Of Fish and Slitting Throats

While in line at a local coffee place the other day, a woman in front of me had a t-shirt sporting the logo and a large picture from the recent movie "Sweeney Todd". If you don't know, the movie is the Hollywood version of the stage musical about a crazy barber who slits the throats of his patrons, carves up their remains and then serves them in meat pies. A delightful, wholesome story, don't you think? Oh, and it's a comedy.

The movie version takes the concept to new bloody heights, with reviewers commenting on the fountains of blood that splay across the screen-and the shirt in this case. The picture takes up the whole shirt, largely made up of the splashing red blood. As the woman reached the register, the young cashier (adorned with a large lip ring)said, "oh hey, love your shirt," smiling shyly.

This same week I noticed a new book about human evolution with the inspired title of "Your Inner Fish". The author is a fish paleontologist and also the dept. head of Human Anatomy at his institution (even he admits this is a bit odd). Of course his thesis is we evolved from fish and cannot understand our bodies unless we examine our finny heritage.

So what's the connection you might ask? Well, for some time I have wondered why modern audiences, especially the postmodern generation, love ultra violent movies, video games, etc. Why would someone love a bloody shirt and the movie it represents? One explanation might be that the belief in biological evolution infers that we are just overgrown fish, and hey,we catch and kill those all the time, right? And sometimes it can get a little bloody. If mutation, natural selection and long periods of time result in ourselves, we really don't posses much dignity or importance. After all, a leech resulted from the same process.

So what do you think? Why do fish-descendents flock to entertainment that depicts the slaughter of.... themselves?

What's your theory?