Cannibalism is considered the most inhumane of activities. In the last year, however, films and TV shows like Bones And All,Fresh, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, House of Hammer, and Yellowjacketshave forced viewers to grapple with the trope by digging into the metaphorical, social and political themes it may represent beyond all that body horror. What they’ve discovered is just how delicious cannibalistic themes can be when digging into capitalism, patriarchy, human connection and autonomy for those at the bottom of the food chain. 

In Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, based on Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 novel, two cannibal lovers face tragedy. In the final scene, Lee (Timothée Chalamet) is dying from a punctured lung and he’s not willing to let his partner Maren (Taylor Russell) do anything to help save him. Their lives thus far have been defined by marginalisation, abandonment, shame, violence and trauma with only romantic love between the two of them offering any sort of true solace. With his final breaths, Lee urges Maren to eat him, "bones and all." We’re told in an earlier speech it is the ultimate, cathartic cannibalistic feeding experience. And so, through tears and after initial reluctance, she does. Two disenfranchised people finding connection in the most tragic of circumstances.

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Now if your takeaway from this ending is that it condones literal cannibalistic love, then screenwriter David Kajganich would like to interject. "If I felt we had somehow pointed an impressionable audience in the direction of ‘this is a beautiful vision of how love should work’ I would have not gotten my laptop out," he tells Mashable. "I think what's important isn't why Maren finally eats Lee, it's why Lee gives up." The teen maneater’s fatal injuries were incurred while killing Sully (Mark Rylance) an elder cannibal. It’s not the first time Lee’s killed; it started with his father’s death and ever since it's been the predominant means by which he secured human flesh to eat. "In his case, the specific trauma of murdering his father is a repeat cycle that even love can't break," says Kajganich. "The ending is less about cannibalism and more about Lee's character deciding, 'I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to live even for this relationship.'" Living on the outskirts with his trauma, the guilt and the shame of his murderous cannibalistic secret is ultimately too much for Lee to bear.

A nuanced understanding is required when regarding the cannibalism trope employed in the novel and its 2022 screen adaptation, as several other social and cultural themes, such as class and gender, overlap and are presented through this taboo prism. But neither book nor film are alone in this resurgence of cannibalistic narrative exploration. Sebastian Stan raised red flags in Mimi Cave’s 2022 poppy rom-com horror Freshas a hunky human flesh connoisseur using meat-cutes (spelling intended) to source female bodies to the highest bidder. Factual television series like House of Hammerand true crime drama Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Storyhave been readily consumed by audiences with a taste for sordid exploitation. But, as audiences, are we missing the memo that directors are trying to send us through this series and movies? 

Eat the rich

There’s something of the American Psychoabout House of Hammer, which details not just actor Armie Hammer’s public downfall – following allegations of sexual abuse. The documentary examines Hammer's expression of cannibalistic fantasies in DMs and shows a backdrop of context by also looking at the alleged criminal legacy left by the powerful men in his super wealthy family. Patrick Bateman, the eponymous psycho in Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 book and Mary Harron’s 2000 film adaptation, like Hammer, has the power, the wealth, the looks, and the cis white male privilege to have whatever he wants – so why not human flesh too? He’s the ultimate consumer but the bodies of his victims tell a bigger story about his immorality. "When Bateman’s seeking the service of sex workers they think it’s for sex that they're going to provide but he ends up cannibalising them," says Mary Wild, Freudian psychoanalyst, cinephile, and co-host of The Projections Podcast. "What he's lacking is humanity. He sees it in people just trying to make a living and he needs to take that away from them." In these contexts, cannibalism runs parallel to extreme wealth and privilege within a capitalist system, in which wealth often comes at the expense and exploitation of other less privileged humans. 

Cannibalism runs parallel to extreme wealth and privilege within a capitalist system, in which wealth often comes at the expense and exploitation of other less privileged humans. 

