FLESH

Directed and produced by Tami Wilson
Rough Road Productions
43 minutes • 2006
Also available on DVD

In this idiosyncratic documentary, Tami Wilson looks at women and meat in a society obsessed with flesh. She introduces a motley crew of women with wildly differing relationships to meat—an organic cattle rancher; a manager for a meat-packing plant; a hunting activist; a Vietnamese-Canadian "meat-lover"; a 14-year-old vegetarian; and a college student/Hooters waitress who admits to feeling like a "stuffed sausage" in her tight uniform.

FLESH also engages the political side of meat eating through interviews with Carol Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Ingrid Newkirk, founder and CEO of PETA, an organization notorious for its animal-rights ads featuring near-naked women. Adams outlines how women and animals are objectified in popular culture and packaged for consumption by men. Newkirk meanwhile refuses to acknowledge these connections in her advocacy for animals. She outright dismisses the feminist critics that claim PETA's highly sexual ads do more harm than good.

Amidst the stories and debate, FLESH dishes up a profusion of powerful images. Magazine photos, clips from popular film and television programs, bucolic scenes of cows with their young calves and harrowing footage of animals at slaughter provide a sometimes beautiful, sometimes humorous, and sometimes disturbing backdrop.

In the end, no perspective wins out unless it is Wilson's underlying argument that women can and should fully engage with the ethical questions that plague our over-consuming society.

Subject(s): Animals, Communications, Consumerism, Ethics, Gender equality, Identity, Media studies, Sexuality, Women