Be too sweet and you’ll be a goner, yup, I’ll pull a Jeffery Dahmer.
Listen to the track on the official Kesha channel on youtube.
Those were words from the second verse of Ke$ha’s Cannibal from the Extended Play of the same name. Of course, after hearing the disturbing lyrics, ignoring the catchy beat, I decided to simply search this unfamiliar name. Of course, I understood the rest of the lyrics; she wants to eat boys for breakfast and lunch and she’s proud of calling herself a cannibal that she shouts "I am cannibal." That at first didn’t disturb me as much. On the contrary, I thought it was creative for the EP to be called Cannibal since it’s kind of a step higher in her diet from her debut album Animal, but that’s not the point. The point is that she used the name in her song and I simply had to Google it; Jeffery Dahmer.
It turns out that Jeffery Dahmer was a real cannibal, before he was ironically murdered in jail the same way her killed his fist victim. Enjoying his secret activity as a cannibal and a necrophiliac (someone who satisfies his pleasures over corps and dead bodies) and especially bodies he kills himself. With more research, I found out that there’s an influence from the surrounding society to this created monster. He grew up in this environment where he picked up the habit of dissecting dead animals when he’s young, and it’s only natural that he’d want to progress to something bigger as he grows old; something bigger here being the human bodies.
Now, I’m seeing that pop music is spreading things I didn’t know because with it I learned more about the cannibal culture, as an example. There are different movies and books which are inspired by real life societies and culture of cannibals. The scariest productions of all are TV documentaries about the real cannibals. There’s obviously a real social aspect and a taboo that can’t be denied, or where would those songs, movies and books have their inspiration from? And I guess the way pop culture deals with this horrifying act is by making it part of it. In Ke$ha’s case, she made this image of cannibalism somewhat acceptable. When something becomes part of the pop culture, even out of another culture, it seems familiar and therefore we’re not afraid of it anymore. Why? Because it connects to us and becomes popular within us as well. I’m not trying to say we’ll grow to be cannibals, but we won’t fear it until we witness it.
Read this blog post to see the association of pop culture and societies acceptance of taboos.
