Early yesterday
this story about everyone's favourite cannibal had a slightly different headline on the BBC's main page: “
German cannibal back in court”, it said. I found myself tutting and saying “What’s he done
now…?”
But he hasn’t been had up for driving with an expired tax disc, or for being drunk and disorderly (“C’mon, I’ll
eat the lot of you”): instead, he’s being retried for his original crime as German lawyers desperately wrestle with the problem of exactly what he’s guilty of. It's clear that Armin Meiwes killed and ate Bernd Juergen Brandes (he said at his trial that his motive was born from a desire for the younger brother he never had—"someone to be part of me"), but Brandes consented to be killed and eaten, leaving the first court uncertain they could convict Meiwes of anything more than
manslaughter.
Now, however, state prosecutors, understandably alarmed at the possible precedent of sentencing a known murderer and cannibal to just a few years’ jail, have appealed and are going for a retrial, on the basis that Meiwes killed for his own sexual gratification. (It wasn’t exactly
sexual, but by any post-stone-age gauge it was deviant, so this will have to do.) The fact that Brandes consented doesn’t count. Nor does the fact that he allowed his penis to be surgically removed and gastronomically prepared in front of him. This makes him a
prize idiot, but not a legally approved victim. According to my
highly methodological scientific paper on a related subject, Meiwes is a classic type [B] nutter, while Brandes was an undoubted type [A] shlub.
What cheers me up about this story is this:
Meiwes' lawyers… have confirmed they are taking legal action to prevent a Hollywood film resembling his story from entering German cinemas. Meiwes fears its release in Germany could prejudice his chances of a fair hearing.
Meanwhile, he is working with a German director on an authorised version of his story.
How would his own version
not prejudice his chances, exactly? Is he hoping a slight shift of emphasis in the storytelling might even
exonerate him?
<--P. 93
INT. NIGHT.
We are in a ruined office building. The windows have been blown out; paper is fluttering everywhere. Dead henchmen litter the floor. ARMIN MEIWES and BERND JUERGEN BRANDES circle each other warily. BRANDES is wearing an impeccable suit and brandishing a cane that doubles as a shotgun. MEIWES is cut and bruised and wearing a white vest.
MEIWES
[American accent] It’s over, Brandes. There’s cops all over this building. When they find you they’re going to want to talk to you about what you did to their friends. The only way you’re walking out of here is with me.
BRANDES
[Cut-glass English accent] I don’t think so.
BRANDES presses a button on his cane. The wall behind him opens up to reveal an attack helicopter bearing his initials, which begins to start up.
BRANDES
You see, my dear Meiwes, I was in the scouts too. “Be prepared”, and all that. Thanks to your little stunt with the fireworks, all the police helicopters are out of action, leaving the perfect escape route for me… and the death ray.
MEIWES
I’ll be the last thing you ever see, you bastard.
BRANDES
Oh, I very much doubt that. [He laughs.] The only way you’ll stop me... is to eat me.
MEIWES looks at the camera.
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This paper uses the work of Jacques Derrida to ‘read’ the consensual cannibalism of Armin Meiwes and Bernd Brandes that took place in Germany in 2001. In particular, the paper aims to create a dialogue between Derrida’s notion of symbolic cannibalism and the actual real case of consensual cannibalism, in order to potentially offer critical insights into the humanist ethical responses and discourse that surround and contribute to a dominant thinking on consensual cannibalism, but also, more importantly, to shed light on the ways in which ethical dimensions are not only made on a day-to-day basis, but how they are constructed, embodied and ‘voiced’, more generally, in Western society.
