Are Animal Crackers Vegan?

Dating back to 1902, Barnum's animal crackers have been an American classic for generations. The original boxes came with a string and cardboard wheels so that the bears, elephants, lions, and tigers painted behind bars could be carried about by children encouraged to take on the role of ringleader. The animals were often shown vicious, wild, exciting, and in need of control. The cages separating the consumer from the wild beasts within were necessary and clearly defined.

In Our Children and Other Animals (2014), Matthew Cole and Kate Stewart argue that children's toys, media, and other products are carefully constructed to capitalize on children's interest in other animals, while also teaching them speciesism and dominance. To accomplish this, the violence inherent to speciesism is presented as unexceptional or erased altogether to the effect of normalizing human supremacy.

In support of this socialization process, the "wildness" of other animals may be emphasized to teach children that violent relationships with other animals is "natural," as is human dominance. However, oppression is increasingly framed as consensual, rather than forced. This approach surfaces is in Barnum's packaging today.

Gone are the angry, caged animals requiring harsh control. Today's box features sentimental images of animal families. This is a soft control. The bars become faint and fall into the background. Children can now imagine that the animals are there of their own will, their oppression desired and mutually beneficial. This ideology of consensual, happy, and willing participation is perhaps the most powerful in support of speciesism. It is not only circus animals who are reframed in this way, but other "zoo" animals. Over 50 species have been imprisoned in Barnum's cardboard railroad cars since 1902.

Some of the newer special editions show no bar enclosure at all. The animals are still controlled, boxed or within a snow globe, but the child is encouraged to understand this control as benevolent.

Are animal crackers vegan? While Nabisco's recipe is free of animal ingredients, Cole & Stewart's sociological analysis would suggest that consuming animal crackers is ritualistically anti-vegan, as it socializes speciesist sentiments and human supremacy in children. The work of vegan feminist Carol Adams supports this position, theorizing that Nonhuman Animals are routinely represented as willing, happy participants in order to repackage their consumption as something pleasurable, fun, and natural.

In the 1990s, Nabisco ran limited edition packaging that featured endangered species to raise awareness and funds, but even this intent to help was human-centered. Said the Nabisco product manager in a story with The New York Times:

What do people like about animal crackers? Biting off the heads! Our hope was that children will line them up, match them up with the names on the box, learn about them and then decapitate them.

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Dr. Corey Wrenn is a professor of Sociology specializing in the political structure of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement. She is founder of the Vegan Feminist Network and author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave 2016).

Pointlessly Gendering Cats and Dogs

Last December in Aldi (an Irish grocery chain), my partner and I were looking for a Christmas present for his dog. While sifting through the pet section, we noticed that perhaps it was a good thing his dog isn't female, because the only doggy stockings for sale were for male dogs. 

According to Armitage Pet Care ("The largest independent manufacturer and distributor of branded pet accessories and treats in the UK"), kitty treats are for "good girls" and doggy treats are for "good boys." The cat and dog caricatures and packaging colors appear to be gender neutral, but the labels are unnecessarily gendered. Upon further investigation, the gendering process extends beyond Santa's workshop: "Good Boy" applies to their entire line of canine treats, and "Good Girl" refers to their line of feline treats. What's more, this gender assignment is presumed to be implicit. The Armitage website does not clarify which product line refers to which species.

Here, the gendered identity of companion animals is taken for granted

Sociologists have noted that humans tend to transfer their gender role expectations onto nonhumans (and nonhumans also become extensions of human gender expressions). Dogs tend to be masculinized; cats tend to be feminized. Regardless of the animal's actual sex, they will be socialized according to the gender of their owner. My brother's pit bull is female, for example, but she plays rough and rowdy. She practically jumps off the walls because of how my brother has socialized her and how he engages play with her (as other pit bull guardians can attest, many pits are quiet and gentle). We also know that that many men are hesitant to have their male companion animals spayed for fear of emasculating them (a serious problem given the high death rates in kill shelters for discarded and homeless animals). Gender may be socially constructed, but its consequences are real indeed.

Dr. Lisa Wade of Sociological Images regularly deconstructs "unnecessarily" or "pointlessly" gendered cultural artifacts on the website and its corresponding Pinterest page to demonstrate how powerful gender roles are on the social imagination. Of course, gendering products is not "pointless." This action has a very intentional social purpose: to maintain and reproduce difference (which, in turn, maintains and reproduces social inequality). Nonhuman bodies are often politicized in the process, becoming representations of human stratification.

In many cases, the aggravation of these differences is much more conscious because it also serves to increase consumption. A heterosexual couple can't just share body wash, for instance. He has to have the forest-scented, blue soap in the black bottle labeled "For men;" she has to have the pink strawberry soap in the flowery bottle. Not surprisingly, there is often a feminine tax as well, with women's products costing more than equivalent products for men. As sociologists understand the economic sphere to be the origin of social structure (and inequality), it is no surprise to see such heavy representation of difference in the marketplace.

