Was Hannibal Lecter Gay?

OP, I’m giving serious thought to eating your wife.

I don't know if Hannibal Lecter was gay but Anthony Hopkins is certainly

GAY

I think Dr. Lecter is asexual, or his sexuality is sublimated into his cannibalism.

“You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste.” Sounds like some gay shade to me…

In the sequel to this they fuck each other. A lot. At least in the book. He's as good in bed as he is with just about anything he touches. I would have thought asexual as well, but he wasn't written that way.

[quote] In the sequel to this they fuck each other. A lot.

He likes corn-pone pussy.

He loves eating pussy. And liver

R2 Is that the reason why he has a wife and two ex-wives?

So did Rock Hudson, R8.

In Hannibal, he seemed very sexual with that Mason guy who cut his own face

[quote] In Hannibal, he seemed very sexual with that Mason guy who cut his own face

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

He's in love with Clarice or he would have killed her.

IF Lecter were in love with Starling, WHY? Does one covet what one loves?

Now that you mention it, OP, I would say he's more gay than straight.

IMO, not in love with Starling. I think she was a toy for him. If he appreciated anything about her, it would have been her earnestness & non-jadedness.

No.

No, the hets can have him.

We have Jeffrey fucking Dahmer, that's enough.

Not if you believe the atrocious sequel to "Silence of the Lambs." In "Hannibal" the novel Lecter abducts a wounded Clarice Starling and brings her back to his luxurious lair. He tenderly nurses her back to recovery, and with drugs and hypnosis and sophisticated mind games he reduces the strong, capable, competent, intelligent exceedingly moral Starling to the state of a little girl sniveling for her Daddy who "short shucked" his shotgun and got himself killed leaving her without her beloved Daddy. After her wounds are healed Lecter prepares a lovely evening, "a pleasant dinner" for Starling. He gives her clothes and jewelry for their date night; "a long dinner gown in cream silk, narrowly but deeply decollete beneath an exquisite beaded jacket" and "a pair of earring with cabochon emeralds." They go in to dinner and Lecter prepares it himself: Human brains straight from the source. The source is from an FBI official who has treated Starling badly; I guess Lecter figured she would love to eat HIS brains. And she does; she enjoys the meal immensely, having seemingly been transformed into a female version of Lecter. Later that evening she pulls a titty out of her decollete and Lecter sucks on it. They become a couple; Starling and apparently enjoy an active sex life: 'their relationship has a great deal to do with the penetration of Clarice Starling, which she avidly welcomes and encourages. It has much to do with the envelopment of Hannibal Lecter, far beyond the bounds of his experience. Sex is a splendid structure that that add to every day." So I guess it is safe to say that Lecter is NOT gay, because his true love is Clarice Starling and they live happily ever after going to operas, having discussions in different languages, dancing, having sex and eating human flesh.

God I hated the sequel.

Every time I hear the name "Mason" it comes back to me.

R12, he wasn’t in love with Clarice, IMO. He didn’t kill her because he respected her. The closest thing to a reason that he kills and eats people is because he is disgusted by a person.

That could’ve been one of those “What if” fantasy sequences, R17.

“Whenever Feasible, One Should Always Try To Eat The Rude”

That quote alone makes him a Datalounger.

[quote]He loves eating pussy. And liver

Well, it is difficult to tell the difference in the dark.

R17, we can only learn so much and live.

@ R22

Liver smells bad. Pussy smells like bad fish.

In the series he was gay for Will Graham.

His obsession with Will partially led me down this inquisitive path, R25.

The sequel to Silence of the Lambs was OTT. It was like Flannery O'Connor wrote it on mushrooms.

R17 ewww. I’ve read a lot of fanfiction (I know…) that’s heads and shoulders better than that!

I think he's in love with Clarice. There's the last time they see each other where he runs his finger across hers as she grabs the files from him just as the guards pull her away.

and

He at one point says admiringly that she is a very honest person and that it would be quite something to know you.

I don’t think he likes her sexually though, he admires her on a pedestal as an intellectual and moral person.

you may be right r30

I think he is gay or bi, based on Silence of the Lambs, the book and movie. No straight man, no matter how refined, would insult a woman by criticizing her shoes and handbag.

In the book Hannibal Thomas Harris completely ruined Clarice, as mentioned above. At least in the movie adaptation they didn't take that route.

The shoes and handbag insight is supposed to show that he is unusually perceptive, in a Sherlock Holmes kind of way, and has rare insight into human motivation. He could very quickly spot the flaw in Clarice’s polish, and could tell she put effort into covering it up. Of course, he was written from a straight guy perspective who didn’t take into account that lots of other people learn to read others closely…

Actually, that makes me think…was Sherlock Holmes gay?

Well, Hannibal was an upper-class European out of the Old World. That is what the shoes/handbag thing was about. It wasn't really about style/fashion, it was more about class/quality. Not far-fetched from a straight man with an Old World sensibility.

I've always felt like being gay was the [italic]one[/italic] thing that separated Hannibal Lecter from the most characteristic DLers here.

R27, you twat, your use of the lazy abomination "OTT" makes me wish Dr. Lecter were here to fish your pancreas out through your left nostril like a patient angler with a panfish over the length of the last movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 17.

Then your insufferableness would end.

