[UA] TABOO

[Paul Wrider]

I can think of two great treatments of the pop icon staple where a cartoon version of an animal sells itself;
First there's a recent (in the last few years) SNL commercial parody where an animated chicken is put through the cooking process while promoting his restaurant chain.  It culminates with his severed head taking a bite out of his cooked body and proclaiming "I taste delicious!"
The second (and more UA) one is from one of the Dream Park novels by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes (which posit the truly unbelievable possible future where VR has made gamers international stars.  But I digress).
The players are faced with ancient tribal spirits (I want to say arctic, but it's been awhile) who accuse them of dishonoring the spirits of the food they eat with cartoon depictions of the animals.   One of the players pulls their fat out of the fire by arguing that the depictions are in fact honoring the spirits, pointing to a popular cartoon advertisement bull named Ferdinand who romances the females while leading the other bulls into being tomorrow's hamburgers.  This placates the spirits, and they're allowed to live.
Having read the scene at least fifteen or so years ago, I'm sure there's all sorts of details I'm missing, but you get the gist.
-Wrider
  Tim Toner <thanatos at interaccess.com> wrote: 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Eves" 
To: 
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 3:44 PM
Subject: Re: [UA] TABOO


> Royal Minister of Stuff wrote:
>
> > I included Cannibalism (A person slowly turning into a
> > Lovecraftian-style ghoul due to magic ceremonies
> > using, well, various "religious tracts" authored by
> > Sandy Petersen.)
>
>
> On a bit of the aside, am I the only one who doesn't get the big
> revulsion thing with cannibalism?
>
> I mean, sure, it's unsanitary, and it's obviously unethical if you're
> killing people for the meat. But if they're already dead, what harm
> does it do? After all, it's not like anybody /else/ is using the body
> anymore. I know I wouldn't mind if somebody ate /my/ corpse.

I've had this paranoid thread running through my head ever since
Underground, by Ray Winninger, came out. There was a burger franchise
called Tastee Ghoul, and the homeless could sell themselves to Tastee Ghoul
for a few bucks, and when they popped off, the body would be picked up for
eventual 'recycling.'

I thought, "Damn, that's a long way off." But then I recalled how creepy
the StarKist Tuna ads were, where Charlie the Tuna WANTED to be eaten! And
I saw Babe, which reveals the dogma of the pig--those who are selected go to
piggy heaven. Time passed, and Transmetropolitan came out, as well as a few
others that explored this concept, and the amount of ads with talking
foodstuffs increased, culminating in the king of them all, the M&M
commercial which has Tia Carrera taking a bite out of our anthropomorphic
hero.

And I'm thinking, "They're getting us ready. Just because we TALK and have
NAMES doesn't mean we're off the menu." I soon shrug off those thoughts,
but still anticipate the day when dolphin steaks will be on sale at the
local food store.





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