My male cat is not going to care either way if he is a good "boy" or "girl" as long as he gets his paws on that catnip. My partner's dog probably doesn't care if he is a good "doggy" or a good "kitty" either, and would gladly chomp down on anything and everything in the "Good Girl Christmas Cat Stocking." In the end, we settled on a gender neutral (and, subsequently, a much less annoying) chew toy.

References

Adams, C. and J. Donovan. 1995. Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ramirez, M. 2006. "'My Dog's Just Like Me': Dog Ownership as a Gender Display." Symbolic Interaction 29 (3): 373-391.

Our Children and Other Animals: Socializing Speciesism through Children's Media

This new book critically examines the socialization of the human domination of other animals, with a focus on the socialization sites of the family, mass media, formal education system and digital media. While the book focuses on the contemporary UK, it also attends to the historical formation of children’s relations with other animals in Britain, and to the inflection of UK popular culture by global giants in the construction of animal iconography, such as Disney and Nintendo.

A central argument of the book is that children’s ethical capacities are systematically distorted by the capitalist imperative to commodify nonhuman animals (as food, experimental tools, objects of entertainment and so on) and that an elective affinity therefore exists between the practices of commodification and the cultural products that distract children’s attention from those practices, at the same time as subtly legitimating them. The instrumentalizing imperative penetrates every aspect of the socialization process, disguised by the ‘cute’ anthropomorphic iconography of children’s culture, which can be found in food packaging, clothing, movies, magazines, teaching materials and online games that feature nonhumans as ‘pets’ or ‘farmed’ animals. This iconography paints a veneer of affectivity over human-nonhuman animal relations that allow the socialization of domination to proceed smoothly, focusing children’s affective concern for animals on fictional characters or relatively protected nonhumans, such as animal companions or members of iconic free-living species. Children’s unwitting complicity with the exploitation and violence that characterizes human uses of other animals is thereby facilitated.

The book also considers how these kinds of anthroparchal inter-species relations intersect with intra-human inequalities, especially of gender and age: ethical concern for other animals is initially encouraged in the socialization process, but is thereafter associated both with human infancy itself as an immature stage of human relationships with other animals, but also with femininity through the construction of a ‘fluffy nexus of sentimentality’ that articulates affective relations with ‘cute’ animals with girlhood. In this linking of infancy, femininity and affectivity for other animals, we argue that the seeds are sown of an anthroparchal, patriarchal and ageist adult culture’s disparagement of the animal rights and vegan movement as infantile, irrational and trivial. The book ends with a consideration of how the vegan movement is responding to the challenge of anthroparchal socialization, through the analysis of the emerging genre of vegan children’s literature. This new cultural development offers some hope that the socialization of the normality of domination can be challenged and that children’s capacities to forge ethical relations with nonhuman animals can flourish in a post-anthroparchal environment.

We hope that the book will interest critical animal studies and human-animal studies scholars across a range of disciplines, but especially within sociology. We are active members of the BSA (British Sociological Association) Animal/Human Studies Group (AHSG), regularly presenting our work at the BSA annual conference. We are pleased to report that attendance at ASHG panels and ad hoc sessions about animals are becoming better attended year on year, and we look forward to building on that momentum in 2015, when we’ll once again be panellists at the BSA conference, discussing some of the ideas from the book. One of our ambitions for the book is that it will foster connections with sociologists working in different areas of the discipline, especially childhood studies, the sociology of the family, education, popular culture as well as social theorists.

ASA members who are interested in the book can download the introduction chapter from the publisher’s website, free of charge. A podcast of us discussing the book, with fellow sociologist Dr Roger Yates, is available by clicking here.  A review by Corey Wrenn is available by clicking here.

We would be delighted to hear from any ASA members who are interested in our work and we can be contacted at:

Dr Matthew Cole, The Open University, UK: m.d.d.c.cole@open.ac.uk

Dr Kate Stewart, University of Nottingham, UK: kate.stewart@nottingham.ac.uk

One Gorilla, Two Gorillas, Three Gorillas, Four. Gorillas are for laughs? Or to abhor?

Hollywood has fed an unforgettable image of gorillas to audiences of King Kong for generations.

Zoos display gorillas in both live exhibits and as climbable statues.

Environmental stewardship organizations present the amber-eyed faces of gorillas with pleas for support.

A life-size concrete gorilla (undoubtedly with a backstory) even stands at the corner of an Arby’s parking lot in Madison, Wisconsin.   

The gorilla image is also used to sell products from glue to horticultural tents (both emphasizing strength and toughness), and from children’s cereal to candy bars.  Of these last two, the former – a mural-like rendering of an adult gorilla seated behind a photographed bowl of EnviroKids Organic Gorilla Munch – has experienced its own popularity as an Internet meme with iterations of the phrase, “That really rustled my jimmies.”  The latter gorilla image comes from a 2007 commercial for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate and features a male actor in a gorilla suit.

