Casualising the Use of Nonhuman Animals’ Bodies in ‘Meat Porn’ Television Programs and Websites

• Published in: M/C journal Vol. 27; no. 4
• Main Author: Rodan, Debbie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 07.08.2024
• ISSN: 1441-2616; 1441-2616
• DOI: 10.5204/mcj.3082

Introduction Rarely in cooking programs and Internet sites advertising cooked meat are nonhuman animals named as a member of a species or named individually – often they become “absent referents” (C.J. Adams 53). This occurs because the butchered animal becomes meat, and once this happens nonhuman animals are turned into an absent referent (C.J. Adams 51). In the rituals of the BBQ cooking programs and Internet sites nonhuman animals’ body parts are made invisible and commodified for the thrill of the perfect ‘grill’. Such language and visual aesthetics are used to intensify a viewer’s “arousal” (Tooming 131), further evident in that cooked animal body parts are given the label meat porn. Camera close-ups that zoom in on the juicy, glistening, dripping, and colour aspects of the cooked meat turn animal body parts into meat porn by making “a material connection to human sexuality” (Metz McDonnell 251). This brings a “pornographic gaze” to the cooked meat (Metz McDonnell 242-43). The cooked animal body parts – as objects of desire – are thus presented to titillate and tantalise the audience’s taste buds. And making them into a culinary dish offers viewers the opportunity to cognitively distance from the living, breathing, sentient nonhuman animal (see Bastian and Loughnan concerning the “meat paradox”). In this article, I investigate how one BBQ television program, Barbeque Showdown (Season 2, Netflix), and Internet sites advertising cooked (often BBQ) meat exemplify, via the language of meat porn, the ways in which nonhuman animals are made into absent referents (C.J. Adams 53). Through the cultural cuisine of the BBQ, nonhuman animals thus become a form of “cultural obfuscation” (M. Adams 58) by being subjected to human meat-eating desires and by ignoring nonhuman animals as “living, breathing subjects” (see Mills 215). By turning them into gastronomic cuisine, I demonstrate how language and visual aesthetics commodify nonhuman animals in a not dissimilar way to the language used in meat porn videos of women’s fragmented body parts. Research Approach There were two main phases of the research – the analysis of the Internet sites advertising cooked meat and the analysis of the TV program. Data collection involved searching for the key word ‘meat porn’ – a term I treated as a cultural object – during April–July 2024. A Google search yielded 690,000 results within 24 seconds, and the first 50 sites revealed that the term ‘meat porn’ was used to advertise for consumption of a) women’s fragmented body parts or b) nonhuman animals’ body parts. Several videos described women’s and animals’ body parts interchangeably, evident in such phrases as “sizzling meat porn”, “fresh meat”, “mouth meat”, and “piece of meat”. To exemplify how animal body parts are presented as a form of meat porn compared to women’s (the majority of the Google results), I used purposive sampling (Waller et al. 67) to identify relevant materials as I knew in advance the case was “information-rich” (Patton 181) and would provide insightful information about a “troublesome” phenomenon (Emmel 6). Materials were collected from Internet sites and Netflix Barbeque Showdown Season 2 Episodes 1–8, airing in 2024. I utilised content analysis in order to make visible the most prominent and consistent language and visual representations employed in these various materials during the identified period. The approach allowed me to code and categorise materials so as to determine trends and patterns of words used, their relationships, key structures, and ways of speaking (Weerakkody 146–160). In addition, discourse analysis (Gee 8–10) was used in order to identify and track “language-in-use”, so as to make visible the names in which parts of animal bodies and the visual representation of those parts were used to obscure this nonhuman animal is a sentient being. Use of Abstract Referent Carol J. Adams, in The Sexual Politics of Meat in 1990, makes the connection between how women and nonhuman animals are often treated and spoken of as pieces of meat, and as a consequence function as “absent referents” in a patriarchal meat-eating society. Meat’s “absent referent” is the dead animal (C.J. Adams 53); women’s is in the object of sexual desire. She critiques the use of the “mass terms” of meat to problematise what Irni (234–35) describes as the normalising and silencing of nonhuman animals exploitation. As mass meat, Adams reveals how individual nonhuman animals become part of the food production chain – that is to say, the term “obfuscate[s] the specificity of animal lives” (Irni 223). Irni (223) explains that this insight led Adams to connect the concept of absent referent to the “thingification of nonhuman animals” and the objectification of women. Adams then associates meat-eating with masculinity and male strength, which categorises