AFTERWORD.

Anthropophagy as means to sacrifice. I couldn't think of a better subject to be examined than that of someone willingly giving up their flesh to be eaten, and to have other person accepting this primordial substance. Because of the physical and mental consequences, cannibalism is the ultimate relation between individuals.
Yet, it's also one of the most (if not the last) stigmatized subjects in our society. I think the reason behind it is that the relationship established between the one being eaten and the eater is not one of simple association; it is the concession to transgress irremediably the physical representation of what we consider an immutable self. The suspension of the barrier between one and what is around him marks the end of a limited existence as we conceive it.
That, I think, is the reason why we regularly limit the concept of a cannibal to the vacuous Hollywood stereotype of Anthony Hopkins' interpretation of a serial killer or that found in any b-movie or comic strip African tribe. We feel safer when we simply disregard human ingest as savage (abnormal) rejection of civilization or attribute it to insanity and mental illness. It doesn't have to be such.
The determinant structure of the society we're part of and its given conceptions of moral rightness and behavior is what labels this practice as incorrect, but it intrinsically is neither good nor bad. I wanted to refrain myself of this framework and focus on the vital, primary sensations of human ingest and its meaning.

We may not be aware of it, but the relationship created in cannibalism between individuals is so strong and so hard-wired into us that we constantly refer to cannibalism to define our interactions.

We may not be aware of it, but the relationship created in cannibalism between individuals is so strong and so hard-wired into us that we constantly refer to cannibalism to define our interactions.
The first contact we have among individuals occurs by eating another one's substance: lactation is the integration of another person in our interior, the last echo of phagocytosis, a legacy of our immemorial evolutive history.
This cannibalistic-oral function sticks with us through our lives in the most diverse manifestations: the ingestion of semen and vaginal fluids is the figurative ingestion of the loved one.
Same is true with other less conventional practices like cropophagia, urophagia, hematophagy in which the purpose can be other than sexual, but relates to the same principle: to eat or be eaten by another person establishes a relationship of superiority, affection, possession, destruction, survival or transformation.
We can find this principle in every aspect of life, from sex, homeopathy, anthropology, literature and arts, history and religion. Anthopophagy even finds its way in semantics, whenever someone says: I'll eat you alive, bite me or eat dick. Anthropophagy is an elemental approach to relationship that needs proper understanding.
I researched somewhat anthopophagy in all this fields, looking for a proper way to channel my feelings into a story which dealt with the relationships it could generate among individuals, in an imaginary world where people found themselves free from all moral principles which blinds us from rather whimsical perspectives.
I came upon a number of Greek myths that present these scenarios. Now, Ancient Greeks found anthopophagy as atrocious as our civilization does, but the beauty of Greek myths is that they reflect upon elemental aspects of human nature, universal and perpetual. The myth of Tantalus does exactly that.
Tantalus represents to me the eternal struggle and eventual fall of an individual's pride. In that respect, he is the paradigm of mankind's condition: one who's intense necessity cannot be either fulfilled nor suppressed. In fact, each step closer to the desired condition puts it even further, and exacerbates the craving.
It also represents that some men can commit the worst atrocities to fulfill their purposes, something we're awfully familiar with. Tantalus is the founder of the House of Atreus, whose members were cursed by the gods for generations, bringing upon themselves variations of the acts committed by him: murder, cannibalism and constant tragedy.
I found it fitting to have a similar family line in this story, with it's own embodiment of mankind's essence. I originally intended to make SYMPATHY GANG a re-composition of Tantalus myth, and that of his descendants Thyestes and Atreus. It ended being so much more, and once you have the whole story together you'll find many other points to ponder besides that of cannibalism.
I particularly like this quote from the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, because it fairly summarizes in one sentence the whole intention of Sympathy Gang: "The mortals who try to ape god by becoming god's equal will be punished by a keen sense of impotence"
What I'd like to wonder is: What if one succeeded?

—Mauricio García

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