Be That Pig: a digression

Sure, one of suicide's primary functions is to mollify our nagging doubts and assure us of the rightness of our habits. The smiling chicken, the capering lamb, the stalwart cow, the laugh-a-minute pig. This is the familiar cast of characters.

What, then, to make of this? At the recent Johns Hopkins University commencement, speaker Brian Billick (coach of the Baltimore Ravens NFL franchise) offered this wisdom:

In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. Be that pig.

We're through the looking-glass, people. Bad enough when young people are taught to ignore the claims that our "food animals" might make on us, but now, this? Now we are encouraged to identify with them? To see in their needless sacrifice an object lesson in leading a fulfilled life?

Or... is this actually a trend or is it simply one more bizarre manifestation of suicide food's corrosive influence? Is it too soon to tell? Certainly this is not the first time such an up-is-down attitude has been espoused. Examples abound. To wit:

This child enjoys lobster at a resort in Maine, undisturbed by the victim headgear he wears as a totem. (Superstitious as children are, one might have thought such fate-tempting would have disquieted the lad.)



This gentleman models a pig hat at some sort of barbecue competition, of all places.



Finally, these children are costumed as prawns for something called the Foods of the World parade.









(Thanks to Dr. BK for the JHU tip.)


Addendum (12/08/07): A new find in the Victim Headgear department. This time, a hat in the form of an entire roasted chicken.











Addendum 2 (12/31/07): Or dress up as meat-based junk food. Does anything make sense anymore?











Addendum 3 (12/19/08): Psst! Your kid's a piglet!










Addendum 4 (8/14/09): If you say so.














Addendum 5 (11/24/09): Pretend that you are bloody cuts of meat! Go on, it's easy!

Evans Food Products Company

You can tell that pork rinds—standard-bearer of the Evans Food Products Company—are held in low esteem. Why, just look at this impoverished pig. Could his presence here signal dire economic straits and not a fixation with his own death, as one naturally assumes? Could the pig just be "suicidal for pay," as the kids say? The suspenders-and-no-shirt look is generally a reliable indicator of brutal (but adorable) poverty. And who but a hobo would wear that hat?

In this case, however, our vote goes to "certifiable." Look at that swollen belly puffed up with pride. The pig looks… happy. At peace. Just knowing that his skin will soon be pelletized and turned into a bagful of Lowest Common Denominator has finally given him a sense of belonging, of true self-worth.

The Evans fold is replete with similarly morbid characters. The gluttonous pig scarfing down a bowl of (ulp) pork rinds. Bad enough when humans are driven to such extremes, but for a pig to munch on the humble—so, so humble—remains of his fellows...

And then there's the Hearty Hog himself. He is a veritable Party Animal, so eager to sample and be sampled. Let the wake party begin!

Pork rinds, cracklins, scrunchions, scratchings. We won't ask you to follow us into the hellish realm we discovered when we undertook our investigations. Know this: the tale of these "foodstuffs" is best left to the imagination. Oh, we knew what pork rinds were, all right. But the black arts by which they are conjured up—and the foul practice by which their many forms are distinguished—are not for the Good and Just to understand. They involve skin—sometimes hair. And incantations, presumably, and the calling forth of the Restless Dead. But you wouldn't know any of this to behold the Evans Food imagery.

Finally, there is this benighted creature, whose motto is pure ambiguous misery:


Why, indeed.

HP Sauce

Through some mechanism we confess ignorance of, people actually like this commercial. They find it funny. For the record, it is not our renowned "preachiness" or "strident" nature that prevents us from enjoying the commericial. It is its utter tiresomeness.

A steer, alone in the corral, croons a love song to a steak sauce.

"Can you imagine how much I love you?
I know the only one for me—yeah!—could ever be you!
My arms won’t free you and my heart won’t try."

Ho hum.

As documented here with staggering redundancy, this is hardly a watershed of creativity. And, of course, our preachiness won't let the opportunity to denounce the ad go by unobserved.

