You all lied to me: Tender Is The Flesh is BAD, actually
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- Phew! Sorry for hiatus, my life has been very, very, very chaotic with moving house! There was some issue with getting this video too- the audio and video may be a bit off, sorry.
Here's a video essay review on Tender is the Flesh, a book which is... oh boy, I don't like it much in terms of how much it fails to achieve. There's good bones in there. I know people get passionate about meat and ethics, and that will be discussed in the video, but please keep chill. Oh, and watch out for the content warning for this one!
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00:00 Start
12:11 Content Warnings (STRONG)
12:14 Rest of Video - Zábava
Also, meat is a very complicated topic! It's okay to have differing opinions. For the sake of everyone's mental health, I'm not going to get into scraps about it here and I'd highly encourage you not to either. Thank you for watching!
Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and Cooked are great
I just wanted to drop a quick thanks for your intro on meat farming. Weirdly enough, as someone with food anxieties, I think you managed to explain a thought that I'm struggling with now. I feel like I've tried to explain how moralizing meat can be (emphasis on "can") the beginning of a spiral towards disordered eating, like moralizing food waste. People need to feed themselves and people deserve to be treated well!
thank you for telling us you have arfid - ive been struggling with it too and it means a lot to just simply hear someone say they have it too - i hope you have a good day
"You will never be able to understand the intricacies of a cow's brain" is one HELL of a quote to hear today
you know, back when i was doing a level spanish, we had to have a debate about whether you should eat the bull after toreo/bullfighting and whoever i was against said "no because the bull has gone through enough pain already", and i essentially said that exact quote in spanish because i just panicked.
i said something along the lines of "nunca serás capaz de comprender los pensamientos dentro del cebrero de una vaca" for any curious. it's definitely up there with "people move to ecuador because there are penguins there" for my panicked responses in that class that werent actually wrong.
@@kaialexander6806awesome quote indeed, but on that, if the bull is dead… imo not eating it is a waste. It’s not going to feel any more pain! I don’t understand the person arguing with you
But I’m against bullfighting anyways, the cultural aspect isn’t enough of an argument (I’m from Portugal, we also have it in our culture at a smaller scale; my tio-avô did it proud and successfully during his lifetime) to make an animal suffer for entertainment, so… in a wonderful world, those things wouldn’t exist to make it go through pain in the first place
@@kaialexander6806 If the birds and worms refused to eat my body, I'd be offended. If you kill it you gotta eat it, have some respect for the dead cow 😂
7:20
7:19
i really hate how morality is applied to food instead of how food is made and where it comes from. the actual food is not a problem - like you said, its just plain food. you really cant get more amoral than that. but yes, there are MANY problems in the food industry, problems we could get a lot closer to solving if we stopped looking at food itself as the bad thing.
I basically stopped buying cashew after finding out about labor practices in the cashew industry, in short: Its chemicals kills workers and sometimes also kill consumers.
A like-minded human! I do my best to eat from local small farms (privileged enough to be able to do so,) and I just won't eat conventional meat - I was vegetarian most of my time at college and would have been vegan if my health would've allowed it. But I don't see anything inherently bad about being an omnivore - just with polluting the environment, causing unnecessary suffering, waste, and the mistreatment of workers.
@@milsthebard1085 I feel like those issues - pollution, suffering, waste, and exploitation - are also the more interesting issues to explore in this kind of fiction? Yes, animal ag causes all those things, which I guess you can get at with "humans are meat", but so does plant agriculture? The ENORMOUS amount of water waste that goes into almonds, for example, is a big one. And the modern-day slavery that goes into a lot of crop harvesting is ripe grounds for speculative fiction, surely?
It’s like how some people would rather use agave than honey, when agave is BY FAR the less ethical sweetener. If you empathize more with animals than certain demographics of people, then I refuse to believe you’re in it for the morality (dietary and religious needs are different of course)
What a lot of white vegans like to forget is that migrant workers are essentially paid pennies to grow the plants that fund their diet, and that such goods are deliberately passed over low-income neighborhoods who struggle to develop the funds that can make such a diet possible.
The elderly black market feels like a strange piece of worldbuilding cause you'd think if this was a world where we're suddenly eating people, there'd be a black market around abducting babies, not the elderly?
And then, I know just enough about the standard funerary business to know that, assuming this world didn't make a sudden pivot to more environmentally friendly methods of burial, the author did not bother to actually research what goes into the process of embalming a body for burial cause we would absolutely not be eating the dead.
Just...no.
Mmmm formaldehyde (I can't spell, for give me if this us spelled wierd)
The best part is the total lack of research in saying people would even bother eating meat that's "diseased, full of pharmaceuticals(???)" just because it's so cheap you can get it anywhere. Does anyone dig up cows that died of old age to eat like it instantly turned into jerky...?
@@FaelumbreProjectYou know that all animals kept for milk/egs, etc. get slaughtered once they don't produce as necessary to earn their keep and their meat gets sold at discount, because it is not "as good" as a younger animal's, don't you? Also, enbalming every body is strictly a USA thing.
@@kikiTHEalien Yeah but that's slaughtering a live animal that's not necessarily elderly, just starting to reach that area. The book is deadass suggesting rotting corpses.
I feel like they watched “Soylent green” (where they do eat the elderly) and ran with it / did lazy world building
I think this book's biggest issue is that it drastically overestimates what it would take for humans to start being cool with cannibalism. I can imagine some way simpler and more realistic scenarios for that to happen, even in my lifetime, without everyone being cartoonishly evil about it. But that would require admitting that eating meat is not a black and white issue 🙃
Based on the logic of the book, and knowing the author is a hardliners vegan, I'd assume they have major anemia. These are the types of vegans who eventually become carnivores because it's the black and white mindset, not the actual impact that is at the core of their worldview
Personally, I would be fine with cannibalism, as long as it isn't the brain. That leads to prion diseases.
There was a scientist in the UK that proposed lab grown human meat as something that would actually be healthier than normal animal meat.
And hey, it IS human. It should have everything a human needs, right xD
My first thought was religious reasons: eating the dead to carry on some aspects or something like that. It could be treated like an addictive substance like in Fallout 3 and you could narrowly avoid cannibalism by way of vampirism instead. It could be more like the Purge or Hunger Games, where folks are chosen to literally sacrifice themselves to the upper class to maintain what is believed to be a balance. Idk, anything could have been better than "all animals dead whoa."
Considering how hard it is for some people to turn to cannibalism in situations where their survival is on the line, I find it hard to buy into the idea where the world just gets super cool about eating other humanoids let alone actual humans.
@@annerumain7711 I wouldn't expect anyone to LIKE doing it, but with enough desensitization and desperate circumstances, it'd be on the table...pun intended. I'm thinking several hard years of nuclear winter or something.
the most eminent zoologist is obviously the one with the most entries in their pokedex
the most eminent zoologist has boxes full with one of every pokémon, one for each evo stage AND one of each shiny
@@AwsomenessRain Psh, no, it's the one who has all of the hidden ability shinies, event moves on the normal ones, and has in fact, multiple normal ones caught in every single pokeball (each with exclusive moves).
oh and they own a japanese ranch, too, can't forget the japanese ranch (because fight me, My Pokemon Ranch is a prerequisite, you don't box your gen 3-4 pokemon you put them in your ranch)
Zoologist here! Definitely no head zoologist, its too broad a scene with too many peculiarities, except we do all swear undying loyalty to David Attenborough as our god-king
I laughed at the “eminent zoologist” bit. Like no description, no specialization, just the top dog zoologist for the entire animal kingdom
I greatly enjoy this comment and wanted to add a personal example, I remember being recommended to reach out to a renowned leech expert with my questions on studying chaetognaths but they replied that they were confident on freshwater worms but not marine ones. We are all united by fealty to David Attenborough.
