In trying to understand the problematic use of cannibalism in film, I started by revisiting cannibalism in visual artwork and literature I was familiar with; Francisco Goya’s mural Saturn Devouring His Son (1823), Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006), and Agustina Bazterrica’s novel Tender Is the Flesh (2017). Cannibalism served these examples of visual art and literature in many ways, but none seemed as problematic as filmic adaptations of cannibalism and were avoiding the perpetuation of problematic histories associated with the term. After comparing the artistic and literary use of cannibalism to a filmic one, the difference between an ethical and problematic use of cannibalism, clearly presented itself as an argument of medium specificity. Visual arts or literature adapt cannibalism in symbolic, metaphoric, or allegoric ways, with the cannibalism delivering themes of underlying existential, social, or political horror. This use of cannibalism is ethical only with medium specific separation between the viewer, the static medium, the cannibalistic "other", and the actual horror. However, that separation collapses when adapting cannibalism to a multi-sensory medium like film.

 The medium-specific, multi-sensory addition of sound, visual experience dictated by camera movement, and immersive nature of a time-based medium, collapses the separation between the viewer, the medium, the cannibalistic "other", and the actual horror. Collapsing that separation, removes the viewer's room to interpret the violent nature of cannibalism as anything but the literal horror they experience through multiple senses. Providing films with sensory horror, violence, and gore, a filmic use of cannibalism retires the symbolic, metaphoric, or allegoric interpretation, while also bringing the literal historic and early colonial perceptions of Native and Indigenous people that underlie the origins of the term “cannibalism” along with it. Most adapted in horror films, the filmic “cannibalistic other” often crafted from literal colonial fears, works with the multi-sensory experience of film, and the collapse of separation between medium and viewer, to create a cinematic experience of cannibalism that is uniquely problematic when compared to other mediums.

 In this essay, I argue that the medium specific, sensory elements of film, make filmic adaptations of cannibalism unavoidably literal, which projects early colonial perceptions of Native people back onto a contemporary viewer. First, I will expand on the medium specificity of film, followed by historical background of the origins of the term “cannibalism,” to further differentiate between an ethical and problematic use of cannibalism. Then, putting my argument of problematic, medium specific, filmic literalism to analytical practice, I offer a visual analysis of Bone Tomahawk (2015). Bone Tomahawk’s (2015) immersive sensory elements like sound, camera angles, and temporal nature, creates a literal interpretation of cannibalism, a less autonomous interaction for the viewer, and visually “others” Native characters through hyperbolic depictions of violence. The film’s literal use of cannibalism, medium specific, and multi-sensory elements, are all underpinned by problematic colonial histories that create an experience of cinematic horror for the viewer that is inseparable from the film’s Native characters and Native people outside of a cinematic experience.

The aforementioned examples of artwork and literature, all allow for a symbolic, metaphoric, or allegoric use of cannibalism in the separation of the “cannibal other” from the horror itself. Saturn may be the “cannibal other” in Goya’s mural but is interpreted as an older generation’s confrontation with mortality; soon to be “consumed” by the young, Saturn’s subversive cannibalistic act is the horror. McCarthy’s “cannibal others” that make up the novel’s cannibalistic gang, serve as an allegorical portrayal of unbridled consumption that created the novel’s horrific, apocalyptic society. Bazterrica’s literary use of cannibalism depicts an entire society of “cannibalistic others,” but their cannibalistic acts are a result of a larger failing political structure that underpins the horror of the entire novel. The actual person performing the cannibalistic acts in these examples, only provides the visual or literary gore of the consumption of human flesh, allowing for room for the viewer to differentiate between actual horror as a product of the larger existential, societal, or political ideas the cannibalism symbolizes.

