Hacker Cinema
Hannibal
2013 · TV series · 45 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by Bryan Fuller
Both a gift and a curse, Graham has the extraordinary ability to think like his prey—he sees what they see, feels what they feel. But while Graham is pursuing an especially troubling, cannibalistic murderer, Special Agent Jack Crawford teams him with a highly respected psychiatrist – a man with a taste for the criminal minded – Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
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20 comments on Hacker News
These are the best comments. Hearing from someone else with AE is really wonderful. I've heard from only a few. And I'm really happy to hear about your mostly smooth recovery. I hope it continues!
> it’s rare to see this condition mentioned outside a specialist neurology setting
I only realized this from the Wikipedia article on anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, but it's apparently what the main character (Will) suffered from in the Hannibal TV show. I watched that show and loved it. I had no idea about the specific disease he suffered from. If you had asked me before this, I probably would have said that he had something like bipolar, like Carrie in the TV show Homeland.
> imagine your immune system spontaneously deciding to run an ablation test on the live neural network inside your skull
This is brilliant. I'm totally going to steal this.
> Today, life is mostly back to normal.
This is heartwarming. I feel almost "normal" now. There are some lingering issues, but there's improvement. I hope it continues.
> My first symptoms were brief “twitches” that appeared simultaneously in my left arm and face. I later learned they were seizures.
This made me remember that I had some twitching too. I had two EEGs, but AFAIK, no evidence of seizures was found. Thank you for this, because it reminded me to write this down as a question to ask my doctors at my next follow-up.
> Wishing you the very best, and I hope the CIELO trial delivers positive results for all of us.
I'm feeling even more excited about being in the trial after the response from everyone! Especially those with AE.
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If you don't mind me asking, how long was it between when you first noticed symptoms and when you got treatment? And what treatment did you get? (The same as me? IVIG and IV steroids?)
I'd suggest you check out the books I mentioned.
The case studies written in Robert Lifton's book, "Thought Reform, and the Psychology of Totalism", have many details of the elements, taken from first-hand accounts (PoWs), back in the 50s. Many of these people never recovered.
Joost Meerloo, Rape of the Mind has an overview of the process, observations, and some early diagnostic criteria (Schizophrenia/delusion is often found as a characteristic in such early cases).
More recently, Social Engineering in the context of movie character design touches on another aspect where distorted reflected appraisal is used to often impart gender or cultural maladaptive behaviors, or destructively interfere in belief systems, such as religion, or groups (the nuclear family), under a guise of inclusion.
Pixar and Disney are two companies which often touch on this subject matter, Apple too, and there have been whistleblowers from the first, who have come out and talked about what happens behind close doors.
Some examples, association of the handsome man always being the evil villain (targeting teen women), the religious or trusted community figure or leader acting and looking crazy and goofy with no one paying attention, the hero being so weak they need to be defended by their romantic interests (targeting teen men), or their romantic interests emasculating them in the guise of defending them (targeting women), normalizing maladaptive behavior that only causes friction between genders, and other cohorts. Similar targeting for the nuclear family, where mimicking behavior (something kids naturally do) becomes malign.
I remember reading some studies where language processing was examined. I can't quite remember where it was from now but basically Children read differently from adults, where descriptive language is modified indirectly. Children take the literal (first simple meaning and stick to it), whereas adults get the correct context after gymnastics.
Basically, with enough natural/destructive friction, people isolate themselves to limit exposure which makes the messaging all the more effective for the majority of the population, as long as you hit those three things I previously mentioned.
As torture is an involuntarily induced hypnotic state, you can find a good deal of more modern material under hypnotism (bypassing the critical factor/attention, and hypnotic reversals which cause irrational emotional response against something when they believe they notice the manipulation.
The TV Show Hannibal, used similar means to induce and associate delight in the audience with the colorfully posed victims, of the serial killer, which was sickening on so many levels.
Igor Ledochowski has several programs, Mindbending Language, and Conversational Hypnosis which take this to SOTA back in 2000.
NLP and Cult deprogramming has been an active area of research.
There are many areas where these things intersect, some relying on distorting communication as that is usually the simplest way to distort reflected appraisal, others to shape sentiment.
Karma bots on social media as an example of the latter (where karma dictates whether you are squelched or not by the majority).
The large tech companies basically used their government funding and constructed echo chambers for all of us individually. Inconsistency in reflected appraisal tends to drive us crazy (as humans), but also leaves us in a state where we are easily manipulated (Joost Meerloo touches on this robotization that inevitably is inflicted on the individual within totalitarian societies).
Google had a leak of their selfish ledger awhile back for a concrete example of the sophistication of the propaganda. While, horrifically flawed, its still convincing if you didn't know better (which is a result of inoculation).
