The Unconscionable Carving of Beverly Katz

A little over a week ago an episode of Hannibal aired that really threw the series off its rails for me. I still enjoy the show and its antics, but the show has done little so far to undo the harm it has done in Episodes 4 and 5 of the 2nd Season.

I am writing specifically about the entirely needless and narratively clumsy elimination of Beverly Katz, the show’s only Asian principle character, and one of a diminishing number of women in the show.

  

In fact, if you look at the female principles we have seen so far in the show, all but Alana Bloom have been murdered or are slated to be murdered (if they follow the novels Freddie will be killed.) To be fair, a great many people have gotten murdered throughout the show, and maybe Freddie will get to live in the TV series. Ms. Lara Jean Chorostecki, after all, has done brilliant job making the character both sleezy and powerful at the same time. The male Freddies that have gone before her were kind of oafish characters, while Ms. Chorostecki’s characterization is alarmingly adept, albeit still a lower tier tabloid journalist.

Nevertheless, we’ve had two recurring principle characters die for what seems to be the exact same purpose: Man Pain.

The trope is sometimes called “Fridging.” A female character dies, usually in a horrific manner (but stuffed into a refrigerator is what the trope is named for), in order to provide motivation, Man Pain, for the male protagonist to soldier on and take revenge or win the day. It’s an old trope in a lot of movies, comics, TV shows… any media really.

Murron in Braveheart?  Good example. That’s William’s wife, by the way… you don’t recall her name, but you recall William being pushed by her death though, right? Exactly.

I recently went to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, and there panelist Cora Walker mentioned Beverly Katz as an example of “Fridging.” It didn’t even hit me until then: In Beverly’s case it was quite literally *fridging.* She is killed, fridged, and put on horrific display to motivate Will Graham and Jack Crawford.

It should be pointed out that in these Fridging Scenarios the woman’s death usually had nothing to do with her personal narrative, but everything to do with the man’s. Murron in Braveheart, going back to our archetypal example, has no narrative outside her connection to William Wallance. Her death is inconsequential to her arc, but crucial to his.

Beverly’s death is even worse in some ways because she was a well-developed character on the show and she had an arc to work with. It’s always offensive when the woman or person of color has no development and serves exclusively to die in service of telling the white male protagonist’s story. There’s something especially offensive about building up a character that *could* have her own arc, but then has that thrown aside in service of getting the audience attention back to “real protagonists.”

A lot of viewers really identified with Beverly Katz. She was smart, scientific, proficient with firearms, comfortable with incredibly creepy murder scenes, strong instinct, and willing to take chances. She was an interesting, well-rounded, and realistic character. Do you know how difficult it is to find non-ninja Asian women on TV? It’s really tough. You know how easy it is to find women, Asian and otherwise, who are just normal people capable of doing extraordinary things in the real world? Very easy. Why can’t art just reflect reality?  

That’s, after all, the essence of beloved relatable characters. In a TV show or movie or game, we usually  want to see someone like us or the people we know, who, through some narratively justified events, is in a place to do something amazing. Beverly Katz was accomplishing exactly that. She was a well written character that made the world of Hannibal feel more real because we don’t only see men accomplishing amazing things every day. With her gone, the audience is only stuck with an increasingly simple Alana Bloom as the only female principle character in the show. Alana is literally used as a sex object in Episode 6.

There was no narratively justifiable reason for Katz to die. Abigail Hobbs had already died earlier in the show to provide exactly the Man Pain that they are now trying to give Will Graham through Katz. At least when Abigail died it was believable and felt like it fit in with Abigail's own arc as a character. She played a dangerous game Hannibal. She brokered some deals with the devil and ended up over her head. (Faustible!) Moreover, she had a relationship with Will Graham that was not wholly appropriate. Will was warned about his paternal feelings towards Abigail and that made her death even more dreadful. Will had a tragic flaw of caring for a person whom he should have kept some professional distance from and it was exploited to demonstrate a point – this is how good drama is to be written.

Beverly Katz, however, made uncharacteristically stupid decisions that lead up to her death. Why would she ruin all the evidence against Hannibal by searching his house without a warrant? Why would she leave no trace of what she was following up on or consulting her colleagues? If she were willing to share what she suspected with Jack Crawford, why not leave him a note or write a report to alert him of what she felt needed investigating? Why did this previously quite capable FBI agent suddenly become like a drugged do-do slowly wandering into her doom?

"No, wait! This is all wrong! My character would never be this dumb... there's a man behind this, I know it!"

Oh that’s right… it happened just so we are doubly sure that this show is all about him. Doesn’t matter where her narrative was going, or what her character growth was heading. Let’s break narrative and all we know about this character just to keep the male protagonist reaching for the stars.

What really saddening is how this contrasts to the film that made the Hanniverse a household name. Silence of the Lambs on the surface is a story about the capture and escape of two different very creepy serial killers, but, more deeply, the movie is mostly about Clarice moving her way through a man's world and coming out a victorious woman. 

In comparison, the trajectory the Hannibal TV series is taking seems to bear the subtext of the feminine being literally killed and eaten for daring to wander into the male domain. The murdered characters we've spent much of any time with so far are Beverly, Abigail, Georgia Madchen, Marissa Schurr, Dr. Sutcliffe and Franklyn Froidveaux. With the exception of Dr. Sutcliffe and Franklyn, all of these characters were female, and Franklyn's character was such that one might as well lump him in as being a characterization of the feminine.

Most disappointing. I hope that this was just a hiccup in the show and that we can steer more towards competent female character in the series rather than very worn out and old tropes, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe though? Who knows with Hannibal! An earless Abigail may be fighting her way to freedom right now.