@@Melissa-zh3zl Not only that, but studying an epizootic or zoonosis would be a bt outside of zoology's wheelhouse; I would probably expect research from someone studying veterinary medicine, [EDIT: epidemiology], or virology, or even - in the case of cattle - animal science.
My best guess is it's a book by someone with no science background. Like if you asked this person who the head physicists are, they'd probably say michio Kaku and Neil degrasse Tyson.
It feels like something you could say even back in the oppenheimer days but not today because I don't think science really works like that
@@robertborland5083 I love David attenborough! I'd swear fealty to him
As someone who also has ARFID and who struggles with veggies A LOT, i need a shirt that says "the dark side of vegetables" in spooky font now.
‘Tis the season to be spooky!
idea for her new merch line???
Veggies actually do produce harmful toxins as a defense mechanism. Take Brussels spouts-they have over 100 different types of carcinogens in them. That’s why so many people think they taste so bad and you have to do a lot of crap to make them tolerable. Your body is telling you NO!! Don’t eat that!!
But we do it anyways and become slowly tolerant to these toxins so that we can extract some of the good nutrients from them.
And we used to be hunter gatherwrs just hunting and eating meat all day! And we didn’t know which plant was going to kill us or not, so we mostly abstained!! Not saying veggies are evil, but eating meat should not be demonized. It is a primal human diet that many people have healed auto immune disease and lost a bunch of unwanted weight by eating more of it.
And I appreciate animal life so much since I’ve become carnivore because I realize how good I feel eating steak and cutting out carbs. I am so grateful for the life that nourishes me. I’ve given up so many foods that I used to love but I don’t even crave them anymore. I feel great and I encourage other to look into carnivore/Keto diet as well
I’m always disappointed with “meat bad” fiction. You have a perfect chance to criticize the massive way industry and capitalism hurts people, animals, and the planet, but instead just say “meat bad”.
I used to be an animal rights activist and the reason I left was because there are actual things I do hate about the meat industry and all that, but no one who is a thought leader in that space seems to understand what to actually focus on and no one seems to have ever been to a farm or thought through the real world. This means a lot of them will never actually help animals truly because they alienate the people like me who object to shit like Tyson but bring in the people who starve themselves eating only durian.
It’s exactly how people misinterpreted The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, as about how gross meat is and not just how awful the slaughterhouse empires were treating their workers, and how impossible the American dream was in general.
@@dismurrart6648 I feel you, as an animal lover I tried to put aside my misgivings and attend an animal rights club meeting at my college, and it was… quite horrifying, to say the least. The meeting was literally about creating, in their words, “vegan propaganda” and they showed us images of racist world war II posters as “inspiration”. Literally supervillain shit, in the moment I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t even know what to do. Needless to say, I wrote them an upset email about why it was harmful and never went back. I think these spaces are just fundamentally coming from a place of too much privilege that blinds them from addressing human concerns. It’s a shame, because I believe that human and animal welfare go hand in hand, and you can’t address one without addressing the other.
@@LPSSYLVEONstudios yeah I left because I wasn't seen as radical enough. The leader of the one at my college full in claimed to be a member of the ALF. Iykyk.
It reminds me of a guy I dated. He was in law school and came from the inner city. He did actually luck/bootstrap out of poverty and wanted to get his law club to come with him and teach classes and legal stuff you need to know for running a business in his home city. That's not gonna save someone from the poor house, sure, but it's basically giving people free access to legal info.
The communist(white guy who came from money) in the club threw a hissy fit because if they did, then they would be continuing capitalism and making those poor people part of the problem.
Yeah the guy running a liquor store is "the man". Ty unwashed rich kid who's mad at dad and has never struggled.
Yeah, it's like if I hear a person refer to "animal rights" instead of "animal welfare", I brace myself for wave of ignorance coming soon after.
This reminds me of something the Jimquisition described in videogames: the Pokemon problem. Where a fictional world is solely focused on its gimmick to the point of absurdity. The people in this world are obsessed with meat in a way that makes no sense for a near-future Earth. We aren't like this with animal meat, why would we be with human meat?
Fascinating observation! The only justification I can think of to excuse the author is that she is from Argentina and beef-eating is a big part of the country's culture.
makes sense.
"People in this future world are obsessed with meat in a way that makes no sense for near-future earth. We aren't like this with animal meat..."
Spoken like someone who has never met a die-hard carnist.
@@Mondomeyer Your comment reminds me of that Liver King's "Christmas Tree".
@@Mondomeyer I'm sure there are a few people like this. But not enough to rewrite society
I feel like to explore this in any meaningful way it needs to be writ from a victims perspective.
honestly yeah. It's a big gap in a lot of supposedly thoughtful stories.
I love your reasonable level headed views.
I can’t even accept the initial premise. We’ve seen real cultures with meat scarcities and they just started eating less meat. People would eat fake meat and meat substitutes long before they’d eat people.
Also killing off all the fauna seemed like an unnecessary plot hole the author didn’t need to include.
It’s dumb 😅 but I guess that’s what happens when you write a straw man instead of an actual story.
Yeah, I got hung up on those points too.
If there were no more meat/animal products then humans would just adapt to that. Maybe there would be an underground human meat market but it wouldn't be the norm. It's not like meat is literally addictive.
Killing off all the animals would only make sense if the virus was deadly to humans and even then it would be nearly impossible to wipe out all animals. Not to mention the massive ecological collapse caused by such an action.
Now imagine a version of this done "right". Perhaps have a zombie/vampire virus that makes you immortal at the cost of needing to eat fresh human flesh to keep from going feral. How would world governments react? What would happen to those who were infected? Would unscrupulous people intentionally infect themselves in order to live forever? There, a much better book with the same title!
@@brushdogart I like that vampire idea so much better, it makes their behaviour make way more sense. The way the people were acting in this book was like they were in the apocalypse from The Road, not like they could go have a beyond meat burger and fries for 7.99$ instead of searching graves or garbage bins 😂
Yeah, like, look at, for instance, the cuisine of Buddhist monks where they don't eat meat, they invented seitan! There's actually centuries of history behind veganism and vegetarianism, you just have to look to non-Western countries! That's always the thing that gets me about so many hardcore, militant vegans, they're so obviously white and honestly really look down on non-white people using their veganism to justify it whereas, if they just broadened their horizons, they'd actually find a lot of what they're looking for!
Dear author: Even if some people just don't want to be vegan, WE LITERALLY JUST MADE MAMMOTH MEATBALLS IN A LAB. No one is turning to humans in this situation.
There are societies that turned to cannibalism likely because of scarcity of protein in their diet - the author could have looked at those as well. No one started to farm humans (well, obviously, if you lack protein to feed your humans) but for example, people would ritually eat their dead relatives, this being part of the funeral rites, and showd respect fir the dead as well. Older, not factory farming societies also had and have respect for the animals raised for meat and this isn't that far off from ideas like eating fallen enemies to preserve their strength, we don't literally need to despise the animal we eat to slaughter it, as odd as it may seem now. Hunters also usually have this innate respect of the prey. I know, I know, we see it as hypocrisy but they would not.
And yes there is also the option to eat less meat, as did those societies that resorted to cannibalism. We eat more eat now we ever did - with the exception few peoples like those in the deep Arctic where human edible plants just don't thrive - and it used to be for most meat was for special occasions and celebrations, or is eaten in really small portions, as it stilk is for many people outside the developed world. Meat might be culturally important for many, but it's not the same as we must have it all the time.
The best well “meat horror” I’ve ever experienced is the Magnus archives episode that deal with the flesh. The quote “you can close your eyes but you can never stop the slaughter’ haunts me.
Oh those fucked me up good. Especially the meat industry ones really stayed with me and I had a nightmare about it month later. That one really creeped me out and I was pretty relieved when I figured out I was just reliving the plot of a podcast episode and not my brain simple fucking with me (I almost never get nightmares and the few I have tend to be awkward social situations so that's why it was extra weird)
Meat is meat, right?
