Recipies

The last ten days were busy days… and, having to attend to a symposium at the De Wulf-Mansion Center in Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve, I had to postpone my writings for the blog… but that doesn’t mean I was just « blog-idle »…
I got interested in a tragic event I read during the last months in the news (Robert Pickton’s trial), the release of a new movie (Hannibal Rising) and one of my favourite writer, Jonathan Swift (A Modest Proposal); and a question emerged: is there a link between tragic actuality, a movie and Swift? The answer was not very hard to find: FOOD. And to be more precise, human flesh. Yes, you are not mistaken: I’m gonna talk about cannibalism… First, to understand what we are talking about, let us propose two definitions of a cannibal:

• 1.a a person who eats the flesh of other human beings. b. (as modifier): cannibal tribes. 2. an animal that feeds on the flesh of others of its kind. [C16: from Spanish Canibales, name used by Columbus to designate the Caribs of Cuba and Haiti, from Arawak caniba, variant of CARIB] From the Collins English Dictionary.

• A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period. From Ambrose Bierce’s Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary.

Those two definitions, a serious one and a hilarious one, are the archetypes of what is following: when the irony is no more understood, one must stand with the seriousness to make people understand what is really at stake.

I’ve always been a fan of Jonathan Swift, the famous Irish writer (1667-1745); he is one of the most talented prose satirist who wrote in English. He is born 60 years after the famous Main plot (1603), Bye plot (1603) and Gunpowder plot (1605), and he was twenty during the Revolution of 1688; his time was a disturbed one, marked by the struggle between catholics and protestants. As it is written on his own epitaph, « he served human liberty », and served it the best he could in fighting against the anti-catholic legislations, the scorn for catholic and in supporting Irish causes. Here, I’m interested in his Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick. In this essay, he wrote a satire in order to:

For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of Papists, with whom we are yearly over-run, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country, than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.

in which he proposed, and I quote again:

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust. I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, (…) the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

Of course it’s quite easy to see the ironic point in his essay, although some readers didn’t understand it and were deceived by the natural and sincere tone of the proposal; but this was clearly a way to fight the indifference for the sufferings of the Irish poor, rather than an apology for cannibalism. During Swift’s time, cannibalism was more seen as a custom in Africa or in the pacific Islands, or a way to survive starvation. Apart from the concern for the Irish poor which is quite sad, Swift’s essay is just hilarious.

But today, as you can read in the news, cannibalism has become more than what Swift knew of it, and sure he would be shocked. And so are we all – I hope. The beginning of Robert Pickton‘s trial (born 1949) with all its horrors shows us how far the bad side of man can go. The accusation is arguing that human flesh of his victims may have been ground up and mixed with pork from the farm and served to friends and visitors. And how not to remember Armin Meiwes (born 1961) who ate with his consenting victim Bernd Jürgen Armando Brande the penis of the latter, and then killed and ate Brande, or Sasha Spesivtsev (born 1970) who raped, killed and ate his victims with the help of his mother, or Jeffrey Dahmer (born 1960) who tortured, killed and ate his victims. This is just crazy: everything here is about the possession of another human being by its ingestion, after having possessed his mind (by soumission) and his body (by torture or rape).

Within the scope delimited by Swift’s essay and the modern cannibal killers, the question I was asking myself is: what is the place of a movie like Hannibal Rising today? I think this is not an innocent question, because what was meant to make people understand the sufferings of the Irish people and was designed to move towards charity in Swift’s essay is now used to create a sort of a personality cult of another ficticious character, Hannibal Lecter, who is more a mix of those serial killers I’ve been talking about, than a philanthropist. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not trying to say that a movie must have a moral issue, or be designed to make people feel better, or be like a documentary and describe the world. Movies as entertainment could present those proprieties, but they don’t have to. I’ve seen the Silence of the Lamb, and I really found it great. I’ve also seen Hannibal, and then Red Dragon (the « remake » of Manhunter, the first movie on Hannibal, directed by Michael Mann in 1986), and I begun to feel a little awkward: it was like one wanted to present Hannibal as a hero, leaving open the possibility that he was somebody to be followed or imitated. And, if one doesn’t really understand the gap between fiction and reality, that could become a problem. I’m not speaking here about censorship (for example, I was against the censure of Pasolini’s Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom in Switzerland) but mainly about care and education. If the aim of the Modest Proposal was not understood by Swift’s peers in a time when the problems between catholics and protestants were obvious, what must we think of Hannibal Rising today? When the difference between reality and fiction grows thinner with the help of new technologies, when the desire to find models is subject to excess (if you doubt it, just look to the problem of anorexia and the models), when Mark Kermode needs to warn not to go and see the new James Bond Casino Royal with children, although it’s a PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, a scene of torture, sexual content and nudity… meaning: some parents went with their children to see it, and they were shocked, when one doesn’t understand any more satire but take it as serious… we need to think about the amount of violence in our society and the way we present it. I think that today, we must be more careful than ever: discussions about movie and violence, fiction and reality, models, must be part of the education if we want to prevent the poor in our society, mainly the one without access to education, to be hurt or – worst – to get mad. Everything is about the first concern of Swift’s Modest Proposal, not cannibalism, but education; so we must follow the lead, and as before, try to improve education in order to prevent more deadly behaviours. It’s somehow sad that satire is difficult to be understand… let us educate the people to deal with it again.