Exquisite Corpse: Tender is the Flesh
If you’ve ever found yourself in the position to question whether or not you should go vegan, Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is The Flesh is the book that offers you an answer. Because this is a book about cannibalism. But not just the eating of people, but the industrialization of eating people.
You know, the thing we do to the pigs, and the cows, and the chickens.
The things that we don’t want to think about, or look at, because if we were to confront the horrific things we do to satisfy our cravings for meat, then we would never eat meat again. We would be too busy hanging our heads in shame.
I am not vegan. I’m what you’d call vegan-curious. And this book hits in a way that hasn’t gotten me in a while. It’s gross. It’s fascinating. It’s impossible to look away.
I’ve been thinking a lot about world-building as a writer lately. Which makes this book an interesting one to ponder, because the whole point is the world building. Sure, there’s some plot going on, but it mostly serves as an excuse to keep going with the world. It’s clear from the beginning that Bazterrica’s purpose for writing was to explore every nook and cranny of how this world fits together.
There must be strict divisions in a world of industrialized cannibalism. There must be people who count as human, and those who do not. And there can only be one direction of movement, from human to inhuman. This is necessary, of course, because if the inhuman became human, well, then the actual humans would have to think about what it is they’re actually doing. Bazterrica manages to create a form of slavery that is somehow worse than slavery.
She also has made a world where The Most Dangerous Game is blasé. Where the washed-up can settle their debts by being hunted for a time frame and eaten if caught. No one bats an eye. Just as no one thinks twice about slowly eating the arms and legs of their ‘heads’ and ‘special meat’ to make the flesh last longer.
The world-building is thorough. It answers questions I didn’t know I would have about such a horrific place. For instance, of course, there would be human-coded people who wouldn’t be able to afford to participate in the special meat economy. So, of course, they would eat the dead. Which would make funerary processes a bit more complicated if you want to make sure your deceased loved ones don’t end up on someone else’s plate.
The plot, however, is a bit light. Marcos is in deep in the cannibal industrial complex. He’s one of the guys who helps make it all happen. He greases the wheels. But his father is dying, and his son is dead, and his wife has left. And it seems, in his grief, that he might finally be seeing the reality of his world. They gift him a female ‘head’ whom he starts to interact with as if she were human.
But ultimately, everything is for naught in this story. The human-coded humans are ultimately all selfish and monstrous. Every one of them. Even Marcos. Especially Marcos.
Because that is what the consumption of another fundamentally is: selfish and monstrous. It is to prioritize the needs of the self over the needs of the consumed. We don’t usually think this way when it comes to actual consumption because we don’t typically eat people, and we’ve been conditioned to think of animals as something else. But we see it in abusive relationships. We see it in the exploitive consumption of limited resources (read: oil). We see it in the class dynamics between the impoverished and ultra-wealthy.
There is just something a little bit terrible about the ways humans interact with each other. It’s these little every day horrors that give us that funny feeling that things aren’t quite right.
Maybe that’s why I’ve come home to horror. As a way to process the general malaise and grief most young people have about existing in this age. To understand what is lying in wait beneath the surface, ready to bubble up at any moment, any time.
Or maybe it’s learning what the world will look like when all just finally decide to eat each other.
Upcoming fiction
Oh jeez, I’m behind. Iceberg Lettuce will be headed your way sometimes soon.
Next time on Bramble & Bray
My content calendar is all fucked up and every time I think about getting it sorted out, I just feel tired and want to take a nap instead. I think I’m talking about White Pines next week, which was maybe supposed to go out a few weeks ago and never did. Or you might be delighted to get something about Between Two Fires, which is also somewhere in this snarled mess of a brain.
This week’s discussion
So….what’s for dinner?
We’re still trying to get our way through Thanksgiving leftovers over here. Which is funny. Because we didn’t actually cook anything for Thanksgiving.