Good enough to eat, part two

In my previous post on Italian cannibal films, a favorite subject of mine I mentioned in passing how the films portrayed primitive practices. I didn't really take on that particular subject in any real way though. Despite the fact that the notion of something primitive is a powerful psychological factor and an important trope in these films. It's time to tackle the myth complex of the primitive in relation to horror films. (Warning: several spoilers below.)

As usual I don't mean myth in the way Mythbusters use the term. While I am in many ways a cultural relativist I'm much interested in the power and function of a myth than I am in cultural relativism. When I say myth I mean a tale with emotional truth by which we order our perceptions of reality. Primitive is such a myth.

In my first post on the subject I mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs. When I was quite young my parents bought me a collection of nine Tarzan books. Several more had been written but if I am not mistaken these were the ones that had been translated to Norwegian. I loved these books, for many reasons. One of the reasons that has stayed with me is the idea of lost civilizations and advanced cultures surrounded by jungles and cannibalistic savages or similar. It's an idea equally important in Burroughs's Barsoom series, where the noble red martians are surrounded by primitive barbarian green Martians. The idea of the primitive is the central core of the Tarzan books. Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, himself is a white man reared by a tribe of apes (who stand in for the most primitive humans) and rises to be their king and the lord of the Jungle. His naked body and sharp steel knife are contrasts symbolic of his primitive surroundings and the noble astuteness of his mind and character. I'm not going to claim that Tarzan is great literature. It's inherently racist and formulaic but read with the right mindset it can be both entertaining and enlightening as a source to knowledge about the society that fostered the books. I could write a whole post about Tarzan, but I won't. At least not today.



These ideas of exotic locations filled with less sophisticated people are fundamental to cannibal films, as well as a whole array of other exploitation, sexploitation and horror films. A potent and lovely example is the french film Gwendoline with its S&M fueled fantasies of a lost realm of white amazonian women surrounded by savage cannibals - and a shit ton of nudity! This film displays not only the idea of the primitive as a scary and hostile other, but also what constitutes the idea of the primitive. They are tribalistic, they occasionally eat people and they like to ravage white women. This of course is the very pattern of both Tarzan and cannibal films. However there is an interesting duality to be found here, which is even more explicitly present in Cannibal Holocaust: civilization is just as wicked, just more ingenious and twisted in its wickedness.

In Cannibal Holocaust this very twisted wickedness is shown as western documentarians out to make a film about primitive people in the jungle. They find their primitiveness to be a disappointing in its lack of true savagery and go about provoking them in a cruel way. It's a beautiful inversion of the common conceptions found in so many other cannibal films. It's no longer enough to venture into the jungle and have blonde hair to be cruelly tortured, slain and eaten. (Without condiments, cleaning nor preparation. Even this vegetarian knows that they're begging for salmonella or something.) While it's not entirely the noble savage it certainly is a viable post colonial critique of our freudian fear of and fascination with primitives. And as post colonial critiques go I personally prefer mine with a touch of brutality and nudity.

When I say touch I mean "a lot".

Defining the primitive is not easy. I use the term vaguely, as it is a vague notion we have. Part psychology and part cultural trope. The primitive is usually, but not always, "the other" and a threat. In horror films we usually see the primitive either as a location where brutal savages live, and where the protagonists end up in a nearly Robinsonian manner - by accident or design. This is usually the case in the cannibal films. In La Montagna del dio cannibale and Cannibal Holocaust the victims go the land of the primitives knowingly, looking for glory and riches. In other films a plane crashes, an outpost is attacked or the protagonists simply didn't realize where they were heading and the dangers that were there.

Sometimes we encounter the primtive as an atavism in our own backward communities. The sausages in the gas station are actually composed of human flesh, and those inbred people might be great with a banjo, but they also like it when you squeal. The primitive is a source of fear whether it's presented as the xenophobic other, or the more jungian atavistic type. In many ways the primitive as trope or archetype or myth or whatever represents our fear of what lies beneath when modern industrial society is shaved away. This is particularly evident in the already alluded to Texas Chain Saw Massacre: the jobs disappeared and the family was left to fend for themselves in whatever way they could. Quite interestingly the mother of the family is as dead as the industry that kept them prosperous and the males turn savage. Women are usually either revered as maternal enforcers of order, or victims of sexual aggression (raped, being eaten, tied to stakes or tortured with phallic implements) in depictions of the primitive in horror, and when the maternal principle is missing the need to bludgeon women in the head with hammers, or such, arises.

