I'd go with (5) and (4). Sometimes it's not the food whichis anthropomorphized but the means of production: "They're made in magic ovens and there's no factory, hey!" Sometimes products other than food receive the same treatment, e.g. the cute Chevron cars by Aardman.

But your question is very interesting. I've been trying to think of preindustrial, pre-advertising analogues. Animal tales are of course extremely ancient and often involve barnyard or prey animals that we eat, but they rarely seem to deal with the idea of being eaten by humans (even the anxiety of the Three Little Pigs was about a wolf, not a farmer).

And the only such tale I can think of from the vegetable kingdom is the Gingerbread Man. I don't recall any talking grapes or flying ladoos from Greek or Indian mythology. Are there obvious ones I've missed?

while i agree with your points.. they come from a "thinking person" i don't give the general population so much credit.. i would dare make the point that it is all much more simple.. the products are given personalities so as to make them more memorable, so that when faced with a dozen choices, the consumer will select the ones most familiar. advertising and marketing 101, brand recognition.

much of this is aimed at the younger crowd, because after all, they do all they can to influence what goes into the basket at the g-store

my 2 cents..

bark

terry

Good point, Terry, but I'm not sure that this anthropomorphic marketing is merely an empty marketing move -- that it couldn't be such a move and ALSO have deeper cultural motivations.

Just ask yourself: Isn't the Pillsbury doughboy's sugary, human laugh an essential part of what makes him appetizing?

-- I mean it's an essential part of why he's appetizing for me. Maybe I'm just crazy.

The Frulatte orange scares me the most. Though not really ad-related, I'm reminded of Veggie Tales, a series which uses veggies to teach values.

Sam-
looks to me like a cause / effect relationship.
i can agree completely that there are deeper cultural influences mainly along the lines of why we "like" or "dislike" a particular character. for instance, the use of big eyes of such characters, the big eyes make us think about baby humans, whos eyes are disportionate to the rest of them due to the curious fact that our eyes are as big as they will ever get the day we are born and the rest of our lil bodies grow around them.. anyway the point is that babies are pure and thereby trustworthy. so they make great salesmen..

m&ms are are a great example against point #1.. they usually freak out when someone wants to help them melt in the mouth..

point number 2 seems odd to me as well in that i feel more guilt when i can look my prey (dinner) in the eyes and realize that it too once had a life, and ate things and saw stuff.. and it DIED so i can live..

#3 dies with the idea that there are no modern economic societies that advocate canabalism.

#s 4 and 5 go hand in hand for me.. goes with my theory that the adverts are directed at kids..

#6 is the strogest in my humble opinion, on the surface, the idea of natural selection seems not to support this, but after some thought, society does value the powerful with the means to hunt down and get what they need (homosapiens sapiens tend to twist darwin around a little)

sorry for this silly essay.. but i sure do enjoy a bit of academic reparte (sp)?

bark

t

Terry--

I'm going to finally go outside, get some food and cigarettes, but when I come back, I want to respond to your points. If only I could pause blog commenting like a VCR deck.

-Nathalie

"m&ms are are a great example against point #1.. they usually freak out when someone wants to help them melt in the mouth.."

Most anthropomorphic food I’ve come across desperately longs to be eaten—the Foster Farm chickens trying to cut out junk food and lose weight, the costumed Slim Jims defiantly screaming "Eat Me!", the Prego anthropomorphic pasta oohing and aahing as sauce pours over them. But popular culture is ironic and referential; the M&M ads are commentary on the almost-paradox of depicting food as human/willing so that we feel better eating it. The M&M ads, in commenting on the trend, confirm the trend.

"point number 2 seems odd to me as well in that i feel more guilt when i can look my prey (dinner) in the eyes and realize that it too once had a life, and ate things and saw stuff.. and it DIED so i can live.."

Anthropomorphic food doesn’t appeal to everybody. I’m not sure why it appeals to anybody. To my mind, that means, if food is still anthropomorphized despite its lack of universal appeal, there must be strong cultural forces behind the anthropomorphizing of food.

"#3 dies with the idea that there are no modern economic societies that advocate canabalism."

Cannibalism, as a practice, may die, but cannibalism can live on as a cultural referent, as a logic that other things can draw on (the logic I refer to in my original entry: consumption as the internalization of exterior power, rather than consumption as the extinguishing of the external).

hmmm ok..

but what about the cows who hold the signs that say
"eat more chiken"

:-)

woof

t

Also, a response to your original comment ("while i agree with your points.. they come from a "thinking person" i don't give the general population so much credit."):

I don't think people need to be aware of the "why" and "how" of trends for a "why" and "how" to exist. The general population doesn't need to think about the trends in any good detail for the trend to have details, and a complicated logic.

I think the cows asking us to eat more chicken are much like the M&Ms-- referencing our knowledge of past ads that portray food as willing, and thus seeming "smarter" or more hip than those past ads.

Also-- I think the anthropomorphizing of food has conflicting strains, aims. One strain: food loves to be eaten, and we should love eating it (this is the logic of complacency, and things "as they should be"). Another strain: a hot dog is chased down the street by rabid hot dog-eaters; catching our anthropomorphized food is an accomplishment akin to hunting down gazelles (a different logic-- one eliciting excitement, acquisition).

all this reminds me of the scene from Austin Powers (the first one), where fat bastard wants to eat mini me..

im hungry.. where is that damm charlie tuna when i need him?

bark..

t

Hey Nathalie,
Just thought I'd surface for an instant to comment on a subject that's been haunting me for quite some time as well. (Implicitly, of course, the tacit aim of this post includes proving that I still do read your blog.)

Since early childhood, I've wondered why on earth people would want to eat anthropomorphized food. While I agree with "Terry" that the intent of advert executives is almost exclusively commercial (that is, condiments with facial expressions are by and large more memorable than their unanimated counterparts), I tend to ascribe to the more psychologically nuanced belief that people tend to gravitate towards foods that represent who they think they are. As Chomsky (and most vegetarians, for that matter) would have it, people simply want to assume that they engender all of the traits of their respective diets (the maxim "you are what you eat" being an obvious proponent of this ideology). Following this theory, people like colorful food not only because it reflects a more varied and exotic compilation of vitamins (and certainly not only because it's "pretty"); people like colorful food because consuming it makes them feel more "colorful" themselves. Why do people eat fashionable -- yet bad-tasting -- food (e.g. octopus, nuts, flan)? Because they believe consumtion equals ontology: eating fashionable food augments the fashionable quotient of the consumer.

Thus, the genius of anthropomorphosing marketers. If a Hershey bar is protrayed as "friendly," eating said Hershey bar must make you "friendli-er." This is the emotional internalization of adverts, and we see it everywhere. If a new, green M&M is portrayed as "sexy and sassy" (why, by the way, is the color green seen as sexy? Green has always made me think of snot), ingesting MORE green M&Ms must make you sexi-er.

This understanding echoes the "cannibalism" theory, I think, but takes it a step further, because the credo of cannibalism entails imbibing the Spirits and Ghosts of ancestors; anthropomorphic food is less a tribute to the dead than a paean to the disturbingly alive...

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