Just got sent over here by a comment on the Prism blog. Did you see the ABC documentary Children of the Mountains?

This is just the ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8ZfIYAYsgA
Full video here: http://abc.go.com/player/index?pn=index&show=166626&season=166625&episode=180725

It’s hard to decide what to make of the “war on poverty.” But, haha, it’s an important question for me because I’m part of it!

see an archived copy at

http://www.box.net/shared/fy9ip4r5x2

NLW: You are asking me for my views on the subject of cannibalism and wondering what my position is — if I understand what you were alluding to, there was the possibility that I was agreeing that cannibalism is an atrocity and that it is also mythical, and that by alleging cannibalism these various media producers, etc., were creating a dangerous falsehood meant to stigmatize minorities. That is only partly what I believe in.

I do not believe that any evidence exists, anywhere, of people subsisting on human flesh the way people in the West today might subsist on beef, pork, lamb, chicken, etc. That much does seem to be an outright myth.

What is far more common is ritual cannibalism — we have a (symbolized?) version of it in the Roman Catholic Church, where we are told that we are *actually* consuming the real body and blood of Christ. In the Amazon, as Beth Conklin wrote in Consuming Grief, an expression of grief over losing a loved one was to eventually cook that person and consume the body, to remove all trace of it, not as a sinister or aggressive act, and not out of hunger. Warriors in other parts of the Amazon and the Caribbean might have reduced the bones of a vanquished opponent to powder, and either mixed the powder into drink or inhaled it, thereby taking in the power of the opponent, and this was a sign of ultimate respect.

So while I believe cannibalism as a diet is a myth, I do believe that ritual cannibalism did take place, and I have absolutely nothing to say against it. I do not believe it is evil, wrong, or backward. As someone raised as a Catholic, I have practiced it myself. I also fully agree with Conklin that our aim should not be to dispel any hint of cannibalism because colonizers used cannibalism allegations to enslave Amerindians, because that reinforces the (hypocritical) Eurocentric assumptions behind the stigma of cannibalism. Rather, she urges us, we need to understand and appreciate why it was done, when it was done. Neil Whitehead — I just noticed your initials are identical NLW, so I hope I am not preaching to the master here! — has also spoken of European traditions of medicinal cannibalism. One side of my family owned ships prior to WWII, and it was an established custom, I am told, that if stranded there was an eating order on the ship — the captain’s “boy” would be the first to go, and the captain’s dog would be last to go. How true that is, I don’t know, but it is very entertaining. I agree that the dog should be last by the way, but I want to see the captain go into the pot first.

Finally, what I am saying is that everyday movie goers in the West have not read volumes of anthropology and ethnohistory of cannibalism, and all of this nuanced discussion is alien to most of them, I assume. I can assume that because the cannibalism shown in these horror films is meant to inspire fear, revulsion, and hatred, and therefore to slant viewers against these monstrous villains. In some cases they both create cannibalism where it does not exist, and in all cases treat it as stigma. That also ties into a long European colonial history of justifications of extreme violence against alleged cannibals, and their enslavement in other cases.

Carmen, finally:

I did not know that Germany had afternoon TV programs that sound like they are similar to what we have in North America, which is very disappointing. Interesting also that you say “Islamofascism” might not be the term in currency, at least in Germany, and indeed I would expect that Europeans would know a lot more about fascism than to ascribe it to non-state, non-elite, non-secular forces.

What was also disappointing, but this I knew, was to read about public intellectuals focusing on the threat of Islam as such (this is extreme, all Islam), while ignoring pressing social problems. On the other hand, this is the oldest trick in the book.

Incidentally — this is directed more at deluded souls who see all Muslims as potential enemies of all non-Muslims — when I lived alone in Trinidad a large family that I knew was sad to see me alone for Christmas. So they invited me over to spend Christmas day with them. It was fantastic. There was every imaginable rum concoction, ham, all the Christmas decorations. The family was Muslim.