The tagline adds a final note—an aftertaste—of offense. This sauce "makes beef sing." You see, the commercial simply offered a literal rendition of that figurative image. Because, as you all know by now, steer=beef. That walking, thinking, singing (!) animal is nothing more than a massive chunk of food. How it can make good sense to equate the slab of meat on someone's plate with a particularized animal (and a dirty, dusty one at that) is—for all our stridency—beyond us. Is the consumer supposed to think, "Finally! I am bringing two lovers together in my stomach! Eating meat is my vote in favor of Love"?

Apparently, however, this 13-year-old ad worked. A quick search turns up testimonials such as "brilliant," "damn funny," "classic."

We must redouble our efforts.

(Thanks to Dr. Rosie for the inadvertent referral.)

Mothership BBQ

Mm-hm, it's on now! You've entered another dimension, an astral plane where pigs lead their 12-piece bands as you browse the menu and select the cuts of your galactic choice, dig?

The captain of this mothership—let's call him Porksy Collins—is breakin it down.

He is the spiritual brother of the Holy Funkin Emperor, Bootsy Collins, after all. Don't believe me? Check it out:

The hat, the shades, the stars. The divine style. This is barbecue of Bootsy proportions!

Of course, when you get right down to it, this is just another attempt to create a Utopia where the animals provide the accompaniment to their own death. Porksy hardly bears his lot in life with stoic grace, head down, shoulders up around his ears. Hell no! He funks with his lot in life, chin up, gold tooth gleaming!

And doesn't that make it all better? This goes beyond the animals granting you their permission. Man, the pig has already gone! He's on the motherfunkin mothership headed for Planet Funk! The flames that soon will cook him have become his funkin symbol, for p-funk's sake! They're on his jewelry. He uses them to see! Laugh at death? He gets down with death! "Free your mind and your ass will follow!"

So eat up! The pigs won't mind. The pigs just chuckle at the triflin nonsense y'all get up to. Tear off a hunk and they'll just shake their ass out beyond the stars!

(Bootsy Collins photo from www.tascam.com)

Cannuli's Quality Meats & Poultry

Wade through all the rhetoric about this "family business," and you're still left with those same old family values: disregard for the poor, unfortunate nonhuman animals and a celebration of them once they're dead and butchered.


One thing they do different down at the old Cannuli place: their Big Three includes a lamb! Gone—from their main logo, at least—is that tiresome old chicken. (That thing's always trying to horn in on the fun. Remember how the corn-peckin' hanger-on is ordinarily depicted. She usually occupies an "And featuring" role.) And the Cannulis more than adequately justify the innocent lamb's inclusion: "Lamb is a particularly tender meat and all the joints can be roasted," they inform us. "This is because lambs are slaughtered before their connective tissues become tough, so the tissues dissolve easily in the meat’s natural moisture during cooking." (I added the emphasis, but the dead baby animals added the flavor!)


The heart and intestines soul of the operation, however, is the pig, and he is one unabashedly suicidal creature. See? "Absolutely no apologies." Even positioned under the de-anthropomorphized pig spitted from anus to mouth, this pig is ready to pitch the pork. (And there's an unseemly figure of speech for you.) The Apple of Death has never looked so delicious! Would you be surprised to learn that Cannuli's Meats is often referred to as the "House of Pork"? Of course not!



It is here where the pig's death wish passes from creepy to just plain embarrassing. Yes, pig, we get it already! Your desire to be destroyed is overpowering. Yes, yes. But do you have to act like the lamb's tagalong little brother about it? Get some dignity, would you?

Finally, let us acknowledge that the Cannulis have a taste for the sarcastic, too. Check out their so-called "living logo" complete with rotating pig on a spit. It's a chicken-shuffling, flag-waving, that-pig-is-totally-dead good time!

askthemeatman.com

This gambit is known as the pretense of professionalism and you’ve seen it before. Every time some actor in a lab coat extols the wonders of the newest miracle drug, every time some pitchman swivels from his computer workstation to gush about the benefits of an antacid or insurance plan, you are being suckered. “Listen to the experts,” these advertisements purr. “The experts know all.”

Professor Bovine (B.S.) attempts to appeal to the same easy-to-be-cowed (!) strain in all of us. The mortarboard, the robe, the glasses: this cow is a learned professional. This cow is an expert. This cow knows all. And after all, how much extra training could a cow require to know the best ways to hack and chop the carcass of a cow? This is what they want you to think. But according to this logic, each of us—being intimately acquainted with at least one human body—is qualified to perform surgery.