These visual artworks and novels offer another medium specific form of separation that further allows for symbolic, metaphoric, or allegoric interpretation of the cannibalism – separation between the sensory elements a viewer’s physical experiences and the medium. Interaction with these visual artworks and pieces of literature, is often an independent, autonomous interaction. When admiring a mural, the mural doesn’t produce visceral sounds of gnawing on human flesh and bone, and the duration of the interaction is decided in the viewer’s ability to walk away. Even if an artwork or written text has the viewer experiencing the cannibalistic narrative from the perspective of an artworks subject or a text’s character, viewers still visually experience an artwork through their own eye that moves them closer to or further from an artwork or the type on a page. With their body dictating the time they spend engaging with or how physically close they are to the medium, the viewer’s temporal and sensory experience is completely disparate. It is this type of autonomous viewing of visual art or literature that allows for a separation between the “cannibal other” and the horror, between a non-literal or literal interpretation of the cannibalism, and between the sensory experience of the mediums than that of the viewer. However, if the audible, visual, and physical sensory experience of viewers become shared or closer to the sensory experiences of the cannibal or victims in the subject matter of the medium, that autonomous separation begins to collapse along with the cannibalism’s ability to be symbolic in nature. The medium specific, sensory elements of film provoke that collapse, creating a less autonomous, more immersive, and shared sensory experience between the viewer, the medium, and the subject matter.

In filmic adaptations, the viewer begins to experience that collapse by sharing sensory elements with the cannibal figures on the screen and an autonomous viewing experience is compromised by the “film’s body.” Jennifer M. Barker writes about film’s sensory elements and the “film’s body” in Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience (2009), explaining how they work together to create a uniquely immersive, less autonomous experience of media that further collapses the separation needed for the viewer to interpret filmic forms of cannibalism as anything but literal. Barker explains how elements like sound, lighting, and camera movement, have the ability to affect viewer’s physical bodies in ways that visual art or literature cannot, writing, “[…] the cinema uses modes of embodied existence (seeing, hearing, physical and reflective movement) as the vehicle, the ‘stuff,' the substance of its language. Thus, both film and viewer might engage in the act of looking closely, showing doubt, or becoming enthralled, dizzy, or agitated, but each would enact those behaviors in a different way […].” [1] The subject matter of visual art or literature may “experience” sensory elements that enthralls, dizzies, or agitates them, but the viewer only imagines those sensory elements, as static mediums cannot produce sensory elements painted in a mural or described in a text. But Barker here explains how the medium of film uses illuminated screens, camera movements, and sound to create unique sensory elements experienced by the film’s subject matter and viewer simultaneously. No longer imagining sensory elements, the medium produces them with viewers physically mimicking or resisting motion on the screen, enthralled by sound, or dizzied by camera movement in relation to the subject matter. Barker acknowledges that a viewer’s biological body and a body that lives on celluloid or digitally, will react very differently even when sharing sensory elements. But stark bodily differences don’t take away from an often unsettling, immersive second body (film body) in its disruption of the viewer’s autonomy.

On the “film body,” Barker writes, “[…] the odd relationship between it (the camera) and our viewing bodies, again begs the question, ‘who's moving?’ or even ‘who's being moved?’ […] Seated in the theater but invested bodily in the actions on (and off) the screen, we must ask, ‘where are we in this picture?’ The film complicates the notion of character identification and ‘objective’ observation by calling into question, without entirely collapsing, the boundaries between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ and between ‘us’ (the viewers), ‘them’ (the characters), and ‘it’ (the film).”[2]  Here, Barker describes the most prominent part of the film’s body, the camera, in its unique ability to remove an amount of autonomous spectatorship the viewer has when interacting with visual art or literature. Applying Barker’s notions to cannibal films, camera angles can mimic the third person, outside perspective of the viewer’s body, but in having a body of its own, the film’s body can also use the camera to unsettlingly thrust the viewer into the perspective of the cannibal or the victim. To Barker’s point, there is not an entire collapse of separation between viewer, medium, and subject matter, with a cinematic experience still being one a viewer can walk away from. However, the sensory experiences of hearing flesh tearing and bones crunching, flinching at blood splattering across the screen, becoming dizzied by light, camera angles immersing viewers in a perspective of a characters, and the time spent with the imagery being dictated by the run time of the film, are all parts of the film’s body that leaves viewers with no room for symbolic, metaphoric, or allegoric interpretation of cannibalism as it is now visually, audibly, and physically literal in every sensory portrayal. To utilize the multi-sensory elements and film body to create an immersive, heightened experience of horror that is closer to literal than symbolic, isn’t a misuse of the medium or problematic on its own. These medium specific, shared sensory elements of filmic adaptations of cannibalism become problematic with the inseparable, literal histories that underpin the term and theme.

