Ensign Steve

I enjoyed getting that close to Lecter, and learning about his history. I found it neat to see things from his perspective. Any time somebody got murdered, I was glad, because they were such a dick. You're right, though, it's kind of black and white. Him Good, Them Bad. But I love that about it because its Hannibal for christs sake! He's the hero?! Weird. Hehe. It's no wonder it couldn't translate into Hollywood.

There's also a lot of that in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher. I didn't like it that much, but the memory palace shit was coooool!

Pain Paien

Originally Posted By: nermal

Could you please give the names of those books? I've read Hannibal, but I'd rather not go dig through the entire book to find this.



Oh, and on the topic of the Lecter character, I would have to agree that his genius is in his perceptive powers, which he used as a lever to achieve some of his ends, even when imprisoned. Since in the first two books we never really get a glimpse into his mental mechanism , he is still an effective genius character, since all we can see are the results of his thought process (which are all, of course, perfectly accurate). Even in the third book this method of showing his genius isn't entirely done away with, though it's much less effective since Lecter is in the narrative spotlight for so much.

I agree that one failing of Hannibal as a book and movie is, as nermal mentioned, that we see too much of him. I think that a more important failing in the book (and much, much more so as a movie), however, is that Lector is no longer in any way prevented from fulfilling his predatory desires.
The reason this took some of the force out of the series is that Lecter's power as a character diminishes once he is free again. He was interesting in the other two books in part because he contained evil, and his menace was in his personal and mental faculties. When he is loosed into the world, he becomes just another horror movie slasher: he just satisfies his urge to kill without using his personality to wield power (which I think is a key to what made him interesting in the first two). Once Lecter is no longer limited in his ability to carry out his homocidal wishes, it's harder to accept him as a character.

All that said, I must still say I enjoyed Hannibal the book (and to a lesser extent the movie, but mostly just because of Anthony Hopkins). This is because the Hannibal Lecter character, even the free one, is such an intriguing character. The most important part of the book Hannibal (which, stupidly, was completley absent from the movie) was the insight provided into Lector's personal motivations (particularly that of his cannibalism).

Also, I disagree with the notion that an author cannot create a believeable genius character and yet not be a genius himself (him, of course, is used here neutrally). An author can use years to come up with the ideas and extrapolations that the character comes up with in moments. For instance, a mathematical genius can do calculations that would take normal people a very long time in seconds. The author could, in this context, give a calculation and have the character know the solution immediately, even if it took the author hours to calculate it(though this is admittedly a rather poor example). The fact that authors have an indefinate time to craft their character's genius counters any mental inferiority they may have to their character.

Cain

Getting back on topic...

IQ is not morally significant. Of course Hannibal Lector cannot (morally) consume other humans simply because he's "smarter" (whatever that means).

But the side discussion on moral agency, I should caution, seems misguided. A moral agent is typically defined in moral philosophy as autonomous individuals capable of impartial deliberation and rational thought. Children are not moral agents, they're moral patients. The same holds true for senile humans or even non-human animals. Moral patients differ from moral agents in that they cannot be held (morally) accountable for their actions.

Two excellent books that discuss these issues at greater length are _Practical Ethics_ by Peter Singer and _The Case for Animal Rights_ by Tom Regan.