The narrative structure of Cannibal Holocaust stands out as fairly unique within the genre of Italian cannibal films. The narrative is neatly folded into two parts, a fold which essentially divides a question from an answer. In the first part of this film a question is posed. The disappearance of a group of documentary filmmakers prompts a rescue mission to discover: what has become of them? When anthropologist Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) makes contact with the Yacumos tribe this question is partially answered: he discovers that the entire expedition has been killed. But the recovery of their film canisters in which they documented their journey through the jungle opens up a deeper question: how and why did they die? In the second half of the movie Monroe returns to New York and, little by little, views the contents of the recovered canisters. Together with him we discover, in characteristically graphic detail, the fate of the film crew. It’s a simple narrative structure: questions and answers -- questions turning into answers -- and answers deepening again into questions. And the whole film flows towards a room ofTV executives sitting in shocked silence after viewing the final canisters, and to another question: "I wonder who the real cannibals are?"

In posing this final question Cannibal Holocaust is perhaps more assertive than most other films in this genre in the way that it renders a particular portrait of Western civilization, a portrait which always suggests that the impenetrable savage mystery of the Jungle still clings to us like a rank stench that we have never been able to completely wash off. Cannibal Holocaust’s particular equation of the Savage and the Civilized, an equation common to all films of this genre, is spelt out on both a narrative and imagistic level by the fact that Monroe brings the canisters back to the city of New York and there, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, views their shocking savage contents. The structure of this activity of re-playing and viewing film footage is very similar to the re-play and viewing of stored intra-psychic information. The canisters themselves are suggestive of the traces of our psychically stored instincts or memories that are projected onto the screen of our dreams or are expressed, at a cultural level, through various artistic media. Monroe’s activity of viewing the footage recovered from the Amazon presents us with a situation in which director Ruggero Deodato leaves us in no doubt that he wishes to state that the Jungle is in the city, and in our own natures, here and now, today.

This question, "I wonder who the real cannibals are?", is surprisingly rich in more ways than one. In the 60’s and 70’s Western society began to show a notable interest in anthropology and ethnology, an interest reflected in the way that the works of anthropologist Margaret Mead and anthropologist-cum-apprentice-Yaqui-shaman Carlos Castenada achieved widespread popularity at that time. This interest was riding the wave of a cultural shift away from the ethnocentrism so characteristic of late 19th and early 20th century Western societies and towards a renewed questioning of the assumption of Western cultural superiority. By the mid-80’s multiculturalism was in full swing. Seen against this background the question, "I wonder who the real cannibals are?", appears as just one symptom of a broader reconfiguration of Western culture that consisted of a dismantling of ethnocentrism and the clearing of a space for an appreciation and exploration of alternate world-views. Some sense of the vitality of the social critique at this time can be had by comparing Cannibal Holocaust to The Blair Witch Project (1999), which appropriated and recontextualized Cannibal Holocaust’s narrative premise. In Blair Witch Project, however, Holocaust’s radical interrogation of Western culture has been replaced with a market-savvy fashionable interest in ‘magik’ cleverly packaged as a ‘reality’ thriller. The abyss between these two films could not be clearer: Cannibal Holocaust speaks in the language of critique, Blair Witch Project speaks in the language of capitulation. (A similar contrast can be seen between the 1975 and the 2004 versions of The Stepford Wives. The original Stepford Wives offers a surprisingly incisive representation of the way in which our society has constructed women as aesthetic objects to be enjoyed and used. The ’04 remake has erased any trace of the original’s critique and replaced it with a glossy voyeuristic fast-paced comedy. The enormous distance that separates the two Stepford Wives is particularly noticeable in their endings: the original’s is refreshingly dark and provocative, whereas the remake’s is sugary and comfortingly normal in the extreme. The ’04 Stepford Wives resembles the ’75 original in much the same way as the robotic wives of Stepford resemble the real women of flesh and blood whom they are created to replace.)

This seemingly simple question, "I wonder who the real cannibals are?" also brings with it an inherent ambiguity. On the one hand, it aims to undermine an established sense of Western, ultimately white, superiority. Western values, however, pervade the film. Cannibal Holocaust is fundamentally narrated through observation -- not only in the trivial and unavoidable sense of being a film presented to an audience -- but in the far more unusual and idiosyncratic sense of having its central narrative premises conveyed via a central character’s viewing of filmed footage. Monroe sits and observes. This emphasis on the centrality of observation is not only essential to the film, but is in itself very Western. Within this context the question, "I wonder who the real cannibals are?" constitutes a significant change of direction within the film in that it represents a shift from a world dominated by the passive observation of images to an activity which demands an active and imaginative exploration of their meaning. In a very real way it positions the film’s ending as a beginning, a first step, the start of something totally and radically new. The meaning of this final and first step, however, depends on our understanding of, and response to, the film’s question. Is it here only to deepen our sense of fear? Certainly the generation of fear belongs to this genre and to this film. If we analyze the film’s final question in this light, the deepening of the film’s fear is achieved by bringing its horror closer to home, by suggesting that cannibalism is the very stuff we are made of.

But there’s another way of responding to this question. A more complex way. The question, "I wonder who the real cannibals are?" itself inescapably supports a Western value system even while it is explicitly trying to undermine it. It is, after all, a very Western judgment to position cannibalism as a savage horror. The impossibility of viewing even the concept of cannibalism in a positive light belongs very much to our Western system of values. But outside of a Western system of values does such a possibility exist? Tribal societies organize the universe into two primary domains: the ordinary world of everyday experience and the non-ordinary world of creative sacred powers. In order for the tribal shaman to enter the sacred creative domain he/she must undergo an ‘ecstatic death’ -- a process which often takes the form of being killed (say, by a monster or perhaps a sacred being) and/or being dismembered, and/or boiled, and/or roasted, and/or devoured, etc ... you get the picture. The point is that each of these activities psychically reduces the shaman to a latent state of being, and that this reduction is the necessary preparation for the shaman’s rebirth as man/woman of ‘power’. Framed in terms of such shamanic practices, the concept of cannibalism can be viewed in a positive, truly un-Western, light. And such an interpretative stance offers an unexpected response to the film’s question that is, nevertheless, wholly consistent with the film’s subversive sensibilities. The expected conventional response to the question, "Who are the real cannibals?" is, of course, an answer: we are the real cannibals by virtue of our own unbridled savagery. A shamanic un-Western counter to this response, however, could be generated by viewing this question as ritualistic, not as intellectual. From this point of view, it is the question itself, not any answer, that is important. Asking this question positions it in the role of the monster or the divine being who initiates a cannibalistic activity of killing, dismembering, boiling up, breaking down, and consuming the stuff of our culturally-constructed selfhood and being as the much needed preparation for a personal, shamanic, and perhaps ultimately cultural rebirth.

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