Horror films often capitalize on literal histories to create an experience of horror that reaches beyond viewer’s cinematic experiences; one example is The Amityville Horror (1979) in an adaptation of Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr’s murder of his six family members in their home. The film takes place in the town the murders were committed only five years prior, and viewers interact with a filmic version of DeFeo Jr., who after murdering his family, is the “other” responsible for and inseparable from the film’s horror. Heightening film’s multi-sensory and immersive elements, a filmic use of DeFeo Jr’s actual murderous actions, creates a cinematic atmosphere underpinned by an actual historical event and “other” that pulls from and bleeds back into the viewer’s reality, even after walking away from the medium. Viewers interact with a filmic “other” inseparable from the horror of their cinematic experience, but they also leave their cinematic experience much more aware of the historical “other,” and real-world horror that underpinned the film. Medium specific, sensory elements paired with actual histories, can be a harmless use of the medium, but when the horror genre pulls from colonial histories of cannibalism, the same interaction with a filmic “other” inseparable from cinematic and real-world horror, damages viewer’s perceptions of Native people in and outside of their cinematic experience. To contextualize the problematic colonial histories that underpin all cannibal horror films, I turn to anthropologist Shirley Lindenbaum’s essay, Thinking About Cannibalism (2004.)

 The term “cannibalism,” has its earliest origins in Christopher Columbus’ records of his expedition to the Caribbean in 1493. Speaking to Columbus’ early use of the term, Lindenbaum writes, “As a prime symbol or signifier of ‘barbarism’ the cannibal was central to the construction of the cultural ‘other,’ and to Enlightenment notions of refinement, modernity, and Western civilization.”[3] That Columbus era use of cannibalism, which distinguished cultural “others” from civilized Westerners, stretched well into the 16th century, developing even more anthropological connotations of bodily difference and signified need for colonial intervention. Speaking to this development, Lindenbaum points to the term’s use in anthropological 1970’s records of 16th century Indigenous cultures in Brazil, writing, “[…] objective of Tupi warfare, in which the Tupi killed and devoured brothers in-law, was carried out not to capture women, but as an expression of a yearning for a world without affines and dependency on others.”[4] Citing records of the Tupi people, Lindenbaum observes a 16th century understanding of cannibalism as a signifier of a ‘barbaric other’ and as Indigenous people communicating a ‘yearning for modernity,’ still being used well into the 1970s, furthering contemporary ideas that cannibalism justified colonial intervention and violence against Native and Indigenous people.

Lindenbaum further explores the problematic histories of “cannibal”, but she also addresses the anthropological re-examination of the term in the late 1990’s, writing, “Cannibalism was viewed [by anthropologists] as a calumny used by colonizers to justify their predatory behavior. Postcolonial studies proposed ‘that the figure of the cannibal was created to support the cultural cannibalism of colonialism through the projection of Western imperialist appetites onto cultures they then subsumed’ [Kilgour 2001, p. vii.]”[5] By the late 90’s, anthropologists widely understood the term as only perpetuating colonial violence and damaging understandings of Native and Indigenous people. While helpful in correcting a contemporary anthropologic use of cannibalism, some of the first cannibal films cited as starting the ‘cinematic cannibal horror boom,’ like Man From Deep River (1972) or Ultimo Mondo Cannibale (1977,) came out a decade prior to that re-examination of the term. Considering the gory, graphic, violent, exploitative nature of those 1970’s films, it is fair to say that underpinning the contemporary cannibal horror films are those early colonial histories of cannibalism, setting filmic standards of “Native cannibal others” for future contemporary cannibalism films.

