Another Suicide Food post, another trashy pig nuzzling a guy with a beard.In her striped tubetop, the she-pig represents the sexual confusion so common in suicidefoodist imagery. (And what exactly is the left-side of the banner covering up? Is the sow wearing bottoms? Please! Let her be wearing bottoms.) The suicidefoodist dwells inside a muddle of conflicting impulses. Not since this porcine black widow have we seen such an example of psychological turmoil. Prey as love interest. Paramour as foodstuff. To love = to destroy = to love.
We are reminded of Les Murray's poem, "In a Time of Cuisine."
A fact the gourmetAll this analysis is well and good, but the Pigman requires us to look deeper, if we can bear it. Seeing as a so-called "breast man" finds breasts especially erotic, and a "leg man" is captivated by the sight of shapely legs, what can we say of the sexual proclivities of a self-described "pigman"? Is he, in fact, a pig pickin' man, one who always selects a certain—shall we say?—breed of companion?
euphemism can't silence:
vegetarians eat sex,
carnivores eat violence
Could there be another interpretation? Yes, of course! The truth has been staring us in the face, so close we can't escape the whiff of its stench. We had proceeded under the assumption that the Pigman in question is the proprietor of Pigman's Bar-B-Que. (There is no shame in the honest mistake!)
To continue, many a restaurateur names his establishment, his economic and creative pride and joy, after his offspring, his emotional and familial pride and joy. In this scenario, Pigman (that is to say pig-man) must surely be the unholy hybrid offspring of the bearded gentleman and the floozy sow! A touching act of dedication, but also a foul betrayal of our shared humanity.
(Thanks to Dr. Jessica for the referral.)
Addendum: Dr. Badchae sent us this image, taken in Busan, South Korea, and what better place to ditch it than this post? Honestly, these sexy pigs are almost more than we can endure. That this archetype should be so widespread causes us more confusion, more outright concern, than you can know.
Addendum 2 (5/12/08): Dr. Melisser sent us this horrid thing. Who would have known that sexy sows in hotpants—it's the same picture!—would become a universal language?
5 comments:
I don't understand the drawing at all. It looks like the guy has the head of a 19th-century European intellectual (is that a monocle?) and the sandaled feet of a hippie and is wearing a red dress (containing his ample bosom) that must be supposed to be an apron? And the pig's body is simply uninterpretable.
That unintelligibility is the image's sole asset. Think of it as a seatbelt for our sanity.
I believe the red garment to be an apron. And I believe what you have interpreted as a monocle string is merely a facial wrinkle.
Now. May I please stop looking at this?
I'm sorry, but I couldn't stay away from it. I now believe that the image is even more horrific than we previously supposed. The explanation of the pig's strange anatomy (the sideways head, for example) is that it's not actually a pig but a badly constructed Frankensteinian assemblage of pig parts. And I'm not entirely sure that the "man" isn't something similar.
I fear this accursed logo will trouble my dreams for the rest of my life.
...so creepy.
The guy in that picture looks Jewish. Surely that adds another layer of confusion to the whole scene.
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