1st Cannibal Horror

On the very opposite side of the spectrum we have Soylent Green, released in 1973 but set in a 2022 dystopian society. Directed by Richard Fleischer the film is somewhat based on a sci-fi novel from the sixties, Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. Rather than primitive, this society is futuristic and a warning about continuing on the same path.

In this dystopian future, due to overpopulation and climate change, (very top of mind in actual 2022 as well), worldwide shortages of food, water, and adequate shelter began. The uber wealthy live a safe life behind security systems while the rest of the people do the labor necessary to make the city work, sacrificing their time and bodies. The poor are so bad off they only eat wafers, called Soylent Red. There's also Soylent Yellow, a highly processed and not so great version and the new Soylent Green wafers. a more nutritious option.

Unfortunately, the NYPD detective, Robert Thorn, that we follow comes to learn that Soylent Green isn’t made from ocean plankton like people are led to believe. In actuality, the oceans and the plankton in them are dying, and to compensate for that lack of resource the government started making Soylent Green out of human corpses. Corpses that are transported from a facility providing medically assisted suicides to those who wish to escape the hellscape that is 2022 in New York City.

It’s not news that things in the United States have…

...dramatically devolved following the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the culmination of a decades long slow decline. In an adjacent story not completely related to cannibalism, US prisoners are being offered reduced sentences in return for their spare organs like kidneys and liver lobes. Though not human consumption of human flesh in the literal sense it still translates into an evil sub form of parasitic behavior on those most heavily affected by wealth inequality.

Starting in March of 2024 people in Canada can consider Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) due solely to suffering mental illness, a controversial policy addition to their 2016 passing of medically assisted death for patients. Some have argued that MAID is Canada's way of financially avoiding funding action to address mental health issues, lack of disability care, and rampant poverty in society.

To this day Cannibal Holocaust, released in 1980, is probably still the most well known representation of the cannibal horror movie genre. Having not been able to bring myself to watch this one, watching Ryan Hollinger’s 2018 video in which he goes into detail about the movie and surrounding controversy will have to work. One of the major instances of controversy was Deadato and the crew taking advantage of natives on set, even trapping them inside burning huts with no safety precautions. Along with actual, graphic animal murder and confusion surrounding what was reality and what was fiction, the real crew faced charges for acts committed while making the film.

Something this graphic in the found footage format hadn’t been attempted at the time of its release in the eighties. To top it all off the film had not been presented as a horror film prior to its release, to the shock of viewers when they went to see it.

While trying to show the ignorance of Western media,...

...Deadato believed that his art would not be received as a snuff film despite all the evidence to the contrary. Ironically he has the film’s plot open with a film crew that goes to the Amazon to find and record a tribe of cannibals-similar to himself. After the initial film crew in his movie goes missing another, second film crew goes to search for the original crew. The perception in their professional circles is that the original film crew died heroes. 

In a dark twist, the second crew discovers the first crew’s footage only to find that the original crew orchestrated scenes of the tribe murdering and cannibalizing people to make a good, interesting film. After the original crew raped, killed, and abused the native people on film, the natives justifiably killed them. The footage is destroyed in order to let the positive narrative of the original crew and those connected to that expedition in their professional circles, live on. 

This is accidentally a one to one representation of the stance that the true savages are the ones documenting the acts of societies unlike their own. The lesson learned that it is worth considering the whole picture when crafting a narrative, especially a cultural one that could have dire consequences. Unfortunately, this message is largely lost due to the overly gruesome depictions of violence and the unethical conduct of the real life film crew.