Needs clean up: Shut Up Hannibal

The trope is supposed to be about the hero telling the villain to shut up either with words or with his fists. Punching the guy making the grand speech. Yelling shut up. Talking over him. These are all good.

What it's being used for is the hero saying anything back to the villain. Even the page quote isn't really an example of the trope. It needs some serious work.

See... I always thought from use on other pages the point of the trope is that, whatever you did, the bad guy was rendered speechless in what is usually the point with an effective motive rant.

Huh.

It's hard to tell honestly. They're both currently kind of tangled up to the point where it's hard to tell what the trope is really about. Even the description isn't all that clear.

I'm almost positive a Shut Up, Hannibal! is any situation when a hero responds to a villain's Hannibal Lecture, Evil Gloating etc with anything along the lines of, as The Nostalgia Critic put it:

"Well gee, when you put it like that...FUCK YOU!!

The page quote doesn't fit that - he's just responding to snark.

I understand the confusion about the page quote. It souds like 'verb this' but it still works here. Megatron making light of concepts like 'honor' and instead of defending them, Optimus punches him.

To me, a good Shut Up Hannibal quote is any reply to a villian's Lecture or Rant that doesn't make use of the Kirk Summation.

Yeah, I thought it didn't require interruption so much as responding to a villain's words with violence. I'm not sure what other response qualifies as Shut Up, Hannibal!.

As such, I doubt Batman saying "what were you trying to prove, that deep down everyone's as ugly as you?" in The Dark Knight is a Shut Up, Hannibal! moment. If anything, it's more of a miniature Kirk Summation.

The Shut Up, Hannibal! bit comes at the end of that particular conversation. "By the way, do you know how I got these scars?" "No, but I know how you got these!"

So the earlier part of the conversation does not qualify, then? Should I remove it?

Isn't Shut Up, Hannibal! just when somebody dismiss Hanniba L Lecture?

^A Hannibal Lecture is supposed to be used when a bad guy has monologue in an interrogation scenario (or any situation where a good guy is trying to place himself on a higher pedestal than the bad guy), I thought.

edited 4th Dec '10 12:49:46 PM by SeanMurrayI

Yes, but the Trope Decay has been severe and irreversible, IMO.

I am confused about whether violence is a critical aspect of Shut Up, Hannibal!. There have been coherent arguments that SUH is always a violent response to a Hannibal Lecture, and that SUH is never a violent response to a Hannibal Lecture.

^^Then that's really, really bad. Off-subject, but very bad.

I disagree in principle that there is any such thing as irreversible trope decay.

Okay, first, the breakdown:

• A Hannibal Lecture is (in the spirit of the trope) intended to be a speech which a charismatic or intelligent villain renders the heroes or the justice system impotent by means of accentuating a negative or fallcious quality about them. It's intended to bring the hero to a Despair Event Horizon and solidify the villain's complete victory.

• Shut Up, Hannibal! is when the villain meets a character who has either ascended above the negative and fallacious qualities or who simply doesn't care. This time, when the villain tries to use their usual tactic, it simply bounces right off. The key element here is that the speech has no effect; the flaws the villain is trying to illuminate are either no longer exist or do not override what must be done, so the hero simply ignores or dismisses it. If the hero merely responds with his own, it's "World of Cardboard" Speech. Shut Up, Hannibal! is quick and thrusts the hero directly to the point: foiling the villain and/or kicking their ass.

The above The Dark Knight example is a good indication of one. We see twice in the movie as The Joker uses his Hannibal Lecture (about his scars) to terrorize hapless victims. When he tries it on Batman, it simply has no effect. Another example is the final battle between Ichigo Kurosaki and Aizen Sousuke in Bleach. Aizen tends to use a Stepford Smile and No-Sell to break the confidence of his adversaries, and up until this point, it had worked against every single character in the series. When he attempts the "Stepford Sell" against Ichigo, Ichigo palms him in the face, carries him several miles, and slams him into the ground.

Again, I think the two most important factors are that the hero is unaffected by the Hannibal Lecture, and that the response is short and direct.

edited 8th Dec '10 3:08:52 PM by KingZeal

...the two most important factors [for an example to fit Shut Up, Hannibal!] are that the hero is unaffected by the Hannibal Lecture, and that the response is short and direct.

Well put. So violent/non-violent response is irrelevant, although violence is a common "short and direct" response.

That's the long-and-short of it, yes.

The Joker uses his Hannibal Lecture (about his scars) to terrorize hapless victims.

I'm awfully confused now because you just outlined Hannibal Lecture as "the villain rendering the hero(s) impotent by means of accentuating a negative or fallacious quality about them."

If The Joker says anything in The Dark Knight resembling a Hannibal Lecture that follows the criteria you gave, it's when he and Batman have their talk in the interrogation room ("To them, you're just a freak... like me! ") No monologues about his scars have the same purpose as a Hannibal Lecture.

edited 8th Dec '10 3:38:45 PM by SeanMurrayI

The fake scar-origin stories that the Joker tells in TDK are not Hannibal Lectures. He gives Batman a Hannibal Lecture about human nature and then starts another scar story.

^Nah, that's just general Nietzsche Wannabe babble. If a Hannibal Lecture is supposed to "render the hero/protagonist specifically impotent," then The Joker gives that spiel of his in the interrogation room.

I agree that it is closer to Nietsche Wannabe babble than a real Hannibal Lecture, but the line between those two is thin and blurry, and I think trying to argue that "no, but I know how you got these" is not a case of Shut Up, Hannibal! is spitting into the wind.

Not if we're going to consider Shut Up, Hannibal! to be directly related to the Hannibal Lecture. When in The Dark Knight did one of The Joker's stories about his scars have the effect of a Hannibal Lecture, that is to say, "point out a protagonist's flaws to make him feel weaker"? I say "never," because that never happened.

Point is, those monologues were always about The Joker himself—they were never about how the person he was talking to was flawed.

edited 8th Dec '10 3:56:55 PM by SeanMurrayI

Oh, okay :) Yes that is coherent. Perhaps "no, but I know how you got these" really isn't a Shut Up, Hannibal!, regardless of how much it feels like one. But I dunno if it's open-and-shut that the Joker's spiel before Batman cuts up his face is not a Hannibal Lecture.

edited 8th Dec '10 4:00:18 PM by rodneyAnonymous

At the risk of splitting hairs, I'd say that indirectly, the scar stories were about their intended victim.

As I said, the Hannibal Lecture points out flaws either in the justice system (or "karmic universe" or wahtever) or the victim themselves. The scar stories served no purpose but to freak out the victim by calling attention to how random and meaningless the world is. In other words, it was specifically designed to break the victim of any sense of hope.

That's my take anyway. As I said, I'm more interested in defining the spirit of a trope before we pick apart the literal definition.