ABSTRACT
LIKE SCULLY & MULDER OR CAGNEY & LACEY, Clarice Starling comes as part of a pair, and in reality her cohort Hannibal Lecter is even more popular than she. The Academy Awards ceremony of 1992 began with host Billy Crystal being wheeled on stage in the infamous Lecter-in-bonds apparatus and hockey mask, a stunt confirming Lecter’s popular status as kinky cannibal. People who have never seen or read The Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal know Lecter’s eerily enunciated greeting, “Hello, Clarice,” which has shown up in ads for Blockbuster and in Dr. Doolittle 2 (2001). Lecter’s line about his gourmet cannibalism-a census taker’s liver served with fava beans and a nice chianti-has made the mere mention of “fava beans” a cue for wicked laughter. Bryant Gumbel once paralyzed a Today show cooking sequence by asking if these were the beans Hannibal Lecter had made famous.
