ABSTRACT

In September of 1969, a strange little song appeared on the US billboard charts. Recorded by ‘bubble-gum pop’ band The Archies, “Sugar Sugar” described how the affection a boy had for a girl was not only comparable to edible delights but conflated the courtship ritual with that of consuming his potential lover: “You are my candy girl/And you’ve got me wanting you.” The seemingly innocuous and saccharine tone of the song invites one to assume that such comparisons are perhaps euphemistic and redolent of another era where Fats Domino’s 1961 song “Blueberry Hill” was about losing one’s virginity and Little Richard’s 1955 hit “Tutti-Frutti” was, in fact, an ode to anal sex (Gilbreath 2015, 806). However, recognizing the euphemistic and, indeed, symbolic use of food within contemporary literature, especially as a conflation of sexual desire, or to use Elspeth Probyn’s term “eating sex” (Probyn 2000, 59) provides an alternative mode of ‘talking sex’. Significantly, when sex is conflated with food interesting parallels develop between erotic desire, consumption, and, as this chapter will present, cannibalism. A craving for the assimilation of another through sexual union invites close comparison to the need for incorporation of individual through the act of literal and symbolic consumption. Moreover, when this craving to desire/devour another is not only consensual but also, in essence, reciprocal, cannibalistic narratives can arguably transcend the typical colonial and subject–object dichotomy.