"I made you eat your parents!": Historicizing Revenge Cannibalism from Ovid to South Park

Abstract

I situate this paper in the discussions of historical formalism that considers the relation of literary form to the new historicist project, and argue that a consideration of the literary motif, understood as ideologically significant and socially efficacious, is essential to that discussion. By way of example I focus on the historical continuum of a motif of a particular form of revenge cannibalism and argue that this motif provides a field of force adequate for the expression of complex cultural predicaments while at the same time, certainly in its later manifestations in 'Titus Andronicus' and 'South Park', it suggests a self reflexive formalism that engages with the literary tradition itself. We will look at the revenge cannibal scenes from Julie Taymor's 'Titus' and Trey Parker's 'South Park' to illustrate my argument. ... This paper focuses on a specific topos from revenge tragedy: the revenger takes vengeance by forcing the victim to unknowingly eat their relatives, usually served up as the main ingredient of a special meal. Repetitions of this motif rely on the shock value of this taboo-breaking behaviour and follow a similar pattern, making much of the forced consumption of blood relations, usually children, as the ultimate form of revenge and the culinary form this takes in the gruesome preparations as corpses are transformed into meat.