eating animals shaped like other animals…
In this weeks post I would like to discuss a marketing phenomenon that has puzzled me for quite some time: the marketing of processed food in animal shapes. I can think of several instances of this, from zoodles commercials featuring a small child excitedly squealing “I just had a hippopotamus for lunch” to the amazingly bizarre animal shaped chicken nuggets I once spotted in a grocery store freezer http://www.brakebush.com/ZooCrew.htm animal crackers, and vegetarian fake meats like tofurky or Dr. Praegers animal shaped vegetarian chicken nuggets. The plethora of products of this nature (particularly the animal shaped chicken!) suggests that animal consumption may indeed have a place among Taussig’s public secrets, at least among children. Indeed, the use of animal shapes by a company making food for vegetarians speaks to the disconnect between animals as cute and cuddly farm (or zoo) creatures and the food that appears on our plate, a disconnect that Shukin quotes Vialles as arguing that smell management plays an integral role in (2009: 63). Covering it in breadcrumbs surely aids in this project.
In conversation with the double entendre of rendering posed by Shukin (that is, meaning both making copies/models and the boiling down of animal remains), I would like to draw your attention toward a piece of poorly digitized nostalgia:
This video features Bill Cosby and a gaggle of children playing with Jell-O. As they pick up pieces of brightly coloured recycled animal parts cut into the shapes of animals (and interestingly, human lips, as a child gigglingly replaces her own lips with a bright red jell-o copy), the previous “first nature” existence that the product is made from is completely obscured. While this product doesn’t come pre-shaped as animals, the commercial suggests that animals are chief among the shapes they envision the consumer will cut into the product. Shukin argues that the market “fetishistically imbues commodities with a semblance of vital life while materially reducing life to the dead labor and nature of capital” (2009: 58). It appears that Kraft foods, the makers of Jell-O, did not feel that the market had imbued their product with enough life. As such, this “second life” animal product was made to remain more strongly glued together for the purpose of prompting children to reanimate the colorful Frankenstein’s monster of animal parts. What would Galvani have made of the idea to use the inherent electricity of children to induce “excited motions” in the dead? (145)
Imperialist nostalgia, Rosaldo is quoted as arguing, encompasses “an attitude of reverence toward the natural [that] developed at the same time that North Americans intensified their destruction of their human and natural environment” (278). Not all animals seem to fall into this category, however, as reverence toward animals we refer to as “livestock” are hardly revered. The children in the Jell-O commercial were not shown making shapes of cows or chicken, but birds in flight and dinosaurs, which, along with exotic animals only seen at the zoo, seem to be the preferred beasts of childhood necromancy. Indeed, the animal shaped chicken seems to point toward a disjuncture between those we eat, and those we pretend to eat (but would be horrified to see on our plates for real).
The vegetarian fake chicken in the shape of animals continues to confound me. Described on one website as “cute (and dare we say) even cuddly” http://www.hungry-girl.com/chew/chewdetails.php?isid=538 suggesting that the link between eating animals and eating animal shapes does not occur to the seller. Discussing another irony, Shukin argues that “resource and animal conservation discourses need to be examined for how they may inadvertently advance rather than antagonize the hegemony of capital” (70). I question what can be done outside of, or adjacent to capital in such a way that does indeed antagonize. My sister’s kids are fond of a brand of organic cereal called “envirokids” that teaches them about habitat conservation, and a percentage of sales goes toward the WWF. This is likely exactly the type of product that Shukin would argue still operates within the rubric of capital. So I ask, what does a model look like that does not, and still is responsive to the needs of this exhausted populace?
March 11, 2010 at 12:19 am
Really amusing post! I find the whole eating animals shaped like other animals very confounding also. Capitalism really is a paradoxical, contradictory beast.
The fact that a lot of these foods are catered towards children makes me wonder about their purpose as educational tools.
A child identifying that she has eaten a hippopotamus for lunch means one less animal for her to learn at school. It’s interesting, as you point out that many of these animal shapes are animals typically not eaten, while animals that are typically eaten (cows, pigs, chickens) are obfuscated through terminology like beef, pork, and poultry.
I wonder if such animal shaped food, despite many of the shapes being of non-farm animals, is a non-confrontational way to naturalize and validate eating animals at all?
There is a point in every child’s life after all (if they grow up eating meat that is), that they will have to learn and come to terms with the fact that they are eating an animal that was once alive. I’m curious to what extent the meat industry attempts to intervene here and ensure consumption is not interrupted.
March 11, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Wow, you raise a fascinating point in this post. It seems so mind-boggling that there would be a market for vegetarian food “imbued with the semblance of vital life.” Contradictory capitalism indeed!
I am also intrigued by the belief that there is added value to the food we eat by having it take on the forms of living creatures. But lets not forget that the shapes of people, objects, and symbols are also popular consumable forms.
Attributing the disjuncture between eaten animals and ‘pretend to eat’ animals to educational practices is a convincing thought. The forms manifested in our foods often take on the exotic and the entertaining. It’s interesting consider how ‘fun’ eating is construed for children (and adults). The value does not exist solely in the substance or the taste, but also the presentation, the texture, and even the history.
March 11, 2010 at 2:23 pm
I think the question that you end with is very evocative and important. It resonates with concerns raised in class about the limits of neoliberal capitalism and whether there are ways to talk without invoking metaphors of productivity. You ask whether there is a model that operates outside of the ruberic proposed by Shukin, and I am at odds too when trying to think outside of capital’s black box. Products or ingredients which might replace eggs, for example, might be called a substitute. To me, the idea of a substitution still retains the semblence; it marks the animal sign in that the animal product can me mimed and substituted but never truly omitted.