It’s safe to say that every human is at some point in their
life scared of death. We are mortal beings and we value that mortality. But it
seems like the one thing that scares us more than dying is being consumed.
Human beings are top of the proverbial food chain and we seem to dread things
that could knock us from that spot.
Exhibit A would be the fascination humans have with
monsters. All of the monsters in popular culture consume humans for food.
Vampires drink our blood, zombies eat our brains (and other bits of flesh
depending on the film) and Werewolves tend to just tear off whatever they can.
Mummies have never been shown eating anyone but no one finds them scary anyway.
Things that can consume us are what truly frighten us.
The most popular monsters in the media right now are
zombies. The entire concept of the zombie revolves around just a mindless
eating machine. People one by one becoming infected and losing their humanity.
There have been movies about contagious diseases but none of them have captured
the imagination of the zombie film. There are real life individuals who are
prepping just in case an actual zombie apocalypse occurs. The zombie genre has
been reinvented and revised several times since that first Night of the Living
Dead film, but the consumption of humans still remains a strong part of the
genre.
Serial killers should be terrifying enough on their own. But
when you add a flesh-eating aspect they become something even worse. Jack the
Ripper, the most notorious serial killer of all time, only killed five people.
But the fact that a letter from him claims he ate half of one of the victim’s
livers increases the horrific nature of his crime. Same with Hannibal Lecter.
In the books and films, Hannibal kills maybe a dozen people or so. That’s not
what makes him scary. The knowledge that he cooked and fed his victims to his
dinner guests is what makes him so fascinating.
It’s not just our fellow humans we fear cutting us up and
serving us for dinner. The monsters of nature also fascinate us, especially the
myriad of ways they have for devouring us. Take for example one of the most
popular films of all time. The film that coined the term “Blockbuster” due to
its tremendous success. I am of course reffering to Steven Spielberg’s
brilliant film, Jaws. This film about a man eating shark inspired three
sequels, numerous imitators and ignited a cultural fascination with sharks. So
fascinated are humans with these killers of the deep that there is an annual
week of television programming devoted to them. Now while it is true that the
number of shark species that attack humans and the number of shark attacks that
occur per year are extremely low, the focus of the fascination with sharks will
always be on their killing ability.
The fear of being eaten is not completely irrational. The
entirety of nature revolves around the concept of the food chain. As humans we
feel that we are at the top of said chain. But long ago in our evolutionary
history we were not. Our mammalian ancestors were often picked off by larger
and more vicious predators. It is only after significant advancement in our
problem solving abilities that we were able to surpass the other animals and
become the dominant species on earth. But that primitive fear of predators
still remains deep in our subconscious mind. A part of realizes we are still
just food.
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