The Defining Cultural Trope of 2022? Cannibalism

Historically, our art reflects our disquiet with cannibalism. Media generally splits depictions of people-eaters into two very separate camps: soaring tales of human spirit or visceral, gut-churning horror. Think Alive for the former, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the latter. While there are cannibal thrillers (Hannibal), cannibal comedies (Santa Clarita Diet), cannibal art films (Delicatessen), and cannibal musicals (Sweeney Todd), none of these subgenres escape horror’s taint. Cannibalism is, inescapably, disgusting—just look at Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.

Gross as it is, cannibalism holds terrific, if rarely subtle, metaphoric power. Soylent Green’s people-eating is about class and climate collapse. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Peter Greenaway’s 1989 cannibal masterpiece, serves up decadent revenge, as does Bryan Fuller’s glorious Hannibal series, though with a thrumming homoerotic subtext. Santa Clarita Diet takes So-Cal healthy living to task. House of Hammer, the docuseries detailing actor Armie Hammer’s fall from grace, uses cannibalistic desire as shorthand for a family legacy of rapacious greed. You don’t need to peel back many layers to find meaning in cannibal media—it’s a text that’s rich with marbling.

In recent years, however, cannibalism has found new homes, new focuses, and new narrators, and these new voices are unapologetically, viscerally female. This woman-forward cannibal trend arguably begins with the 2016 release of Julia Ducournau’s Raw, an arty French coming-of-age horror film, though Jennifer’s Body, Karyn Kusama’s 2009 film, might be the great mother of the genre. In both of these films—as well as Yellowjackets, where Kusama serves as an executive producer—cannibalism serves as a fertile metaphor for self-discovery, sexual awakening, repressed teen girl rage, and the inherent thorniness of female friendship in a patriarchal world.

As women writers and directors breathe new life into tired cannibal clichés, we get a smaller, more intimate look at people-eating. This year’s Fresh, directed by Mimi Cave, begins like a rom-com—all bright colors, snappy dialogue, and meet-cutes—until it flips, and we glimpse its fattened, bloody underbelly. As Noa, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, falls for Sebastian Stan’s smarmy Steve, every woman’s dating nightmare gets turned up to 11. Noa is literally nothing more than a piece of meat to Steve, until she reclaims her whole personhood at the movie’s end.