IntroductionIn the 80's and 90's, a remarkable number of artworks dealt with (and still deal with) either cannibalism or the psychopathic serial killer - or both in combination. The question is why?I could perhaps call it a trend, but I won't. "Trend" suggests an arbitrariness, a possibility of unlimited replacement, which I don't think is the case. I could perhaps say "the more extreme the better". But then I'd have to answer the question: Why is more extreme better? And I'd have to explain: Why these extremes? And perhaps that's what I intend to do. As the title of this article suggests, I want to argue that cannibalism (as an event, or even as the essential event in a given film) and the serial killer (as filmic sub-genre) can be seen as metaphors for transgression. But first a few precautions must be taken. It might seem trivial to mention this, but cannibalism and the serial killer are referred to here as visual metaphors - not linguistic ones. Moreover I do not consider the metaphors in question to be specific for film. I might, for instance, interpret a literary work not on but including cannibalism in exactly the same way. What makes film especially interesting is that due to its form (as medium), it affects us in a more complex way than a literary work. And that film, still due to its form (but as institution), affects us in a more insistent or provocative way. You can close a book and leave it on the table for a couple of days because the phone rings. With cinema you can't do - or are not supposed to do (that's the code of a silent convention, which has a lot to do with film's potential) - anything but watch the film.
In the discussion which follows, I will use two feature films as essential
examples of "film as metaphor". This does not mean that I claim to analyze and
interpret these films exhaustively. Considerably more would have to be said if
that were my intention.
Supplements are, generally speaking, 'dangerous'. They are dangerous because the area of interest (the "inside") depends for its very being on the conceptual operation of the frame; that is, on an operation that threatens the clean separation of "inside" and "outside". Pointing to the frame - for example by calling attention to phenomena that do not respect the clean separation - is thus to question the purity of the "coupure pure". I don't want to go any further into Derrida, but simply to make use of the figure: "inside"/"outside".
I believe that cannibalism and the serial killer (as metaphors) theorize that
the boundary between the "inside" and the "outside", between the One and the
Other, is not stable, not natural, not "God-given", and that - in a conceptual
sense - it never has been. These metaphors show that the conception of the
Other as radically different is a fiction.
In classical horror films the monster, in general, comes from "outside". It might be an animal (King Kong, The Birds), a demonic power (The Shining, Rosemary's Baby), a creature from outer space (Alien) or an artificial creature (Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). The monster is a stranger, but it often appears to be quite attractive and gentle; and it can be eliminated. Horror films such as Psycho and Chain Saw Massacre (to mention just a few) deviate from the usual pattern in that the monster does not come from "outside", but seems to be something like a psychic disease within or among us. Even though it can still be eliminated. Some of the horror films from the 80's and 90's make another change (which applies to literature as well). The monster does not come from "outside" but from "within". It is a rational and intelligent human being, most often a white male in his 30's, well educated and presumably well functioning. No outer features indicate that he is a psychopath. But - and this is what I find especially interesting in a film like Seven - it can not be eliminated.[5] By making the monster supernatural, a stranger from "outside" and by finally eliminating it, the classical horror film set boundaries and created order. Being without narrative closure, without an unambiguous ending, the psychopathic serial killer film (and the splatter-film as well) states that the horrible and monstrous cannot be delimited. And it is perhaps because the horror film draws attention to unstable and permeable boundaries, that the sub-genre has had a rise in popularity parallel to the discussion of the postmodern.[6] In the psychopathic serial killer film, the murders are committed in accordance with a system; they are founded on a kind of rationality. In Cape Fear[7] the motive for the terror is revenge. John Doe (Seven) kills in accordance with the seven deadly sins. In Copycat the killer copies the modus operandi of previous killers. In Manhunter, the killer just does not like women (I don't remember, but his mother might have treated him badly). This 'rationality' of the monster makes it possible to identify with him.