Quite a lot of this research originated in Russia/China, but has continued globally under Irregular Warfare/Political Warfare subject matter. If you have a high discernment, going to the source material and understanding what is meant can provide useful insights, as well as the history of the Jesuits (which Marx/Engels seemed to have stolen somewhat heavily from).
Psycho-politick was interesting as well, albeit older. There is a ebook available from USMC Press on Political Warfare (published 2020), albeit doesn't touch as much as I'd like on the nuts and bolts.
Most of this has until just recently, been understood by those in the know, but publicly discounted/nullified. The history is quite interesting on its own, albeit hard to piece together given the clandestine nature of it all. A lot of this falls under regime-change strategy, and military doctrine of divide and conquer.
If you can segment people into roughly three groups, one unresponsive, one psychotic, and one rational. The rational cohort is too busy offsetting the fires created by the psychotic, and only a small group is needed (in theory) following a four stage process. Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, and Re-normalization, based in psychology.
Hopefully that provides some useful springboards for your research. Knowing how it happens, can provide some useful defensive measures, albeit one must be careful about anchoring on stimuli, since people who use some of the more sophisticated aspects often will notice the lack of effect, and adjust and will often try to invert, or induce an irrational reaction, which can bypass simple measures, and you can't remain hyper-vigilant all the time without detrimental effects (jumping as shadows). They'll paint you as a crazy person after goading you to destroy your social credibility.
I think about Clarice's character growth a lot as well, I was just bringing up the sexism stuff because I thought it was relevant to the article.
Clarice's character growth is (brilliantly) almost spoiled by the movie's title; the lambs screaming in her head symbolize a sense of failure and guilt that she's carried for her entire life; stopping Buffalo Bill, if only for a moment, made the metaphorical lambs silent.
I got pretty bored with the TV show, it just kind of kept going. It also felt like they kept acting Will Graham like had a superpower just because he had empathy for serial killers? My wife and I got almost exactly halfway through the series, and eventually I asked her "do we really want to keep watching this?" and she said "nope" and we turned on something else.
Also, I'm pretty annoyed that they decided to double-down on Hannibal's samurai origin story from Hannibal Rising, which I thought was pretty dumb.
It's interesting that your memory focuses on what the men were doing, and hers on the woman's hero story.
I liked the Hannibal TV show (at the time). Is it worse than I remember?
I am not a woman, but I consider Silence of the Lambs to be in my top five favorite films, and a large part of the reason I love it so much is because of how it actually talks about sexism in more subtle ways. The male characters aren’t overtly sexist to Clarice, but there’s tons of little microagresssions (e.g. multiple male characters making a pass at her when she’s just trying to do a job, the Crawford subtly trying to talk to the police chief without her because he thinks woman can’t handle gruesome details, etc.). None of the characters are really doing anything reportable, and they’re not “bad” people, and they’re not cartoonish stereotypes of sexists. It was something I noticed even as a teenager watching the movie the first time. I would like to think I am a tiny bit more aware of institutional sexism than I would have been without the movie.
It’s too bad that everything else in the Hannibal universe has blown chunks.
In the TV show Hannibal they unironically had to cover a naked butt with blood to lower the age rating. This single sentence sums up just about every pathology of US culture
I honestly could do with way simpler VFX if the end result at least had something like style or a vision to it. One result of this highly sophisticated and expensive pipeline seems to be that everything looks sort of generic. The superhero productions in particular, don't know how to describe it but visually they all basically look like the equivalent of what Material design is for apps.
i want something like Sin City or Hannibal (the tv show) again, I wouldn't really care if it's not the most technically sophisticated thing ever made.
Harry potter movie changed directors a few times right?
Amazon is getting a 160mil tax credit in NZ.
Regarding the team: "The team who will be creating the “LOTR” TV series includes: executive producers Lindsey Weber (“10 Cloverfield Lane”), Bruce Richmond (“Game of Thrones”), Gene Kelly (“Boardwalk Empire”) and Sharon Tal Yguado; writer/executive producer Gennifer Hutchison (“Breaking Bad”); writer/executive producer Jason Cahill (“The Sopranos”) writer/executive producer Justin Doble (“Stranger Things”); consulting producers Bryan Cogman (“Game of Thrones”) and Stephany Folsom (“Toy Story 4”); producer Ron Ames (“The Aviator”); writer/co-producer Helen Shang (“Hannibal”) and writing consultant Glenise Mullins."
So they have established people in the background and a well known franchise. As for not involving Peter Jackson maybe they just wanted to start fresh, no idea but George Lucas isn't involved of the Mandalorian
That dichotomy exists in American society broadly. I remember an episode of Hannibal had to cover the butts of two dismembered corpses up with blood as to avoid a higher age rating for nudity
Kudos!
[..] "I was asked for one episode to get Norton grapes, but Norton grapes are not in season, they're only grown in Virginia in one area, and they're very specific in their looks: a big, round, dark, purple, grape," Poon says. "In the script it calls for Hannibal to peel the grape to reveal that the grape is the same color as inside. I called everywhere, couldn't find them to save my life, and I hesitate to tell you, I even learned that Norton grapes are not the same color inside as they are outside."
