Pop Culture Police
August 16, 2012
Although there is an official Vegan Police, I’m making a few citizen’s arrests here today. Up for trial are:
1) Lena Dunham from Girls
Charged: with seeming cute and innocent while needlessly hurting animals
What a great show. The awkward sex could be cut down on a smidgen. Sometimes a suggestion can go a long way. But it’s fresh, it’s current, it’s raw, and lol at times. I want to know what happens next. That’s the definition of a good fictional work.
Lena Dunham is the creator of this masterpiece (major props), and aside from a few Full House moments, it’s clear that some of the show is based on reality. How right I was to find out that Dunham used to be vegan and into animal rights.
The scene in question is her diner confession to the pharmacist that she used to be vegetarian, but then she was forced to eat roadkill and she felt herself “growing stronger and stronger with each bite.” So this would make her character, Hannah, strong, right? Have you seen her character try to jog? She is clearly out of shape and admittedly not the weight she feels best at.
This seemingly innocent anecdote did not fall on deaf ears. It’s weak sauce and a blemish on Lena’s perfectly imperfect character.
You don’t need meat to feel strong. There are MMA fighters and athletes all over the world who are vegan.
Lena, if you want to be able to jog without collapsing in the street – go veg. And if you want to create a work that speaks to REAL girls, have a vegan character. This is current. Or better yet, have Hannah go vegan. She can be self-effacingly weak willed in all other areas.
2) “Food” vendors at Shambhala & BassCoast
Charged: with preaching peace while vending violence
Welcome home, the signs say. You’ve found the holy land – the land where love lives. With all this love in the air, chowing down on factory farmed animals seems not quite apropos.
Humans celebrating freedom, while fueling themselves on the confined misery of animals who are tortured in captivity from birth to death.
These festivals have hardly any vegan options, and definitely not a single completely vegan stand. Not even the ultra hippie ones that serve twigs and moss and forest berries.
Well PLUR you, BC festivals. These could be excellent opportunities for people to experience a taste of vegan food. And instead you serve pig parts to real-fur fox tail wearing hypo-hippies.
Living in the past. I sometimes feel that we are. Living in the past.
