२३ जुलै, २०२२

"Bill Schutt, the author of 'Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History,' says that fictional plots about eating human flesh are as old as literature itself."

"Pointing to examples that include the man-eating Cyclops in Homer’s 'Odyssey,' he said the taboo has artistically been used to horrify for centuries. 'When you take something that is so horrible and put it through this lens of fictionalization,' he said, 'we get charged up about it, but we know we’re safe.' At least most of the time: Mr. Schutt only made it halfway through Hulu’s 'Fresh' before he had to stop the movie. 'It was almost too well done,' he said. [Photo caption: 'In 'Fresh,' a woman becomes charmed by a man she meets at a grocery store, whom she later discovers is involved in an underground human flesh trade.']"

४८ टिप्पण्या:

RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

I'd like to go on record that if - for whatever reason - pork becomes unavailable, I am totally cool with eating Alex Beggs. She looks like she works out, so I'm thinking backstraps only in wine sauce with garam masala asparagus, Oaxacan esquites, and pinot.

Coffee icecream for desert followed by a fat Dominican as a final fuck you cause you just know she hates guys who smoke.

Michael K म्हणाले...

I've done some reading about New Guinea. Cannibalism was common there before "civilization" moved in. This was largely because protein was rare. It was also useful in solving the juvenile delinquent problem. Misbehaving teens went into the pot.

Something to think about in Democrat run cities.

Kate म्हणाले...

Cannibalism: humans eating humans. A Cyclops is not a human. If this is an example of his literary scholarship ...

Shane म्हणाले...

"The IT Crowd" had one of its absolutely funny episodes on the same basic premise as you say this Hulu show, and that is an achievement because its one of the funniest shows of all time, I think.

Crimso म्हणाले...

We all look delicious until the kuru sets in.

John henry म्हणाले...

Globalist are moving to push us to plant-based meat. Impossible burgers and such. One company has developed a product with the taste and texture of human flesh.

Would eating this be bad?

Is it akin to animated child porn? The justification for laws against child porn is to protect the children involved. Animation harms no child yet is treated the same.


John LGBTQBNY Henry

John henry म्हणाले...

Link

https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/scariest-plant-based-food-vegan-burger-tasting-like-human-flesh-wins-award-5521087.html

Narr म्हणाले...

An anecdote about Berlin in 1945, right after the surrender. A young refugee befriends a distinguished looking old gentleman who limps by on crutches every day, a man who lost a leg in the 14-18.

He seems healthy and well-fed in comparison to a lot of people, and gradually he lets on that he has a black-market source for top-quality meat. Eventually he scrawls a note and tells her to take it to a certain address in a distant district--but to be VERY discreet.

She goes one evening and finds a shabby butcher's shop, and is admitted to the back room after she presents the note.

The end.

Narr म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
JPS म्हणाले...

Not even a mention of "Timothy," by the Buoys, ranked fourth on Dave Barry's Bad Song Survey:

"It's a real tribute to this song that it got so many votes, because it was nowhere near as big a hit as the three songs that finished ahead of it. But 'Timothy' compensates for its relative lack of exposure by being extremely memorable, in the sense that the singer of the song appears to be saying that he...well, he ate the subject of the song. Really."

Mountain Maven म्हणाले...

The sickening of the culture continues unabated.

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

It's always been about breasts and thighs...

pacwest म्हणाले...

Just how bad is the coming famine going to be?

khematite म्हणाले...

The 12/13/59 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents had the title "Specialty of the House." It involved a club where the rare gourmet dish "Lamb Armistrand" was sometimes served. You can easily guess what this dish turned out to be. Yes, this taboo subject was the subject of a television broadcast over sixty years ago and was beamed out to millions of viewers. Not a peep from the FCC, so far as I know.

narciso म्हणाले...

soylent green,...is the main course,

Bruce Hayden म्हणाले...

“I've done some reading about New Guinea. Cannibalism was common there before "civilization" moved in. This was largely because protein was rare. It was also useful in solving the juvenile delinquent problem. Misbehaving teens went into the pot.”

One of the big problems with cannibalism is prions. That’s apparently where Mad Cow disease comes from, and there is evidence that it occurs with human cannibalism too.

Meade म्हणाले...

