Thursday, June 5, 2008

Belson Pig Roast

These two pigs represent the alpha and the omega of suicide food. Above, the unnatural, anthropomorphized surrogate pig. He’s just like us, with his chef's hat and his bandanna of the damned and his penchant for eating pigs.

In Belson's Pig Roast Manual, he informs us that "The sight of a whole animal roasting over a fire is one that people can't help but enjoy." He envisions a continent-spanning string of roasting pigs.

In his fantasy, one could gnaw on a pig part, start walking, and find another pig part to eat before one was finished with the first. The railroad opened up the West, but Belson's would pave the whole darn country with intact animals roasting over fires!

Below this faux pig snuffles the poor doomed, realistic swine. He is ever on the bottom. Of the food chain. Of the relationship. He is the subjugated.

That the pigs—the “human” pig and his objectified inferior—are paired in this way shows the power of suicidefoodism to warp conscious thought and repel inquiry. Such a juxtaposition should render itself illogical, if not absurd. One pig, able to identify with us and our desires—foremost among them our need for "fun"—sacrifices his ostensible kinsman and reduces him to the status of barely-animate object.

After showing us a Potemkin village dedicated to a shoddy philosophy, Belson invites consumers to peek behind the façade. Even after seeing it for a sham—how can they not?—still they eat.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"The sight of a whole animal roasting over a fire is one that people can't help but enjoy."

WHAT? Yeah, maybe if you're a cast member of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.