The steak is fried and the red is no longer appropriate. The meat will soon be an old moon fallen in the gutter where the blood of deceased idols laughs. The green mayor of Lyon, Grégory Doucet, committed this crime of lese-majesté, in a row. Behind the screen of health constraints and religious reluctance, he has stashed a completely justifiable ideological ambition, that of killing the carbonic carnivore that slumbers in every little schoolchild with baby teeth. Result: the canteens of the capital of Gaul untied the sapper’s apron. They will now serve unique vegetalized menus where fish and eggs will be tolerated. If we do not see why it takes longer to harpoon a pre-cooked cutlet waiting in its stainless steel bowl than to trawl a cod with pearly petals, we fully understand the thought behind this disembodied diet. The fight against global warming is well worth a Mass and a Lent, even if it would have been clearer to announce the color.
The vegetable is the future of the detumescent man and the cooled human. The mutation is initiated, no need to shed the tears of small calves under the mother. In politics, green is imposed on everyone at the risk of chromatic imbalances, while popular and union crimson undergoes bleeding after bleeding. The conquest of Mars, the purple planet, in no way exhilarates those who are struggling to save the blue orange, and who, to persevering Promethean scientists, prefer those who come from Venus. The anthropological break is straightforward, the break in references is clear. Before, in cannibalistic times, it was necessary to feed the brute force of workers, warriors and adventurers with this ammunition which allowed them to accomplish the twelve labors of Hercules. Then, in metaphorical times, the glory of the forts of Les Halles and the butchers of La Villette was diluted in mechanization and robotization. The muscle could well atrophy and the energy “mononuclear”, the dish of the day remained invigorating and the prime rib was served blue. Roland Barthes, whom I had promised myself not to quote because it is very used, says it too well for me to dispense with pulling on the easy rope: “The steak participates in the same blood mythology as the wine. It is the heart of the meat, it is the meat in its purest form, and whoever takes it assimilates the taurine force. Obviously, the prestige of the steak is due to its almost rawness : the blood is visible, natural, dense, compact and breakable at the same time. “
Now is the time for the countdown, where the red-cheeked omnivores with scarlet cheeks must whiten endive in front of the screens where their lives are simulated without too much organic stimuli, nor caloric expenditure. So too bad for old-fashioned oxen and salacious meadow lambs, farewell to cursed pigs and lackey ducks. These species are doomed to disappear or, to put it mildly, to become pets. Check out these new plush toys for hipsters that are the chickens pecking hard bread in the backyards of “nested” sores. Will also fall into oblivion a proximity on the lookout and a careless neighborhood with tame not very expansive, not to mention the language expressions that regimented them in a chattering anti-speciesism. We will have to replace “my little bunny” as “my cute teddy bear”. The “beautiful plants” and the “nice poppies” will certainly provide for this and will provide us with the word about hunger, so clearly what is eaten well is stated.
The risk is that the appetite is lost along the way. Some will see a chance, if not a necessity, in this pursuit of pursed lips, in this hollow-cheeked frugality, in this refusal to appropriate the other, to ingest and digest it, before conch-eating it. Others will fear that desire will turn sour, that the language of flowers gives buds to perpetual adulthood and that vitality will flee through the bung of sewage, recycled waste and tired precautions.
I am not a compulsive meaty. I eat what’s on my plate. And I will gladly console myself for being put on a lean diet, if I can continue to work scraps of ocean, via shellfish and crustaceans. Satiety and drunkenness will also have to be allowed to me. And that we dispense with putting curry everywhere, to spice up the blandness of certain vegetable stews.
I will especially miss the beauty of these slaughtered animals when artists made allegories to life, to death. I will regret the generosity of Chardin’s game tables, the apoplectic carcasses of Soutine, the animal “vanities” put in formalin by Damien Hirst. And especially those moments when Francis Bacon represented himself in bloody and trembling boneless.
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