I do like that it doesn't dip into total absurdity when it comes to slaughterhouses. Supernatural time/space distortions aside, anyways.
The Killing Floor is still haunting every time i re-listen to it. Tbh a lot of tma episodes are like that, Lost John's Cave made me realize that YES, i do in fact have claustrophobia
The Magnus Archives truly shined when it took the mundane and injected supernatural horror elements into it. Sometimes I relisten to statements from seasons 1 through 3 because they were some of the best horror writing I had heard, and I really miss when everything wasn't so grand in a sense. It all stopped feeling scary when we stepped away from regular places like gyms or meat processing plants into... A garden where humans are grown like flowers. It was interesting and grotesque, but it was not scary.
(Do note that this is all just my take on the series! I find the fans who like seasons 4 and 5 a lot more powerful than me for being able to appreciate what I couldn't.)
I really wish meat scared me, but I thought that the flesh episodes were well written and slightly unsettling nonetheless.
Yeah that ending looks like it came out of nowhere.
Now. Excuse me, I have to go sadistically torture an apple.
[Dons a Medieval executioner's mask and slowly, agonizingly starts peeling an apple.]
the second you started talking about how this book presents a group of Rich Elites who are trying to make people eat Human Flesh i started to get the antisemitism stomachache.
Same. The second someone talks about "the elite" my alarm bells go of
That soured my opinion the first time I read the novel as well.
ESPECIALLY considering that Jewish people have very famously been victims of the kind of extreme dehumanization and graphic violence the book is about.
Literally same
Antisemitism stomachache is such a good term for that feeling.
oh my god i read tender is the flesh about 2 years ago and i kept thinking "man i hope crow caller covers this book someday this sucked" im so excited to watch this omg. i got a tiktok recommending it to me and i was like "hey that sounds good!" and let me tell you those booktok girlies lied so hard
edit: if you want to actually read a good book about factory farming and has interesting and thoughtful takes on eating meat and the culture around eating animals read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, i read it around the same time as Tender Is The Flesh and i enjoyed my experiencing Eating Animals MUCH MORE that Tender Is The Flesh.
I'm a bit late to it, but I had so many people recomend it after perfected. I hadn't heard of it before!
thanks for the book rec! I actually liked Tender, and I think I gave it 5 stars... but like I said before it was marketed as horror and so I read it as such... I will be rereading it tho, and most likely will end up changing my review and rating on GoodReads...
The most eminent zoologist was the one who defeated all other zoologists in physical combat
VERMONT COW PARADE MENTIONED
VERMONG COW PARADE..... HONOURED................................ I was wondering how long it'd be before a local recognized my home zone
Haha greetings from the alps :D cows in flower crowns are the best thing ever I with everyone could experience some very good cows in their little get ups
They are good cows, Bront.
i watched a documentary for a class analyzing several viewpoints on meat & animal farms- with a very obviously holier-than-thou approach to the whole thing. the part that has stood out to me since forever was one person explaining that they would only eat meat occasionally or at a social gathering, and contribute to animal welfare on his own time- he also said that not everyone can fight for every little thing, and wearing yourself thin will only hurt you instead of help others. i thought it was very insightful and very true.
and THEN the narrator comes in with "but what if, say, a pedophile only occasionally "indulges"? are they then less bad?"
i had to scrape my jaw off the floor. the fucking audacity is stunning. you could have said ANYTHING else. also, the nerve to interview this guy and then compare him to a fucking pedo. this over footage of him enjoying himself at a social gathering, no fucking less. i *really* wish we could talk about how horrible the meat industry is without it getting dominated by shit like this.
adding on now that ive actually finished the video:
there are a few fish dishes from several cultures where the fish are either served alive or prepared while still alive & just barely dead by the time its served. you can feel how you want about that, but i dont really wanna harp on it. i will say that the fish are usually either killed Very quickly or literally intoxicated so they wouldnt feel it anyway. think how you would put crabs on ice to put em to sleep before throwing them in the boiler.
my working theory is that the author heard the "eaten alive" part and decided meat eaters are sadists or something. if the angle on sexist oppression was more explored, you could say the humans being eaten alive is an allegory for how women are figuratively eaten alive the moment we act out of line or gradually by the pressures and expectations set on us to conform, but since its pretty clearly a 1:1 on cows it falls apart really fast. its like you said about the perfected series, an interesting concept destroyed by the execution.
yeah, eating meat and being a sick freak who harms children is NOT the same thing and should NEVER be compared!!!! WOW ... the audacity indeed!!!!!
@@ashleyreynolds8961the literal fucking audacity.
God, the moral grandstanding among vegans is absolutely unhinged. They even shame within their own community if someone isn't "vegan enough" for them. I start seeing red when they relate r@pe and pedophilia to slaughterhouses. No, it's not the fucking same actually.
Wouldn’t you know it, I made that exact argument @ crow caller. I know it’s offensive as shit, but it’s a more accurate comparison than you think. I defy you, give me a concrete moral difference that isn’t just “they’re animals and we’re humans” or “sex is different than eating”, both of which are fallacious. Domestic animals have the abstract reasoning capabilities of toddlers. They know what death is, they know what freedom is, they resent confinement as much as any child, and they don’t want to be trafficked, abused or preyed upon. If you don’t have arguments, you don’t have real beliefs.
Hi! I'm involved in livestock research which aims to increase animal welfare in the industry. This topic is so so interesting to me! Attempting to find a balance between animal needs and human needs is the crux of the livestock industry. Pretty much everyone in this field cares a whole lot about animals and wants them to have a fair and good life. We also care a whole lot about people, and we want to make sure that everyone is able to afford the nutrition that they need. Welfare can be very expensive, so trying to keep costs low to supply affordable food sources while also maintaining humane treatment is a daily battle. There is always a give and take in this field where we must try to have it both ways. In my opinion, that would be a much more interesting and nuanced topic to discuss in a dystopian book than "cow = human". I enjoyed hearing what you had to say about farming, Crow! Thanks for covering such a cool topic!
That definitely sounds like a more interesting topic! Honestly, I'd read spec fiction about navigating the weird, ethically fraught lines involved in feeding people under capitalism
Well you sure sound like a monster lmao
Hello fellow ARFID haver!!! It's so hard to explain to people that I'm not just a "picky eater" and that it's a genuine medical condition. It also sucks because I do have moral issues with the meat industry, but some of the only sources of protein I'm able to eat are beef and chicken. Vegetarianism/veganism is just not an option for me if I want my body to get the nutrients it needs, and a book like 'Tender is the Flesh' that compares eating meat to cannibalism is definitely uh,,,,, difficult to cope with. Food is a morally neutral thing, and moralizing food itself instead of the means by which it is produced only makes it harder for me, a person with ARFID and in recovery from anorexia, to be able to eat without crippling anxiety and guilt.
I went through a really rough patch a few years back wanting to be vegetarian but learning quickly I never could because of my disordered eating (similar to ARFID, more to do with my Autism). I felt so bad that I nearly stopped eating altogether. I'm glad I found my own way out of that because there are so few voices in the vegetarian/vegan discussions that acknowledge that some people just cannot live like that either due to disordered eating issues or more physical dietary restrictions. We all deserve to eat, we are not bad for doing so (even when it IS a choice). Thank you for bringing it up because I so rarely see it discussed on either side of the discourse.
Same!
as an argentinean this is so embarrassing 😭
I'm not sure but this book it's likely at least partially inspired by an argentinean classic called El Matadero (the slaughterhouse) by Esteban Echeverría from 1840, the book it's a political commentary/propaganda book written in the middle of a civil war that portrays the other as bulgar and beastly, etc. In the book there's a flood that causes hunger, the hunger makes the common folk raid a slaughter house (it describes the skinning and cutting up of the cows, the blood and mud mixing etc etc) a rogue bull killing a child and the torture and execution of the straight man (representing the opposing side). It's an interesting read with the proper historical and social context and a classic for a reason(disclaimer: i am not a scholar or an expert i am 20 and read it in secondary school)
About funerals for ashes remains in Argentina. I have gone to funerals held with ashes remains and it's not something so uncommon that could warrant that description BUT it is significantly less common than a ground burial, all the same beside personal or religious preference people wouldn't tell you something like that. also idk how funerals work elsewhere but here rule of thumb there's the funeral (a wake) at the parlor that several hours, then the burial.
