Kitsch, Decarnation, and the Erasure of Edible Animals From Visual Culture

In contemporary society, the consumption of animal products is increasingly disconnected from the reality of animal life and death. Edible animals are largely confined to industrial spaces, where killing is sanitized into “use,” while advertising and visual culture further reinforce this detachment. This paper examines how media representations obscure or transform the animal origins of meat, often rendering them into cartoonish or infantilized forms. Drawing on Hermann Broch's concept of kitsch, such depictions are shown to “rarefy” the animal, sublimating its living reality into palatable, aesthetically pleasing images that shield consumers from the ethical and material implications of their choices. Through an analysis of pleasure-oriented meat imagery and a focused case study on commercials employing infantilization strategies, the essay explores the cultural mechanisms that conceal animal death. It shows how, at its most extreme, this concealment can manifest through a religious subtext. Rather than offering moral judgment, this essay seeks to understand how contemporary visual culture mediates human engagement with animality, death, and consumption.