“In “Fresh,” a woman becomes charmed by a man she meets at a grocery store, whom she later discovers is involved in an underground human flesh trade.”

Hey there, lonely girl
Lonely girl
Don't you know this lonely boy
Could just eat you up?

n.n म्हणाले...

Human rites performed for clinical cannibalism and other causes.

PM म्हणाले...

If this is a longstanding taboo, bet on it being acceptable within a decade because:
- we need land for trees; cemeteries waste resources
- 3rd world hunger
- it's the most sacred of foods
- my wife/husband/family/friends/accountant will always be a part of me
- Armour provides a living wage for 1.5 million people globally

Meade म्हणाले...

You don’t get more anthropophagitic than breastfeeding.

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

I thought it was just going to be bugs...

rhhardin म्हणाले...

There are hardly any missionaries in a pot cartoons today.

natatomic म्हणाले...

@michael k

“I've done some reading about New Guinea. Cannibalism was common there before "civilization" moved in.”

So you’re saying that NOT eating other humans is a form of white supremacy and colonialism?

Howard म्हणाले...

Raoul?

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

Soylent Green was non-fiction?

Lem Vibe Bandit म्हणाले...

Fox News: "Twitter disgusted by New York Times piece suggesting there's a 'time and place' for 'cannibalism'"

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

Howard, at least, is safe- no one is going to want to feast on a sack of dogshit no matter how hungry they get.

narciso म्हणाले...

well it was in 2022,

rhhardin म्हणाले...

PNG natives were pretty friendly in WWII to our side. There's a nice YouTube channel of a Missionary Bush Pilot in PNG who is friends with all of them.

RigelDog म्हणाले...

Come, Sweet Meteor of Death!

Marc in Eugene म्हणाले...

I knew that this post would be here when I skimmed at the NYT earlier.

The sickening of the culture continues unabated.

Indeed. Widespread acceptance of procured abortions, 'no fault' divorce, same-sex relationships and then 'marriage', violence in the media and in schools and communities and so forth. Doubtless there will be several more steps (e.g. paedophilia, incestuous 'marriages') before cannibalism is as normalized as it can be.

FullMoon म्हणाले...

"Several streets in San Jose are named for the members of the Reed family. Denying Cannibalism After their rescue, the Donner Party survivors became famous and then infamous. While a small number denied the tales of cannibalism, at least eight survivors personally admitted to eating human flesh."
Several claimed: "Tastes like chicken".

https://allthatsinteresting.com/donner-party-survivors

Meade म्हणाले...

anthropophagic.

Bob_R म्हणाले...

The Russian famine of 1921 is instructive. I didn't notice any celebrations of the centennial.

Michael K म्हणाले...

One of the big problems with cannibalism is prions. That’s apparently where Mad Cow disease comes from, and there is evidence that it occurs with human cannibalism too.

I think that is only a problem if you eat the brains. See this, for example.

Women removed the brain, mixed it with ferns, and cooked it in tubes of bamboo. They fire-roasted and ate everything except the gall bladder. It was primarily adult women who did so, says Lindenbaum, because their bodies were thought to be capable of housing and taming the dangerous spirit that would accompany a dead body.

“So, the women took on the role of consuming the dead body and giving it a safe place inside their own body — taming it, for a period of time, during this dangerous period of mortuary ceremonies,” says Lindenbaum.

But women would occasionally pass pieces of the feast to children. “Snacks,” says Lindenbaum. “They ate what their mothers gave them,” she says, until the boys hit a certain age and went off to live with the men. “Then, they were told not to touch that stuff.“


Howard, I think you are safe. Nobody would want to eat your brain.

Iman म्हणाले...

Talkin’ ‘bout dat long pig

Lurker21 म्हणाले...

People are getting tired of the usual plots. Maybe in the future the "dirty little secret" behind stories and films won't be incest, but cannibalism. I believe Tennessee Williams already tried to pivot the "dirty little secret" plot from pederasty to dismemberment and cannibalisms.

Last month we learned that a vegetable product made to taste like human flesh (how exactly did they get that right?) won a prize. Will that be considered a gateway drug to anthropophagy, our future national pastime?

Narr म्हणाले...

