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Suicide Food

Dinner Fabulous

We have no idea what’s going on. We’ve got the vestige of a pig, done up like a delicious slice of cowboy, in a mustache and hat, with coiled lariat dangling from his… hand… area.
We’ve got the whole thing labeled fabulous, an adjective not traditionally associated with rugged outdoorsy types.
We haven’t been this confused since the strange case of Mort the He-Cow.
Or is that the whole point? As in this sign, ripe with similarly conflicting stereotypes of traditional sexuality, the pork’s sheer, stubborn absurdity is an attempt to overwhelm our sense of reason and order. Pork? Equally at home singing along to a Broadway show and roaming the rolling prairie? Wearing a campy mustache? Brandishing a lasso? Enjoying the masculine solitude of life on the ranch? Proclaiming his fitness for your consumption? Must… resist. Must… retain… sanity.

Luv-a-Duck

Luv-a-Duck, we are told, is “Australia’s Favourite Duck.” The praise does seem to have gone to the bird’s head. The way she lowers her eyes, tilting her bill—oh, she knows how they feel about her. She knows they think she’s something special, all right.
Now, we know and you know what they mean by “love” (pardon us: luv) and “favorite” (sorry: favourite). By the former, they don’t mean “feel profound tenderness toward or affection for.” And by the latter, they don’t mean “most esteemed.” Even a child knows that the Luv-a-Duck corporation means simply that they really like eating the things. They describe the flavo(u)r as “superior,” and remind us that duck “can be reheated and served as a prestige meal.”
But the matter that concerns us here is what the duck thinks. By her bashful pose, it’s clear she knows what form their luv takes. It is that ravening love that craves and devours, the all-consuming love (or, well, the duck-consuming kind, at least) that seeks union of a purely digestive sort. It sees the beloved as nothing more than aliment, a substance to be sacrificed and swallowed. What they love about the duck are precisely (and exclusively) those qualities she can embody only after she’s been destroyed. To which the duck replies, “Luv me as you will. I’m yours.” (Thanks to Dr. Kirsten for the referral.)

Woody’s Bodacious Barbecue

The most bodacious thing about this scene is how family is front and center. The cow, the pig, and the chicken—it’s the whole family of “food” animals, the Brotherhood of the Edible! And here, the whole gang has assembled for their own last supper. The spot they’ve chosen is right off a postcard, with the palm tree, the old prop plane pulling the banner encouraging passerby (passersunder?) to eat dead animals, and the mustachioed chef (Woody?) serving them all. The cow offers a toast (“To death!), they all eat well, and then they’re all well eaten. Good food, good friends, good-bye.
The perfect end to a perfect ~~day~~ life.

Bair’s Fried Chicken

It’s a snappy technique, so seamless you might not even be aware of what it’s doing to your brain. Like a roasting pig logo we discussed almost three and a half years ago, this image is up to something.
See how the meaning of fried changes from a state that only deliberate actions performed upon the chicken could bring about to a natural, inevitable result of lounging in the sunshine. It’s a crafty bid to shift focus and responsibility.
You didn’t fry the chicken or cause her to be fried! No, no! Far from it! The chicken is merely basking and drinking gravy (?) and being, you know, gently… fried. By the rays of the life-giving sun! And we wouldn’t want that naturally, passively fried chicken meat to go to waste now, would we? The chicken’s fried carcass is like a gift that nature has bestowed upon us.

Hogback Mtn BBQ Catering

We have to go all the way back to April, 2007 to find an antecedent for this thing, an image as raw and stuffed with casual menace, an image as ripe with hostility for the world. Renouncing every instinct, repudiating every natural impulse, the Hogback Mountain hog revels in a death-loving ecstasy.
He smears himself with barbecue sauce, the better to be cooked and basted. As he slathers it over himself, he smiles, at ease behind his Risky Business Ray-Bans. He might be applying sun screen before a day at the beach for all the concern he feels. One ear flopped over his face in perfect imitation of a teen’s wayward forelock, the hog laughs at himself. At us. At our feeble feelings of pity and disgust. They mean nothing to him. Not a single damned thing.

