Freddy Lounds

Freddy Lounds
Hannibal Tetralogy character
Three on-screen versions of Freddy Lounds (clockwise from top left): Stephen Lang, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Lara Jean Chorostecki.
Created by	Thomas Harris
Portrayed by	Stephen Lang (Manhunter) Philip Seymour Hoffman (Red Dragon) Lara Jean Chorostecki (Hannibal)
Information
Gender	Male (novel, films), Female (TV series)
Occupation	Tabloid journalist
Nationality	American

Freddy Lounds (or Freddie Lounds) is a fictional character in the Hannibal Lecter series, created by author Thomas Harris. Lounds first appears in the 1981 novel Red Dragon. Lounds appeared in the 1986 film Manhunter, which was based on the novel, and was played in that adaptation by Stephen Lang. The character did not appear in the 1991 sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, but was again portrayed in the 2002 film Red Dragon, this time by Philip Seymour Hoffman. In the 2013 television series Hannibal, Lounds was recast as a woman, Fredricka "Freddie" Lounds, played by Lara Jean Chorostecki.

Character overview

Harris describes Lounds as "lumpy and ugly and small", with "buck teeth", and whose "rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt".^[1] Harris describes Lounds as having "the longing need to be noticed that is often miscalled ego",^[1] sharpened by frustrated ambition:

He had worked in straight journalism for ten years when he realized that no one would ever send him to the White House. He saw that his publishers would wear his legs out, use him until it was time for him to become a broken-down old drunk manning a dead-end desk, drifting inevitably toward cirrhosis or a mattress fire.
They wanted the information he could get, but they didn't want Freddy. They paid him top scale, which is not very much money if you have to buy women. They patted his back and told him he had a lot of balls and they refused to put his name on a parking place.^[1]

Resentful of this treatment, Lounds goes into tabloid journalism, receiving much higher pay and better treatment for writing popular but factually questionable news stories.^[1] Lounds has been characterized by reviewers as a film noir throwback:

Noir tropes appear again concerning the character of Freddy Lounds, a sleazy journalist that's too good for the trashy job he's doing, Lounds is burned by ambition and by desire for vindication in front of those colleagues that look down upon his tabloid-related work. Everything in the character of Lounds, from his disregard for truth masquerading as desire to serve the public, down to his stripper girl-friend, comes straight from the rain-soaked and neon-lighted alleys of a generic 1950s noir downtown, and Freddy Lounds is certainly the most traditional noir character in the novel.^[2]

Lounds is also said to represent "the vulgarian who does not believe in anything except his own career; he does not understand the idealistic insanity of Dolarhyde or Lecter or the idealistic sanity of Graham".^[3] The death of Lounds is reflected as a consequence of his having only "a modicum of understanding" of people with desires unlike his own.^[3] As a tabloid photographer, it is also through Lounds that Harris "introduces a theme important to the three novels, the use of film and various optical apparatus to spy upon victims, because the antagonists of the novels need distance".^[3] Through photojournalism, Lounds publicly highlights Graham's role in the investigation, thereby making Graham himself a target of the killer,^[4][5] and also conveying to Graham's wife and stepson the dangerous world in which he has involved himself.^[5]

Appearances

Red Dragon

In the novel Red Dragon, Lounds attempts to elicit information from Will Graham as Graham investigates serial killer Francis Dolarhyde, whom Lounds has sensationally publicized as "The Tooth Fairy". Graham despises Lounds, who had sneaked into Graham's hospital room after Graham was attacked by Lecter and taken pictures of his wounds, publishing them the next day in the Tattler. Lounds becomes aware of secret correspondence between the killer and the now-imprisoned Lecter, and sneaks onto a crime scene to get information. He is caught, however, and threatened with imprisonment unless he cooperates with the investigation. Hoping to lure Dolarhyde into a trap, Graham gives Lounds an interview in which he blatantly misrepresents the killer as an impotent homosexual. This infuriates Dolarhyde, who kidnaps Lounds, glues him to an antique wheelchair, shows him slides of his victims, and forces him to recant the published allegations into a tape recorder. Dolarhyde then shows his face to Lounds, bites his lips off and sets him on fire, leaving his maimed body outside his newspaper's offices. Lounds eventually dies in the hospital, but not before providing information to aid in the hunt for Dolarhyde. Lecter sends Graham a note congratulating him on Lounds' death, which "implies that the Tooth Fairy's murder of reporter Freddy Lounds is at least a sort of wish-fulfillment for Graham".^[6]