In Fuller's Hannibal, he's pansexual and in love with a man so yeah.

"He didn’t kill her because he respected her."

He didn't respect her. She's an uneducated hick who became a cop. But he did become fond of her, the way some brilliant people are attracted to people from the wrong side of the tracks.

[quote] No straight man, no matter how refined, would insult a woman by criticizing her shoes and handbag.

I somewhat agree. But there are straight men out there who could quickly scan a woman and pick out all her faults. Scott Disick could probably do that and be really mean about it.

For me his attachment to Clarice was seeing how helpless she had been as a child and the bravery and dedication she shows in attempting to protect equally helpless people, such as Buffalo Bill's victims.

I think he does respect her for that quality.

He seems fond of Will for different and potentially sexually charged reasons in the Norton/Hopkins film version of Red Dragon, which I think underrated, as is the striking original film version Manhunter (which contains one of the most terrifying sequences in any thriller, when the detective visits the scene of one of the murders and has a vision of the woman victim rising from her bed).

From reading SOTL and Hannibal it's obvious Lecter has a "thing" for Starling. He's fascinated by her. I think he eventually falls in love with her. At their dinner date he's dazzled by her beauty, telling her "If I saw you every day, forever, I'd remember this time" and "I'll confess it is pleasant to look at you asleep. You're quite beautiful, Clarice." Sounds like he's in love to me.

In the film, she has such a pure of heart quality compared to all the people he must have come into contact with for so many years, not just in prison but when he was a practicing doctor. She is honest, caring, dutiful, working to protect others, persevering, and ultimately skilled enough to get it done. That appeals to him as a novelty, as a contrast to himself, and because it’s just nice to know that people like that exist.

Yes, R34

What gave it away, OP? Was it the hissing?

Or was it telling Senator Martin, "LOVE your suit..."?

R29, he’s not in love with her because he brushed his fingers against hers. That scene is a reference to the Michelangelo painting, The Creation of Adam. It symbolizes that “god” is passing along his mastery to his pupil. The knowledge that we are our own gods. It’s blasphemy of the original pairing which symbolizes that humans cannot touch God and cannot be on his level.

Hopkins was great as Lecter in SOFL, but Mads Mikkelsen's portrayal of the same character over three seasons made me moist more than once. Hugh Dancy was juicy as Will Graham.

He certainly didn't respect Staring at first, but he came to admire her deeply, for her genuine, authentic traits.

And the sequel really is an abomination. Lecter and Starling feasting on a man's brains as he dies slowly in front of them is not just repulsive and cartoonish , it's the complete repudiation of everything we know about Clarice.

[quote] he is honest, caring, dutiful, working to protect others, persevering, and ultimately skilled enough to get it done.

And critically she is courteous and receptive to courtesy.

R48, I have to think Thomas Harris was taking the piss with Hannibal. In the book Mason has a sister named Margo who is a lesbian, steroid-taking body-builder who has a sexual encounter with Barney. Still, it pisses me off what he did to Clarice.

R48 But Clarice was drugged out of her mind, so it doesn't count against her. I do agree that the sequel was a mess but some of the music--Vide Cor Meum based on lines from Dante--was good and the photography was splendid.

[quote] I have to think Thomas Harris was taking the piss with Hannibal.

He has admitted as much.

Because he ate ass?

[quote] In the book Mason has a sister named Margo who is a lesbian, steroid-taking body-builder who has a sexual encounter with Barney.

She also has a giant, oversized clitoris and kills Mason by stuffing his pet eel down his throat. "Hannibal" Is one of the worst books I ever read.

He does have a flare for the dramatic. And he's a fashionista, "Love your suit".

Jodie Foster was appalled when she read the script and promptly declined.

wow r46 great info thanks! Never thought of that.

Yeah Foster hated the finished product of Hannibal too. When asked why she didn't do it she said something like did you see it?

Julianne Moore must have still been building her fortune back then and took the role for the money. Her imitation of Foster's accent is pretty good though.

R9 Rock Hudson had three wives over the course of 55 years? I thought he only had one wife for three years. But you showed me I was wrong.

[quote]Julianne Moore must have still been building her fortune back then and took the role for the money. Her imitation of Foster's accent is pretty good though.

She did what any working actor should do--say yes, and enjoy being able to pay the mortgage. For all the things wrong with that movie, she's not one of them.

Ta.

Movie but especially book Hannibal always seemed kinda gay or at least not completely straight to me ( his love for the opera, all his known victims before the nurse at the Baltimore state hospital were male, him reading Vogue, Mason Verger trying to lure him into some S/M scenario, him watching Mason perform autoerotic asphyxiation before disfiguring him, him quoting Truman Capote to Clarice), also Thomas Harris based the character on a gay mexican surgeon. I think he was originally intended to be a non straight character, but after the success of Silence of the lambs Harris backtracked and made him hetero. People read him as gay, because that's how he was intended in the source material and it's not only because of Anthony Hopkins' campy performance, because the Brian Cox version of Hannibal also seems like a bitchy tasteful friend straight out of datalounge at times.

He loved a character played by Jodie Foster so yes, flamingly gay.

R16 You're forgetting John Wayne Gacy

It’s kind of old hat to consider every weirdo and freak and murder we as an undercover homo.

I’m glad the Bates Motel TV series didn’t go there.