The Other White Meat

I guess I blogged last night before I saw this, otherwise, this totally would have been  what I wrote about.  The long and the short of it is that two guys on a Dutch TV show had bits of their body flesh removed and  then cooked on air for each other to eat.  That's right, folks. Live cannibalism for your entertainment!

It's really hard to explain how much this squicks me. Actually, I probably don't even have to explain how much it squicks me. This is gross. Cannibalism is only acceptable in times of extreme snowstorms and/or your flight going down in the Andes.

Actually, even then, while it is excusable,  it isn't really acceptable. When I was in college, I read the book about the Andes situation. I read horror novels for fun. I watch most scary movies and don't bat an eyelash.  That book, being nonfiction, screwed me up for weeks. I had nightmares and would wake up with this overwhelming feeling that I had done something disturbingly wrong. Taboos run deep.

And when people try to argue that there are absolutely no sinister or harmful undertones in pornography,  I will always point out to them that when the facts of the Andes situation came to light, porn mags posted pictures of the half-consumed limbs left by the survivors. Yes, there is the part of porn is that is "we just like to watch people have sex," but there is the other side of it that is "wow, let's look at all the distorted and fucked up things people can do to each other."

Those two Dutch guys handled the whole shockshow of eating each other's flesh pretty well. They even seemed a little jaded by it.

It makes me wonder though, what was it like later? What was it like when they got home, looked in the mirror, and understood they were now a person who had consumed human flesh?

Maybe it meant nothing. Or at least, maybe it means nothing now.  But tomorrow? Two years from now?

How would you feel? Because, here's the thing . . . there is no going back from cannibalism. Once you take someone else's flesh into your mouth, chew on it, swallow it, digest it . . . you are different. You have stopped being whatever you were and entered the ranks of cannibals.

What would life feel like for you then?