ON MIKE TYSON'S CANNIBALISM

Watching the Tyson-Holyfield fight, I thought my friend seated next to me was going to puke when he witnessed the minor-league cannibalism. He gasped and covered his gaping mouth. His torso convulsed. I, on the other hand—habituated to violence at home, in the schoolyard and in prison—leaned in and recognized the swift teeth-to-the-ear move as my own.

I once bit off a piece of a man’s ear in a prison brawl.

Anyone who has been in a gang fight knows he should prepare to lose an ear or a nostril. But barbarism is not the monopoly of the street thug. Nor is savagery only a prison ethic.

I have a friend who survived hand-to-hand combat in the Vietnam War. He bayoneted to death a North Vietnamese soldier, but not before his antagonist slapped my friend on the side of his head, grabbed his ear and peeled it off.

President Clinton and sportswriters are quick to decry, and distinguish themselves from, Mike Tyson’s bloody business. And most of us are reassured by this separation. We censure him. Call Tyson a “brute.” In this way, Tyson becomes an example of what civilization has risen above. But methinks humankind doth protest too much.

Under shallow surface trappings, humans are animals at base. Let’s remind ourselves who is underwriting the huge purses of these gladiator spectacles: fans of carnage. Nature documentaries that show a zebra twitching in the jaws of a lion are among the most popular programs on PBS. Go to your local video store and ask to rent anything in the “Faces of Death” series, and they’ll probably sign you up on a waiting list.

The common pay-per-view customer expects violence inside the boxing ring. In some cases, even demands it. Boxers will tell you they are withered by public criticism when they show the slightest sign of having lost “the eye of the tiger.”

Long before last weekend’s infraction, Mike Tyson was a tough kid full of rage. Gruff Cus D’Amato saved the boy. Trained Tyson to redirect his anger. And it worked. Boxing fans hadn’t seen such fierce dominance in a long time.

There were always signs of crisis. There were even some whispers of suicide attempts. Remember the shiny luxury car that Tyson crashed into a pole? Didn’t we watch Tyson’s trophy wife confess on TV that his eyes went vacant when he was out of control? Even when he was whisked away in handcuffs to serve time for rape, we could only wonder at the sociopath behind the cartoon voice in a bull’s body.

In Tokyo, when Tyson was preparing to fight Buster Douglas, the cameras captured Tyson in a public square, tossing peanuts to pigeons. Our hero waited for the birds to begin picking before his strong hand lunged at a gullible neck. He giggled at the scared bird in his grip. Proud of his skill.

He released the bird. But not before the crowd giggled with the bulky man whose hunter instinct harked back to a time when Homo sapiens developed the stealth skill of the hunt.

In my experience, the people who are truly civilized are people who know how close we are to the animal. The rest can only use clichés when they toy with the idea of our violent selves.

Last weekend we watched Tyson become ruthless nature personified. Uncomfortable with the naked and uncivilized nature of his gnawing offense, spectators turn from an opportunity to recognize themselves in Tyson’s obscenity.

Maybe we are simply scared, as this bloody century closes, that our vulgarities compete against our virtues, and we lose more times than we’d care to admit. Think of Rwanda. Cambodia. Bosnia. Germany. Turkey. For all our talk of progress, human civilization hasn’t found a way to conquer the beast within.

Tyson’s surrendering to his monstrous instincts implicates us all. In a well-lighted room, turn off your TV and you will see a dim reflection staring back at you on the screen. Dr. Jekyll pondering Mr. Hyde.

Published on Salon.com, July 2, 1997