In nearly every notable fandom, regardless of media popularity or media form, there is at least one popular “slash” relationship that rules the minds, hearts, and, occasionally, the genitals of its devoted fans. “Slash relationships”, in general, are constructed when fans of a media place two presumably. or explicitly, heterosexual characters of the same sex in a romantic relationship that generally has not been acknowledged within the source media. In season one of NBC’s psychological thriller Hannibal, this slash relationship first materialized in-fandom between horror icon Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter and Will Graham.
Lecter, portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen, and Graham, portrayed by Hugh Dancy, are the co-leads in Hannibal, which details the life and crimes of Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic psychiatrist, and Will Graham, his psychologically unstable patient and the FBI profiler hired to catch him. Hannibal, developed and produced by Bryan Fuller (Wonderwalls, Pushing Daisies), aired on April 4th, 2013 on NBC. The series is loosely based on The Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris, but diverges notably from the text and focuses on the existing characters and plot events that took place prior to the books chronology.
Specifically, the series focuses on the budding relationship between Lecter and Graham, and the idea that these two men are two of a kind, and uniquely suited to understanding one another. Much of the popularity of the show comes from the diversity of the cast and the fully fleshed-out characterizations for even minor characters. The cast of the original text was overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male, so critics and general fans alike have praised Fuller for changing the race and/or sex of several characters to create a more diverse and interesting cast (Fanlore 2015).
As for the Hannibal fandom itself, many claim it materialized overnight, with a large fan base organizing primarily online within weeks of the shows air date (Fanlore 2015). Despite having a large and involved fandom, and despite strong praise from T. V. and film critics, Hannibal’s ratings from the general public suffered in season one, largely due to the sensitive material being dealt with, and the shows casual treatment of violence and gore. As rumors of cancellation spread, the fandom organized en masse and valiantly campaigned for the show during each weekly episode.
Fuller and the cast have since cited fandom intervention as instrumental in saving the show (Goldberg 2015). In season two, the show continued to suffer in ratings from the general public, and a second push for renewal secured season three. Despite two prior successes, ratings continued to drop and the third push for renewal failed. NBC officially canceled Hannibal after the series three finale on June 22nd, 2015. (Fanlore 2015) In spite of the shows cancellation, in Hannibal’s three year run a stunning amount of fanfiction, fan videos, and fan art have been created to celebrate the show.
This fan-created media is collectively known as “Transformative” media. Transformative works can be understood as fan-created media that takes an original source material and changes one or more of the sources vital elements in order to “transform” the meaning of the original text. Transformative works are often the means by which fans of a series or subject interact with one another and with the creators of the text to show their appreciation for the media, and this can also be seen in Hannibal.
Possibly the greatest effect these fan creations had on the show was to push for even more development of the relationship between Graham and Lecter, even to the exclusion of other major plot points. Though the relationship between the leading men was always central to the show, prior to season one, roughly equal time was devoted to this relationship, as was devoted to other elements of the show, such as Graham’s mental deterioration and the show’s original “freak-of-the-week” theme.
About two-thirds of the way into the first season, the Hannibal fandom, taking its lead from countless fandoms before it, starting creating media around the perceived slash relationship between Lecter and Graham. This relationship, or “ship” for short, was later dubbed “Hannigraham”. The popularity of this ship spread rapidly through the fandom, who collectively wrote thousands of fanfictions and made hundreds of fan art and fan video pieces devoted to celebrating the relationship between these two characters. As the popularity of Hannigraham grew, Fuller and Co. caught wind of this ship and enthusiastically jumped on board.
Both Fuller and the cast have been outspoken in their support for Hannigraham and this support manifested in seasons two and three of the show. Season two dealt almost exclusively with Hannigraham, and by season three, several minor characters had been cut out of the narrative to generate even more screen time for this slash ship. Fuller has since confirmed that the fans of the show and the resulting fan-created media had a large impact on the direction the show took. (Goldberg 2015. ) As a devoted fan of Hannibal, Hannigraham, and of slash in general, I greatly enjoyed this immense outpouring of fancreated media.
As I sifted through this media, however, I began to wonder why it is that so often each of a pair in a slash relationship takes on the same tired, specific, gender roles portrayed in vanilla media. Specifically, I asked “Why do slash authors so often portray one character as traditionally ‘feminine’, while portraying the other as traditionally ‘masculine”? The goal of this paper is to examine this question, and to do this I will use Hannibal and the Hannibal fandom as a case study to examine heteronormative gender roles so often present in fan-created media.
Because of the potential confusion surrounding the terms “gender roles” and the frequency with which “gender swap” fanfiction is confused with “feminization” fanfiction and “transgender” fanfiction, it will be useful to first define gender roles. For the parameters of this paper, the feminine gender role typically portrayed by Will Graham will be defined as out-ofcharacter fiction that explicitly ascribes Graham stereotypically “feminine” characteristics, with or without the authors express intention to do so.
Conversely, the masculine portrayal of Hannibal Lecter will be defined as out of character fiction that exaggerates Lecter’s masculine characteristics. My research suggests that some fanfiction authors portray slash characters in heteronormative gender roles, because slash authors are primarily heterosexual women writing slash fiction primarily for other heterosexual women. These heteronormative, power-dynamic filled gender roles are so prevalent in our media, that these authors are actually writing out a heterosexual romance fantasy using their favorite male characters as stand-ins for a true heterosexual relationship.
This stringent adherence to the common heterosexual framework is fully discussed in the text below and will be demonstrated within the Hannibal fandom through analysis of select primary sources from within the fandom. In doing my research, I first found that heterosexual women are primarily, but not exclusively, the authors of fanfiction. Though this trend seems to be changing in recent years, most current published academic work still supports this conclusion.
This trend of heterosexual women writing for other heterosexual women seemed to begin in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Star Trek emerged and became popular. The slash pairing Kirk/Spock was primarily circulated by and for women “under the table”, because homosexual relationships, even fictional ones, were castigated in world culture during the mid 20th century (Salmon 2004). In recent years, however, fandom culture is seeing a change in who participates in fandom. In “Cyberspaces of Their Own”, Bury discusses an online pole on the sexualities of fanfiction