"But it is important to differentiate those who have cannibalistic sexual fantasies and those who literally act on. Although these two sometimes intersect, this seems to be the exception and not the rule," says Victoria Hartmann, Ph.D., an extreme pornography and paraphilia researcher and executive director at Erotic Heritage Museum Las Vegas. "I strongly believe it remains vital to carefully consider the chasm between those who are disordered in such a way they would cause harm to another human being in real life without a shred of empathy, and those who have unusual (which can also be considered extreme) sexual interests."

Texts attributed to Hammer suggest he has been "kink-shamed" for his sexual fetish which is commonly known as vorarephilia (vore). Vore is characterisedas "the erotic desire to consume or be consumed by another person or creature," specifically being swallowed or swallowing someone whole which is a tad different to the allegations against Hammer. Many of the women claim they were coerced and manipulated into his so-called vore situations which left them feeling physically and emotionally damaged. In the vast majority of cases – because eating people is a horrific crime, of course – vorarephiles, whether they imagine themselves as predator or prey, mostly enjoy this kink in a fantasy realm reinforced through images, texts or video games shared online through websites like Eka’s Portal. "Research continues to indicate, and this has been reproduced in study after study (including my own studies from 2012-2014), that paraphilias (also known as fetishes) are not usually indicators of abusive tendencies," adds Hartmann. 

For some, however, the focus on cannibalism in this conversation says a lot about our social acceptance of certain heinous acts compared to others. "Sexuality scares us; it is a place where we as human beings are deeply vulnerable, both physically and emotionally," Hartmann tells Mashable. "Now add to that something of an ‘extreme’ nature (such as a cannibalism kink) and this creates even more fear — both existential and real….we are forced to ask ourselves why some people would be drawn to the idea of sexualising death, it’s process and its aftermath."

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Death has never been an easy discussion topic let alone when overlapped with desire – unless vampires are thrown into the mix. "Most people cannot fathom even for a moment how those two could ever come together," says Hartmann. It’s disturbing and disgusting and yet, no less harrowing than assault, abuse and sexual violence, which is far more commonplace and continues to be. "We only have to look at the low incidence of convictions for these very real crimes to understand how little value we give to survivors of these forms of violence," she adds. And certainly in the case of Armie Hammer, those accusations were deemed less shocking than the claims relating to cannibalism.

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What’s important to remember, says Hartmann, is that a person's cannibalistic desires may not be the root cause for their "impetus to harm others in a non-consensual manner." "Generally, it stems from a co-morbid set of personality disorders; it’s just that some happen to have a co-existing paraphilia(s)."

Consumptive love and desire

The serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is a prime example of this sort of overlap. In the opening episode of Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer series, starring Evan Peters as the titular serial killer, he rests his head on the bare chest of Tracy Edwards (Shaun J. Brown), the man he has lured to his apartment in order to murder. "I wanna hear your heart," Jeff tells the scared Tracy as he pushes him back on a bloodstained bed, strokes his chest and breathes heavily. "'Cause I’m gonna eat it."

SEE ALSO:Netflix's 'Dahmer' backlash highlights ethical issues in the platform's obsession with true crime

After Tracy’s escape and the serial killer’s arrest, we learn that he had been murdering, carving up and eating his victims while keeping some bones as keepsakes – a habit psychologically influenced by the perceived abandonment by his mother. This could be seen as a way of preventing his victims of "love" from ever truly leaving. 

"Cannibalism is the consumption of someone else so, as a Freudian psychoanalyst, I see that as a longing for intimacy, a longing for psychological or emotional closeness, that is actually taking the form of a physical reunion or keeping that person as close to you as possible," says Wild. "Physical intimacy in terms of intercourse, that's not going to do it. You actually need to ingest them, you need to metabolise that person."

Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer in Netflix's 'Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story'Credit: Netflix

In fictional works the cannibal trope can provide fertile metaphorical ground to explore consumptive behaviours involving romance, intimacy and desire, especially for female writers and/or female characters, as with Freshand Bones and All. "The mere concept of pleasure, especially tied to feminine pleasure, has been considered taboo or worthy of derision, not just in art but society in general," says Kayleigh Donaldson, critic and pop culture writer for Pajiba. "In its most basic form, romantic fiction can be a great way to bust those taboos and dig deeper into our desires. It's a safe space, so to speak, and genre fiction can be a great way to dissect those trickier areas, if it's done well."

"It’s a type of eating that is done in secret, that is shunned by the rest of society and that's seen as abnormal, or, taboo, or sinister."

Cannibalism in this context can be seen as an expression of female desire and autonomy in a patriarchal world that suppresses and oppresses. "We're taught to walk this literal and figurative thin line of femininity," Chelsea G. Summer, author of cannibalistic body horror novel A Certain Hunger, tells Mashable. "You have to be desirable, but not too desiring. It’s a test that female humans are set up to fail."

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Unrealistic feminine standards continue to cause body image issues and eating disorders for women and girls. While not solely female conditions, female cannibal characters like Bones and All’sMaren can provide a "diagnostic criteria," says Wild. "It’s a type of eating that is done in secret, that is shunned by the rest of society and that's seen as abnormal, or, taboo, or sinister. It's representing on a screen this total, emotional spiralling and falling into an eating habit that is shameful. And cannibals themselves will express shame."

Outsiders in a discriminatory world

The desire for self-expression in a still discriminatory world has meant cannibal stories — like Raw, Yellowjackets, and Hannibal— have also been embraced by members of the queer and LGBTQ community. Not in the Dahmer sense of a gay man who racially fetishized many of his gay victims. But in the keen sense of disenfranchisement and societal shame where cannibalism is a substitute for a marginalised queer identity. "It isn't hard to imagine anyone in the LGBTQ community who has ever felt targeted intuitively understanding this metaphor," Kajganich adds. "Cannibalism is such a taboo of the civilized world, such an emblem of what is considered immoral and contemptible outside of holy communion, of course." 

"Horror is often such an amplification of everyday anxieties."

"Horror is often such an amplification of everyday anxieties. Why shouldn't those two things combine for those of us in the LGBTQ community as a great language for expressing how it feels when your completely natural way of being intimate is judged as morally violent and socially destructive?"

And yet, when writers, artists or filmmakers employ such cannibalistic themes, characterisations or narratives, an angry online mob is sure to follow. From right-wing groups to QAnon conspiracy theorists, pro-cannibalism accusations have been levied at varied marginalised creators and groups to justify discrimination and fascist politics. And it’s nothing new. "Cannibalism is a charge deployed by colonising people throughout the globe throughout history," Summers points out. "When [Christopher] Columbus hit the Americas he said [the indigenous people were] cannibals therefore we need to change that." 

"Now there's this whole network of far right fascist media saying things like, ‘The New York Timesis promoting cannibalism, this author is saying everybody should be cannibals and that is why we need to assume control of the West.' It is a fascistic way of implementing control. Cannibalism is the thing we hold up for being inhuman; not murder, not rape, and certainly not colonising. It's cannibalism."

Cannibalism in film and TV is proving to be a nourishing narrative tool to embrace and exemplify the disenfranchised. As well as forcing readers and viewers to negotiate their own awareness and sensitives to morally-challenging stories that don’t serve up clear answers on a platter. "If the element of cannibalism in the film isn't testing your empathy with the characters," adds Kajganich. "If it isn't forcing you to continue to re-up your contract with them in terms of just being open to their lives, then we failed, right?"

And that’s the power of this storytelling tool. By using cannibalism to ask questions of societal power structures, the patriarchy as well as the shame and fear associated with marginalised identity, it forces the audience to seek answers inside themselves. Is cannibalism the problem – or are we? Food for thought. 

TopicsFilm