The reaccion you had to this subject is completely understandble and completely right
Very Long Comment sorry !
I enjoy the comment! Since reading Tender is the Flesh, I have wondered about its Argentine cultural context.
Voy a re leer el matadero, me sirve la info jajsj
Book : " Weslthy Jews want you to be cannibals! "
Me: "Uh, human meat isn't kosher."
Book : "We don't have time for your logic! "
they weren’t even subtle about the antisemitism
Clearly it's because they're also liberal /s
@@bucca2i thought it was kosher like in the extreme
What are you talking about??? The wealthy people we see in the book are OBVIOUSLY white. You see rich exploitative people and you think “oh they must mean Jews”
@@antoniasigafus5359still wouldn't be kosher, just forgivable and understandable in very specific extreme circumstances
looking forward to this because every person i know that's read this has nothing but praise for it 😭 my biggest beef (no pun intended) with it is that it hits a similar pitfall that handmaid's tale does- if you are aware of the true horrors of things like the atlantic slave trade and the subjugation of indigenous people etc etc, this... really isn't shocking. it can't be speculative if there are real world examples and events that are similar enough which have happened in real life.
yeah, it's simultaneously not that shocking because humans have always subjugated each other in various horrific ways, but also completely unbelievable because cannibalism is so inherently repulsive to like 99.9% of humanity (i'm aware some cultures engage in cannibalism for spiritual purposes, but it's my understanding that no culture on earth is known to eat human meat just because they think it's yummy). like, even among the worst abuses of the chattel slavery era, i think people would have been horrified if some plantation owner was just casually eating his slaves, yet this book wants us to believe that in this hypothetical near future all it takes is a few magazine articles to convince us that turning grandma into a doner kebab is fine and cool, actually.
@@friday13thirteen I totally agree with y'all !! Like chattel slavery was literally five centuries of africans being treated as cattle (ex. hair shearing for use in furniture; forced reproduction to continue the workforce; hunting/capturing of both escaped enslaved and free black people; and even instances of cannibalism and torture carried out by slaveowners) and yet this book seems to undermine all of these real life horrors by making them ideologically baseless beyond a "humans are the real animals :(" cliche. even amongst a system that legally defined black people as subhuman and akin to animals, there was a huge population of both known and unknown abolitionists adamantly opposed to it. it's bizarre that everyone would just be 100% down for this seemingly overnight if it couldn't happen in around half a millennium.
+ also yeah, as an anthro major, aversion to cannibalism is one of the closest things we have to a universal human principle. i've yet to read of any instances of cannibalism that didn't have an explicit religious purpose.
@@friday13thirteen there are documented incidents of slavers eating slaves/serving human meat to slaves as punishment (see the case of the Arrogante), and for a period of time the british were VERY into eating mummified bodies from egypt, but yeah. not as a food staple, more as a novelty from people who denied slaves and the resting egyptians their humanity.
@@gaymiensLMAO exactly. If you’re a historian, nothing surprises you. It disgusts you, but there’s no surprise
The thing is the person that wrote the handmaidens tale specifically took inspiration from things that actually happened. Like almost everything so that might have been the point for that book?
I think people who say “I don’t think it’s really about veganism” haven’t encountered some of the more out there vegans/ARA’s, because I immediately recognise a lot of their talking points being played straight in the book. “Meat is literally addictive and people who eat meat are meat addicts” is something I’ve seen multiple vegans earnestly argue. Replace the humans with cows (lmao the turntables) and much of the descriptions of the slaughterhouses sounds 1:1 how I’ve seen animal rights activists (as opposed to animal welfare) describe the supposed reality of all slaughterhouses in the real world. That people are unfamiliar with this sort of rhetoric doesn’t surprise me because most vegans are reasonable people, but the rhetoric is absolutely out there and absolutely in the book as well.
...How can anyone argue with full sincerity that "meat is addictive, therefore meat is bad and we must abolish the consumption of meat" when entire industries surround the socially-accepted cultivation and distribution of addictive plants, i.e. tobacco and coffee? (To say nothing of the use of plants in illicit drug industries, though that's a topic I'm much less familiar with.)
@@chansesturm7103 not to mention it's "addictive" for the same reason carbs are. They're nutritious and valuable in a low food environment. We're programmed to be attracted to them.
And they're both healthier than another "addiction" of humanity: sugar.
okay just to be clear: no, sugar is not addictive either. If you’re going to dismiss ridiculous arguments peddled by ARA’s you need to also dismiss ridiculous arguments peddled by the diet industry.
@@AwsomenessRain Very well, I'll amend my reply in that case.
Neil Gaiman did this back with Babycakes, which you can also argue is about abortion, but holy shit it's not as bad as this book
The author of this book seems to not be aware of human prion disease, the human equivalent to BSE (mad cow disease). A society with sustained cannibalism would see a definite increase in cases of this terrible disease, which would be hard to hide from the population, I think.
I've got to admit though, that I'm not an epidemiologist and have most of my limited knowledge about this from a documentary about a population in Papua New Guniea, the Fore people, who engaged in cannibalism as part of their funerary rites. It had devastating consequences for the community, as many members, foremost those involved with butchering and eating the meat (women and children) got a degenerative disease called Kuru, leading unvaryingly to the death of the affected people by destroying their brain.
Thankfully, through studies undertaken there the cause for the before mysterious disease was discovered, which, combined with cultural changes in the Fore community, for example changes in funerary rites, lead to a point where no new cases were found.
To make a long tale short: Ignoring this problem makes the premise of the book even more ... unbelievable.
I've never read it, and won't in the future, but I found the analysis interesting, as I probably wouldn't have seen the connection to veganism.
I don't think the author knew. Although I think I remember Kuru came specifically from eating the brain, I also remember a part of the book where in a butcher shop human brains are being served.
I think this would also speedrun developing new prion diseases. If the meat eating addiction is so bad, I don't think most people would care what the human cattle were eating, including trash - just like prion diseases from pig meat in areas with weaker food health inspections.
@@tomrojigualdoyeah kuru occurred specifically as a result of eating human brain tissue, not just generalized cannibalism, and even among those who participated, kuru’s death rate was about 3.5% of the population at its highest. Obviously this is still a huge problem, but the world described in the book is already pretty definitively fucked, so even if some people are eating brains, and some small portion of those people develop kuru, it’s a minor issue in the face of….everything else. Non-brain meat won’t make your prions start spontaneously folding. Not defending cannibalism, but I also wouldn’t Cinema-Sins-Style ding the highly metaphorical dystopian horror story for lack of realism.
Prion diseases are very rare and are mostly spontaneous, not transmittable
@@victorvale1015but they'd be far more common if people were regularly eating the dead, meaning that the transmission of prions through consumption would skyrocket and increase their prevalence exponentially. Mind you, it would almost never become a full-blown *pandemic* or anything, but prions would certainly be of greater concern.
blood libel! that's the word i was trying to remember!
blood libel on the mind lmao????
It sounds like Beastars takes a similar premise and explores it with a lot more nuance - both in its class/sex allegories and in its character relations.
Highly recommend it to anyone that hasn't checked it out yet, the adaptation is pretty good if unfinished (and taking the place of my beloved Land of the Lustrous >:( , the comic is complete iirc, and isn't one of those series that's going to take you a year to get through.
Beastars and it’s spin offs are leagues better than this and I’m only 4 mins in the video😭 I’m sure of it!
