Lu’s writing: Hannibal, BDSM, and form in fanfiction
Here is an excerpt from Lu’s dissertation draft circa early 2015, later revised significantly. This excerpt can be read at any time, but it is most useful as a companion to chapter 10 of Or Else.
Content warnings: violence, knifeplay, blood, bondage, subspace, BDSM, mentions of non-consent, a larger context of consent issues and cannibalism, psychoanalysis lol
A little background: Hannibal was a show on NBC from 2013-2015 loosely based on the Hannibal Lecter books by Thomas Harris. Starring Hugh Dancy as FBI profiler Will Graham and Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal and created by Bryan Fuller, the show revels in the gory aesthetics of bodies and blood and is set up as a police procedural-turned thriller-turned gothic fairy tale. The show revolves around the erotic-but-never-quite-sexual relationship between Will and Hannibal, in particular Hannibal’s belief that Will’s preternatural ability to get into the minds of killers means he’s harboring a secret darkness that Hannibal can exploit. Lu’s argument in this early draft of her dissertation chapter is that this particular work of fanfiction, “Blackbird” by the incredible emungere, transforms the show’s exploration of bodily autonomy and vulnerability into something explicitly sexual—BDSM scenes that allow Will and Hannibal to explore their desires and darknesses without permanently harming each other. Lu’s reading of the fic has changed substantially since this draft—she no longer believes these scenes ultimately solve the problem of complex desire—but the analysis of how certain sex acts allow Hannibal and Will to play out their violent fantasies in a controlled space still holds to some extent. [Note: if you check out any of the fanfiction I link to and you’re not familiar with fanfiction spaces, make sure you pay attention to the warnings and tags before the fic, and if you leave a comment, be aware that the convention in those spaces is not to give the author unsolicited criticism.]
In her Hannibal fic “Blackbird,” emungere draws attention to the formal properties of sexual acts like knifeplay, marking, and bondage, using them to make meaning and to explore how boundary-obliterating desires might be formalized so they help, rather than harm, those involved. One of Will’s greatest desires is to have Hannibal truly see him; he wants the relief of letting all the fear and darkness he keeps inside bleed out. In one sex scene from the fic, Hannibal ties Will to his kitchen table and (consensually) slices into him with a scalpel. The literal cutting into and opening up of Will’s skin means, for both us and Will, that Hannibal is exposing Will’s vulnerability, his darkest secrets, the desires he has tried to keep trapped inside him. When Hannibal describes what he wants to do—to cut “right down in a line over the breastbone, over the bronchial tube, down the stomach”—Will responds, “Opening me up.” “Yes,” Hannibal says. “Red thread beaded with blood. Like the glimpse of magma through fissures in black rock. A hint of what is inside you” (emungere ch. 10). Cutting into Will’s skin makes him, as Hannibal says, “Exposed. Visible for what you are and vulnerable because of it” (emungere ch. 11).
This is a sexual act that gains eroticism and meaning from its specific formal properties. It is different from penetration into a preexisting orifice, like an anus or mouth, because it opens up a new, potentially dangerous entry into the body. According to psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu, skin, when functioning correctly, both “contains and retains inside itself all the good, full material that has accumulated” and “protects one against being penetrated by the aggression and greed of others” (44). When Hannibal cuts into Will’s skin, he is not just stretching him wider to take a private look; he is slicing him open, exposing all his tender insides to a hostile world.
Will wants to be painfully exposed, but he also wants to be taken care of. Hannibal does this by sewing him up, giving him stitches after his scalpel slices too deep into Will’s arm. This is care, and it is also marking. Throughout the fic, Will and Hannibal are erotically and emotionally invested in marks on skin. Anzieu writes that “however much the skin is said to keep [the] inner state [of the self] safe, it is revealed on the surface of the skin for all to see; it tells other people whether we are well or ill and acts as the mirror of the soul” (Anzieu 18). Will, normally an intensely private man, relishes the marks that Hannibal leaves, the formal imprint they make on his body. He appreciates the rings of bruises on his wrists from where Hannibal holds him down: “The colors were so vibrant they looked like they'd been painted on. He loved them, wanted them there all the time” (emungere ch. 10). The marks Hannibal leaves during sex mark Will as his—as possessed, consumed, desired by someone else. They are echoes of the violence Hannibal performs on Will’s body in the show under different, non-consensual, non-sexual circumstances: the fic routes these violent desires through sex and through form in order to make them feel like and signify care rather than harm.
Finally, the various levels of bondage Will and Hannibal engage in are similar transformations of the show’s various examples of non-consensual, non-sexual restraint via ropes, chains, and fabric. Will is consistently calmed (and aroused) by Hannibal’s efforts to hold him in place. “It feels good,” he says when Hannibal binds him with rope (emungere ch. 10). Hannibal holds him by the throat to “still the chaos in [his] mind”; Will feels his grip as “a secure mooring rather than a threat” (emungere ch. 6). When Hannibal has him pinned to his lap, he tells Will, who is “dazed and turned on,” “‘You’re perfectly safe…From the world, from yourself. I have you’” (emungere, ch. 4). The form their sexual contact takes—the physical power imbalance and the material structure of a body held or tied down—accumulates meaning: it means Will is safe, held, and calmed.
Scholars like Kristina Busse and Malin Isaakson have argued that fanfiction involving violent or enjoyably painful sex is invested, both on the level of the story and in the relation between writer, story, and reader, in navigating and interrogating practices of consent. These fics advocate for what is known in BDSM circles as an “ethics of care” (Isaakson 108, Busse 206). In Queer BDSM Intimacies: Critical Consent and Pushing Boundaries, Robin Bauer argues against the idea that the most ideologically “good” version of sex is “devoid of power dynamics and anything that may be thought of as unpleasant emotions or sensations, such as pain, humiliation, shame or discomfort” (3). Bauer writes that, in fact, this model tends to obscure abuse and violence by positioning sex as private and apolitical. We can think about emungere’s fic, therefore, as a critical investigation into how BDSM might help us learn to manage overwhelming, all-consuming desire. We can understand “blackbird” as making a case that such desire can actually further care and consent without having to transform into a more socially acceptable, normative, moderate shape. Emungere explores sex as form to consider the possibilities and limits of the concepts of consent and bodily autonomy.
Works Cited
Anzieu, Didier. The Skin-Ego. Trans. Naomi Segal. Karnac Books, 2016 [1995].
Bauer, Robin. Queer BDSM Intimacies: Critical Consent and Pushing Boundaries, Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/ lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=1837244.
Busse, Kristina. Framing Fan Fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities. University of Iowa Press, 2017. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/j.ctt20q22s2.
Isaakson, Malin. “Pain as Pleasure: Tough Girls’ Love in Fan Fiction.” How does it feel?: Making Sense of Pain, ed. Hans T. Sternudd & Angela Tumini, Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press , 2011, p. 99-116. DiVA. http://umu.diva-portal.org/smash/ record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A441253&dswid=9702.