Hunting: The Stigma of Serial Killer.

Image still from Hannibal, episode entitled: "Potage".

Remember this: Imagery influences the mind. The unspoken interpretation can either infect your thoughts as acceptably rational or make you question everything.

Staying with the theme of imagery, I was lucky to surf the channels to land on this gem of an example. I was already thinking in terms of this topic because of a previous read or something I had typed in a passage. I was watching a television show called “Hannibal”. This television show is based on the famous character from the movie “Silence of the Lambs”. I am not lobbying for anyone reading this to boycott this particular show. It’s just a good working example. The episode I watched was entitled, ‘Potage’.

The first opening scenes you find a novice brunette teenage girl with her father in the woods hunting a deer or elk with no horns. The girl lifts the rifle dubiously then I would assume due to editing the cross hairs show a doe’s head. She then takes a shot. The deer wonders through the bush then the girl takes another shot. The father and daughter later are seen unloading the deer from the hood of a truck. Next the pair standing over the deer’s carcass inside the family hunting lodge having a conversation. The girl named Abigail is telling her father how beautiful the deer was as she pets its hair and the father agrees. Abigail seems to be remorseful at the killing. Her father hands her the knife to have her field dress the deer inside the family hunting lodge. Abigail says something to the effect it seems such a shame to kill the deer. Her father replies that they will honor the deer by not wasting any part of the deer. The skin would make an item such as a bag, the bones a knife handle, etc. The father stated that they were honoring the deer by not wasting any part of her otherwise it would be murder. The daughter’s uncertainty at what her father is directing her to do along with her father’s lead of dressing out the deer and the mentality of dealing with the whole scenario is evident. Abigail begins to dress the deer from the sternum and he tells her abruptly not to damage the organs.

Abigail wakes up in the hospital. In the course of the show you see the lead character Will Graham showing an overhead photo of a woman impaled on a stag’s horns in a college class. Will contends that this is not the work of Abigail’s father but someone much more evolved. Hannibal replies, ““He would honor every part of them”.

The reason this scenario came about was Hannibal Lector called Abigail’s father to warn him that he was found out thereby causing Abigail’s father to rush kill his wife and daughter. The daughter’s attempted murder was a fail.  Abigail tells you that her father makes plumbing putty which is where they think the father may have disposed of the remains. Abigail’s brunette friend that is standing outside the house with her before the random angry stranger appears says the reason that there might be a belief that Abigail and her father killed girls was indicative by the statement made, “you or he both hunted so that should have been a clue’.

Will Graham is dreaming; standing behind Abigail as he looks to see a computer generated stag in the road. Will slices Abigail’s throat then gets up from the sleeping nightmare. The storyline moves to the hunting lodge.

“No parts go to waste otherwise it was murder” then Abigail states in disbelief that her father was feeding the dead girls to them.  As Will goes upstairs in the hunting lodge there is a dead girl mounted on the dried horns of ruminants in the upper level of the hunting lodge. Abigail comes in and screams.

Will tells Hannibal it’s a copycat killer not Abigail’s father. Hannibal says, “I know. He would have honors every part of her.” Now with these things being said the main character Will Graham seems to have issues himself, plus the girl Abigail being questionable and we really don’t need to go there with Hannibal Lector. 

Lector is about the evolution of serial killers he shrinks out and his own creepy requirements. We know his character from feature film. Abigail’s dead father was killing girls that look like his daughter, eating their organs, and use parts to stuff handbags. After that manipulation, murder, and mayhem ensue with Abigail killing random guy in the living room. Of course Hannibal being the Good Samaritan steps in to ‘hide the evidence’. With this I leave you to watch if you please. Here one could assume that Abigail is being nurtured into a ritualistic killer on the sly.

I had wondered about this evolution or maybe I should say deviation of the concept of the serial killer to the current day hunter. Anytime you have an influencing factor such as a serial killer it can easily be mistakenly interchanged with the activity of hunting with negative connotations. This is erroneous because anyone can participate in the hunting sport if they have a license or are unknowingly-knowingly insane. It happens. One could argue that a serial killer can dress up like a cop or be a cop and do his evil magic just the same. A serial killer can work in a oriental restaurant cooking or waiting tables. A serial killer can be a anti-hunter that believes blonde women holding poodles should die because they are Satan revisited while kissing the Mother Mary. Of course you have to ask how many of these mental images are from feature films, television shows or magazine ads?