Knowing that the anthropological re-examination of cannibalism missed the 70’s breakout of cannibal horror films, that horror film’s often capitalize on literal histories, and that medium specific, multi-sensory elements of film collapses space between the viewer, the medium, and the subject matter, fully solidify my opinion that a filmic use of cannibalism creates an unavoidably literal interpretation of it for the viewer. With a less autonomous, multi-sensory, cinematic experience of Native, cannibalistic violence, filmic cannibalism becomes something viewers can see, hear, physically react to, and has historical underpinnings that make an on screen “Native cannibal other,” inseparable from the problematic, uncorrected, colonial defined “Native other.” Like I said at the very beginning of this essay, my theory that filmic adaptations of cannibalism are uniquely problematic and unavoidably literal, all comes down to an argument of medium specificity. Sensory elements like sound, camera angles, and the temporal nature of film, are the medium specific elements of film that makes the difference between an ethical symbolic or problematic literal use of cannibalism. To put my theory to analytical practice, I offer a visual analysis of a contemporary cannibal horror film.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), and The Green Inferno (2013), are all contemporary films worth visually analyzing in their misuse of sensory elements to create cannibal horror that’s problematic in its literal sense. But Bone Tomahawk (2015) is one of the most recent examples of an unethical, filmic adaptation of cannibalism, and is the film I will be focusing on. Bone Tomahawk (2015) uses medium specific sensory elements in a filmic representation of cannibalism to collapse the separation between viewer, medium, and subject matter, leaving no room for interpretation of the cannibalism as anything but literal. And with my argument that filmic literalism is intrinsically tied to literal histories, Bone Tomahawk (2015) is a prime example of how a literal interpretation of cannibalism, brings with it the literal, harmful, early colonial perceptions of Native people. Analyzing two scenes from the film, I’ll draw attention to the medium specific, sensory elements of each scene (sound, camera angles, and time-based duration of visual images), and relate them back to my arguments of unavoidable filmic literalism and problematic Native representations based in colonial histories.

 S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk (2015) is a Western horror set in the 1890s, in a fictional southern United States town. The town’s sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell,) deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins,)  Arthur O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson,) and John Brooder (Matthew Fox,) band together, trekking through the southern plains to rescue one drifter (David Arquette,) deputy Nick (Evan Jonigkeit,) and Arthur O'Dwyer’s wife Samantha (Lili Simmons,) who had been kidnapped by a cannibalistic Native tribe known as the Troglodytes. The film follows the band of westerners in their attempt to find the Native tribe, and at 1:20:00, they finally reach the entrance of the Troglodyte’s cave system. All the men (sheriff Hunt, Chicory, and John Brooder) except for Arthur O'Dwyer who is just slightly behind the group, are then brutally attacked by the Troglodytes at the entrance of the cave system, resulting in the death of John Brooder.

I would like to start my visual analysis at 1:31:00 – 1:32:00, just after the death of John Brooder and right when sheriff Hunt and Chicory are physically overtaken by the cannibal Natives. In this scene, the Native’s wrestle the westerners to the ground, shoot arrows, and wield handheld weapons fashioned from bone that is sharpened or left blunt. Looking first at the sensory element of sound, the arrows whipping through the air and the cracking of the bone weapons against the westerner’s heads are somehow just as loud as the gunshots coming from the gun of sheriff Hunt. The entire altercation is filled with sounds of grunting, skulls cracking, physical grappling, and the sheriff’s desperate gasps for air, making an uncomfortable, drawn-out, audible experience that has viewers longing for sound that is as brief as the bang of a gunshot. With gunshots and the physical brutality of the Natives unrealistically equal in volume, the sound of colonial gun violence seems quick and humane when audibly compared to the equally as loud, drawn-out, uncomfortable sounds of brutal Native violence.

