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[carnationgirl]

With my cube-neighbors listening to "Sweeney Todd" (Broadway Cast Version, not the film soundtrack, thank goodness), I have to ponder:

Between "Sweeney Todd", "Eating Raoul", "Scotland, PA", and even "Soylent Green" I have to wonder why in all these films where people eat other people (whether they know it or not) we're always really tasty

Comments

Yummy human

[witneyman]

Actually, "Scotland, PA" didn't have any cannibalism. But I see your point; why is human meat always so... tasty? I think because it does add the "forbidden fruit" angle to the funniest of the taboos.

Cannibalism is the one taboos in movies that is never NEVER given a sympathetic eye. All sexual fetishes are pretty game, now, including BDSM and even bestiality (remember "Zoo?"). Incest is not often given the wink-and-nod treatment, but it has been ("Oldboy," "Spanking the Monkey"). Pederasty and Cannibalism are all that are still out-and-out villainous. Pederasty, I get. But why is cannibalism such an evil? If the person is already dead (you didn't commit the murder), why is eating the meat so bad? It's not bad for us. It's not even expressly forbidden by any religious dogma.

I think cannibalism reconnects the disconnet we have between our meatfood and the animal it once was. A hamburger is no longer a cow. It's a sandwich. When the thing we're eating could have been a peer, then we picture the peer and not the sandwich. And then we picture their death. And then we picture their anatomy. And then we think about their ripping tendons and we appreciate their meaty savor. We become morally wrapped in our food... Perhaps a bit unsettling.

Dunno. Just rambling.