A cannibalism expert explains Hollywood's savory surge of people-eating-people projects.
So as you feast with family and friends this holiday weekend, we reached out to Long Island University biology professor Bill Schutt, author of the acclaimed bookDark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures
Scientists started to figure out that was not the case. There are all kinds of reasons cannibalism occurs — like parental care or unpredictable environmental conditions or sexual selection. For example, if you’re a codfish and lay 5 million eggs, it’s not like it’s Tony and Tina over there. You’re looking at the equivalent of raisins. They’re nutritious. There’s no danger from consuming them. Probably more fish are cannibals than not.
In Western culture — from the time of the Greeks and then passed on to the Romans and everyone else — there was this idea that cannibalism was the worst thing you could do. It ties into the idea of the Other. If you’re a good Ancient Greek, you’re not eating bodies. But those other guys do, so they’re not even human. A lot of people jumped on that bandwagon in the West. It became arguably the number one Western taboo.
Why, if were you to guess, do you think there’s been a surge of projects about this lately? Why here and now? Good question. I’d say cannibalism is titillating in much the way vampirism has been — though the former is even more extreme. And once again, these topics only produce that effect if they can be viewed through a filter of fictionalization. Food — which is often viewed as sexy — plus taboo equals fascination.
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