With appearances in these various places, products, and representations, how are we to know what a gorilla is…  A vehicle of entertainment?  A messenger for conservation?  A mascot, and if so, to be feared or endeared?

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Janine Benyus reflects upon historical presentations of gorillas in her recently published book The Secret Language of Animals: A Guide to Remarkable Behavior.  She writes:

Don’t you wonder how anyone could have portrayed this peaceable animal

as “nature’s most savage beast” for so many years?  The answer, of course, was in the profits.  Circuses that housed a “dangerous killer” drew record crowds...  As a result, fears and myths about gorillas became embedded in our culture.

History has shown that gorillas need not be present for audiences to find “them” amusing.  Enter the infamous man-in-a-gorilla-suit.  Whether at a circus, like the one shown below in Calcutta, or in advertisement, like Cadbury’s Phil Collins mimic, gorilla antics – even of human invention – are fair game for derision. 

Despite laughter and media playfulness surrounding gorilla images, it seems the “savage beast” representation endures most strongly.  “Not too long ago,” Beynus adds, “a survey taken among British schoolchildren showed that gorillas ranked right up there with snakes and rats as the kids’ most hated animals.”

Does hating this mostly vegetarian, sociable, intelligent, curious being cause us any conflict?  
Or can we separate the Kong and gorilla-suits from true gorillaness?

SOURCES

Literature
Benyus, Janine M. (2014). The Secret Language of Animals. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
New York. 

Images
1.  serkis.com
2.  Brookfield Zoo (the author's)
3.  Madison, WI (the author's)
4. ourgreenhome.ca
5. Gorilla grow tent poster (the author's)
6.  Cadbury's Gorilla video on YouTube (screenshot by the author)
7.  Mark, Mary Ellen. (2014). "Plate 86: Twin brothers Tulsi and Basant, Great Famous Circus, Calcutta, India, 1989."  Man and Beast, Photographs from Mexico and India. University of Texas Press
8. orvis.com

STK Open Call: Exploring Species-Gender Intersections in DC Steakhouse

A new steakhouse  has opened in Washington, DC that relies heavily on sexualized women to glamorize animal flesh as sexy, trendy, edgy, and available.  Many of the photographs used to promote the restaurant utilize thin, young, and mostly white female models.  This is done to create a sense of pleasurable consumption. As Carol Adams has argued--sex and animal foods are often overlapped to give an impression to the privileged consumer that the products of oppression are given freely and happily. Just as patriarchy convinces us that women really want it (sex, rape, violence, humiliation, etc.), it also convinces us that other feminized bodies really want this violation, too. Indeed, this fetishization becomes marketable.

Unfortunately, what this means for women and animals is that the violence enacted against them is sexualized, romanticized, and normalized. Notice the disembodied woman in high heels with a meat cleaver--extreme violence is being associated with sexual desire. Given the epidemic levels of violence against women, this should be serious cause for concern. As for Nonhuman Animals, like the woman in this image, they are fragmented and only made visible in consumable pieces of chopped up flesh.  These images want us to stay focused on meat; they don't want us thinking about the woman or cow they were attached to. That isn't sexy--that makes us think, and thinking interferes with sales.

Customers can come to STK to get their meat served up pretty. The website is careful to frequently juxtapose human meat with nonhuman meat. Human and nonhuman bodies are presented as interchangeable, fragmented, and completely and utterly objectified.

Models hired to promote the restaurant are literally branded with the store logo, marked as STK property as cows are in the feedlots of STK suppliers.  Again, this logo is quite indicative of the close association between the oppression of women and other animals. With a pouty lipsticked kiss, the mass murder of Nonhuman Animals and the objectification of women is made flirty and sexy.

Sexualized women routinely show up in STK adverts as well, even when they have nothing to do whatsoever with the product. Notice there are not even any pictures of food or drinks in the Apple Pie Day advertisement. In the happy hour advert, it is suggested that female customers at STK drink booze in positions of sexual availability (the mixing of alcohol with the sexual availability of women, incidentally, is the symboblic language of rape culture).  Women are used as signifiers:  Enact your privilege here.

A sexualized woman is even used to sell dead animal parts for charity. Ironically, the charity, UNICEF, is concerned with childhood hunger...and the Western animal-based diet that STK satiates is one reason why this hunger exists. Third world nations are often left unable to provide food for their own inhabitants, as much of the food they grow is used as feed for those Nonhuman Animals destined for Western consumption.  The violence enacted on these colonized peoples, like that which is enacted on women and Nonhuman Animals, remains largely invisible behind the glamour of youth, beauty, sex, and money whipped up in STK campaigning.

The vegan-feminist critique featured in this essay is based on the work of Carol Adams.  Thanks to Ivy Collier for bringing this steakhouse ad campaign to my attention.