[8] And it makes the game between the killer and the "opponent" (who is not the victim but the detective, the FBI agent, the psychoanalyst or whoever) a significant point. A scene in Seven[9] makes this clear. John Doe gives himself up after what seems to be murder no. five, but he succeeds in making a deal with the detectives. He offers to confess his killings, if they agree to follow him to the last two victims. They agree to this. In the car the young detective (David Mills) triumphantly proclaims that they have caught him. But they did not catch John Doe - he gave himself up. And that's John Doe's point. By giving himself up, he manages to complete his system: David Mills, the one who considers himself to be beyond (that is "inside"), commits the seventh deadly sin. John Doe makes David Mills cross the boundary between normality and madness, between the One and the Other - spontaneously. A previous scene sets this in relief. David Mills and William Somerset (the older detective) are having a beer in a bar after the fourth murder. The subject of their conversation is the killer's mental state. According to Mills, he's insane, different, "outside". (The point is followed up in the car scene. David Mills asks John Doe: "When a person is insane, as you clearly are, do you know that you're insane?"). According to Somerset, he's just a man. As he says: "We're talking about everyday life here". Mills repudiates this standpoint and primarily ascribes it to Somerset's disillusion, his unwillingness to fight what Mills, relying on the boundary, defines as being "outside", as Other. Secondarily, but on a more profound level according to Mills himself, he considers Somerset's disillusion, his claimed insight, to be an excuse for leaving the city and his job in favor of a newly acquired house in the countryside. The bar scene anticipates the final scene with a tragic resonance, but it also stresses the dominant figure or structure of the film: the mirroring of David Mills and John Doe.[10] David Mills fights the Other and so does John Doe - as his aim is to eliminate the deadly sins and thereby the "degradation of humanity into a subhuman level."[11] In the final scene of Seven a cardboard box plays a significant role. The content of the box is never shown to the spectators,[12] but the size and shape enable us to guess what it contains. I find the box rather trivial as an effect, but it creates a wonderful suspense. A deliveryman brings it to the location. As his van enters at the left side of the setting, William Somerset leaves David Mills and John Doe, who are both situated at the right side of the setting. Somerset's receiving the box and opening it provides space[13] for John Doe to spin out - and enjoy? - his final act. When Mills realizes that John Doe has killed his wife, he wants to shoot him, and who wouldn't? Somerset warns him not to - not because of the consequences but because of the game. If Mills shoots John Doe, John Doe wins. Mills does shoot John Doe, and the spectator's sympathy just goes to show how unbearably easy it is to cross the boundary.
 At first it seems paradoxical that the only scene with sunshine and dry weather is the last one - which furthermore takes place in the open space outside the city. On second thought, there is a point here: everything comes (out) in the light.[14] |
Food and meals in art can basically be seen as metaphors for drawing and crossing boundaries.[15] So can cannibalism. But cannibalism makes a difference. Taking part in a meal means eating of the same but not the same, and in particular - not eating one another. You do not eat the person you are eating with. It is natural to eat but it is civilized (or cultural) to take part in a meal, because in the process you refrain from eating one another. Thus cannibalism metaphorizes the break down of civilization, the dissolution of culture into nature. The Cook, the Thief his Wife and her Lover[16] is a brilliant example of how food, the meal and cannibalism work as metaphors for transgression. The universe of the film is centered on a restaurant, le Hollandais, with its kitchen, dining hall and lavatory. Outside the kitchen door is a parking lot, and additional settings are a book depository and a hospital. These six rooms are coded in accordance with various cultural systems. The parking lot is blue and in the first shot a yellow line functions as an orthogonal in a picture, composed with a central perspective. Later on the parking lot is shot from another angle, which makes the yellow line disappear as orthogonal. Instead, focus is on a scaffold and a neon sign saying LUNA. The kitchen is green - the color of nature and hope. The upwardly striving architecture, the reverberation and the singing of the androgynous dishwasher, suggest a cathedral. The kitchen is the seat of manufacturing, of nature and - as the cook must be characterized as a culinary artist - of the creative spirit. As such it alludes to Romanticism. The dining hall is red - the color of violence, sexuality, and blood. The interior is made up of sumptuous food-arrangements (referring to still-life), heavy red draperies, a painting of Frans Hals,[17] and the table where the "thief" (Albert Spica), his wife (Georgina) and his gang of pimps and Mafiosi are having their dinner. The lavatory is white (overexposed) and very sterile. There is no trace of feces or anything that is usually to be found in a lavatory. The additional rooms, the hospital (populated by nurses with traditional Dutch headgear) and the book-depository, are respectively yellow and golden-brown (referring to the Golden Age). 