Let us consider a model hunter mentality.

People who hunt have a clear governmental-approved license and description of what species of animals can be culled, at what times, in certain numbers. These activities are monitored by governmental officers who enforce law so there is not usurping those laws for negative benefit.

Serial killers do not have this. They are people walking around that seem normal but no one knows what they are up to until a body is found; if one is found. Law is applied at the moment the suspected serial killer is booked and processed for the judicial system.

We have no idea what early man did in his regime of hunting for food and killing it. Based on data from historical diets of early man it was assured humans ate plant and animal life. There have been times of note where cannibalism was evident. I am sure it wasn’t censored. Over time hunting became the sport of kings and subject of tales of bravery. Now hunting is a personal endeavor of society either rich or poor for food or sport. At some point hunting began to change negatively in non-hunters minds as an outlet to exercise ‘sociopathic’ or ‘psychotic’ tendencies because of the nature of killing animals for food or sport. We can thank a lot of anti-hunting regimes for this but it can be applied to anyone that does not see hunting as a normal activity of a select few in society that gather their own foodstuffs instead of purchasing them from a store. Another suspicious beginning for this negative thought toward hunting is the allotment with commercial ‘hunting’ of animals in bulk where the gruesomeness of lots of blood and dead animals in piles that could allude to over-exploitation for financial gain. A great example of this is seal hunting. When groups or people see large numbers of animals killed it brings about questions of greed and lack of responsible usage. I contend this could be the thoughts behind the flood of ‘trophy photos’ of animals hunters have killed then posted on social media. People that do not hunt see this barrage of photos as over-exploitation and lack of reverence for life. One man’s pride could turn into another man’s raised eyebrow. This is something to consider. It is easy to see how the crux of the ‘argument’ to hunt or not begins.  

I wanted to make sure my definition of what different labels that could be applied to a hunter psychology through manipulation or just compare and contrast. I wanted to know, as I have seen hunters called these things in conversations, the difference between a sociopath, psychopath, a serial killer, an a hunter were as defined by shrinks, the law, and the dictionary.

A sociopath is a person whose behavior is antisocial and at times criminal. Sociopaths lack a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

A psychopath is a person who is amoral or antisocial and lacks the ability to love, establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, or failure to learn from experiences.

A serial killer is a person that has serially killed two or more people separately by one offender (but do not exclude a second person helping) in a ritualistic fashion. Victims share a common attribute throughout the victims. Serial killers seek psychological gratification. Motives vary depending on the type of display the killer exhibits in the murder act. One indicator of how a serial killer evolves is psychological distortions learned or not properly learned as children who as exacerbated by mistreatment, abuse, trauma or rejection of society. A serial killer can exhibit social or psychopathic tendencies. Serial killers pick their victims based on some idea or opportunity but their victims start out to be animals because killing a domesticate cat or dog is easy to do with very little retribution. This experimentation on animals leads them to explore a human victim.

A hunter is any person without concern for his/her psychological state who goes into the outdoors to hunt wild game (excluding humans) for food or sport. This person uses a license distributed by the state to satisfy the laws of that state before activities are entered into.

To define murder in brief is the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered by law. This act can be committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crimes and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation.

With these definitions being noted there is a clear difference.

I pondered on the stigma of the label “serial killer” that is tagged onto the people who hunt. This label is taken out of context if one references to what a serial killer is defined. When this label is used it is from the perspective that animals are human or have human tendencies. If it is an anti-hunter, one could suppose the same kind of misinterpretation of the definition and use of the words/meaning being used as personal tools for manipulation or erroneous thinking as the father who is a serial killer in “Potage”. The use of how these meaning are acted upon is a point of interest on how a ‘normal’ belief, thought, or idea can be misinterpreted and then applied.

The reality of hunting is that anyone can take part because there is not a requirement for a psychological test to decide whether a person is emotionally fit to hunt. There are already parameters on buying guns that should intercept people that are emotionally compromised. If a serial killer has not been caught by the law there is no way to say to the serial killer, “you can’t hunt”. The same thing could be said for an animal hoarder that no one knows the depth of their problem going into a store to buy another animal or adopt one from the pound.

Referencing back to the episode of “Potage”, the activity of going hunting, taking the animal home, or dressing it out is not untrue. The interpretation by the person doing the activity and their defining beliefs on the hunting ritual could be the turning point where it translates over to the decision to kill a human being. This mental pivot is where the stigma of serial killer is applied without foundation to the hunter/huntress.