Skewering Training Center

Who will be the best skewered food item? Will it be the bell pepper for the third year in a row, or will the upstart onion make its mark?
What’s this? Two new competitors have entered the Skewering Training Center*, and they mean business. The chicken and pig have fire in their eyes and steel in their hearts, and—if all goes well—they’ll soon have a giant skewer running through their abdomens. They’re obviously quite pleased with their performance, and well they should be. Never have animals been impaled on a skewer so skillfully, their internal organs so neatly perforated, their peritoneums so thoroughly punctured. Vegetables can’t hope to compete with thinking, feeling, pain-suffering creatures. How could inanimate objects throw themselves onto sharp rods with anything like this kind of style? Look at them smiling, arms upraised in triumph. You can do it, chicken and pig! We believe in you! Years from now, when people think of the joy of being well and truly stabbed clean through, they’ll think of you! (Thanks to Dr. Daniela for the referral and the photo.)

*This is actually what this was (actually) called.

Festival of Cruelty 15: Forcible Testicle Removal

For those of you unfamiliar with our cringe-inducing Festival of Cruelty series (the last official entry was three and a half months ago, but there was also a Festival of Cruelty special report recently), here’s the gist:
Suicide food is all about deception. But some meat-promoting imagery is so nakedly honest in its depiction of pure contempt, its expression of such hatred for animals, that we find it almost refreshing. (Almost.) This is stuff that could stand a little camouflage, a little lipstick, a little stagecraft. At least a few bandages to hide the wounds. This isn’t suicide food. It’s murder food. And it’s instructive to dive into the cesspool now and then. What it teaches us, exactly, we have long since forgotten. So! Hold your nose and jump in and try not to drown in our newest, themed Festival of Cruelty.
Huntley (Illinois) Turkey Testicle Festival: As it turns out, some turkeys object to castration. This one clutches his savaged loins. He gapes in wordless horror, as though petitioning Heaven’s vacant throne. But most of all, he advertises an event whose foundation is the consumption of turkeys’ private parts. Do you see what we mean about cruelty? They don’t even bother dressing this up in the same old clichés of subservience, compliance, and victims identifying with their predators. It’s just shock, pain, and anguish.
Olean (Missouri) Jaycees Testicle Festival: We “love” the disdain implicit in this one. “Our volunteers make the difference,” they say as they show us this maimed cow wearing a button that identifies him as one of those volunteers! “No, no,” they proclaim, “that one’s a volunteer. He signed up to have his stuff hacked off! You saw the button, didn’t you?” It’s the most half-hearted disavowal in the history of people caught in the act, the equivalent of “Honest, officer! The dead guy was on the floor when I got there.”
Minnesota Testicle Festival: The call it the home of the Minnesota Tendergroin, because if there’s one thing people like more than eating an animal’s testicles while it watches, it’s making puns while they do it. (You should know that testicle festivals are hotbeds of suspect humor as well as viciousness.) Featured here is a former bull—he’s a steer now—who can only snort in impotent agony. While people laugh at him.
Thirteenth Annual “Calf Fry” Testicle Festival: The newly castrated can also take the stoic cowboy route, hoping to numb the pain with nothing stronger than beer and nicotine. But nothing can soothe the searing sting of degradation. Notice the barren landscape, the single tumbleweed an errant mark on a blank sheet of paper. It all serves to emphasize the castrato’s loneliness. He went from vigorous to victimized just like that, with no one to witness his turmoil but the uncaring sky.
Rock Creek Lodge: More craven snorting. This steer’s got a haunted, hunted look in his eyes. Which is only fitting, seeing as he’s been hunted down and the aftermath of what they’ve done to him will haunt him the rest of his days. Which—let’s look on the bright side—won’t number too many.
Outdoorama Turkey Testicle Festival: Is this turkey warding off the knives? Are his hands thrown up before him in an “Out of my way!” gesture? Either way, there’s no stopping them. There’s no getting between the hungry hordes and the poultry testicles they crave.
Addendum: We have, of course, seen castrated animals before. There was a steer, a turkey, and a different steer from way back. Improbably, it’s a motif that’s been with us through the ages.

