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Charlotte Chalker dishes the dirt on cannibalism
‘If you were starving to death, and I had already died, would you eat me?’ It’s a question that can keep the most enthusiastic carnivore up at night.
Obviously we can’t all imagine how it feels to be stuck in the Andes for weeks with no food save the tempting human carcasses preserved in the ice. But we still question ourselves. We still wonder if human flesh really does taste like chicken. (kip:well skin doesnt)
The recent case of self-confessed Internet cannibal, Armin Miewes, has dragged cannibalism into the media again. Legs have been crossed and there have been grimaces-a-plenty as we have read of Miewes serving sautéed penis avec garlic, salt and pepper to his enthusiastically castrated victim. However, perhaps the most interesting fact about our 21st century man muncher was not that he had a taste for cock, or that Brandes, the victim, volunteered his body, but that Miewes was found to be completely sane. This was no lunatic feasting on flesh, rather a 42-year-old man with a bizarre sexual tendency. He got off on eating an engineer from Berlin.
This fact takes cannibalism straight into the post-modern world. No longer can we see it as a nutritional demand for developing, irrational man, a trait of those far away or long ago, nor a characteristic of the mentally ill. There are people who just want to eat other people. And perhaps even more surprisingly, there are people that want to be eaten. On the surface, people-eat-people is just another happy food chain.
To take this one step further, if there are people who wish to be eaten and people who wish to eat, then why not kill those two birds and eat yourself? Welcome to the self-cannibal.
In 1999 American forensic specialist Dr Mark Benecke reported the first non-psychotic self-cannibal. She was just a 28-year-old New Yorker. ‘Normal’ upbringing, ‘normal’ family, ‘normal’ degree. Abnormal eating habits. In the cause of self-mutilation she had spliced her tongue, branded her body and during frequent ‘cutting sessions’ eaten her own skin tissue. But apparently, as with Miewes, this was by no means due to psychiatric problems. Instead explanations have fallen to the universally adaptable theory of the experience of urban subculture. The city becomes such an alienating and insecure environment that group membership can be the only route to happiness. All it takes is some like-minded individuals. So if your friends like eating and mutilating themselves, you’re likely to as well. Seems like New York can be a funny old place.
She’s not the only one to eat herself though. Before we condemn those whose tastes lie in the alternative aisle, we need to look closer to home. A mild form of autophagy (self- cannibalism) is the consumption of fingernails and cuticles. Think of the pre-exam mealtime. If you don’t partake in nail biting, fear not, as cell biologists on the other side of the pond have come up with a plan for you to join the autophagy subculture too.
The Medical University of Carolina suggest a clever trick ‘for vegans’. Take a biopsy of your own tissue and they can ‘culture’ it to make self-steaks, thus allowing meat consumption without the guilt of killing an animal.
So perhaps lurking beneath all the media disgust and confusion over Miewes and his taste for human penis there is a whole society of current and future cannibals. Perhaps insanity is fast going out of fashion as a required cannibal characteristic. 2003 saw autophagy even capture the imagination of the big screen. Cult French ‘skin flick’ In My Skin portrayed the exploits of self-cannibal, Esther, indulging in multiple meals and discovering unparalleled sexual pleasure. No need to depend on the death of your friends to provide that meal of chicken breast, we can do it all ourselves. Skin with sauce anyone?
By Charlotte Chalker