That is just one abbreviated anecdote…I have many, many, more…from Muslim friends who wanted to go to Catholic mass to get a sense of what was involved, to Muslim classmates who attended the same Catholic schools as myself.

This is turning out to be an essay — I just had one last comment for now: one of the points of the post was to link allegations of cannibalism and allegations of terrorism, since in many ways they serve the same ends.

your essay has many important points! I am living in Germany and the Netherlands and I have witnessed how in recent years the Illiberal Muslim Other (it is not even “Islamofascism) has come up as a trope, especially in the Netherlands. And, especially in Germany, the ” weird, backward underclass and mostly overweight, or at least unhealthy looking whites” populating the afternoon TV shows. Both fits very well with your analysis although I would suspect that there are some (socio-cultural) differences.

Taking your thought further, it is interesting to observe the role of many public intellectuals in this. In recent years many have profiled themselve in Germany and in the Netherlands as the defenders of “liberal Europe”, usually against Islam (not Islamism) and feeding into the threat perception. What is interesting: In their discourse they portray themselves as swimming against mainstream society which is still naively living, according to them, the multicultural dream (in the case of Islam), or social romanticism (in the case of “white trash”). Basically, everybody is living in a dream world, while they can magically see through it. However, from my perception, their thinking is mainstream and they do not stand out or have to fight for their opinions because they are not controversial and far from being anti-establishment! I would really like to see some of these figures pick up the issue of… let’s see, there are many… refugees in Europe or the widening income gaps. Not popular topics, for sure, within the European public sphere and won’t gain influence in established social, economic and political elites….

Sorry, to let you have a taste of my frustration here! But the essay was just to good to keep this to myself.

Best,
Carmen

I essentially agree with everything you wrote, cautions included. I do not believe that the “master plan” is consciously held and deployed by individuals, but I do think that such imagery is, as you mentioned, deeply ingrained in the Western cultural imaginary and remains available as part of our everyday cultural vocabulary.

While I originally wrote this for fun mostly (pretty well everything I do for “Monday Morning Madness” is meant to entertain in some way — usually tame and mild stuff), I think it could be taken much further.

I do believe that such movies are, like the endless cop shows, intended to train us into seeing and thinking like “the mainstream” that media moguls believe exists or that they try to fashion or bolster. These are horror films, and their makers want us to be very afraid.

However, the “local revenge” horror films make one important narrative “mistake” (or concession) that is necessary for their own very construction: they admit to the presence of local hatred, at the same time as they try to steer us against these resentful locals and try to get us to see them as uber-villains. Unfortunately for the media myth makers, that does not always work: I personally loved the character of “Mick Taylor” in Wolf Creek (I could not stop laughing at his jokes), and I thought the Brazilian doctor in Turistas was performing a great service. Unlike the endless happy ending tales (which horror films tend to go against…especially with sequels in mind), Mick Taylor walks away free…so there is not even any punishment for what he does. Of course the film also suggests that he is the figment of the real criminal’s imagination, the lone survivor who may have concocted the whole story…but he also gets away without punishment.

…Anyway, I am running, but I very much appreciated the comments and questions.

Having seen some of these films myself over the past few years, I never really went to the trouble of connecting them thematically and aesthetically. By trying to categorize and organize you bring out some latent (and some very explicit) meanings that might justify perceiving them as forming genres, though I think that argument needs further development. We already know that there is limited innovation of themes in contemporary commercial cinema, therefore it is not surprising to see some leitmotifs taking root.

The connection with Hulme’s work is a fruitful one, I believe. I would have added Todorov as well. That Europeans populated their imaginary with monsters in distant and outlying lands is well established. The question is whether these films serve the same purpose, and who designed them to do so? Are these films expressions of some “master plan”? One has to be careful there since it could come across as a conspiratorial argument.

Thank you for the quick introduction to Adams’ photographic work, I had not known of him, nor is Appalachian ethnography especially prominent where I am.

No I would leave it. I liked the discussion so its good to leave it where it is. I know you told me you like to rewrite rewrite rewrite but I think its pretty harmless and besides it’s thought provoking.

Keep up the great work!