At the start of our project my group and I wanted to feature our antagonist as this stalker but who is also a cannibal. Weird but different. But we were told that stalkers are quite the cliché in thriller movies. Considering my group and I want to try a different take on thriller films we made the decision to revolve our antagonist's character around cannibalism. I don't know about you but I certainly have no idea about how one becomes a cannibal, let alone the complexities of cannibalism. So I did some research. It was a little hard to find some articles that could possibly help emphasize our character's appearance, but there were some that gave me some very interesting facts.
By definition, cannibalism is the eating of the flesh of an animal by another animal of its own kind; therefore, human cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings. According to this article from the National Geographic, unless facing black widow spiders or praying mantises, the only times that one would see cannibalism would be stress-related or due to lack of alternative forms of food. For example, if a group of people are stranded in the wild, there are no other animals or non-poisonous plants around, and no rescue is coming any time soon then these people would eventually need to resort to cannibalism if they plan to stay alive.
The article stated that starting in the 1970s and '80s researchers have discovered multiple instances in the animal kingdom that cannibalism was completely a natural behavior. Us humans, on the other hand, have been taught, since Homer and the Greeks, that cannibalism is the ultimate taboo. When in reality combining this ultimate taboo with our obsession with food, we end up with this new fascination toward cannibalism. This idea of cannibalism as a taboo was used to de-humanize the people others have encountered.
Also stated in that article was the character Hannibal Lecter, from The Silence of the Lambs. This character is a murderer as well as a cannibal, which is exactly what my group and I are aiming for.
I think the research I have come across, though it might not be a lot, has helped me visualize the character my group and I truly want to create. When filming comes around and we have our actor I think the hardest task is to portray our subject as a cannibal while simultaneously not revealing too much about the character. This will take more thinking and processing.
After meeting with my group today we have made more progress in our storyboard and really focused on the cannibalism aspect of this film opening. Updates on the storyboard will be discussed in a future post.
Overall, the research has helped our production but now it's time to focus on how our antagonist will be illustrated as a cannibal.
Cites:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/cannibalism-common-natural-history-bill-schutt/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/22/515668867/cannibalism-its-perfectly-natural-a-new-scientific-history-argues
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