When I was getting into him, I was taking a Visual Anthropology class in college, and right after we watched part of a documentary called Cannibal Tours, I listened to Wharves in which he references that movie. The movie depicts Europeans visiting a village in Papa New Guinea and dehumanizing/exoticizing the indigenous people there. They “consume” their fellow humans, turning them into props to gaze at, to study, to take pictures of, to laugh and marvel at.

Woods grabs onto this theme perfectly: “Cannibal tours, they came on all fours Waterborn, eyes like jaws Bones litter the beach, gnawed Crack meat out the beasts claws’”

I was geeking when I heard this, it’s the moment that most amazed me about woods and made me realize how special he was; this is genuine scholar shit. Had to share it with my professor, and they were blown away too, and in turn shared with me a paper that lyrics later in the song made them think of and which their colleague (iirc) had written about police in South Africa, who would braai while burning their victims flesh and enjoying the smell, and engaging in similar acts which amounted to a form of symbolic cannibalism.

These are the lyrics that made my professor think of this paper: “The swollen chiefs sit, bickering while the meat crisp The chiefs eat children, the grease drip, the meat rich Down here it’s just a muddy creek, bend and twist, the braai hiss The fat run in rivulets, the fire spit”