And leaving aside the absurdity of the theoretical underpinning of this image, there is the sheer horror to consider: The cow, thrilled to share her expertise with the meat-happy public, is pointing out the tenderest cuts of her own anatomy. For you to buy. For you to savor.

Why, we ask—howling into the wilderness—why do we stand for this? It insults our intelligence. It insults our decency. And why do meat-eaters require such nonsense, loathsome for its ubiquity if nothing else? Why, if they are content with their habits as they claim, do they require the constant hand-holding assurances of suicidal food that all is well, that all is forgiven? Perhaps they should be assigned more homework.

Class dismissed.

(Thanks to Dr. Alison for the referral.)

Smokin' Al's

Smokin’ Al, you exemplify the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle! The shades! The "and-party-every-day" attitude! The way you play to the crowd, the glare of the flames at your back!

It is here that we are reminded of the ancient Cult of the Bull, echoes of which linger even today in these so-called “modern” times. The central tenet of the cult is that, in order to attain the power and virility of the bull, you must not eat as the bull eats. Instead, you must eat the bull. It is a magical thinking that pervades the ethos of meat-eaters to this day. This brings us back to Smokin’ Al.

This pig has made himself the High Priest of a new cult, one that picks up where the old one leaves off. His purportedly cool image entices one and all with that same ancient formula: To be as cool as the pig, do not eat as the pig eats. Instead, eat the pig.

Caveat Voror: Like the backfiring wishes granted by mischievous fairies, the cool that the pig offers all his adherents is a shabby counterfeit, inauthentic and trite. Better to skip the Temple of Al, remembering the truly “cool” imagery to be found in the land of the herbivore: iceberg lettuce, winter squash, cool as a cucumber.

Carnitas, Tulum, Mexico

Spotted on a restaurant wall in the Yucatan, this gruesome mural has it all:

A dedicated team of worker pigs—Cutter, Poker, and Snoozer (?)—lavishing attention on the main course, that lucky, lucky pig in the pot. Don't let the "folk art" quality of the work mislead you. This "innocent," homespun painting is prime suicide food action, as sophisticated in its way as anything churned out by those high-powered firms in El Norte.

Notice that for all the players in this perverse drama, none protests. The sacrificial pig is sweating in anticipation of the blessed event, the magnanimity just pouring off of him. Cutter obviously takes pride in his work, the way he holds the blade just so. (If the boiling water doesn't do the trick, he's there to finish off his amigo.) Snoozer lolls in bliss at the foot of the cauldron. Only Poker has a gripe: "¿Why am I stuck with the grunt work?" he mutters to himself as he stirs and stirs. "¡That should be me en la caldera!" (Click the image for a better look at his disgruntlement.)

The truly unspeakable detail in this repulsive tableau is the young girl sitting at the table, bored, completely inured to the horrors occurring just inches above her head. Have we all become so jaded? Has suicide food entrenched itself so deeply in our consciousness that it no longer alarms? No longer haunts? No longer matters? Has suicide food dehumanized us as it has degraded its subjects?

"Ummm!" is right.

(Thanks to Dr. Annalisa for the referral and the photo.)






Addendum: Somehow, this slipped past our stringent peer-review process. Another referral, this one from Dr. Phil (no, not that Dr. Phil).

And a meme is born. Or discovered, at any rate. Does this image—the quartet of death-hungry pigs, the cauldron—appear all over Mexico? The flashier version shown here is from the relatively cosmopolitan Cabo San Lucas. Note here that the pig in the pot has a brush! He is taking the opportunity of his impending death to exfoliate and make himself as tender as can be.

Fictional Suicide Food Emeriti

You know them. You love them. You feel for them. They are time-honored, yet fictional, exemplars of suicidefoodism. In fact, we hereby confer upon them honorary suicide food animal status.

