Body Language: Gore as Metaphor in Visual Media

In media involving physical performance, like theater and film, the human body becomes another weapon in the writer's storytelling arsenal. The body's posture and movements can speak volumes about a character before they even open their mouth; the way a character chooses to clothe and present their body gives hints about their background and values. There are also less conventional ways of using the figure to convey information - for example, distorting and perverting the expected human form to create an disarming language of visual metaphor. In other words, gore.

Shakespeare uses gore to great effect throughout Titus Andronicus, but nowhere is the meaning behind it more clear than with Lavinia's maiming. It's not a subtle technique; the characters who assault her go out of their way to explain to the audience why they've done what they've done to her. Her wounds harken back to mythology Shakespeare's audience would have been familiar with, with her tongue and hands cut away to render her mute and prevent her from identifying her attackers. In a grander sense, her injuries are the silencing of a female voice, particularly one that could be disruptive to a patriarchal status quo.

As Shakespeare's work was intended to be performed, not read, an actor would have portrayed Lavinia's disfigured body on stage. The characters around her make abundantly clear with their lines what the injuries she's suffered signify, but even before those lines are uttered, the audience would see her body maimed and understand the intent behind it. The visual would have been a powerful indicator of Lavinia's new position in the world.

Techniques for simulating gore have naturally improved since the days of the Globe, and visual media continue to convey story through carefully crafted viscera. A good recent example is NBC's series Hannibal, based on the tetralogy by Thomas Harris. The show centers around Will Graham, a profiler working for the FBI, and his friendship with his psychiatrist, the culturally ubiquitous Hannibal Lecter. While Dr. Lecter is naturally the story's main antagonist, Will encounters other violent tableaus in his work, each of which is a deliberate addition to a growing repertoire of thematic imagery that repeats throughout the show.

The scene above marks the first on-screen death of a recurring character - Beverly Katz, a forensic pathologist who works out what Dr. Lecter is up to, at the cost of her life. Dr. Lecter affords her the same 'consideration' he does all of his victims, aesthetically arranging her body for her coworkers to find. Though the tableau is incredibly morbid, it, like every other murder scene portrayed in the show, is designed by the showrunners to convey information about Beverly's character and the meaning of her death to the audience without relying on verbal cues.

Beverly had spent the story increasingly divided between loyalty to the FBI and loyalty to Will Graham, her friend, who encouraged her to begin an off-duty investigation of Dr. Lecter. The visual nod to that component of her story is fairly obvious; the part of her that sided with and supported Will, represented by the left half of her body, was ultimately the part that got her killed, and is the part dismantled by Dr. Lecter, while the right side of her body remains intact and undisturbed.

There are a number of other things at play in Beverly's tableau - a reference to her work in pathology, and, naturally, the aesthetic of raw meat - and it, too, makes a nod to contemporary art, specifically exhibits like Bodies, which display cross sections of human remains for the purpose of education. And much like Lavinia, Beverly is silenced by her maiming; the name of her attacker dies with her voice, and the characters who loved her are left with aimless anger.

Both Titus Andronicus and Hannibal are full of other examples of gore being used as a visual mode of storytelling, and both demonstrate the uncanny narrative power of deliberately distorted bodies.

Cannibalism in Titus Andronicus and Hannibal

While for the most part following along different lines, Shakespeare’s play Titus Andronicus and the television show Hannibal (a series following the notorious Hannibal Lecter of the Red Dragon series prior to his arrest) do maintain one crucial connection; cannibalism. Each work utilizes the consumption of fellow humans as a central aspect of the narrative (though, admittedly, the cannibalism in Titus Andronicus only appears near the conclusion of the play whereas Hannibal deals with the concept in the majority of its episodes). However, the primary detail connecting these pieces isn't the cannibalism on its own; without further context, this would prove a bit weak in connecting two so different works. Rather, it is the specific act of tricking others into cannibalizing then watching said act that proves most interesting within these pieces, and the relationship this has with the piece’s audience.

            In Titus Andronicus, Titus tricks Tamora into eating a pie cooked from her own deceased sons; he does this as an act of revenge, to repay Tamora for the crimes/wrongs she has committed against Titus and his family. Alternatively, in Hannibal, Lecter does not act out of revenge. Rather, he appears to gain pleasure simply from the act of tricking others into becoming cannibals (and for other, no more revenge based reasons later on in the show (spoilers!)). In each case, the act appears sickening, a grotesque oddity; yet it proves enthralling not only to the characters of the play/show, but to the audience as well. In the case of Titus, one might argue that this is because of the fulfillment of his revenge, the audience rooting for Titus as he avenges dear Lavinia. However, when the aspect of revenge is removed, such as the case with Hannibal, the question remains. What draws an audience to, if not sympathize, than at least continue to follow the actions of such a malevolent character/action?  Not only this, but why would a work such as Titus Andronicus fall somewhat by the wayside (in regard to its appearance/prevalence in the modern “spotlight”) when Hannibal, with its similarly gruesome content, has become so popular? 
Also to consider is the focus placed on gender by another cannibal portrayed in Hannibal, Garret Jacob Hobbes. While this man similarly performs acts of cannibalism and tricks his family into doing the same, he also restricts his victims to only young, brunette woman of the same age and general appearance as his daughter. Hobbes does this, his daughter later claims, so that he won't be "forced" to kill his daughter herself. This adds something of an incestuous aspect to the situation, in addition to portraying an obsessive focus on gender and sexuality as well as the preservation of innocence (Hobbes' daughter's innocence) not apparent in the case of Hannibal himself but echoed by the treatment of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus. Thus the grotesque/twisted nature of Hannibal is further strengthened, once again raising the question as to its continual popularity despite the lessened interest in such works as Titus Andronicus.

 I would argue that it is perhaps due to the intimacy of the stage. Despite the work being a play, and the actions performed by the actors only imitations of cannibalism and other unsavory acts, the audience would likely feel more personally linked to the occurrences due to their actual closeness/presence in regard to the acts. Alternatively, despite the much more graphically intense depictions found in Hannibal, its depiction through a television provides some degree of separation, a sort of barrier between audience and narrative. While this is just speculation (as I lack sample groups to poll regarding these questions), I feel this watching cannibals watch cannibals eat from behind a sort of two-way mirror could act along similar lines to the internet, anonymity providing some sense of “security.”