Lounds' mutilation at Dolorhyde's hands is not shown in the film Manhunter, but is "depicted with both more restraint and more ambiguity".^[7] In the film, Dolarhyde puts something in his mouth that can not clearly be seen and taunts Lounds, before "[c]utting to an exterior night shot of the killer's house... lets Lounds's distant, muffled screams tell the real story".^[7]

The Hannibal TV series

In the 2013 television series Hannibal, Lounds is recast as "a shifty redheaded female",^[8] Fredricka "Freddie" Lounds, and is played by Lara Jean Chorostecki. The series precedes the events of Red Dragon, and the character is shown as a tabloid blogger who runs the true-crime website TattleCrime, and who reports on some of the murders investigated by Will Graham. As with the character's appearance in Red Dragon, the character sometimes complicates these investigations, and is sometimes used to spread information in order to influence the behavior of the killers Graham is investigating.

In the series, Lounds is introduced in episode 2, "Amuse-Bouche".^[8] In that episode, Lounds snoops around a crime scene, and around Lecter's office, to write a story about Graham. To the chagrin of the FBI, the killer is able to use these reports to stay a step ahead of the investigation. She is caught engaging in unethical journalism on several occasions, once by Lecter, when she attempts to secretly tape record a conversation between them.^[8] In the next episode, "Potage", Lounds meets the brother of Cassie Boyle, who was impaled on deer antlers, and reveals to him that the suspected killer's daughter, Abigail Hobbs, is out of the hospital. She distrusts Graham, and writes an article implying that he is able to empathize with psychopaths because he is one himself.

In episode 6, "Entrée", Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom make a deal with Lounds to write a story about Dr. Abel Gideon, a patient at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane who has murdered a nurse. The murder was committed in a manner reminiscent of the "Chesapeake Ripper", who hasn't been active in two years, the same number of years Gideon has been incarcerated. Hoping to provoke the real Ripper into making himself visible, Bloom and Crawford have Lounds write that Gideon is believed to be the "Chesapeake Ripper".^[9]

In episode 9, "Trou Normand", Lounds attempts to convince Abigail Hobbs to let her write a book about Abigail and her father, both for monetary gain and to clear Abigail of involvement in her father's crimes.^[10] This is met with grave concern from Graham and Lecter, both of whom have helped Abigail cover up her "accidental murder" of Boyle's brother. In that episode, Lounds also joins Graham and Abigail for a dinner served by Lecter, but whereas the other guests dine on meat, Lounds informs them that she is a vegetarian.^[11]

Lounds' involvement in publishing the Gideon story comes around in episode 11, "Rôti", when Gideon escapes from custody and begins murdering the psychiatrists who attempted to treat him. Gideon lures Lounds into a trap by pretending to be one of those psychiatrists who wishes to be interviewed by her. Gideon instead shows Lounds the psychiatrist's dead body, and forces her to write an article about him. He also makes her assist as he surgically removes organs from still-conscious hospital psychiatrist Dr. Frederick Chilton,^[12] with the intention of leaving a "gift basket" for the Ripper. When the FBI arrives at the scene, Gideon has fled, and Lounds must keep Chilton alive with a respirator.

Chorostecki has noted in interviews that the Freddie Lounds of the TV series differs from earlier portrayals in a number of ways. She observes that the change from a male character to a female character provides a great deal of room for interpretation,^[13][14] and finds her character to be an equally sleazy journalist, "but in a more sophisticated way".^[13] Contrary to the slovenliness of previous portrayals, Chorostecki notes that this versions of Lounds is "fresh and central and so high fashion, she always looks her best".^[14] Chorostecki has also spoken about the inspiration for the reinvented character, explaining how Hannibal producer Bryan Fuller suggested that Chorostecki study the case of Rebekah Brooks, an editor of News of the World charged with in a widely reported telephone hacking conspiracy.^[14][13]

References

External links

• IMDB page on the character, Freddie Lounds