Casualising the Use of Nonhuman Animals’ Bodies in ‘Meat Porn’ Television Programs and Websites
Authors: Rodan Debbie 
Published: August 2024

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 venison

Chorizo venison sausage

 

 

Table 1: Absent referents in Barbeque Showdown.
The language used to describe cooked animal body parts in Barbeque Showdown could be interchanged with the descriptions of women’s fragmented bodies in meat porn videos, such as “sexy fire” and “heat of the flame” (Episode 3), “salivating so excited” (Michelle, Episode 3), “oh baby” (Thyrone, Episode 4), “ baby … tie this baby up” (Eduardo, Episode 4), “it’s pretty gorgeous” (Michelle, Episode 4), “wonderfully juicy” (Episode 6), and “so moist and tender” (Episode 6). Several online meat porn videos using language that could be interchanged with animals’ cooked body parts describe women’s fragmented bodies as: “fresh meat”, “ raw white meat”, “juicy meat”, “little pink meat” (Eporner); “piece of meat”, “stuffed like a turkey”, and “beef meat” (Pornhub); “mouth meat”, “white meat”, “fresh meat”, “pig meat”, “piece of meat”, “fresh slice of meat”, “meat products”, and “prime grade” (xHamster). Here the metaphor of meat (C.J. Adams 53) suggests women’s bodies can be substituted with animals’ bodies in that both are meant to be consumed: thus, these meat porn videos reduce women “to mere objects of flesh available to be gnawed and devoured” (Abbasi et al. 69). Recent research reveals how teen girls’ body parts are rendered as “interchangeable” commodities to be traded as “valuable currency” on Snapchat and Instagram – in a similar way to animal body parts –, that is, to be consumed and to be used as a resource by boys (Ringrose et al. 558).
Internet sites describe cooked animal body parts as meat porn, with phrases similar to those used in the meat porn sites discussed above; examples include: “grabbed the big one”, “hot steak”, and “nice cuts” (TripAdvisor); “nice selection of meat porn” (Bernoff): “lovely piece of meat” (Johanson); “tasty porn to get you in the mood” (The Edwards); “it tastes better than you can imagine” (Texas Pete’s BBQ Joint); “Meat Porn Alert!” (Smoke Masters BBQ); “sizzling meat porn” (Diva Q); and “slow cooked” (BONESTOCK). Here the nonhuman animal – turned into a piece of meat – becomes the object of the gaze to be consumed and to be objectified. The implied reference to female sexual body parts, the photographs of BBQ animal body parts, and the use of metaphorical language work together to titillate the viewer.
In Barbeque Showdown and Internet sites the cooked animal body parts are glazed, scored, and scorched so that the outer parts are a glistening charcoal colour, juicy crimson red, or pink colour glossy with juicy fat when cut open, and appear succulent to induce gustatory arousal in the viewer. With the use of digital technology, the cooked animal body parts appear to be stylised and manipulated using non-food chemicals to enhance (Tooming 131) the juice and marbled animal fat on these BBQ shows and Internet sites. Camera and photographic shots of cooked animal body parts heighten the visual appeal to stimulate, arouse, and titillate the viewers' desire and taste buds in a not dissimilar way to that of online meat porn video shots of women: this reveals that the “parallels between actual pornography and food porn images” are deep-rooted (Tooming 131). Thus, the fragmented body parts of women in the meat porn videos, the animal body parts in Barbeque Showdown, and the Internet meat sites are constructed as a visual aesthetic to arouse the viewers’ sensory desires, taste buds, and gustatory imagination (also see Metz McDonnell; Tooming), though some viewers may view these as “obscene” and “even disgusting” (Tooming 131).
Cultural Obfuscation
My analysis of Barbeque Showdown and Internet sites exemplifies the “array of practices” (M. Adams, 58) that both use to obscure the nonhuman animals and their body parts. Rarely are nonhuman animals named as a member of a species or named individually in BBQ programs and the Internet sites. Both obscure and casually treat animals’ bodies, limbs, and organs as absent referents in a not dissimilar way to how women are treated in meat porn videos online. From Matthew Adams’s (58) perspective, this obfuscation has the task of protecting viewers from “experiencing the immorality of their meat-eating behaviour” and recognising the subjectivity of nonhuman animals (Calarco 68; 121). Through both language use and visual aesthetics, the fragmented body parts of women in online meat porn videos position women as objects; due to this positioning, viewers are then enabled to distance cognitively from recognising women as having the status of full subjects.
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