Cock Stock (2019)
Inspired by Carol J. Adam’s The Pornography of Meat, and theory of the absent referent, Cock Stock seeks to disrupt the animalization of women, the sexualization of animals in visual culture, and to unsettle the interlinked oppression, objectification and control of women and non-human animals in patriarchal society.
Adams argues that “Pornography uses butchery to say something about women’s status as mass terms: women are as meat; not only that, women deserve to be treated as meat – butchered and consumed.” [1]
Utilizing the ‘rollage’ technique to allude to a broken flip billboard, Cock Stock dissects an 80’s Bovril advertisement, in which a woman performs for the male gaze in a ‘sexy’ chicken costume. Adams states “Showing women with nonhumans or showing them as animals is one way to convey that women are animal-like, less than human, unruly, needing to be controlled.” [2]
The Bovril ad is cut into strips using a razor blade, and combined with an image found in a contemporary international fashion magazine, of men looking at their cocks during a cock-fight. The cutting technique alludes to the razor blades that cock-fighters, normally men, attach to the cockerel legs to cause extensive violence and cruelty to cockerels when they coerce them to fight. Moreover, the blade references the self-harm that many women use as a way of escaping their internal dislike for their self. Not to mention the shaving of bodily hair once again to perform for men.
By dissecting the image of a woman performing as a ‘sexy’ chicken through her cues of violability i.e. small waist, breasts accentuated, smooth legs, etc. Adams states that these cues of violability for women “are fragmented body parts, in which the accentuated body part stands for the whole, available, “fuckable” woman. (“I’m here; come and get me.”) Adams points out with certainty that these are cues of inequality, ones which women learn to exhibit, rather than to inhabit in their bodies.[3]
In piecing together and reworking through a feminist gaze, the male dominated gaze towards women and animals, this work aims to destabilize patriarchal consumption [4] and help “eliminate the structure that creates absent referents”.[5] By dispelling sexual objectification and violence towards women and animals by affirming that women have greater roles to play, the adverts are transformed into a poetic calling for human evolution to a higher level of consciousness and to live in a more just world.
[1]Carol J. Adams (2003) The Pornography of Meat, pp.25. [2]Carol J. Adams (2003) The Pornography of Meat, pp.46. [3]Carol J. Adams (2003) The Pornography of Meat, pp.106-7.
[4]Carol J. Adams (1990) The Sexual Politics of Meat, pp.240.
[5]Carol J. Adams (1990) The Sexual Politics of Meat, pp.90.
Adams argues that “Pornography uses butchery to say something about women’s status as mass terms: women are as meat; not only that, women deserve to be treated as meat – butchered and consumed.” [1]
Utilizing the ‘rollage’ technique to allude to a broken flip billboard, Cock Stock dissects an 80’s Bovril advertisement, in which a woman performs for the male gaze in a ‘sexy’ chicken costume. Adams states “Showing women with nonhumans or showing them as animals is one way to convey that women are animal-like, less than human, unruly, needing to be controlled.” [2]
The Bovril ad is cut into strips using a razor blade, and combined with an image found in a contemporary international fashion magazine, of men looking at their cocks during a cock-fight. The cutting technique alludes to the razor blades that cock-fighters, normally men, attach to the cockerel legs to cause extensive violence and cruelty to cockerels when they coerce them to fight. Moreover, the blade references the self-harm that many women use as a way of escaping their internal dislike for their self. Not to mention the shaving of bodily hair once again to perform for men.
By dissecting the image of a woman performing as a ‘sexy’ chicken through her cues of violability i.e. small waist, breasts accentuated, smooth legs, etc. Adams states that these cues of violability for women “are fragmented body parts, in which the accentuated body part stands for the whole, available, “fuckable” woman. (“I’m here; come and get me.”) Adams points out with certainty that these are cues of inequality, ones which women learn to exhibit, rather than to inhabit in their bodies.[3]
In piecing together and reworking through a feminist gaze, the male dominated gaze towards women and animals, this work aims to destabilize patriarchal consumption [4] and help “eliminate the structure that creates absent referents”.[5] By dispelling sexual objectification and violence towards women and animals by affirming that women have greater roles to play, the adverts are transformed into a poetic calling for human evolution to a higher level of consciousness and to live in a more just world.
[1]Carol J. Adams (2003) The Pornography of Meat, pp.25. [2]Carol J. Adams (2003) The Pornography of Meat, pp.46. [3]Carol J. Adams (2003) The Pornography of Meat, pp.106-7.
[4]Carol J. Adams (1990) The Sexual Politics of Meat, pp.240.
[5]Carol J. Adams (1990) The Sexual Politics of Meat, pp.90.
