October
1995
Editorial:
A Brief Theology of Meat
By Martin Rowe
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A recent full-page ad in the New
York Times for Smith & Wollensky (“the quintessential
New York steakhouse”) had the following byline. “If
steak were a religion, this would be its cathedral.” A
friend of mine mentioned the ad to me, and we both expressed
a certain wonderment —
indeed puzzlement — about what the byline actually meant. Obviously,
at a basic level, all the advertisers are saying is that this steakhouse
is the best, a place of maximalism — respect, dedication, even
sanctity. The twist is, perhaps, that potential customers would think,
“C’mon, this is steak we’re talking about here,”
but that they would go nonetheless — curious about a place where
succor is offered and certainty conferred.
But this explanation doesn’t seem quite enough. After all, flesh
in the form of the body of Jesus Christ lies at the center of the religion
addressed here. (Note it is neither a temple nor a shrine that is talked
about). There’s not enough space to talk at length of how the
commemorative vegetarian seder of Jesus the Jew became the transubstantive
consumption of the Son of God. Suffice to say, the resonance of meat
as a locus of truth, comfort, plenitude — even reality — echoes
throughout Christian patriarchal culture; and that by calling upon
the dual themes of flesh and the house of God, this ad is sending
out a message to the faithful and lapsed alike to return to the fold.
My suspicion about this ad has been enhanced by a spate of recent ads
operating under the same guiding principle. One TV campaign (“Beef.
It’s what’s for dinner”) shows various nuclear families
gathering together around a dinner table, drawn from all corners of
the house to eat meat. An ad for The Post House has a picture of a large
knife, with the byline: “Horrifying Vegetarians Since 1980.” Radio
and print media ads for the National Cattlemen's Association talk about
preserving an American way of life.
In each of these ads, what beef is — and those animals who
have “disappeared” to become it — has vanished.
Meat itself has converted itself to a symbol, an abstraction; albeit
an abstraction that lies at the heart of white Christian America. It
is heritage; it is the bond that binds the family together when everything
else — including vegetarians (whom The Post House suggests, should
be frightened by beefy meat-eaters) — is tearing it apart. To
live without meat, runs the implication, is to live without the central
forces that keep (patriarchal) society in place. This has always been
the case; but like the cigarette industry (“You’ve come
a long way, Baby”) the meat world can no longer deal solely (or
even mainly) on the product. It must deal with easily-cooptable concepts
such as freedom of choice, “hell-it’s-my-life”, and
the American, God-ordained way.
Thinking about these ads, however, I feel some hope. Sure, when advertisers
start calling upon faith statements and other such ultimates, to be
a vegetarian, or an environmentalist, or for gun control no longer
becomes
an isolated battle (if it ever was that way). It becomes a struggle
for the cholesteroled heart of America; any place (whether church or
steakhouse) where authorized men place themselves behind a table to
dispense food they have deemed manly and significant. But, by the same
token, upping the anti to such an extent can only mean that these advertisers
have no where else to go. Falling back on the self-identified eternal
verities of meat is male America, these advertisers are still “falling
back.” I think it shows they are losing the argument and more
significantly losing faith and belief in their product, because their
customers are. And I say amen to that.
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