I was invited to a dinner party once. Boy was I surprised when I arrived and they told me it was a DONNER party! I had a few beers and left before they started the grill.

Rollo म्हणाले...

When you hear Gates, or Soros, or Schwab say that their only goal is "to serve man," you will know that the cannibalistic future has begun.

Narr म्हणाले...

Speaking of incest, I read in Martyn Rady's fine book "The Habsburgs: To Ruke The World" that between 1450 and 1750 there were 73 marriages between the Spanish and Austrian lines, and each one required special papal dispensation. Uncle-niece unions (4), first cousin marriages (11), the remainder between varying degrees of cousinage, and from 1527 to 1661 of 34 children born to the Spanish royal line 80% died by the age of 10--four times the usual rate.

One result was a mess named Carlos, Philip II's son--physically disabled, mentally ill, and delusional. He probably could have used a puppy, but the therapy he got was to sleep with a mummified saint. A short and quite hellish existence.

Narr म्हणाले...

Rule the World. Stupid computer.

AndrewV म्हणाले...

Too bad Michael Rockefeller isn't around to talk about cannibalism in New Guinea.

wary म्हणाले...

For more than a decade, my wife and I have continued to be appalled by the low bar of tv reality shows. Naked and afraid, Cheaters, Jersey Shore, Temptation island, multiple Real Housewives, Hoarders, the Biggest Loser and of course 90 day fiancé. We’d laugh and I’d joke, “These shows are bad but at least it’s not at ‘American Cannibal’…yet..’.

I’ve got an ugly feeling about where this culture is headed

Tina Trent म्हणाले...

John Henry: look up HUFU. See, especially, "flesh in the pan" interview by Samantha Bee.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"Cannibalism: humans eating humans. A Cyclops is not a human. If this is an example of his literary scholarship ..."

The title of his book is "Cannibalism" but the rest of the text refers only to one side of it, that human flesh is what's eaten: "fictional plots about eating human flesh" and "the man-eating Cyclops." So maybe the book makes the needed distinction. But what's the point of talking about some non-human animal eating human flesh? That's just predation.

Still, if you look at the pictures, Cyclops is in human form, basically. He just is very large — a giant — and has one eye in the middle of his head. So it's not as though he's a wolf or lion eating people. And I can see how that would belong in a discussion of cannibalism in literature. The NYT summarizes the book so quickly that it exposes the author to your criticism (which is apt!)

Marc in Eugene म्हणाले...

I had no idea until this morning that one of the Old English legends of Saint Christopher (whose feast in the traditional calendar is tomorrow) portrays him as dog-headed, from a land of cynocephali where cannibalism was practiced. Dr Eleanor Parker today featured the Old English Matryrology's entry for the feast; at Patreon. A few sentences of her translation:

... He came in the days of the emperor Decius into the city which is called Samos, from the race where men have the heads of dogs and the land where people eat each other. He had the head of a dog, and his hair was extremely long, and his eyes shone as bright as the morning star, and his teeth were as sharp as a boar's tusks. He was faithful to God in his heart, but he was not able to speak like a man. He prayed to God to give him human speech....

mikee म्हणाले...

Transgression is a tough game to play as an artist, as the past was full of it, and its cessation for a while is recognizably temporary in human history. The unthinkable has been performed by humans so often that entire civilizations arose, prospered, decayed and fell while practicing it. That damn colonialist, oppressive Western Civ did a lot of unthinkable transgressions as it spread over the world, but it also stopped a lot of other arguably worse unthinkable transgressions by those it oppressed with such mighty self-righteousness.

The saying goes that everyone is only 3 missed meals from becoming a criminal. It might take 5 before the cannibal emerges.

David-2 म्हणाले...

mikee said: "The saying goes that everyone is only 3 missed meals from becoming a criminal. It might take 5 before the cannibal emerges."

Or fewer. Didn't take that long before it started in New Orleans, right here in the USA, after Hurricane Katrina (not so long ago - 2005 - some of you may remember).

...

Oh wait, NVM, that was a racist story spread about poor blacks in New Orleans, turned out not to be true.

...
...

Oh wait, that was a racist story spread by a black "leader" (Randall Robinson), amplified by the mainstream media, turned out not to be true. So, really NVM.