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Wasn't there cannibalism in the US on a wagon train? That's right, the Donner Party (almost wrote the Doner [kebab] party hey ho). According to the wiki, there was quite a lot of cannibalism on that journey. I also seem to recall tales of cannibalism on the Klondike gold rush. Or maybe I'm confusing it with the cannibalism in the film The Gold Rush. No, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C0DE2D71438E733A25750C0A9619C94689ED7CF Roger On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 6:07 AM, ROBIN HAMILTON <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> Is everybody saying that they think Lec _isn't_ referring to deeply >> suntanned cannibals who live in primitive societies outside the ken of >> us civilised types? Ie, that it's totally incongruous, and therefore >> very funny, to imagine Hannibal Lecter with a knife and fork? What's >> the point about "progress", then? > > It's stereotyping rather than racism, like the how many Irishmen/Poles does it take to change a lightbulb? jokes, or mean caber-tossing Scotsmen in kilts. > > I'd guess that the majority of cannibalism jokes turn on educated black cannibals cooking Presbyterian Scottish missionaries. > > But then, as a Scot, I'm lumbered with the heritage of Sawney Bean (and let's not go into the intra-Scottish spin which has anyone north of the Highland Line who speaks gaelic notorious for eating their living young). > > Sawney Bean, allegedly flourishing in the time of Jimmy the Sixth and One is -- despite one's feelings that anyone from Morningside is capable of anything -- a load of tosh, and emblematically hymned by the laird of the Kailyard, S.R.Crockett, in _The Grey Man_. > > Sweeney Todd (who first appears in _The String of Pearls_ in 1846) is simply an avatar of S. Been, as is Hannibal Lector. > > One of the recent moments of such alleged cannibalism to surface is in a novel by Christopher Brookmyre. > > Comes down to it, there seems to be a stronger association of cannibalism with Scotland than any other place in the ever-living universe. > > R. Scotsman > > (I would add that setting Sweeney's pie-shop in London rather than Edinburgh is as transparent, and for equally commercial purposes, as relocating Jekyll&Hyde. R.) > -- My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/ "I began to warm and chill to objects and their fields" Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds