Abstract
Abstract This article takes up the representation of cannibalistic foodways in dystopic science fiction films. Keeping with a Hollywood generic tradition, these are not moralistic or dramatic tales of taboo or human nature as might be found in horror films, but distinct explorations of industrialization, mass culture and capitalism and the effects of these phenomena manifest on the bodies of the populace. The benchmark text in this discussion is Soylent Green (Fleisher, 1973), wherein the human body processed into food represents the human turned into a commodity. Consumption in the film is a mechanism of destruction, and the cinematic spectacle concludes with repeated visions of containment and disaffection. By contradistinction, two contemporary texts – The Hunger Games (2012) and Cloud Atlas (2012) – rework the dystopian vision in ways that suggest a more optimistic turn. Of central concern throughout the article is a consideration of the cinematic spectacle as a potential political, visceral and/or affective force for change.
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