proponents prefer killing farm-raised animals, others enjoy the thrills of hunting in “the wild.” The resultant blurring of the boundary between human and animal meat is a dominant motif and a key theme in Hannibal. In fact, as early as its first episode, the show begins to challenge the notion of a clear distinction between human beings and other animals.
