In addition to movies, cartoons and books, the cannibal trope also makes occasional appearances in music videos. Here are some of them.
Scandanavian group Abba - er, I mean Aqua - spoofs jungle adventure movies with the video for their hit song Doctor Jones. Lene, the tatooed female singer, follows her summer love Rene (Dr. Jones) into the jungle where he apparently lives with the jungle tribes. Braving snakes and giant spiders she and the rest of the band are eventually captured by a tribe of cannibals who put them into a big stewpot. But wait! This tribe worships Dr. Jones as some kind of a jungle god! How fortunate for Lene; how unfortunate for the rest of us.
Ted Turner jumps on the Reality TV bandwagon with "The Real Gilligan's Island," a reality television show featuring real-life equivalents of the Seven Stranded Castaways trying to get off the "uncharted" desert isle. a rocked-up version of the theme song was recorded by the group Bowling For Soup and this video is a great homage to the imagery of the classic old television series. The original series never really featured any cannibals, but this video does. Using instruments that look every bit like the Professor made them, the castaways play through the theme song while being chased by a cannibal tribe. Watch Ginger and Mary Ann struggle with their ropes while the cannibals stir up the pot! Tikis, coconuts, cannibals and seven stranded castaways, here on Gilligan's Isle!
Divine, everyone's favorite transvestite and star of many John Waters films, also produced a few music videos featuring songs such as "I'm So Beautiful." In "Hard Magic" Divine appears in dual role as "female" transvestite and male witch-doctor. Divine is the captive of a voodoo tribe who tie her up, put her in a cage and cook her in a pot. At the end, the tribe of sexy cannibals can be seen eating chunks of cooked meat which is, of course, mostly fat.
aka Jungle Jig, 1941
Think music videos started in the 80s? Not true. Before MTV there were scopiotones, and before scopiotones there were "soundies": short films featuring a song or musical act. Beautiful actress Dorothy Dandridge is featured in this racially offensive 1941 soundie with Cee Pee Johnson and his Orchestra. Cee Pee and his orchestra of black musicians appear cannibals, one of whom stirs the obligatory cannibal pot with a trombone slide and Cee Pee himself is the entree cooking in the pot. Dorothy plays an ostrich feathered jungle princess and, unfortunalte, not the entree.
This video by the short-lived eighties band features a voodoo theme which really doesn't go with the song. A bunch of male and female surfers are on an island full of voodoo practicing natives. In one scene, a bikini-clad redhead dances in a big black pot while natives painted like skeletons dance around her. I have no idea why.
A claymation animated video. Hexxers is a comic book rock and roll band. In the comic the band are tribal cannibals. In this video, the cannibal Hexxers play instruments made of bones, sticks, and other primitive jungle paraphanalia. When a topless blonde runs by, the tribal band pursues and catches her, ties her up and throws her in the pot. Tarzan doesn't come and rescue this damsel in distress, but the dog does get the bones.
I'll bet you thought that music videos started in the 80s. In the 60s, 16mm short films called scopiotones ran on video jukeboxes and were very similar to the modern music videos. Joi Lansing was a B-Movie sex star from the Mamie Van Doren school, and performed in a couple of scopiotones including this one in which she is cooked in a cannibal pot in a whacky tiki bar jungle set. They just don't make 'em like this any more!
In this video Katy Perry is seen wrapped in packaging like plastic being cut free by a group of faceless chefs, all men. Once freed from her packaging she is dumped into a pile of flour and the chefs kneed her like dough. She is then placed on a giant pizza peel/cutting board where she is garnished with vegetables and spices and then dumped into a giant pot. The chefs baste her and she even helps to baste herself. It is hard to tell whether she is being boiled or deep-fried in oil, but ultimately that does not matter. All the time Katy is wearing a flesh-colored budy suit to appear as if she is nude, but she is not. While on the platter the body suit is one piece, but it is two piece while she is in the pot. After the pot she is placed onto a platter, has her hair cut off and her tongue burnt with a torch before she is served to a waiting group of diners. Then a rapper appears, the diners are all tied up and have fruit put into their mouths and a stripper pole rises out of the table and Katy gets up onto it. The song and video are ostensibly about feminism and the objectification of women, but like many Peta videos it is kind of hard to see that past all of the sexy cannibalism references.
A music video for a song from Mexican singer Maria Cristina's 1987 album La Frescura Tropical features the singer flying a plane and crashing it in a jungle where she is captured by a cannibal tribe and cooked in a pot.
One of the sexiest and most popular Latin singers of the 1990s, Thalia also acted in several popular Telenovelas including Mari Mar and Maria de los Barrios. She also made several music videos including this one in which she takes a trip on a plane to a jungle where she is captured and tied to a tree by a savage tribe.
"In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle, the Lion sleeps tonight." Tight Fit was a UK disco band in the early 1980s. In this video of their cover of the well known Tokens song, they "weemoweh" through the jungle with a group of pretty young girls while pursued by an African tribe.
One of Petty's more clever videos featuring a Lewis Carroll theme. Petty is the Mad Hatter at a tea party in which Alice is turned into a giant cake and served around to all the guests.
"I eat cannibals. It's incredible. You're love is so edible to me. I eat cannibals." This all female eighties singing group, also called Toto Coello, sings and dances in a jungle reminiscent painted set while singing this thinly-veiled song about oral sex.
Pia is a school-marm teaching children in a jungle school when a fierce tribe attacks and carries her off. Her high-necked and hoop-skirted Victorian dress quickly turns into a sexy teddy as she is escorted through the jungle to the native village, where she dances and sings with the tribe. A big black pot is prominent in the background. Apparently in the original version of this video her tribal captors tossed Pia into that pot, but the video was re-cut due to claims of racism.
Frank Zappa serves up more of his psychedelic weirdness with black-light painted, drooling and slobbering "cannibals" menacing a guy with a cabbage head who they are cooking in their cannibal pot. What does it all mean? Who cares; it's Frank Zappa!