Carne de Avestruz

Did you think ostriches were only sex objects? That’s a common misconception. No, they’re also corral-based bon vivants and rugged cowboys. And, as we now know, ostriches are superb athletes!
Like the Brazlian people, Brazilian ostriches enjoy futebol. And like the Brazilian people, Brazilian ostriches are deliciously healthy.
It’s curious, yet commonplace, this identification with one’s main dish. As though the way to induce consumers to choose this or that dead-animal product, you must first get them to see themselves in the lifeless eyes of the food on the plate. “This ostrich felt a patriotic pride toward my country. He enjoyed the same pastimes that give me pleasure. We’re not so very different, he and I. Now that our connection has been made plain, an undeniable bond, I will experiment and devour him.” Or, we… guess that’s how it goes? And through it all, for his part, the ostrich never stops selling. The intensity, the rah-rah boosterism, the countless hours devoted to training—it’s all part of his plan to pitch his kind as the perfect meat for a hungry Brazil. (Thanks to Dr. Clea for the referral.)

Uncle Dougie’s Barbecue Sauce

Cozying up to Death Chicken, the Devil’s Pecker, breathing the sulphur of his nethercoop, the pig and cow contemplate entering the next (which is to say, the last) stage of life’s journey. The chicken might appear mundane and harmless, with his striped Polo and How’s-everybody-doing demeanor, but take heed: Mefowlstopheles has come for their souls. And before long, as they gaze into his unblinking crimson eyes, they will surrender. They all do in the end. They will give themselves over to him and follow him down, down, down. Past the galleries of the shrieking dead, all the way to the River of Sauce. The river in which they can hope to forget.

Pigheaded BBQ

The pig’s plan is finally bearing fruit. By finding a way to mate with miniature cows and chickens—thereby rendering their offspring blessed with the pig essence so prized (it would seem) by humans—he shares with the rest of creation the joy he has known so intimately. It’s a strange plan, admittedly, and it involves some irksome mutants, but whatever. Here’s to the lovable crackpots who roll up their sleeves (or, in this case, tear them off), and get the job done! We’re not saying the pig is entirely altruistic, either. The wicked way he’s looking at his feckless spawn does give one pause.
Well? What of it? Why shouldn’t he get something in the bargain—in this case, the joy of killing and cooking—when he’s giving so much? He, who made the lowly cows and the dim chickens more palatable, more desirable as living, breathing pre-food. More piglike. Is he not their god? Do they not owe him everything? All the mightiest gifts—theirs!

Barbecue Coach

And here you thought the animals were simply blessed by their creator, endowed with the rich flavor and utter worthlessness that render them fit for nothing but death. Such innocence is almost touching.
No, the animals have to work at this stuff. Sure, some come by it naturally, but for most, it’s crack-of-dawn sweating and wind sprints. Like this chicken. Employing the vigorous whistle-tooting services of a coach, he hopes to be in ~~fighting~~ dying trim in time for the big event. It’s a lifelong dream, and the dedicated understand that achieving a dream takes hard work and stick-to-it-ive spirit. Lift those knees, bird! You think anyone’s going to want to eat you with drumsticks like that?

Rudolph’s Reindeer Meat

Rudolph—the decent, selfless reindeer beloved by millions of boys and girls—has an important message: “When you order reindeer, you make Santa smile.”
Yes, Santa (Santa Claus, that is) would appreciate it if you’d order reindeer meat. He likes ordering reindeer. Get it? Ordering reindeer? Like, ordering them around? What a country!
And because Rudolph’s such a ~~doormat~~ generous soul, this really is the most important thing he can think to share with you. Not “For the love of God, would someone please rescue me from what has become a nightmare of captivity and the ever-present stench of fear!” but instead “Don’t forget to pick up some dead reindeer on your way home!” Merry Christmas!
(Photo by Travis S.)

Addendum: Allow yourself to be haunted by this ghost of Christmas past. And this one, too, while you’re at it.

Landry’s Seafood Restaurants, Inc.

And then there’s this guy. He has certainly settled into his role as seafood with panache. A tawdry, leering panache, to be sure, but have you ever seen a crawfish with more self-confidence? Feet dangling in the ol’ briny, teeth clamped on a cigarette holder worthy of Thurston Howell, suspect mustache winking in the sun, he’s the very model of looking-out-for-number-one-ism. That he expresses his exceptionality by playing the part of foodstuff will discomfit no one familiar with our work.
He will be boiled and cracked apart, his pale flesh dug from his blood-red carapace, and he accepts it all—the attention, the adulation, the respect—as nothing less than his due.
Addendum: Or maybe he’s a lobster?
Addendum 2: An earlier Landry’s crustacean, this one exhibiting none of the moneyed importance of the current crawfish. Or lobster or whatever.