A major theme of the Hannibal Lecter franchise is the blurring between protagonist and antagonist. The pleasure and horror of the Hannibal films, television series, and novels derive, in part, from the ability of the cannibal Hannibal Lecter to get into the heads of the main protagonist. An example of this can be found in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) in which Hannibal (Anthony Hopkins) prompts FBI trainee Clarice Sterling (Jodi Foster) to relive her childhood trauma of witnessing the slaughtering of lambs. The scene is shot in intimate close-ups, cutting back and forth between Clarice and Hannibal (who stares directly into the camera). 

Looking beyond the claustrophobic cinematography, the scene features a striking use of wind. As Clarice recounts her memory, we hear the vacuous rumbles of wind in trees. The sound appears to be non-diegetic, as if coming from Clarice's own memory. We never hear the lambs, rather the ghostly rustling evokes their titular silence. The scene is both intimate and moving, allowing us to empathize sonically with Clarice rather than through a visual flashback. The scene evokes a recent term in audio-visual sound studies, asonority, coined by Arzu Karaduman. Karaduman defines asonority as, “sonic in nature but, at times, inaudible, unsyncable, or barely audible.”^[1] Unable to fully experience the trauma of the dying lambs, we are still able to connect to Clarice through the barely audible memory of the wind. In the case of Silence of The Lambs, the sound design allows us to empathize with characters on-screen despite (or maybe because of) the ambiguous nature of sonic experience, a sound that is both inaudible and ambiguously both diegetic and non-diegetic. Despite this experience of silent trauma, this scene is a moment of empathy rather than antagonism. 

We might then ask, when does sound or music create too much connection between characters and spectator? When does an overly empathetic sound become antagonistic? We will have to look at the first Hannibal film, Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986). A work more oneiric and stylized than Silence of the Lambs, largely due to Michael Mann’s MTV-style aesthetic. Like Mann’s classic cop-drama Miami Vice, Manhunter is less interested in the dark lighting of crime thrillers but in a bold color palette (often blues and greens). Also, like Miami Vice, the series implements a soundtrack in the style of a music video. 

The most unnerving music video-esque sequence occurs in the third act of Manhunter. The film's antagonist, serial killer Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), sits in his van awaiting his blind co-worker Reba McLane (Joan Allen) who he has just started a romantic relationship with. Before exiting his vehicle, he spots Reba being escorted home by a male co-worker. Mistaking the co-worker for a romantic rival, Francis breaks down in the van. Reba enters her house alone; Francis then murders the male co-worker outside. He then knocks on Reba’s door and declares, “Francis is gone forever.” What is so off-putting about this scene is how Mann constructs the viewer's subjectivity in relation to the serial killer. This three-minute sequence incorporates, not a sinister non-diegetic score, nor anempathic diegetic sounds, but rather is overlaid with the ambiguously upbeat song “Strong as I Am” by the American post-punk band The Prime Movers. 

In his text on serial killers in American films, Philip L. Simpson notes that, “Manhunter is a profoundly ambiguous and destabilizing film. The dialectical tensions between binary oppositions are quite pronounced, creating uncomfortable affinities between protagonist and antagonist(s), especially the ways in which they are threatened and exploited by others.”^[2] I would add that this tension is not merely a question of content but form, and Mann’s distinct use of non-diegetic music. Throughout the scene, we are made to simultaneously watch and identify with the serial killer. As the music starts, the camera pans left, showing Francis through his van window. During the song lyrics, “See me as I really am/tell me how it feels now”, we cut to an interior shot of the van, seemingly from Francis’s POV. The camera pans left as it tracks Reba and her co-worker. However, as the camera pans inside the van, Francis is shown in profile; we are not permitted to see through his eyes. After a shot-reverse-shots of Reba walking to her door and Francis looking out of his van window, we get another interior shot in the van. Over the lyrics "Forsake me, you break me”, we are presented with a disorienting close-up of Francis’s downcast profile. During the song’s chorus, we see Reba and her coworker in an imagined, feverishly lit romantic embrace; for a moment we have entered the subjectivity of the killer. 

Mann’s use of “Strong as I Am” never turns into ironic detachment. The music allows the viewer to sonically empathize with the antagonist even as the camera works to deny a visual subjective POV. The framing of Francis in the van window creates a feeling of distance even when we see from inside the van. Yet this subjective use of music appears to spill out of the frame of the window and the literal frame of the screen.^[3] Although the music is meant to be non-diegetic, even after several viewings of Manhunter, I find myself hearing this song as diegetic, as if coming from inside the van.^[4] Unlike the subtle asonoric sound of trauma from Silence of the Lambs, the use of The Prime Movers in Manhunter creates an over identification between viewer and serial killer. Mann’s music video aesthetic creates a formal antagonism between frames, very audible music, and our sense of subjectivity.