The sounds of this scene are accompanied by other filmic, immersive sensory elements like camera angles. Visually, the perspective shifting, close-up shots of the camera, change the viewer’s visual experience from a third person outsider to a perspective that is close to that of the Native’s, as he physically overpowers and chokes sheriff Hunt. In conjunction with the sound, this intimate, intrusive camera angle emphasizes the needless brutality of the Native’s violence as the viewer now is empathetic in their face-to-face interaction with sheriff Hunt desperately gasping for air. Tight framing and sudden perspective change, collapses the separation between viewer, medium, the “cannibalistic other", the victim, and the horror of the physical altercation.

The uncomfortable sensory elements of sound and camera angles are both underscored by the scene’s color choices that further dehumanize and “other” the Native characters. Color schemes of surrounding sand and rock are ashy tan tones that are almost indistinguishable from the skin color of the Native characters. This color choice creates a disturbing visual harmony that ties the Native cannibals to their cave systems, further “othering” them by making them not visually comparable to a human or even an animal, but visually comparable only to rock. These sensory elements combined creates an immersive, uncomfortable cinematic atmosphere in which viewers experience a scene that leaves no room for symbolic interpretation, audibly leaves them envious of sounds as fleeting as a gunshots, places them face-to-face with the needlessly suffering westerner, and projects extreme colonial ideas of bodily difference that visualizes Native characters as having no more morality or civility than the rock that surrounds them. 

The second scene I would like to analyze runs from 1:33:30 - 1:37:30. Sheriff Hunt and Chicory are drug by the Natives into the cave where the others are held captive. There are two, small, barred cells; sheriff Hunt and Chicory in one and Mrs. O'Dwyer and Nick in the other. Spoken through the cell bars, Mrs. O'Dwyer tells sheriff Hunt the Natives had already eaten the drifter. One Native enters the space, letting out a screech that calls two other Natives to come open the bars of Mrs. O'Dwyer’s and Nick’s cell. Barely conscious, Nick is drug into the space between the two cells, the Natives strip off his clothes, and Sheriff Hunt and deputy Chicory scream through their cell bars to try to wake Nick. In a brief exchange, Nick tells sheriff Hunt that the drifter desecrated burial grounds of the Natives, which instigated the kidnappings in the first place. Facing sheriff Hunt and Chicory, two Natives hold Nick’s upper body up while the other Native slowly scalps and hammers the slice of skin and hair into Nicks mouth to subdue his screaming. Then, the two Natives holding Nick flip him around, hanging him upside down by his ankles to spread his legs. The third Native swings a sharpened bone weapon three times at Nick’s groin, until the two other Natives holding his ankles, are able to tear Nick vertically in half, with his internal organs spilling onto the cave floor. There is then a shot of a mortified sheriff Hunt, a shot of the outside of the cave system, a close-up shot of coals burning, and a final shot back in the cave where one Native paces around the cells as he chews at a hand-held piece of Nick’s leg.

            The multi-sensory experience of this scene is arguably the most overwhelming and disturbing portion of this film for the viewer. Starting with the sensory element of sound, the Native enters the scene with brutish footsteps that reverberate through the cave, emphasizing bodily differences in terms of mass between the Natives and westerners. The deafening screech of the Native shortly after he enters, can only be compared to something heard from a prehistoric creature, further dehumanizing the Native figures in just sound alone. Hearing this screech in a shared sensory experience, the viewer is now experiencing the same audible discomfort inflicted upon the western characters who cover their ears. Also shared between characters and the viewer are the inescapable sounds of blades severing skin, desperate pleas and muffled screams of the western characters, blood-soaked flesh ripping and tearing, bones breaking, and the wet organs thudding and piling onto the cave floor. Gratuitous to say the least, these sounds shared between the now victimized viewers and the tortured westerners are uncomfortably immersive on their own, but again, they are accompanied by the camera angles and perspective changes that further collapse separation and immerse the viewer in the film as a recipient of the Native violence.