I know a Beastars *fanfic* that goes even more in depth with the meat topic since they felt like the original left it kind of ambiguous.
So even fanfics of a furry anime are better than this mess.
Beastars, it's written bythe daughter of Baki's creator!
@@teslashark ... wait really
EDIT: well I'll be
@@nunyabiznes7446 The world's freest and 2nd freest manga creators
I know this isn't about anything but the book but I feel so seen by you mentioning your ARFID and eating plain pasta bc this has been my safe food ever since i was 3 years old and it's nice to have found a kindred spirit in something so "unique" 😭
My sister is always like "how can you eat buttered noodles every day" 😭
Arfid pasta pals unite 🙌
arfid plain pasta eaters UNITE!
Oh my fuck, I had no idea how common plain pasta as a safe food is for people with ARFID!
Squad!
REALLLL!! im not even diagnosed with arfid (i do have asd) but pasta is kind of like a safe food for me
In line with that "the book refuses to acknowledge viewpoints other than it's own"- I can definitely imagine that some (emphasis on some) people would lean full-throttle into the idea of keeping "domestic heads" or even hunting people for sport, because this is an objectively disturbing premise of a story and people get really weird about their trauma and fears sometimes (not a judgement, just a statement), so it's not THAT out there to imagine a minority of in-fiction people would lean full-throttle into this situation and create a whole spectacle out of it/do anything to dehumanize the people they're eating to feel less bad about it. People robbing hearses also isn't that surprising since people have been robbing graves since we've just about had graves, and that was before the things that we buried were apparently a highly-addictive substance, so I can also very easily imagine that hearse-robbing for a quick buck was one of the first things to start happening once the people-eating began. So yeah, there are definitely some concepts in here I can buy happening, especially since it sounds like there was some chaos and pandemonium when this animal virus first happened w/ the panic killing of all the animals (and people get opportunistic in chaos).
But the fact that these things are SO prevalent and normalized? I don't remember if you said how long ago the Transition was so I don't know how many generations this has been going on for, but I find it very hard to believe that people would just be Okay with everything happening in such extreme degrees unless there was already some pretty extreme instability happening long before the Transition. I still can't get over the guy's boss being like "Hey, good job champ, here's a whole human person as a bonus", which is the whole crux of what little plot it sounds like this book has.
I'm kind of reminded of Repo! The genetic opera- Which I'm a huge fan of but also recognize it's in the same vein of "this was almost really good at saying something- but at least Repo leaned full-throttle into it's absurdity. Of course I say that having not read Tender myself, but from this video and the descriptions I'm hearing about it, it sounds like this book wants to be taken seriously. So I guess what I'm saying is it sounds like Tender could've benefited from a few more musical numbers.
Zydrate comes in a little glass vial…
love that movie... I actually used to watch this every night to fall asleep to! (that one and Warm Bodies) I LOVE Anthony Stewart Head, I think he has an amazing voice!!!! When he played Giles (BtVS) I always had a little crush on him... (even tho, I will always be Team Spike! and Team Spuffy) ... Giles did have a special place in my heart!!!
@@phoenixfritzinger9185A little glass vial?
13:27 why would the inability to access beef make people start killing pets for fun??? I have a big disconnect here???
Ironically, in my own work, I use cannibalism and body horror as allegories for capitalism! XD Honestly, I feel like most people would actually be behind a lot of ideas like having to eat less meat and working to make the conditions for animals better, but the problem with so many vegans, especially WHITE vegans, is just this complete and utter lack of nuance. At a certain point, it really becomes apparent that those people actually don't really actually care about animals or well-fair or the environment, but are really just looking to make themselves feel superior to as many other people as possible, and especially superior to people of colour, and that's a shame. There is so much better to be done in the world of animal rights and animal welfare, but so many involved in it are simply in it for their own ego and it makes the entire field toxic, look at PETA and them killing 90% of all animals they "save".
Zoology student here: yes. It’s me. I’m the chief zoologist
Why do I feel like "most eminent zoologist" might've been a crack-ball with the credibility of conspiracy-grifting behind him rather than even a doctorate?
Yay moral scrupulosity/eating disorder crossover mentioned!! Thank you!
How does this end up feeling like a fetish thing despite explicitly being written to condemn it??
PETA has a lot of such art.
I really feel like this topic was more appropriately addressed by "Under the Skin" about 'aliens' harvesting humans. It more directly addressed the cognitive dissonance between how we view the suffering of humanity and the suffering of other creatures, by forcing the reader into the POV of both the aggressor, the person who's accepted that they 'have' to cultivate these simple meat creatures on 2 legs, and the victims, the many practically anonymous hitchhikers and the forgotten who've been picked up by this operation.
Was scrolling through to see if someone else mentioned Under The Skin. An amazing book, and wish got more love as a book. And yeah, I felt like that book addressed the issues of the meat industry and classism, and so much more than a lot of others.
I also have a lot of feelings on the movie.
Perfected is a book that has lived in my head rent-free ever since I saw your video on it, even though that was all the interaction I had with it or it's story, while Tender Is The Flesh is one I have heard multiple people talk about, including in person, and I forget about the fact it exists until someone brings it up again.
While the first one has interesting ideas but fumbles the execution, I felt like it could have been something, in fact I felt that so strongly that I spent an entire night writing the outline of a story inspired by it, trying to get that "something" that it could have been (I don't know if I did, but hey, it got me to try at least), while Tender feels like it has one good idea, and then climbed on topof it to shout at us peasants to marvel at how smart it is for having that one good idea, and barely even tries to do anything with it...
This is like The Purge levels of "realistic" dystopia 🙃
can you imagine if the author had ever heard of human prion disease
@@cyanthrope It is a plot point in the book.
As SOON as you mentioned "Liberal elites", I cringed so hard. I gave up on the book after that. Even if they didn't mean for it to imply Jewish people... it does. And there's no denying that.
It doesn’t imply Jewish people at all. It only does if you believe that about Jewish people.
@@narcissistsanonymous3904You reek of bad faith and shit. Referring to a "mysterious group of powerful rich people" as "elites" is a common right-wing dogwhistle to imply the group is jewish. SOMETIMES people who don't know about the dogwhistle say "elites" when theyre just talking about the 1%. Fys troll, I'm not going to argue with you.
Bruh, how does a simple statement equate to Jewish people? What other term must we use to refer to the rich, elite, oppressive ruling class?
@@midapita @narcissistsanonymous3904 The specific phrase "liberal elites" is a common antisemitic dog whistle popular as code for "Jews" among neo Nazis. All language exists in context and the unfortunate fact is that this is a frequent dog whistle used against Jewish people. Bigotry never actually makes sense so this is no exception.
I cant understand the connection between Jewish people and the liberal elites thing 😭 can someone pls explain I'm too dumb for this
Animal Science student here! The Most Eminent Zoologist(TM) is clearly David Attenborough and he can't die
I don't think you mentioned this bit, but the part where he goes to visit the 'animal testing' facility was just really stupid. In North America at least, the laws around animal testing are very strict, people go to jail for not following the rules. It's especially frustrating because it tries to garner our support by replacing the animals with humans, but that is literally what happens in our real world as an alternative to animal testing! If animal testing is not done, then the next step after theory is human trials. There is usually a monetary incentive for human trials, because most people don't want to be 'lab rats'. This means that only the poor and desperate are subject to this.
The book is literally advocating for what it is using as a metaphor.
Oh yeah! It was so dumb, but was honestly short and surprisingly less shocking so I didn't really mention it. I was looking forward to the lab to be the worst of it, but it was almost disappointingly just more lame gore
this is the most creepypasta like book that wasnt about a creepypasta I've ever seen, like the mlp creepypata Cupcakes had a better take on cannibalism and it was an edgy splatterpunk creepypasta about making cupcakes from pony guts
I feel like Neal Shusterman's "Unwind" touched on a lot otlf the interesting themes of this book (dehumanization and capitalism, the human potential for cruelty and indifference towards others) but did a much better job of it (if i remember right -it's been like 10 years since i read it to be fair). It was also super disturbing, but the central conceit of that is, in a future where abortion is made illegal (😬) unwanted children can be handed over to the state, and when they turn 18, they can be "unwound" and used for organ donation.
