Hello! This is a stupid question but I was wondering why Will feels more comfortable looking Hannibal in the eyes. Most of the times he doesn’t make eye contact with Alana and he likes her! Is it because of Hannibal’s manipulation and he trusts him? Thank you!— Anonymous
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There’s also something going on with Will looking *at* eyes, not into them; he says eyes are distracting because he notices things like the capillaries or the color of the sclera, not really the expression. Considering that Hannibal is so gimlet – eyed, with a gaze so utterly opaque to most people, it’s interesting that perhaps, just perhaps, he opens his eyes more fully to Will. Or gives a more convincing and reassuring pretence of doing so.
Ahhhhh, for this one I think it’s important to do a bit of research on eye contact and reactions to it from people with conditions such as Asperger’s or social anxiety (which is not to say that people with these conditions universally have issues with eye contact, nor that they’re the only reasons a person might be uncomfortable with it). I sometimes experience some discomfort with eye contact myself (not sure why, but it flares up when I’m stressed). When it’s going, it feels an awful lot like having my personal space invaded; I just want to fidget and back up a bit, and maybe politely ask them to move over a couple of inches.
Essentially, it IS an intimacy/personal space thing. Eye contact is uncomfortable for some people because it feels too revealing—they’re showing more than they’re comfortable with, and also seeing more than they’re comfortable with. (And this is not just in our heads; the fine muscles and membranes around the eyes are responsible for a lot of the micro-expressions that do so much of our emoting in body language, so eyes really are very expressive.) So whatever Will’s neuroatypicality is, between his overactive empathy and his observational skills it’s no wonder that eye contact is often uncomfortable and distracting for him.
If you pay close attention to Will’s eyes in scenes with other people, he does two things, which are both common adaptive techniques for people who have difficulty with eye contact: he will either periodically make fleeting eye contact and then look away again, or he’ll look almost at the other person’s eyes, so that it twigs enough like ‘making eye contact’ to be socially acceptable.
Now, just because someone is uncomfortable with eye contact doesn’t mean they can’t ever do it. For most, the more comfortable and intimate they are with someone, the more comfortable it is to maintain what most of us would consider ‘normal’ eye contact with them. So Will’s ability to casually meet Hannibal’s eyes (or anyone else’s, for that matter) is very simply an indication of how comfortable he feels being intimate with the man. How well he feels he knows and is known by him. How okay he is with Hannibal seeing things about Will’s mind and emotions without Will’s prior permission.
So yeah, you can start screaming now.
(Actually, the thing I found interesting was that Jack—or was it Hannibal? I can’t remember now—brought up eye contact at all. Most people don’t, even when dealing with someone for whom they know it’s a problem. I suppose this is half that most of the people on this show are trained professionals in the field of psychology, and half that Jack was going out of his way to help Will feel as comfortable and productive as possible. But I found it striking.)
as ambitious as a toaster: Meta: Will & eye contact