Hi! I’m Edward Gimberdale, editor of the Weird & Wonderful section of Long Distance Magazine. For this week’s Nasty News, I interviewed India Hunt, a self-proclaimed ‘Social Cannibal’ from Croydon and spokeswoman for Social Cannibalism UK. After chatting to the friendly and funny Ms Hunt for a good while, I began the interview:

LDM: Right, let’s start the interview. I think most readers will by now be asking “What’s the difference?”

HUNT: You mean the difference between regular cannibalism and Social Cannibalism? Well, Social Cannibalism advocates only the eating of your own flesh. We think this is the main reason many people have this bias against cannibalism – they just don’t like being killed and eaten, which is fair enough, I suppose.

LDM: So what first attracted you to give up your old cannibalistic ways and go Social?

HUNT: Having been brought up a good cannibal by my mild, traditional parents, always serving up someone’s head on Sundays and the like, I started life stuck in the apathetic rut that most English cannibals are born into, and never escape. It was a friend of mine when I was about 17 who first introduced me to Social Cannibalism – she invited me to her house for dinner one time, and I asked what the food was. When her father told me it was his own leg, I was so struck by the nobility of eating your own flesh rather than other people’s that I decided to get back into cannibalism with the vigour and feeling of righteousness that only Social Cannibalism can offer.

LDM: What’s your view on ordinary cannibalism and its adherents?

HUNT: Obviously without the initial stages of cannibalism in human history Social Cannibalism wouldn’t exist, so we’re grateful to the Founding Fathers of cannibalism in this respect. However, since the 1960’s, with the rise of pop-cannibalia culture and songs like Eat Your Heart Out and Never Mind the Sex Pistols, Here’s the Bollocks reaching the Top 40, cannibalism, which before had mainly been a pursuit of the upper classes and the criminal underworld, exploded into the mainstream. Cannibalism lost some of the charm that it first held in its Golden Age – the 1300’s. Back then, cannibalism was viewed as mysterious, exotic, even as dangerous, and cannibals were given a great deal of respect. But during the 60’s, cannibalism became just another hip thing to do, a way for young men to attract girls, something to do with your mates on a Saturday night, eventually descending into a low-brow pastime, like Monopoly or Snakes & Ladders. As a result of this rapid growth in cannibalism, it is now more feared than it ever has been – remember the Hyde Park CanniBBQ of 1964? Even though many people would have given their right arms for a ticket, some of those who actually did end up giving their right arms, and in some cases left arms too, weren’t so keen on cannibalism all of a sudden, and they passed this prejudice onto their children. With Social Cannibalism, we’re trying to bring back some of the allure and respectability that once surrounded cannibalism and cannibals all those centuries ago.

LDM: Don’t you think that trying to restore this Romantic ideal of cannibalism will alienate the ordinary cannibals out there?

HUNT: We certainly hope not. Even though cannibalism isn’t today what it was 700 years ago, what with the increase in party-cannibals and other people who simply practice cannibalism without understanding the philosophy behind it, there is still a dedicated hard-core of cannibals who really appreciate it and the way of life it comes with. We hope that they aren’t offended or put off by our attempts at revamping cannibalism – we just want to give it back some of the class that it used to have. We don’t see ourselves as the vanguard or last bastion of true cannibalism; we just find it a bit boring being marginalised and excluded by civilisation, and I think that the Social Cannibalism movement is enabling more and more cannibals to rejoin polite society while remaining true to cannibalism and its values.

LDM: What’re the advantages of Social Cannibalism over ordinary cannibalism?

HUNT: Well, there are loads of benefits to eating your own flesh: it’s voluntary, so there’s none of that kidnapping people in the middle of the night and smacking their brains out with a spade; you can do it in your own time, rather than skulking around alleys at ungodly hours waiting for someone to come along; and the NHS, which is aware of the problems cannibals face and has always been supportive of us since its foundation, now offers free painkillers and other essential equipment for Social Cannibals as an incentive to stop people eating each other, which means that if do it yourself it’s virtually painless and whole lot less messy. I could go on –

LDM: If we only had time. I want to move on to the next question, which is this: is Social Cannibalism really sustainable?

HUNT: I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand?

LDM: Well, if you can only eat your own flesh, doesn’t that mean that soon you’ll run out of flesh to eat?

HUNT: Oh, I see. Well, clearly this is a major issue for us. My answer to your question is no, currently Social Cannibalism isn’t really sustainable. This doesn’t that we aren’t trying to find solutions to this problem, just that we haven’t found a way around it yet.

LDM: Yes. I notice that you yourself are merely a disembodied head on a chair, isn’t that so?

HUNT: That is true, yes. I ate the last of my neck for breakfast this morning.

LDM: So… what are you going to do now?

HUNT: To be honest, Social Cannibalistic thought hasn’t really covered this stage yet, although I hear that Social Cannibalism France has recently presented a draft copy of the European Anthropophagic Treaty to the World-wide Cannibal Forum in The Netherlands, which contains a paragraph towards the end about sustaining Social Cannibalism past the consumption of the entire body.

LDM: …one paragraph?

HUNT: Yes.

LDM: Towards the end?

HUNT: It’s the thought that counts. Well, it’s the brain that counts, actually, but most Social Cannibals start with their brains when they join our ranks.

LDM: So Social Cannibalism could possibly be defined as ‘mindless self-harm’?

HUNT: Well, yes, but that wouldn’t be very sensitive now, would it?

LDM: Ms India Hunt, spokeshead for Social Cannibalism UK, thank you very much.

That’s all from Nasty News this week - come back next time to read my account of my visit to the Nose-Fetishists Convention in Serbia!

Cadaverine Magazine 2007