My least favourite thing about this book from what I've gleaned in this video isn't the content - although I do find it pretty meh - but rather the way it's written.
Like the way it frontloads so much of its worldbuilding seems like such sloppy writing. Particularly in how it just lists things that happened. It feels like I'm just reading the Wikipedia summary on it.
I feel like that's a sign of an unconfident or unpractised writer, does anyone else get what I mean? Rather than drip feed elements of the conspiracy and how the world was shaken by the sudden death of all animals, it just lays it all out at the beginning and then rushes into the shock factor parade.
Right from the get-go you're aware it's likely not an actual virus and that's so boring to me.
I found it to be extremely well written. I don’t feel it info dumped at all. I liked that the virus is probably fake because it demonstrates how a government will try to manipulate people to get at its true goal: population reduction. Though there are already so many paranoid people out there that this might feed their false narrative so there also that lol.
I just wanted to put out there that A/RFID (avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder) can mean a whole bunch of things! I rarely see people talking about this eating disorder and it’s more common than you would think!
as a zoology major it's actually my life's greatest dream to be known as the world's most eminent zoologist
Your videos are such a vibe every single time. My dad died a few weeks ago, and it’s been hard to find anything to enjoy, but you are just such a cool person and your videos are so fun and interesting. Thanks :)
It’s so delightful and refreshing to hear someone say the obvious, that animals are not human and we cannot apply our moralities to them. I’ve worked in zoos and have taken courses on animal welfare and behavior, and one of the big things you have to get over is that your feelings about something are not applicable to the animal. Yeah, it sucks to catch a duck for a medical exam, it’s stressful. But that duck is going to get over it essentially instantly once you release it back into its habitat.
It’s also kind of wild that the author doesn’t seem to confront the question of how people get to the point where they can maintain an industry like this. Sure okay you remove the vocal cords, you have people who want to eat meat, but these are still apparently human beings with human features. We literally accidentally made wolves look and sound more like humans during the initial domestication of dogs. How did enough people suddenly lose their ability to empathize to hold up a global industry?
Respectful applause for the good cows of the Vermont cow parade 👏🫡
it's called the strolling of the heifers, which is adorable.
I love how well thought out these reviews are. How you can recognize the potential and how it was not used to its full extent. It’s so sad when something has such an interesting concept but it is not explored properly. Also your outfit is adorable. I love the little horns with the shirt
The laugh that came out of my mouth when you read that woman had their limbs removed. Like, yeah, alright, who’s chopping cattle limbs off? Secondly, it was a huge missed opportunity to call human meat “mystery meat” instead of “special meat.” Lmao
Multiple ranches will cripple mother's limbs if they are at risk of harming the child.
I got really worried when this video popped up in my recommended because it arrived literally a week before I requested Tender from a nearby library, but I waited to watch it until I read the book. Unfortunately, it was a DNF, and so here I am!
While we definitely disagree on some points about meat, I really appreciate the way Crow discussed this book.
So... I'm a weirdo, and have kind of an obsession with cannibalism. I'm also (kind of? but not really) vegan-adjacent, as I don't eat meat (except fish) or dairy.
Tender is the Flesh was recommended to me for both of those reasons, but in spite of how short it was, I had a REALLY hard time getting into it. I didn't make it far into the book before I just gave up and returned it to the library.
The ideas in it are provocative, but like Crow said, essentially useless at best, and very damaging at worst. (The other fun cherry on top of all this is that I'm also Jewish, so the antisemitic conspiracy theories underpinning the story definitely made me uncomfortable.)
Excellent review, thanks for the hot takes!
Note: Manmeat is not halal or kosher
how much does the most eminent zoologist even know about the virus. leave that to the most eminent virologist.
Da spooky season has brought us crow
God I should try and think of something for halloween... I don't think I have it in me to like, quickl read all of goosebumps in a month though
I'm always so happy when you post! I love to hear your thoughts on various books
Love the cute lil horns!
They are one of my favourite accessories to wear and I very much wear them out of the house, often.
@@Crowcalleras you should
Most Eminent Zoologist vs Head Dog Guru of the Free World
*_Pick Your Fighter_*
I'm an ARFID haver too! I'm autistic, I typically only eat pasta, and I can't stand most vegans because they tend to get eugenicist with me quite quickly, I enjoyed Tender is the Flesh because I frankly never picked up on it as a vegan allegory, I saw it as an allegory for capitalism and the commodification of workers and the lower class, as well as women. Thank you so much for sharing this and taking the time to make it! I wish I could sit down with you and talk about this for hours, honestly, I've got a Special Interest in cannibalism and love picking things like this apart
I did a bunch of research on this author after reading because I'm Jewish and that makes me weary of conspiracy narratives, but all of her comments about it make it seem like she's very specifically targeting the corruption within Argentinian government which...doesn't completely alleviate my fears, because plenty of antisemitic conspiracy is unconscious, but it's...as far as I can tell, something coming from the context of another culture, and not a QAnon thing
@@cannibalgenderDon’t forget the translation barrier--the translator could've tweaked it a bit
i read this book and was OBSESSED....mostly because cannablism is my special intrest.....but i still quite like the book, but this definitely helps me recognize some of the glaring faults i missed. im a vegetarian (for religious reasons) and im not incredibly tuned into all the discorce around the meat industry, so i didnt quite catch onto the vegan themes..... i think in my brain i was reading a much cooler book.
There weren’t vegan themes, this CZcamsr has wildly misinterpreted.
@@kameronclark3979"Thanks to my own reading on the topic I gradually changed my diet and I stopped eating meat. When I did, a veil was drawn, and my view of meat consumption was completely changed. To me, a steak is now a piece of a corpse. One day I was walking by a butcher’s shop and all I saw were bodies of animals hanging down and I thought, “Why can’t those be human corpses? After all we are animals, we are flesh.” And that’s how the idea for the novel emerged."
Quote from the author about the book.
@@kameronclark3979there absolutely are vegan themes and if you look into the author for 5 minutes its literally confirmed by then
You can still enjoy a fictional book. Sometimes I feel like people forget books are meant to be enjoyed. Not just analyzed for ethics and politics.
@4PawSquad but these books don't exist in a vacuum it is informed by both ethics and politics
Unironically I think this book is a very telling look into the worldview of particularly adamant moralizing vegans who don’t seem to understand the actual issues around food production in our society. The shock and horror in this book is mostly meant to impart the reader with the feeling that “meat bad” while being so divorced from actual reality that it has little to say outside of that. While I can forgive a lot of hand waving when it comes to ‘what-if’ scenarios like this in fiction, I think it’s especially telling that there is seemingly no thought put into the whole “most animals are dead” thing besides as another shock element to disturb the reader. In real life, the mass death of several species would accelerate our already struggling ecosystem’s decline massively and make it more difficult to farm ANY sort of food, not just meat.
Furthermore, the author is, at best, wildly irresponsible and ignorant regarding the whole conspiracy theory angle and at worst, actively malicious. As you pointed out it’s absurd to think that “wealthy elites” (aka Jewish people) would be behind the push for cannibalism, and even implying that in a fictionalized setting is grossly negligent. It also ignores the actually interesting angle that could be taken with major corporations pushing for profit, which is an actually real issue both with animal farming and agriculture in our reality.
Overall this book sounds like hot garbage and I think the author has a lot to answer for, which is a shame because the premise could be an actually interesting look into a disturbing alternate reality. But as it is, it’s so unbelievable and irresponsibly written that it doesn’t say much and, ironically, makes the author’s clearly intended conclusion feel weaker than when it started.