But, Poon says, it wasn't in her interest to go back to writer and explain that Norton grapes aren't the same color inside and out. "The whole scene hinges on that. So in my little mind, I justified it. I thought, well Hannibal lies about everything — he's telling you it's jelly when it's made from the bones of young women — so he'd lie about Norton grapes too." And Poon knew she would have to create these nonexistent grapes from scratch. "So I peeled and dipped grapes in food coloring, hung them all around my kitchen studio, dripping dye, and then once they were semi dry, because of course grapes won't dry, they're juicy, I dipped them in wax and dusted them with corn starch." That night she got a phone call from the producer asking about the grapes. He said the plan sounded fine, but she should also have a backup grape made a second way by 8:30 a.m.[..]
The “food” in the TV series Hannibal was always amazing. Nice to finally learn something about where if came from.
- The "Esper Edition" of the Blade Runner soundtrack, by Vangelis et al., is a must: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQFRtbDK9Yk
- The classic horror movies made by Hammer Films had terrific soundtracks, James bernard's being my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isG3-rQqxZA&list=PLs3T-t417YhSZSUSAIDgcLjvhE4h2n1Vl
- David Lynch's Twin Peaks, by Angelo Badalamenti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDbSYAJ9Tvw
- Everything and anything by Bernard Hermann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owm8RkA3FtA
- I'm not sure if it ever received a proper release but the Hannibal TV show's soundtrack, by Brian Reitzell, is highly regarded for, IMO, good reasons.
- David Lynch's Dune, by Toto and Brian Eno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMnM1Qww2xs
- Goblin's horror soundtracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQejiArD608
- John Carpenter wrote the soundtrack of most of his films himself. My personal favorites are The Fog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKGzUxH9GyQ and Christine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEwN1-Gaj5s
- John Schlesinger's Marathon Man, by Michael small: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh8osZAYTjo
- Classic Godzilla soundtracks by Akira Ifukube et al.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3FnS6lx-Ds
- David Cronenberg's The Naked Lunch, by Howard Shore with Ornette Coleman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBh_4_i2zLk
There was an episode of Hannibal where this sort of thing was part of the plot - using bodies to grow fungi.
It reminds me of the story about the TV show Hannibal. There was an episode where a couple was murdered and flayed but because they were naked and their butt cracks were visible, the network wanted to censor the scene. The solution? Fill it with blood. The network's happy and they get to keep their TV-14 rating.
I'm a bit surprised by that comment. I actually find Prime to have pretty good content and typically better movies than Netflix (who's movie library has been shrinking pretty drastically over the years).
If you haven't already watched it, I'd highly recommend Season 1 and 2 of "The Expanse" on Prime. There are a lot of pretty great shows on there as long as you don't rely on DC/Marvel shows for all your entertainment. Other shows that are reasonably acclaimed are:
- The Man in the High Castle
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- The Nightmanager
- Mr. Robot
- Boardwalk Empire
- Downton Abbey
- Sneaky Pete
- Orphan Black
- Dr. Who
- Veep
- The Good Wife
- Transparent
- Hannibal
- Deadwood
- Curb your Enthusiasm
- The Wire
- Six Feet Under
- The Sopranos
I know this is off topic, but I really disagree about the quality of broadcast TV. Hannibal and The Good Place are both beautifully shot, very distinctive, and highly ambitious, and both came out of NBC. Speechless is on ABC, and while it's a pretty by the book family sitcom, I still think it's funnier than anything else on right now.
Thought this the other day, was watching that Hannibal TV series. Didn't see one nipple but a few people torn to pieces. Intestines hanging out and person cut into slices and displayed in glass are ok.
(Kinda gross Hannibal spoilers below)
There's an episode where a man's skin is flayed off his back and turned into metaphorical wings, which are then used to hang him from the ceiling.
In depicting this from behind, you could originally see the man's buttocks. NBC censors objected, so the "fix" was to digitally add a massive amount of dripping blood to cover them up.
The absurdity of that has always stuck with me.
I saw "German-American" and started reading Foos's speech in the voice of Hannibal Lechter (from the TV show..)
I have Amazon Prime and I've been forced to pirate the content because their streaming app on the Roku 3 sucks ass. On the same device, the Netflix app never buffers (I have a 55 Mbps connection). So, I recently downloaded a series I was watching. Turns out, I had paid for it (Hannibal season 3), in HD. Just couldn't stream, over a few days, without stopped. So, torrenting I went.
I have the same complaint about HBO Now on the Roku. Man, does it suck.
Lest people think the problem is my network, often when I have the issue I switch to Netflix and never once have I had a problem after the switch. Seems unlikely I just happened to switch when the network problems went away.