This scene’s camera angles are an intentional choice of the filmmaker to create a cinematic experience that immerses and collapses the separation between the viewer, the medium, the subject matter, and the experiential horror. The entire sequence of Nick being scalped, cut, and torn in half, is captured in changing camera angles of a third person outsider standing in between the two cells, or from a third person perspective in the cell with sheriff Hunt and Chicory. There is a distinct filmic choice in the camera angles to place the viewer inside of the cave or cell, but it is not from the perspective of any character. Allowing the viewer their own perspective but forcing it to be one that is from within the cell with the other characters, means the viewer is not just empathizing with the western characters through their perspectives, they instead are equally as much of a victim to the horror as the westerners. Bringing it back to Barker’s notions of the film body, viewers remain seated watching the screen, but the visual and physical autonomy of the viewer is challenged and disrupted by the films body, whose  perspective changing camera angles, quickly shift viewers from an outside observer, to a captive of the Native characters as they now experience the horror through a barred cell. Even a slight disruption of viewers autonomy is all that is needed to begin to collapse the space that allows for interpretation of the cannibalism as anything but literal. With the shared visual and audible experience of cannibalistic violence between the viewer, the medium, and the subject matter or characters, a cinematic atmosphere is created in which the viewer is equally as much of a victim of the Native’s violence as the western characters. And unlike a mural or piece of literature, the medium specific ability of film to produce those shared sensory elements, means viewers are no longer having to imagine sensory elements of cannibalistic violence, further removing any chance of symbolic interpretation of the cannibalism and viewers ability to separate the multi-sensory experiential horror from the Native “cannibal other” character enacting it.

 I’ve discussed the sensory elements of sound, visual imagery, color, and camera angles in the two scenes above, but I would like to end my visual analysis discussing the medium specific, temporality of film in its dictation of the duration of sound, visual images, and the entire interaction with the medium. Looking back at Goya’s mural, the visual imagery of cannibalism is arguably just as gory as these scenes in Bone Tomahawk (2015). Elements of sound or changing camera angles aside, viewers of Goya’s mural still visually experience a still moment where Saturn is in the middle of devouring his limp, bloody, armless, and headless son who he holds in his hands. But when you consider the viewer’s full autonomy in dictating how much time they spend interacting with the mural, the time-based nature of film is just one other medium specific, sensory element that makes the difference between an ethically symbolic and problematic literal use of cannibalism. In both scenes I visually analyzed in Bone Tomahawk (2015), the gory, brutal physical violence and cannibalistic acts of the Native characters, are not visually still and fleeting, but instead are dynamic, moving, audible, and drawn-out by the temporality of a filmic medium. The time-based nature of film creates a cinematic experience for the viewer where both the duration of those other sensory elements and the duration of the interaction between the film and viewer, is almost fully dictated by the medium itself.

No, the time-based nature of film doesn’t fully revoke the viewer’s autonomy. When interacting with a static medium like a visual artwork or piece of literature, viewers can close their eyes, avert their gaze, or simply walk away from the medium as ways to autonomously decide the duration of their time spent with the subject matter and the medium itself. Viewers of Bone Tomahawk (2015) and any other film for that matter, can still close their eyes, avert their gaze, or simply walk away from the screen, but it’s the additional sensory elements of film that when paired with film’s temporality, challenge the viewer’s autonomy. When viewing either of the scenes above, the close to real-time spent with the gore and horror, creates a cinematic experience for the viewer in which they feel less like an outside observer of the violence and more like a victim or participant of it. The viewer can close their eyes during either of those scenes, but the other sensory element of sound leaves little to the imagination of the viewer and the duration of the sound is still decided by the medium, further collapsing the viewers true autonomous ability to end the engagement with the medium in full. The uncomfortable duration of the sound, changing camera angles, and the scenes themselves, creates a temporal interaction with a medium where the viewer no longer is choosing to admire it like a mural, they are instead enduring it until the next audible or visual break from the horror. One can counter my argument in pointing to the viewers ability to walk away from the screen as more that enough autonomy. And yes, viewers can still walk away from the cinematic experience, but that only brings me back to my argument of the historical narratives that underpin films like Bone Tomahawk (2015).

