Eat Yourself, Clarice!

Hannibal Lecter, the anti-heroic cannibal and sophisticated psychiatrist from Thomas Harris's novels and the corresponding Hollywood movies, has been a type of 'recurring reflector'. He has come and gone, tantalising subjects with the secrets of themselves. Again and again this has happened, until at last the subject cannot resist the urge to ejaculate his/her fantasies out into the external world. This study is intended for students and enthusiasts of film, literature and low culture who wish to gain a greater understanding of the relationship between the individual Subject and the Big Other state by using the figure of Lecter as a lens through which people view and externalise themselves. Considering everything from Wagner's Parsifal to the TV Show Big Brother via Columbo, this study will uncover the reasons why the western citizen has become disconcertingly blase about privacy and basic freedoms. At its heart is the pervasive, haunting figure of Doctor Lecter. The study will help readers understand: - How subjects construct fantasies that are connected to their position within society - That Lecter the psychiatrist is a paradox; he is simultaneously less extreme and more extreme than the conventional psychoanalyst - Lecter's continuing influence upon popular culture - The ways in which this has resulted in a tragicomic inversion of the horrors of Nineteen-Eighty-Four. - A sense of a sense of enjoyment, and the enjoyment of that enjoyment - Further postulations upon the dangers of externalising our fantasies via two full appendices, considering Eraserhead, and monsters in general.