Cannibalism in Literature and Film PDF
Preview Cannibalism in Literature and Film
Cannibalism in Literature and Film This page intentionally left blank Cannibalism in Literature and Film Jennifer Brown ©JenniferBrown2013 Foreword©MarcJancovich2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-0-230-36051-8 Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission. Noportionofthispublicationmaybereproduced,copiedortransmitted savewithwrittenpermissionorinaccordancewiththeprovisionsofthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988,orunderthetermsofanylicence permittinglimitedcopyingissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency, SaffronHouse,6–10KirbyStreet,LondonEC1N8TS. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorizedactinrelationtothispublication maybeliabletocriminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. Theauthorhasassertedherrighttobeidentifiedastheauthorofthiswork inaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Firstpublished2013by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN PalgraveMacmillanintheUKisanimprintofMacmillanPublishersLimited, registeredinEngland,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills,Basingstoke, HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanintheUSisadivisionofStMartin’sPressLLC, 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,NY10010. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabovecompanies andhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnitedStates, theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-349-34784-1 ISBN 978-1-137-29212-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137292124 Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitableforrecyclingandmadefromfully managedandsustainedforestsources.Logging,pulpingandmanufacturing processesareexpectedtoconformtotheenvironmentalregulationsofthe countryoforigin. AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. AcatalogrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryofCongress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 For my Grandpa, Eric Brown, who always asked me if I was reading anything good This page intentionally left blank Contents ForewordbyMarkJancovich ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 Part I MrCannibalIPresume?TheColonial Cannibal 1 NoPetticoatsHere–EarlyColonialCannibals:FromDaniel DefoetoH.RiderHaggard 17 2 IntotheHeartofDarkness:JosephConrad’sHeartof Darkness 31 3 OfftheBeatenTrack?ThePost-ConradianCannibal: FromGrahamGreenetoHollywoodandtheItalian CannibalBoom 54 Part II Yeehaw!TheRegionalCannibal 4 BordersandBean–TheBritishRegionalCannibal:The RegionalGothicandSawneyBean 85 5 HillbillyHighway–TheAmericanRegionalCannibal:From TheTexasChainsawMassacretoTheHillsHaveEyes, OriginalsandRemakes 107 Part III CannibalsinOurMidst: TheCityCannibal 6 CitySlashersandRippers–LondonCannibals:FromJack theRippertoSweeneyTodd 153 vii viii Contents 7 AmericanPsychos:FromPatrickBatemantoHannibal Lecter 170 Conclusion 215 Bibliography 234 Filmography 249 Index 251 Foreword Hannibal Lecter is an odd figure, both animal and aesthete. He is a cannibal who eats human flesh but his appetite is not born out of basehunger.Hemakeshumanfleshthecentreofelaborategastronomic feasts;and,intheprocess,hisconsumptionofotherhumanbeingscel- ebrates his superiority, and control, over them. He particularly enjoys eating the flesh of authority figures: ‘A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.’ Those, likeMasonVerger,whomheconsiderstobebeneathhisculinarystan- dards,areconsignedtoamorehorrifyingfate:Lecterdoesnotconsume Verger’s flesh but persuades his victim to cut his face off and feed the fleshtodogs. Lectermayhavebeenaculturaliconinthe1990s,followingthesuc- cessofthefilmversionofThomasHarris’snovelTheSilenceoftheLambs, butheishardlythefirstcannibaland,asJenniferBrowndemonstrates, heisheirtoalongtraditionthatdatestothebeginningsofmodernity and beyond. The ways in which the figure of the cannibal transgresses taboos about what is good to eat, and what is not, not only tells us about monsters, or about food consumption, but about the modern worldmoregenerally. For Brown, the history of the cannibal, or at least mediated repre- sentations of it, can be divided into three phases, phases that are not only temporally but also spatially organized. In the first, Brown con- siders the ways in which the cannibal is mobilized in the encounter between the colonizer and the colonized, and the common associa- tion between savagery and cannibalism. In the second, she moves on to explore the ways in which this spatial opposition shifts to figure anxieties about the relationship between the urban and the rural. In a range of narratives, the cannibal is a decadent rural hillbilly, not sim- ply a figure of pre-modernity but of underdevelopment. For example, thecannibalsinTheTexasChainsawMassacreturntocannibalismasthe factories that employed them are closed down and as their provincial backwater becomes excluded from the networks of modernity – in the USA, vast tracts of the country have become known as flyover states! Finally,ifthesecondstageshiftstheencounterfromcolonizertocolo- nizedclosertohomeandrefiguresitasanencounterbetweentheurban ix
The list of books you might like
