Lil Wayne, Imitatio, and the Poetics of Cannibalism

Abstract

Lil Wayne, Imitatio, and the Poetics of Cannibalism Andrew M. McClellan (bio) Abstract This paper explores rapper Lil Wayne's use of the language of food and consumption through the lens of critical theorizing about poetic imitatio ("imitation") from antiquity through the staggered Renaissances across Europe. I suggest that Lil Wayne's use of consumptive imagery points to a poetics of artistic engagement—what I term a "poetics of cannibalism"—that has lurked in the background of theorizing about imitatio for millennia. Scholars have recognized a range of deep-seated traditions going back to antiquity analogizing literature to physical bodies, literary reception to "consumption," and the notion that competitive poetics is inherently violent. But rarely are these traditions merged in discussions of imitatio. This study sheds light both on the tradition of theorizing about imitatio and on Lil Wayne's place in it. More broadly, the paper interrogates the role food plays in mimetic arts and in discussions of poetics and reception. Introduction: Imitatio One of the most provocative and self-critical expressions of the anxiety of artistic influence occurs in the animated sitcom South Park. The episode "Simpsons Already Did It"1 charts two parallel plots, each of which confronts frictions engendered by working within a generic tradition dominated by the presence of an identifiable urtext (The Simpsons) that seemingly curtails "innovation."2 In one, the child Butters, rejected by his friends Kyle, Stan, and Cartman, assumes the alter ego "Professor Chaos" and sets about plotting the destruction of the world in retaliation. His schemes, however, synopsize Simpsons episodes, as his toady "General Disarray" notifies him with each successive suggestion. Butters's inability to conjure anything "novel" precipitates his spiraling dejection and neurasthenic breakdown, which causes him to see the world of South Park warped into Simpsons-style animation. The second plotline is itself an insidious reworking of a Simpsons short "The Genesis Tub," wherein, like Lisa Simpson, Cartman manages to create a miniature world in a petri dish whose society worships him as a god.3 The two plots converge when Butters notices that the parallel events involving his erstwhile friends mirror the plot of "The Genesis Tub." The conversation doubles as a metatheatrical psychologizing of the show creators' anxieties about writing an animated series in the wake of The Simpsons: BUTTERS: They did that on The Simpsons! Ha! "Treehouse of Horror"! Episode 4F02! "The Genesis Tub." Lisa loses a tooth, and the bacteria on it starts to grow, and makes a little society, and they build a statue of her thinking she's God! Ha! Hahaha! CARTMAN: So? KYLE: Yeah. So? CARTMAN: Dude, The Simpsons have done everything already. Who cares? STAN: Yeah, and they've been on the air for like, thirteen years. Of course they've done everything. [End Page 109] MR. GARRISON: Every idea's been done, Butters, even before The Simpsons. CHEF: Yeah. In fact, that episode was a rip-off of a Twilight Zone episode. BUTTERS: Really? So I shouldn't care if I come up with an idea, and The Simpsons already did it? It … uh … doesn't … matter.4 The boys' schoolteacher Mr. Garrison's claim that "Every idea's been done" is a literary conceit of immense antiquity.5 The Old Testament Ecclesiastes, for example, postulates something similar in "there is nothing new under the sun."6 So too the fifth-century BCE Greek lyric poet Bacchylides—"it's not easy to find the gates of verse unspoken"—and the Roman playwright Terence in Eunuchus—"indeed, there's nothing said today which has not been said before." Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, joked that it's impossible to say anything, no matter how ridiculous, that hasn't already been peddled by some philosopher.7 And there's a wonderful irony that one of the oldest poetic texts that comes down to us—the Words of Khakheperraseneb, a self-reflective colloquy between an Egyptian priest-poet and his listless heart (c. 1,800 BCE)—bemoans the state of literary expression as one of constant recapitulation of earlier poetic material, that literary invention is suffocated by the weight of tradition: If only I had unknown utterancesand extraordinary verses,in...