To reiterate, using multi-sensory elements of film in Bone Tomahawk (2015) to create an immersive, heightened experience of horror that is closer to literal than symbolic, isn’t a misuse of the medium or problematic on its own, it only becomes truly problematic with the inseparable, literal histories that underpin the term and theme of these films. In the same way most horror films will cite actual histories to prolong the duration in which the viewer experiences horror, Bone Tomahawk (2015) is no exception. In both scenes, director S. Craig Zahler uses sounds that emphasize the Native character’s brutality in contrast to the colonial violence, colors that dehumanize the Native characters to the greatest extent, and camera angles that have a viewer not only empathizing with the western characters, but as a victim of the Native violence themselves. Emphasizing their brutality, Bone Tomahawk’s (2015) “othering” of Native characters, obviously draws from early colonial ideas of cannibalism as a signifier of barbarism and as justification of colonial violence discussed by Lindenbaum. The perpetuation of those ideas through the sensory elements of film, creates a horrific cinematic atmosphere for the viewer of Bone Tomahawk (2015) that is undeniably underpinned by an actual historical “Native other.” That unavoidably literal adaptation of cannibalism’s colonial histories, bleeds into the real-world of the viewer, even after walking away from the medium. Say a viewer autonomously walks away from the screen and the “Native other” before the film reaches its final run-time. In an abstracted way, the film being underpinned by the actual colonial histories, extends film’s temporal nature beyond the moment the viewer ended their interaction with the medium since it pulls from and bleeds back into viewer’s perceptions of Native people in and outside of the cinematic experience they believe they just “walked away from.”

  In a contemporary landscape where digital or filmic media is the most consumed, discussed, and interacted with as methods of cultural and social representation, cinematic experiences are the most influential and immersive forms of media that shape understandings of Nativeness and Indigeneity. This is a very subjective opinion, but films like Bone Tomahawk (2015) have much more weight over visual artworks and literature, as their medium specific, immersive, multi-sensory elements make its impact the farthest reaching and most compelling for contemporary viewers. In understanding a filmic portrayal of cannibalism as unavoidably literal and inseparable from problematic historical narratives, this sub-genre of horror film is understood by me as the largest perpetuator of harmful colonial stereotypes, ideas of bodily difference, and justifications of violence against Native people in the contemporary.

In arguing that the medium specific, sensory elements of film make a filmic use of cannibalism unavoidably literal in a projection of early colonial ideas of Native people, I aim to reexamine the intention and responsibility filmmakers have in adapting themes like cannibalism. My visual analysis of Bone Tomahawk (2015) is not based in a distaste for the medium or my personal artistic preferences, it is an application of my argument that provides readers of this essay with a visual, audible, temporal piece of very recent cinematic evidence that calls for critical engagement with the ideological narratives of cannibal horror films and their real-world impact on perceptions of Native and Indigenous peoples, communities, and cultures.

Bibliography

Lindenbaum, Shirley. “Thinking about Cannibalism.” Annual Review of Anthropology, no.33 (2004): 475–498. https://doi.org/10.2307/25064862.

Barker, Jennifer M. “The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience.” Berkeley, California: University of California Press, (2009): 1–22. ISBN: 9780520258402

[1] Barker, “Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience,” 8.

[2] Barker, “Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience,” 6-7.

[3] Lindenbaum, “Thinking About Cannibalism,” 477.

[4] Lindenbaum, “Thinking About Cannibalism,” 484.

[5] Lindenbaum, “Thinking About Cannibalism,” 476.