Did your food have a face? Well, I only eat "clean", non-factory meat, which means I only eat animals whose faces I have already seen. In fact, if I eat an animal I probably gutted and skinned it. There is a certain beauty in the skinned body of an animal (or in a dissected cadaver) which I think one can only really realize if they've seen one up close, and what really bothered me about the first picture in the slideshow is that the beauty is ignored.
Like the ads in the Barton's United Way article, this PETA ad simplifies and gives us a one-sided view of things. Barton writes that the "simplistic and stereotypical representations of disability... [erase] the complex experience of individuals... with disabilities" (172). I feel like the PETA ad erases the complexities involves with the decision to eat meat through the combination of image and text. "Did your food have a face" combined with what is indeed a rather barbaric image (Saw, anyone?) implies if your food has a face, then the animal you are eating was cruelly murdered. Disregarding, of course, that we have no idea how the dead animal was treated before its death or the manner in which it was killed. And of course, the most offensive part to me is that it turns the dead animal into something fearful and ugly.
The shock-factor of the image also calls back to Barton's article. One of the goals of the United Way ads is to evoke pity and fear, and thus solicit a donation from the reader. Often this is done by using the image of a child, who appeals to the viewers sympathy through the viewer's "twentieth-century ideas about the innocence of childhood and the importance of protecting children from the evils of the adult world" (184). Barton says that "the United Way personalized its front-stage representations in the form of a child who could evoke sufficient pity and fear to fuel donations from American families" (185). Does this remind you of any fluffy bunnies or baby chicks you've seen recently? I'm certainly not the only one who sees a picture of a fluffy bunny or baby chick and immediately shuts off, disgusted by the blatant appeal to my emotions, sympathy, pity and fear. These PETA ads, especially "Did your food have a face", remind me particularly of some of the more extreme pro-life propaganda, i.e.: that which involves pictures of the little bodies of aborted fetuses (which also only succeed in shutting off my emotions). I find the whole principal behind the pity-and-fear techniques of these parties rather disgusting.
4 comments:
Hey Sarah,
I have a hard time knowing where I stand on this issue. I'm someone who believes that, ideally, everyone who wants to consume meat should, at least once in his/her life, have to kill an animal (or that meat consumption should at least be far more personal than it is). But I'm also aware that we live in a society that is painfully (and willfully) ignorant about where any of our food comes from, or what it's made of, so I know that will never happen.
But what I do see with PETA ads is that there is a certain level in which the ends justify the means. So while I agree with you that their tactics involve giving a very skewed, and often simplistic perspective on eating meat, I also think, in the end, it can be prove empowering.
In terms of agency, what I mean is that while their methods initially remove agency from the viewer, in the end, it can actually serve to restore agency that had previously been taken without our realizing it.
For example, several years ago I stumbled across one of PETA's shock videos, and was, of course, disgusted at what I saw. But even though it was completely playing on my emotions and removing any agency I had in making up my own mind, it did open my eyes. It made me ask questions, and seek out answers from other places. I began learning about factory farming and hormone use, etc. In short, I started to realize that I had gone my whole life without having any agency in making decisions about what to eat.
In the end, I was able to base my eating habits (which include non-factory meat) on my own value system, rather than those imposed by PETA's videos. But I can't help but feel that the agency I now have in terms of choosing what I eat is partially due to the same ads that initially took it away through their emotionally manipulative tactics.
One of the things that really bothers me about the PETA campaign is that it doesn't embrace the history between humans and meat-eating. PETA might not like to admit this, but if our ancestors had never begun eating meat, we never would have had the sufficient calories to develop and nourish our complex brains. Though in those times, it was a much more personal relationship between the hunter and hunted.
(Like the one between the persistence hunter and its prey, documented here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o)
I agree we've lost this connection and respect for the animals we eat. I think PETA's campaign is definitely misguided in its efforts though. Humans have been eating animals since the beginning of time, and other predators would not hesitate to eat us. Rather, we should recognize the unfair advantage we have; either we should level the playing field by only hunting in the wild with more rudimentary weapons or pay due respect to the animal that we sacrificed for our own gain. It should be about recognizing our place in nature, not seeing ourselves as above "animalistic" instincts or behaviors.
What Tessa said... that's just way I was about to point out about the relationship between humans and eating meat. I don't eat any meat besides fish, and that's mostly because after I switched up my diet I just lost a taste for beef and chicken and I never liked pork anyway, but I agree that it's perfectly natural for human beings to eat meat. We as a society just eat too much of it and most have lost the respect for animals when it comes to raising, interacting with, and killing them. The image of a dead animal should not be ugly or scary, it's just natural.
And it's funny, but when Welling describes the "hidden impact" behind nature photography and how ecopornographic images always ignore or fail to acknowledge what isn't visually present. With these PETA images, either they fail to acknowledge that there are companies that kill humanely (Bell and Evans, for example), or, like I mentioned previously, that humans have been eating meat for all of their existence.
The scare tactics, the pity and shock value in the images does exactly what you say it does. It shuts down emotions automatically, and constantly bringing out these graphic images as a first resort is just creating that "apathetic consumerist response" that Welling protests. It desensitizes us and shuts us down.
@ Kevin: I see what you're saying, and I think in the past I have felt the same way about PETA ads ("This is a blatant appeal to my emotions... but maybe they do have a point"). I think it's dependent upon the reader to take back their own agency, though, and who knows how many readers of PETA ads have realized there agency is being removed and chosen to do something about it, rather than just swallowing what they're being fed? Of course, I suppose as many people look at the ads, shut off, and go to McDonald's. I guess there are a lot of levels to how a reader might respond to the ads, and many different answers to the question of how it affects their agency.
Quick disclaimer: I think in my post I perhaps made it seem like I eat a lot of meat, when in fact I haven't eaten any meat in over a year and even when I have access to clean meat I eat it sparingly. Most of it just doesn't taste good to me anymore. However, I am also the woman who picks up roadkill to use the bones in home-decorating, so even though it's been a while since I ate my own dead animals, I deal in muscles and blood and sinew all the time.
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