From normal to cannibal: a small step

The biggest nightmare of man is also his oldest: to be eaten. Once, when we took our food out of nature, you ate or you were being eaten. We don’t have to worry about that nowadays. Man eats. Man doesn’t get eaten.

But to be eaten ... The fear of it is so deeply ingrained in our DNA that it speaks to the liveliest imaginations. Ask little children what the monsters do under their bed if they do not go into bed with a running start. Or look at the grown-up variant: the monster film. Sharks, snakes, wolves, but also more imaginative monsters like aliens and dinosaurs; they all play the role of the predator that takes us down without mercy.

But also in movies, the most terrifying beast of prey remains human. No bigger horror than a cannibal. Kevin Toma wrote an interesting article in the Volkskrant about the question why the (film) cannibal fascinates us.

The cannibal is perhaps the most human of all monsters, because the eating of human flesh is the only thing that distinguishes the civilized man from the cannibal

There is indeed little more frightening than the sudden transformation that Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins) undergoes when FBI agent Starling (Jodie Foster) puts him under pressure. He is caged and yes, maybe crazy. But he is a man. And suddenly he turns into a greedy predator (I admit, with a good taste. The fava beans and chianti sound like an excellent combination with human liver). Both Starling and the audience of Silence of the Lambs were appalled.

Yet the only real cannibal I have ever seen - although it was on TV - is far from frightening. In the documentary Keep the River on Your Right, filmmakers David and Laurie Gwen Shapiro (brother and sister) tell the bewildering story of Tobias Schneebaum. Schneebaum was a painter from New York who in 1955 went to the undiscovered jungle of Peru. He was looking for inspiration in the wild nature.

Almost unprepared he walked deep into the jungle. There he found members of the Amarakaire, a tribe of Amazon Indians. They probably never had seen a white man before, but he was welcome in the tribe. For months Schneebaum then lived as an Amarakaire. And at the same time he even ate human flesh, because the Amarakaire were cannibals.

To their surprise, the filmmakers find out that Schneebaum is still alive. Not only that: he lives in New York again. They call him and he wants to cooperate with their film. The Cannibal from the Amazon turns out to be a frail old man, a sensitive art lover, warm, timid and occasionally a little effeminate. Not what you would expect from a cannibal.

Keep the River on Your Right shows that the boundary between what is normal and what isn’t, easily can be stretched. If we as humanity with our ever-growing number fail to feed ourselves with other species one day, peace will be short-lived...