The book is about corporations pushing for profit... did you read it?
Special Meat doesn't sound right. Should've gone with Long Pork or Nuevo Beef. Let people think of pigs or cows instead of people.
I'll have more to say as the reviews goes on but for the moment, I'll say this:
The taste of a pear is not worth the textural nightmare. They're meh at best
Edit 1: Holy shit, my nana's been dead for 9 years and we never buried her. We better get on that
Twist! Sudden betrayal, heartbreak. Sorry it happened to you but ultra here for it this sounds dumb as hellll
Oh, it's just... a trip. a LOT. you do not understand how LOT it is.
Respectfully, I think you missed a lot in this book. I watched your video first and then read the book. I do see some of your points, but at the same time I don't think it's saying a lot of the things you interpreted it as saying. There's a lot more going on in this book and a lot more nuance than you're giving it. I'm a vegetarian and I didn't read this book as exclusively a criticism of eating meat or saying that cows are people too. In addition, I think when reading this book, you have to go in with a high level of suspension of disbelief. Like it is shocking how fast people accept cannibalism, but I think it's meant to be extreme horror. The book also shows an example of someone who is disgusted by it and what happens to them. As for the uncontrollable hunger that some of the members of society have for meat, that's following the horror trope that once a person eats another human (or sometimes any meat at all), they have a veracious craving for it. Anyway, I totally get if you don't like the book, it's very disturbing, not realistic and not for everybody. It just feels like I read a different book than described in this video.
I do not believe the book is a commentary on meat production, I think it’s ultimately about capitalism and how quickly our culture and morals change based on what drives the economy and makes the rich more money.
Not saying the book was good. I honestly think it would have been better if there was more follow through on the conspiracy of the virus being a lie, or the consumption of humans being driven for political reasons. Like animals are safe to eat again, but the economy is so heavily driven by ‘heads’ now that to say it’s no longer necessary could potentially lead to business owners losing their fortunes (or governments who export their own people losing their profits).
Instead, the idea is just kinda mentioned and dropped from what I remember. Very disappointing ending as well. Would have preferred Marcos being caught and put through the same process we watched happen at the start. Being processed himself at his own factory. Much more fitting end.
The author has stated in an article she wrote that it was about both capitalist exploitation and meat production.
Perfected is what brought me to you. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! I've been super busy, but I'll be getting back to more regular uploads soon I think!
If you haven’t read Unwind yet, I’d love for you to dive in. It has this “one thing in our world changed” premise but it’s SO good. It’s this type of book done really well (imo). Thanks for another great review!
As a Zoologist, if there's chief zoologist, I sure as heck haven't heard of them
My interpretation of the ending was that.. He wanted his nornal life back the same way the meat eaters wanted to regain a bit of their normalcy by eating meat. In the end the main character isn't much different from the people he looks down on... Like his sister
omg i love your video’s so much i’m so excited for your next one!!
"assigning morality to food is how you get disordered eating" !!!
this! thank you for the concise summary
Ok so we're currently working on things like lab grown meat. Did that just never get off the ground there? Impossible burgers also not enough?
Like there are probably some options pre cannibalism
If you want this premise done well I'd recommend a channel 4 mockumentary 'The British Miracle Meat'. I don't want to spoil too much but it plays the whole thing very straight.
Hilariously the cartoon Bojack Horseman sort of did the theme of this book and a million times better (though using Chicken people)
Love to hear your perspective on this! I am surprised to hear of this book as i hadnt heard of it before and didnt know people liked it so much
Louis Erdrich’s “Future Home of the Living God” handles a lot of the same themes that “Tender is the Flesh” tries to but in a much more practical and kind way
huh i think i came out of a wildly different view of the novel. i saw it as an exploration of capitalism and the evils of human greed, and how it especially targets people of color (i remember there was a line exotifiying of meat from poc and immigrants were targeted) and the cannibalism being symbolic for the consumption of humans under that capitalist society rather than just a straightforward meat bad book. and how the main character has always been a bad person i do remember that scene where he i think had sex with a woman pretty like it was basically sa he always read to me as a sort of guy who is aware of the problems but benefits from the status quo too much to fight against it. sort of like the type of guy who espouses platitudes about womens rights but never confronts his male friend who makes derogatory comments about women. so honestly i never read the ending as a twist bc i already was like oh yeah this guy fucking sucks
like an interview quote from the author “Although my book contains clear criticism of the meat industry, I also wrote the novel because I have always believed that in our capitalist, consumerist society, we devour each other. We phagocyte each other in many ways and in varying degrees: human trafficking, war, precarious work, modern slavery, poverty, gender violence are just a few examples of extreme violence.” also i think some stuff sort of flew over my head bc im not argentenian so idk the nuances of meat in the culture as she has stated. like i dont think she got the message through perfectly i do think the virus stuff was dumb and i think it would have been far more interesting if it was more of a universe where cannibalism was legal but was treated moreso like a symbol of wealth. but i never saw it as a vegetarian novel really honestly i was pretty neutral with the gore i guess i took it as yeah if cannibalism wasnt so taboo im sure we would absolutely find a way to commodify
At the start of the book one of the meat bosses tell to his employee "I want black meat for the next week". The first humans to being eaten are foreigners. All the bosses are foreigners. It's a critique against colonization and also capitalism. How are people not getting this, I don't get it.
@@cidevant002Because vegans urironically espouse points from the book. Very militant ones, yes, but its hard to see "its a critique of capitalism" when vegans make the same argument
Also the author said its about meat. so.
That's literally what the person said at the beginning? They were talking about how they're trying to do that but at the base it's a meat bad book.
as someone whose safe food is chicken and pasta, i feel you on the plain pasta. its something i have absolutely done a lot and gotten eyebrow raised at Gortash
28:00 EXACTLY THIS, i think this is rly the crux of the issue with this book's premise for me- i don't think humanity is overall cruel or evil at all, & i think even if real-life cows were being treated like this, people would Know about it & they wouldnt be okay with it, theyd be horrified. also, and disclaimer i dont know much abt the meat industry other than stuff i heard in a documentary when i was a little kid, but i feel like if the author has to embellish this much the book kind of shoots itself in the foot, yknow? like if the author is presenting this as a near 1-1 parallel, realizing they're exaggerating makes me distrust them & their point more, if that makes sense (also i found ur videos the other day and i love them!! ur summary + analysis r very well put together and even tho im completely unfamiliar w the content of the books :} )
Dear Crow Caller,
The new microphone’s quality is better, or possibly I have less wax in my ears than I did the last time I tuned in to your channel. Either way this was a very good video and you always provide an insightful perspective. I completely agree with you; this novel was heavy handed with false equivalencies and felt holier-than-thou.
wow, i actually loved this book, i know it was very popular with the horror readers and i didnt get the same thing from it that you did... i do still have this book and i think i am gonna reread it and see if i see what you did... if so, this book will be completely different for me lol ... i freaking love you and your channel, i love the way you think and talk, keep doing what you do!!!
Dude even in zombie based media they aren’t cool with cannibalism and it’s shown as bad I don’t think mankind would be that quick to chow down on thy neighbor
When you want your book to be a modest proposal... Johnathan Swift did a much better job imo. When you take over 200 pages to do what he did in 30. 😂
crow's back!
I Lived!!! I've been moving house, it's been. so much. too much.
off-topic! but i love the little 'horns' in ur hair haha! very cool!
You know. . .the "most eminent zoologist," line could have been fixed by simply making the subject plural.
