In looking at the posters for PETA and body modification, two concepts, one at the forefront and one in the background, pop out: norms about purity/naturalness and how these debates are easily conformed to standard media forms.
In these two debates are competing definitions of what is ‘pure’ or ‘natural’ and, therefore, what is acceptable. PETA seems to adopt the attitude that any manipulation of biology is inherently wrong, debasing, inhumane, etc. There is a natural order of things, they contend, and it should be deferred to at all costs. The other side of the debate about animal rights adopts similar language: human supremacy is the natural order of things and culture and tradition should be values as well. Body modification has a similar dichotomy. The people against body modification argue that our bodies should in certain respects be inviolable, the naturalness and purity (‘god-given’ is often invoked too) of the human form is a priority our own wants and wishes. The converse argument is that being true to one’s self and having individual autonomy is a core value, and to have true individual autonomy, people must have this right as well. There are deep sexual and right-to-life politics in this as well, Catholicism is a great example having developed sophisticated catechism about what is natural and what is profane.
These debates are also linked in my mind as having the profile they do because they are often inherently visual. The suffering of animals on (poorly run) farms requires no explanation beyond the image. Just as body modification, in its most extreme forms, lays all the existential questions out there without any philosophy required. That there is always something new going on with these phenomenons, some new outrage or grotesquery that is easy to package and fight over that favors the media bias for newness, exceptionality, and controversy. They also reflect a culture’s willingness to not see, to avoid noticing the centrality of killing and mass production in a society that eats meat or to embrace absurd standards of physically beauty and stare quizzically at people suffering under those same standards. The new horrors are minor ones compared to what’s already integrated into our society. Body modification and body standards are a constant presence in daily life and are broadcasting cultural signals by nature. I’m sure in a hundred years societies will look our present treatment of animals and our present standards for when to reshape the human form with the same disdain we know have for dog-fighting and corsetry.
Norms about purity/naturalness and our society’s visual bias also have a bastard-child called advertising, which only retains its connection to the real world via a process of inversion. The more blue sky, green grass, and picturesque streams I see in a commercial the more I know I’m being screwed with. Almost every product seems to rely on naturalness or purity in it's advertising, even electronics. Apple commercials make every apple product look like it was plucked from a zen rock garden rather than manufactured.
The linkages I thought of aren't particularly weird or unique to these though. I think they could probably be extended in some way to most of the issues we talked about. In fact, I think purity norms and visual media are fundamental background issues in society right now.
(As an aside, we’ve all seen the horrific videos of factory farming; I think it might be interesting to think about what this looks like under the best of circumstances. Thus I shall share two videos, the first is how Polyface Farms process chickens and the second is the slaughter of a cow and a pig by a New York meat processor. These videos are graphic. That said I don’t’ find them disturbing. Chicken Processing. Meat Processing.)
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