A fascinating contrast to this type of depiction of the primitive can be found in what is possibly the best novel ever written: Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. In the aforementioned Tarzan the protagonist is a noble surrounded by primitives, and ends up as their master due to his biological breeding and background. A lord he was born, a lord he must be. In Frankenstein a creature is created with no background and no breeding. He is a primitive in his lack of civilized traits, surrounded by cultured society. The tragedy and horror lies in the fact that he is noble and highly intelligent, but shunned by his creator and the modern world. In fact he is probably undone by it as he drifts off on an ice flake carrying his dead progenitor and the latter's funeral pyre.

Frankenstein and Tarzan were written in different eras embodying two very distinct concepts of the primitive. Burroughs wrote in a time very much in line with Kipling's White Man's Burden, and is obviously even inspired by his Jungle Book. The primitive is something that was to be tamed, and the noble white man was the one who could do it. Frankenstein however was written a century earlier and in a time where the noble savage had strong influence on the romantic ideals. The untouched, or unblemished, was superior to the sinful and complicated ways of the modern world. Even more so the book carries very strongly the idea that science can go too far in its ambitions and turn the world into a horrible place.

Personally I love both of these depictions, while neither agrees with me in terms of ideology. But that is a whole different continent, and we're not going there. Interestingly however it deserves mention that in most Frankenstein screen adaptations the tables are turned, and the hulking, primitive creation becomes a monster, whether by flawed design or by circumstance. An exception is Kenneth Branagh's honest attempt at a more loyal adaptation. While his film falls short in many respects it manages to capture the tragic promethean element of the novel, unlike its predecessors. Interestingly it also turns up the sexuality of the book to 11, or even 12. God knows why. I still prefer the 1931 film any day, despite being less true to the book. In part because it doesn't have Kenny B groping at Helena Bonham Carter's crotch.

That makes me sound so prudish, and I feel a need to return to tittie flashing cannibal films for a final remark on the subject. Imagine yourself deep in the jungles of new guinnea, surrounded by crocodiles, snakes and barely clad, whig bearing, underpayed, drunk philipinos, errr, I mean local cannibals. There is only one way to escape their anthropophagous wrath. You must become as primal as they are. Partake in their rituals and dine on your friends with them. In both Cannibal Holocaust and Il Paese del sesso selvaggio we see that this is the only possible option. The latter is of course a nudity infused remake of A man called horse, and follows the same pattern: go through terrible and visceral rituals, cast off civilization and you will live.

This in turn takes us to modern primitivism, but that is something I would have to tackle in the future. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Good enough to eat, Italian films for the true gourmet!

One of the many tasteless subjects I found fascinating as a child in the eighties was cannibalism. I can remember very vividly tales of cannibalism in books by Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert Louis Stevenson, or recounted by the adults around me. When I was probably 10 years old I remember reading about a pirate somewhere in Malaysia who had a penchant for eating his victims ears after roasting them over an open fire. Don't know if it was something he actually did, or just image branding. Regardless, I was enthralled. And it seems I was not the only one.

From the mid seventies to the late eighties Italy was a cinematic super power, atleast if you enjoy slightly offensive dehumanizing exploitation films with hardly any logic consistency scriptwise, and even more films that objectify women. And I do. I certainly do. In fact, I love it! Italians produced a wide range of exploitation films, starting with the so called mono genre, and developing into nunsploitation, nazisploitation, sexploitation, slasher films, giallo, zombie films and the subject for today's blog: cannibal films.

