Back when I still had a writers group, or maybe it was in a class, we were talking about the absolute glut of books and movies about vampires. It began, probably, with Ann Rice, but really Bram Stoker and the movie Nosferatu. But by the time of Kristen Stewart and her run of movies, it was a joke, almost. As Stanley said in “The Office,” “How many damn Vampires am I supposed to care about?” With Ann Rice’s “Interview…” it was clear because of her skill with writing, that she was writing about gay men. Homo eroticism is basically the foundation of that novel and the subsequent sequels. Sexuality in general is important to those books because once they become a vampire, in Ann Rice’s rules of the world, the penis stops working and sexuality becomes more skin centered, and the focus is on the neck which is a fairly erogenous area. This allowed her to explore the history of Vampirism (but really, it was a look back at gay history and every gay man understood it).
Anyway somebody mentioned that the “new” theme of modern books, especially for young readers, was going to be cannibalism and I think I groaned out loud. I’m so tired of books and stories that a: make no sense and b: purport to shed light on an aspect of life in a new way. The Time Traveler’s Wife, for example, is just so difficult for me because although it’s shedding light on the “part time” marriage, people don’t just pop in and out of time. So it just doesn’t do anything for me.
Whatever cannibalism is supposed to represent is lost to me in this movie, which has won awards and appears to be well liked. What does it mean that they’re cannibals (which they call Eaters — they are able to find each other through a strong sense of smell that they possess). Is it trying to say that sex is a form of eating or ingestion? Is it trying to say that our deepest urge is to devour others? The title, Bones and All, refers to a line said by some particularly creepy cannibal they run into, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, who seems to have a lover played by David Gordon Green, who is not a cannibal but practices it anyway. He says that to eat a person, “bones and all” is the greatest feeling one can ever have. Given that it would be impossible to do this, it feels like a lie, but it sort of makes sense if you’re talking about cannibalism as a metaphor for sexuality. But I’m not really sure that’s what the author intended or what Guadigno is going for. And a quick look at the book it was based upon suggests to me that it’s simply a story about a young girl who is a cannibal. That’s all. Like a book about a girl who wanted to be a rugby player. Or a princess. When Jeffrey Dahmer ate his victims he said that the first time was simply to see what it was like, but later, he said he felt it was a way of keeping them with him. I don’t necessarily believe what Dahmer said about himself and his murders or even his feelings. For me, cannibalism is like murder. It is not explainable and it is no more a metaphor than murder is. Some people are just awful and can’t feel.