das Racist.
Flexitarian, Pescatarian, Vegitarian, Lacto-Ovo-tarian, Vegan, Freegan, Fruitarianism, Su vegetarianism, Raw veganism, Pollotarianism, Locavorianism and flavor slave. These constitute just a few of the food consumption orientations which populate the memeosphere. To all of these there is much to be written, but for the sake of cogency let it suffice to say that people should think about the objects they stuff into their gullets and even more so if that gullet leads to a stomach which has expanded to a size, which in terms of evolution, is just as innovative as elastic-waist pants.
Similarly, this type of thinking goes for those forward-thinking (or “degenerate” if we ask Žižek) souls who call themselves environmentalists. The Brooklyn group Das Racist’s single “Chicken and Meat” is about food in some regard. As the latest to emerge in the free-association-bilingual-rhyming synth-music genre (Lil’ Wayne being the Abraham in this Genesis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh69LBrB48U), the bespectacled and bearded Victor accompanies Hima to compose the entirety of the group. The video for the aforementioned single chronicles this duo eating chicken in three symbolically fecund locations: the forest, the F train in NYC and what is presumably their kitchen. While there is scant room for a full exegesis, it seems as though this group has decided to confront the nebulous galaxy of food orientations through tracing the movement of “food” from its origins as macrobiotic life to its consumption and conclusion as human shit. While we could fault them for their anthropocentric bias (the origin of what human’s eat is clearly not the harvest field and its conclusion is obviously not human feces) the video works and the message is well received. As an added bonus the savvy duo subtly gestures towards, if i can borrow a phrase from Renata Adler, a “radical middle” with Debord’s Society of the Spectacle popping up as well as homages to Evil Dead in the forest scenes. In sum the final analysis for Das Racist echoes what was agreed upon by the Tenenbaum family at Royal’s funeral, that is to say they are “most satisfactory.”