The genre grew out of the aforementioned mondo genre, which also originated in Italy before becoming international. Mondo is italian for world, and the mondo films were a sort of low brow sensationalist anthropological exploitation cinema - in the borderland between fiction and documentary. The films showcased a variety of perceived primitive practises from around the world, with a fair dosage of schock value. Shockumentary was another term used for these films. The genre devolved into death fetishism with the american Faces of Death and died out soon thereafter. Not really a great loss.

The Cannibal films can be seen as a direct off shot of this genre, both stylistically and with regards to the subject matter. Cannibal films transported the viewer to remote locations and let them witness a wide range of primitive (mostly fictional) customs - including cannibalism. The films also cashed in on the death fetishism of the mondo genre by including footage of animal death. Either stock footage of animals eating each other, or filmed sequences of natives slaughtering animals for food. These scenes are usually the most repulsive, especially considering that I'm personally a vegetarian. In addition these scenes usually had little to do with the "natural" behaviour of the supposed tribes who performed them. But they are what they are, and thankfully the climate for portraying animal cruelty in film has changed considerably since then. Let's not forget vicious treatment of animals was common in main stream films just 40 years ago.

An even more notorious example of linking to the mondo genre can be found in the most famous of all the cannibal films, IE Cannibal Holocaust (1980) by Ruggero Deodati. This film is about a mondo film crew who provokes a tribal war in the amazon, before being molested and devoured. The film attempted, quite successfully, to emulate a real documentary in certain segments and the premise is that a great deal of the footage is real. This led to rumors that the film did in fact contain the real on screen death of the actors involved. (And in fact there is a real life execution scene in the film, but through stock footage. None of the actors are in fact killed, or eaten, or any other such stuff.) Cannibal Holocaust is easily the most artistically well made film of the genre, and its reputation is well deserved. Ruggero Deodati even had to convice a court that the deaths were special effects, and spent some time in jail for the animal cruelty portrayed in the film. Don't see it if you can't stomach it.

The cannibal films are mostly trash, and I mean that in the most explicit sense. The editing is poor, the acting is terrible and the scripts are wafer thin. In addition the films are inherently racist and often come off as a remnant from earlier colonial times. The various exotic locations and tribes are always treated as savage, merciless and hellish and the death of a native is hardly worth a comment, while a scene depicting a white woman being molested can be lavishly detailed. In addition the supposed anthropolical aspects of the films are usually erroneous down to the very last detail. Prime examples are the portrayals of the amazonian Yanomamo as cannibals or the use of philipinos to portray Asaro mudmen from Papua - who also don't really eat people very often. (I have in fact met a couple of Yanomamo in real life, and they didn't try to eat me, or any other people.) But as it was with the mondo films, the value of these films is hardly in correct portrayal, but in shock and disgust.

In spite of this overdose of subconscious racism the films often have a anti-imperialist message. The filmmakers in Cannibal Holocaust clearly represent european interests with little respect for their film's subjects and end up being eviscerated and digested. Ursula Andress, of Dr. No fame plays a cynical capitalist searching for uranium in Papua has to witness the death of her brother (and eat his heart) and other horrors before escaping. While certainly not all the films have this premise it is certainly present in several of them.

Another aspect that can hardly be ignored is the direct sexuality these films have. I have allready mentioned the former Playboy model Ursula Andress, who displays most of her body in Mountain of the Cannibal God - where she is oiled and rubbed by a pair of native women. She is not the only one. In Emanuelle and the last cannibals (1977) the beautiful Laura Gemser once again undresses in front of the camera as Emanuelle (not to be confused with the more famous Emmanuelle), the world's sluttiest reporter. (One of the least interesting Emanuelle Nera films, go watch Emanuelle in America instead. Now that's offensive cinema for you!) Also any cannibal film that doesn't contain a healthy helping of naked savage women is not really a cannibal film. The same goes for rape, and to some degree explicit images of castration. It's all very delightful.

So now you know how to spend your weekend. Never mind clubbing or whatever, fire up Pirate bay, and get yourself some cannibal action! Once you've learned the joy of the dangers all natives present to white people trekking through a green hell, your world will never be the same again. I know I'm gonna get the last hufu out of the fridge and fire up Jungle Holocaust later today.