It’s a form of manipulation and fear on the part of the label maker. The confusion comes from the idea that hunters are killing humans which they are not. I can see the argument of killing animals in wanton unchecked ways to the point of cruelty but this is not always the case with hunters. We can’t argue that all hunters hold this idea of ‘not for sport’. Hunters in truth do hunt for sport given the individuals.

The hunter eats game meat versus the random serial killer eating human meat. There is a big difference there. Unless a hunter got the taste of raw meat in his mouth then decides he wants to see what human meat would taste like is questionable. I would say anyone dancing around with this idea should go see a psychiatrist before he gets himself in trouble.

People to some degree in different locations have ‘banned’ the consumption of human meat and certain species of animals. A good example is horse meat. I personally do not want to eat this particular kind of meat due to the use of drugs and the fact I don’t perceive horse meat as food. This could be a different case with a person living in another country where horse meat is on the menu. This is another stigma for particular foods we eat or the idea. This eating of people is a theme in the Hannibal television show because the main character of Hannibal is a cannibal. 

The most notable story of cannibalism is the Donner Party. Society frowns on cannibalism but it happens. Cannibalism happens in all species from bugs to other animals eating their young. I am not promoting cannibalism and not all serial killers are cannibals.

I also noted the teacher and pupil theme where Abigail is being taught what to do and the mentality behind the lesson of reverence of the deer’s death. It was interesting the writer used a female. Females are considered much more emotional but can be just as cruel. You see the father slowly molesting or raping the mind of his daughter toward his ulterior motive of killing girls. As the story evolves you witness Abigail agreeing with ‘hiding the body’. Whether or not her father turned her into a split personality by the inability to process traumatic images but seem like a normal girl is another possibility to take into consideration. The different ideas one can scrutinize from this episode is not finite. There is the concept that impressionable adolescent teenagers and children can be influenced through what they are shown or taught by dysfunctional parents or adults into activities that society deems abnormal or against nature. Use of threats or a false sense of threat or trust can lead these types of children into deviated psychological behavior during their adult lives.

Here you can see how an idea or imagery can be balled up like a piece of paper, contorted and applied in ways that have nothing to do with the original meaning or belief. This manipulation can be used in derogatory ways to discredit an activity like hunting.

The comment on the episode “Potage” made by Abigail’s friend, “you or he both hunted so that should have been a clue’ is an example of the misconception that is being inserted into dialogue widely signaled to audiences watching the show. This insertion is an unchecked influence on culture’s definition or consideration of the difference between the motives of a serial killer and a hunter. The motives are completely different by definition. Just because anyone hunts does not imply this is a workable clue that a hunter is a serial killer. This is misconception, lack of education and very judgmental.

The reference of the father stating if any part of the deer is wasted then this is murder made me think that the father doesn’t have a clear sense of the definition of murder. People do at times deviate from the path and write their own script with or without society’s help. Did the father see the murdered girls as wild animals instead of people? Where this ideology comes from is unknown. There is the reference by the father that deer are like people in their attributes but not physically the same.

The fact of life is not all people receive or understand information in the same way. There can be distorted processing of information due to previously taught behaviors, ideas, misinterpretation or trauma that distorts learning in the ‘correct way’. There is always the question of sanity. One culprit to any of these psychological distortions is extremism. To what lengths does a particular person take a behavioral extreme or train of thought? It is then the application of that extreme into actions and the subsequent outcome.

The idea that hunters are serial killers, sociopaths, or psychotics should be left up to a profession once the hunter breaks a law ending in a human death. Hunting is a lawful physical activity of participation not a behavioral condition defined in terms as a symptom to a psychological disease, disturbance, or psychosis. Anyone using this should educate themselves for it is a manipulative and false use of terms, meanings, and applications.

Always be aware of what you are viewing but don’t be afraid to question it in a healthy sense or investigate through knowledge to make a more concise clear interpretation. There is always another ‘truth’ but that ‘truth’ can be the reality or the lie. Don’t be afraid to investigate.

The full episode of "Potage" here:
http://www.nbc.com/hannibal/video/potage/n35685/

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Sources Cited:

"Potage". Hannibal.   NBC network.Developed by Brian Fuller.2013. Television Series.