Acrually, I thought of how to reword it, and then I kept changing it until there was only the notion of what it was trying to say left. In other words, it's just badly written.
congratulations on reaching 20k! that's awesome
I kept seeing this book recommended as a „horror“ or a „fucked up“ book, and most of the reviews said it’s interesting but not that good. Thank you for this review!
the premise of Tender vaguely reminds me of matthew stokoe’s infamous book Cows. which i personally hated but some people really seem to love
[jonathan sims voice] hmm. more meat.
im so glad i found your channel i love your takes
This is an awesome review! loved hearing your perspective on this book
I think in the ending the head is being compared to his pet dog. Dont think about it too literally, cuz the metaphor isnt really about bestiality, just breeding animals with other animals. We are supposed to think the head is a replacement for his wife, as their relationship is strained, but hes actually using her to replace the dog that he lost. Which explains the revelence of passages where he is remininscing about his pet dog.
IMO the entire book makes more sense as a metaphor for eating animal meat and most of the characters represent a different excuse we use to justify eating meat or otherwise exploiting animals. Keep in mind im not vegan but Im well versed in the idealogy so Im not agreeing with the author but I do think this is what she meant.
The premise being so ridiculous is likely intentional. Shes saying "you wouldnt do this to a human so why is it ok to do it to an animal".
Idk how she could write this book and not see the obvious plot hole that it is extremely unlikely that humans would be the only animal meat that isnt affected by the virus. If we see through it, so do the characters. Same with the idea that the human meat is fed a vegetarian diet, meaning everyone else could also live that way. Its never explained or examined cuz the virus is made up, and everyone knows it deep down but wants to continue eating meat without guilt so they pretend they believe it. Marcos even says to his sister that people in the countryside dont use umbrellas cuz they arent afraid of birds giving them the virus.
The idea that there is some antisemitism in the government conspiracy thing is valid considering there are actually some extremist vegans who think along those lines. But personally i think the government making up a virus could be a metaphor for meat industry propaganda in Argentina. I think it could be both at the same time. Theres a small hint that the government targeted immigrant communities. To me that meant to show the hypocrisy that we think its ok to kill some types of animals to eat but not others.
The main character says he is vegetarian and finds meat consumption morally repugnant, then "lies" to others and says he cant eat meat due to health issues. Yet he does eventually eat meat anyways, like a person who is vegan except on holidays and special occassions. We know from the ending of the book he doesnt care about human life.
The people who hunt humans for sport are a metaphor for actual hunters, excusing their meat consumption as more ethical because it isnt factory farmed.
Marcus's sister represents the people who eat meat because they "believe" its the only safe way to live, despite it being obvious that there are vegan humans.
Im not sure about the scavengers but I see them as people living in poverty that rely on others for food and cant pick and choose. This is one of the reasons I dont see the book as just preachy vegan propaganda. To some extent, it is showing people dont have complete control over it. Just like how even vegans still rely on animal exploitation whenever they take medication which is animal tested, for example. Marcus having to work in the slaughterhouse to support his dad is another example of this. I got the feeling while reading this that everyone is complacent but also unable to escape the new societal norms.
I can see why many people dont like the book but personally I love it just because the vagueness and lack of detail in the world building makes it so open to interpretation. You have to really like literary novels that arent super plot driven (as well as very unlikeable characters and disturbing themes) to enjoy this book.
Oh, boy, this one's going to have blood libel, isn't it.
Okay, good, you mentioned it.
This one is very classic antisemitic conspiracy theory, very straight up blood libel.
Incredible skill calling it! I very much didn't expect the 'liberal elite scientists controlling the media to make people love meat' angle at all when I picked up the book, and it comes up like 10 pages in, so very much coloured my experience in the book. Just... you can talk about capitalism and the ultra rich and powerful without it being an antisemitic conspiracy theory, this book does not
@@Crowcaller Oh, I was a bit into the video when I called it. Still, its one of those things- being Jewish, some topics need to prove they aren't being handled antisemiticly, as opposed to the other way around. Cannibalism (especially in an institutionalized capacity) is one of them.
Thanks for recommending Extreme Makeover: Apocalypse Edition ms crow caller!! I devoured it in two sittings, I really really enjoyed it. Crazy premise pulled off wonderfully. I'm still thinking about it.
Apulious attempts a similar idea in The Golden Ass. But instead a guy gets turned into a donkey and is used for various tasks and bought and sold and he is basically miserable. Anywho the story was basically an allegory for doing away with the slave system in Ancient Rome or at least treating them better though some people speculate that it could be indicitive of early advocation for animal rights.
This book could have also been about how capitolism removes us so far from terrible things that we don't even care. Like it would have been really cool to see the end of eating animal meat and then companies lobbying to sell human meat and slowly gaining sway and paying politicians like that could have been so biting. Also like imagin the bananas advertisements that could have happend in the book like someone sadly looking over a nutroast (its vegan meatloaf bought out for special occations) and then someone brings out a roast baby and the advert says 'Its just not christmas without some meat'
Full disclosure I am a vegan. I don't think eating meat or animal byproducts is immoral. But factory farming is so exploitative to both the product and the consumer. Which is why Soilent Green works as an eating humans concept becasue the general public has become complicit in terrible acts and it is hard for the average person to extract themselves from the modes of consumption without a lot of time and effort and maybe money.
This book could have also looked at the overconsumption and waste of meat. It is more cost effective for companies to overproduce a little bit of meat than to butcher animals on demand and be intentional with the production and allocation of resources.
I agree that the book fails but I think that's because it asks the viewers to feel empathetic instead of thinking empathetically. Also they could have come at it from an environmental impact as well like imagine the footprint of raising human fodder to adulthood only to eat. Like could have been a fun idea
ALSO ALSO ALSO like YEASSSS! Regarding the wellfare of food production employees. There is an Extreme Horror book that explores this with a guy who works in a meat packaging plant and slowley becomes desensatised to all the gore he sees every day. And What Remains of Edith Finch also has a segmant where a man disassociates from reality and dies because his job at a fish processing plant is so monotonus and soul crushing
I never read this book and never known about the premise before, other than is being about cannibalism of some sort. Now I know I just wouldn't be able to read it, even if it was satire, it just doesn't make any sense.
Let's say that humanity doesn't just decide to go with fake meat and milk/cheese substitutes and wants real meat. Human meat would not be sustainable. A single adult human does not have anywhere near the same about of meat as a cow, we've not been bred specifically for the purpose over hundreds of years, and even if this starts, we aren't built as a species to be bulk meat providers. Strongmen, the closest I can think of to have enough muscle, eat almost their own weight in food every day and a large percentage needs to be protein. We're just not economically viable.
And that's thinking of just adult humans. It takes almost twenty years for a human to reach full maturity for a full meat yield, so unless everyone is eating babies, the time/food cost is just not worth while. And if they are eating babies, then it's not cows we should be looking at, but chickens and the amount of chickens we need every day to fulfill global demands is just not going to happen with the human population.
Funerals are not going to stop. Especially if there is a human meat market where some humans are considered less than animals, families will want funerals even more to show how their loved one was special. There are many funerals conducted every year where there isn't a body to go with them. If someone is lost at sea or dies somewhere the body cannot be retrieved, or even if a person is just missing for a legal amount of time to be declared dead, these funerals happen. Even if the body has to be cremated beforehand to stop thieves, there can still be a proxy coffin for the mourners to focus on. Some graveyards don't even deal in bodies anymore, they just put up headstones or plant roses for the deceased, so people who get their loved ones cremated and scattered elsewhere still have somewhere to visit to mourn.
I just can't get my head around these first few points. Nevermind the idea of carving up someone piece by piece and somehow not having them die due to infection or shock. There are a large amount of people who don't clean their surfaces properly or handle meat correctly now. You're telling me they know how to cut meat from a person in such a sterile way that they don't just die of sepsis?
I can't suspend my disbelief for this, the whole thing is just too stupid.
and all of this before we even touch on the human equivalent of mad cow disease which has been found to occur in real life with regular ritualistic cannibalism, which you cannot convince me would just not be a problem in a primarily cannibalistic society. Especially as our modern society isn't exactly perfect when it comes to food safety as-is
yo i'm so excited you're back and covering this book!!
I use she/him! thank you! moving has been hell!
she uses he or she pronouns ^^