1. The Ameglian Major cow, who has delighted millions of readers with his "please do eat me" shtick in Douglas Adams's The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
(Image from wikipedia.com)





2. Al Capp's Shmoo, a thoroughly ingratiating species whose every impulse is to serve humanity in any way possible.
(Image from http://www.lil-abner.com)






3. Saturday Night Live's Cluckin' Chicken. He pushes the grilled chicken parts even while the blood drains from his decapitated head. Now that's dedication!



It should be noted that—in the case of the Ameglian Major cow and Clucky, at least—the characters were created as grotesque lampoons of suicide food's excesses. And so it is with a certain tenderness that we celebrate their legacy.

Thank you to the many people who nominated these fine fictional beings.

Metropolitan Meat, Seafood & Poultry

The Three Musketeers. The power trio. Cow Meat, Lobster Seafood, and Chicken Poultry. True pals. Cow, the "shy one." Lobster, the "leader." Chicken, the "clown."

It's not the usual Cow-Pig-Chicken arrangement, no, but somehow, these crazy kids make it work. Lobster seems to understand that he's the nontraditional one in the bunch, and it only makes him try harder. Those legs draped around his buddies' shoulders, gigantic claws resting on them casually. Hey, whatever it takes, he'll keep them all together long enough to persuade the greater D.C. metropolitan area to eat them and their relations. (And maybe try an order of "No msg Bacon Old World" while they're at it.) Surely, just thinking about them—their bond of friendship—makes an adoring public want to eat dead animals.

A mission like this is important. It gives life—life, death, whatever—a focus. A sense of direction. Meaning. And as they travel from the District to the suburbs and back, day after day, one special song plays, a soundtrack for their hours in the refrigerated truck:

Keep smiling, keep shining
Knowing you can always count on me, for sure.
That's what friends are for.
In good times, in bad times
I'll be on your side forevermore—
Oh, that's what friends are for!

Of course, as we know by now, the bad times will be so very bad indeed.

(Thanks to Drs. Valent, KCinDC, and Karl for the referral.)

Hotdog Man

This offers no fresh philosophical issues to explore. Its principal offense is aesthetic. And offend it does. Oh, lord, how it offends.

The legs and sneakers offend. There’s something about this everyman detail that makes for an uncomfortable linkage: Hotdog Man is me.

The intense concentration as ketchup is applied to the crown of his wiener offends. He is so particular about this detail, as though he’s role-playing as a 13-year-old preparing for her first boy-girl party.

And, yes, we cannot avoid it any longer: The hideous, distended bulk of his meat offends, the way it brushes the pavement like a sick and colossal phallus. Priapus come to life in all his engorged menace.

The enormous, bloated hotdog comes with a silver lining: It just might be the most effective stop-eating-meat message ever devised. Can even the most avid dead animal consumer see this horrible thing and think, “A hotdog would really hit the spot right about now”?

Surely, Hotdog Man turns people off everywhere he goes.

(Thanks to Dr. Patrick for the referral.)

Rosario's Italian Sausage

This Chicago sign is weathered. And obscure. "Sausage by Rosario made fresh daily." We could be anywhere within the kingdom guarded by the Big Shoulders. From this vantage point, only that tantalizing legend gives any hint to the world within.

Now, we see. The hogs have transformed Chicago—Hog Butcher to the World—into a ghastly paradise. One where our every need is met and we are freed from the tiresome toil of butchery. At Rosario's, not only do the pigs assist in their own killing—they tumble gaily into the grinder to be stuffed into casings by the sheer force of their thoughtfulness. We need not lift even a finger. Our clothes bear not a drop of gore. "Sausage made fresh daily," indeed. "Self-made sausage" is more like it. The pigs exist only to smooth our path, to serve us to the last. Like unbottled genies, they unleash a blessed magic of generosity.

And isn't this the meat-eater's Promised Land! A place where meat rains from the sky and flesh ripens on the vine! (And all with no need to reflect, no need to pause, no need to wonder at that nagging thought in the back of the mind.) A place where the disconnect between carnivores' appetites and what's required to satisfy them is tolerated. No, not just tolerated. Exalted.

But this is not the time or place for such solemnity. This is a wake! Let us use this moment to remember the dearly departed. Let us at least remember our hogs in a more festive light. Namely, the brash neon of Utopia.

(Thanks to Drs. William and orangexw for the referral.)