 Another system that structures the film, is the distinction between the raw, the cooked and the rotten. According to Julia Kristeva, the abject is "anything" that the body secretes: blood, vomit and excrement. As a secretion, the abject is at the same time part of and not part of the body. The nastiness (or 'unheimliche' in a Freudian sense) of the abject is caused by its not being an object. The object is definitely not the subject, but by being secreted, the abject is neither object nor subject, but both at the same time. The not-usually-eaten items, that are eaten in The Cook, the Thief his Wife and her Lover, the abjects, make us aware of the boundary between inner and outer, between subject and object, as being unstable and permeable. The camera-movements are another principle of structure. Usually the camera moves in straight lines - either laterally following persons (even through walls) or at right angels to this movement - almost drawing the persons through the monumental doors placed in a row and flanked by curtains. Thus the camera-movements create a kind of grid (miming the scaffold at the parking lot and metaphorizing the rationality of the West) and make the whole universe of the film theatrical, artificial. The deviations from this rigid camera-choreography attract attention. When Georgina points the pistol at her husband, the camera turns - in a bow movement - behind Spica, who falls as he is shot. Thus Georgina's line "Cannibal!" turns out to be directed to the spectator as well as to Spica.
 As I haven't space enough left to go into further details, I'll get to the point. The structures of this film - the structures that mime the way the Subject tries to order and control an otherwise chaotic reality - are, throughout the film, shown as fictions. The symbol of hierarchy is the vertical axis and the symbol of its breakdown is the circle (up and down meet in the same spot). In the film, the circle's concretization is, in formal terms, the sequence of rooms. From the parking lot, with its dog shit and garbage, one 'rises' to the restaurant, but the culmination of this ascent is a toilet![18] In terms of content, it is the decentralization of Spica. In the first scene he places his anachronistic car on the axis of symmetry; he puts up his name in the kitchen (his name is A. Spica but the letters go A. Spic - aspic - which means meat jelly or snake. Meat jelly is a jelly that surrounds pieces of meat. In a metaphorical sense it surrounds or controls everything. And it is as flabby as Spica's stomach. A snake is circular when it bites its own tail: A-spic-a), but he ends up as a cannibal. And so does the spectator. The first line of the film is "Open your mouth." It is directed to a debtor but it is also an order to the spectator. We "eat" through the film and we are sent through the digestive system - from cooking to evacuation - but upside down.
 In an interview, Peter Greenaway says: "Once we've stuffed the whole world into our mouth, we end up eating ourselves," and he further states that the film is (partly) meant as a commentary on the consumer society.
To me, cannibalism is a metaphor for the breakdown of culture; for culture
turning itself into its opposite: nature; and therefore for transgression.
According to Anne Jerslev the priority of visual effects over the cost of narration, the humorous metareflexivity and the exaggerated abjectal symbolizations, which activate the pleasure of anxiety, appeal to 'big boys'. In contradistinction, the serial killer and cannibalism - especially in feature films like Seven and The Cook.... with their thorough aesthetics, their intertextuality and classical frame of reference - appeal to an adult and more (or less) intellectual audience. Transgression per se is not a postmodern phenomenon, but a metaphorical expression of transgression, in the form of the serial killer or of cannibalism, certainly is.
1 Jacques Derrida: La vérité en peinture. Paris: Flammarion, 1978. |