Saturday, October 9, 2010

Jughead and the National Buffalo Wing Festival

Forsythe P. (Jughead) Jones—icon of wholesome American gluttony—shows up to give us a textbook example of IAS, a concept we haven't delved into much since this piece from 2009.

By masquerading as a chicken whose life is devoted to dying (and who eats chicken and who has a chicken for a head), our eternal teenager is enacting a time-honored ritual wherein people assume the role of "food" animals.

With this purportedly humorous inversion—human and commodity trading places—Jughead endeavors to deflect some of the blame he has earned through a lifetime of relentless consumption. Oh, the uncounted burgers he has forced down his elastic gullet at Pop Tate's! But here, on the grounds of the National Buffalo Wing Festival, he imagines he has taken on the role of victim (the phenomenon is known, after all, as Ironic Aggressor Sublimation). Oh, of course it's a pose, one that underscores the total domination exerted by the human overclass.

(Thanks to Dr. Robert for reminding us of what was under our very noses the whole time.)









Addendum: There's also this, from the same issue, harkening back to a theme we've been tracking since 2007.

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