women as objects of desire, and together with animal meat, as meat to be consumed (also see Sikka 735; De Backer et al. 2). Once butchered and becoming “meat”, animals no longer exist as a subject (C.J. Adams 51). The language of gastronomy further extinguishes the live animal to the point that humans no longer envision the nonhuman animal, rather they imagine the “cuisine” (51). When animals are “framed” as food products – through the language of gastronomy – this obscures their subjective experience as “sentient beings who experience complex lives” (van den Brandeler). Van den Brandeler claims that when this language becomes normative it allows humans to “dissociate from the sentient animal”. Later, I demonstrate how the language of the BBQ “contributes even further to animals’ absences” (C.J. Adams 51). Adams’ “influential” concept, Irni (209; 219) remarks, is useful to reflect on the ways in which nonhuman animals are denied their subjectivity by becoming “someone … who is being eaten”. In her analysis of Daphne du Maurier’s short story, “The Blue Lenses”, Habibi (18) finds the concept helpful to connect the main female character’s “feeling” of being used as “an instrument” in a medical experiment with the experience of nonhuman animals as being “coded as objects”. In Thonsgaard Klainberger’s (136) analysis of how nonhuman animals and women in contemporary fast-food advertising become absent referents, she reveals the ways in which both “are objectified and reduced to consumable products”. Drawing on the literature discussed so far, the concept of meat porn is applied in two ways in this article. Firstly, how BBQ television cooking shows and Internet sites advertising cooked meat depict animal body parts through language use and visual aesthetics. Secondly, how women are objectified on the Internet, in meat porn sites, depicting women’s (mostly fragmented) bodies in poses found in pornographic magazines and videos. Both types of meat porn objectify nonhuman animals and women by making them “absent referents”, a key idea that Carol J. Adams (53) theorised. Language Use and Visual Aesthetics of Meat Porn Today, BBQ program (see SBS Food channel and Netflix) contestants, presenters, and judges come from diverse gender, ethnic, and class backgrounds. The idea that patriarchal males are the barbeque king, and “eating animals” is a natural “masculine” primal desire (Thonsgaard Klainberger 128), is no longer endorsed in most of these reality programs. Barbeque Showdown (Netflix 2020–), filmed in Covington, Georgia, also breaks down traditional gender, ethnic, and class stereotypes; this is illustrated by the diversity of contestants in Season Two: they come from several American states such as Iowa, California, New York, Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee. Yet Barbeque Showdown continues to reinforce the evolutionary myth of the “caveman” (Sikka 733), which is associated with “primal power”, masculine strength, and “a fixed understanding of history”. Located in one of Georgia’s natural wilderness areas, the set comprises one wood building and The Trench, an outdoor uncovered area containing cast iron barbeques, hooks, and steel prods; this equipment is suggestive of the type used in sado-masochism sexual activities. Other tropes include: the wilderness setting, open flames, fire pits, wood coals, cooking on an open fire, cooking underground, using swords to cook meat, and cooking styles such as the “caveman sear” (Delilah, Episode 1). Both the setting and BBQ implements underscore the gendered power dynamics that occur in the treatment of women as absent referents in meat porn videos; however, an in-depth analysis of this aspect is beyond the scope of this article. I analysed the language use in Barbeque Showdown for the terms used for animal parts cooked in the BBQ. Most terms outlined in Table 1 make the nonhuman animal and their body parts absent and in some cases unrecognisable, such as Vegas strip, Picanha (Cow), money muscle, Prosciutto (Pig), and Turducken (turkey, duck and chicken). Noticeably, contestants mention the nonhuman species in only two episodes (out of eight): for instance, a cow (Episode 7) and a pig (Episode 8). These absent referents in Table 1 circulate throughout Season Two. Animal Absent referent Absent referent Absent referent Cow Beef cheeks Chuck roast Beef ribs Hanger steaks Oxtails Rare beef Barbacoa beef Cowboy steak St Louis ribs Beef tallow Texas smoked tri-tip Tomahawk steak Beef ragu Flank steak Vegas strip Picanha New York strips Rib Eyes Filet Mignon Churrasco Rib roast Rib eye churrasco Beef tenderloin     Sheep Pulled leg of lamb Leg of lamb Sticky lamb ribs Lamb shanks Lamb curry       Pig Pork belly Chorizo Hog Salted pork Pork tenderloins St Louis ribs Pork butt Rib tips Spare ribs Bacon Pork steak Pork slides Stuffed pork tenderloin Money muscle (filet mignon of pork butt) Boston butt Country ham French bone pork roast Pulled pork Baby back ribs Pork ribs   Pork loin Prosciutto Pork shoulder Chicken, Turkey, and Duck Spatchcock Cajun sausage   Turducken (turkey, duck, chicken breast) Deer Ground ve