RAVENOUS: Meat, Masculinity and Manifest Destiny  ImageIn
researching wendigo myths for a fiction project I’ve been
working on, I figured I’d break from the academic and historic
articles and watch the 1999 film Ravenous, starring Guy Pearce
and Robert Carlyle and directed by Antonia Bird. Ravenous is a
darkly humorous satire that is fantastically skewering and
clever. Set in 1840’s California, the film revolves around
cannibalism, specifically invoking the Wendigo myth against a
cultural backdrop of Manifest Destiny and the budding American
Dream. Throughout the use of the story of the wendigo, the movie
explores indoctrinated violence and the “masculine” act of meat
consumption, repressed homosexuality and colonialism.  The movie
begins with Captain John Boyd (Pearce) receiving a medal for
single-handedly capturing an enemy base during the Mexican-
American war.  After being presented with the medal, he is
seated for a steak dinner with his fellow officers; a dinner
that he can’t stomach, and is later berate