We graze the tall fields of grass and sunbathe not knowing that no matter how expansive the field may seem, there always exists a fence around the enclosure. We eat from the hands of those who slit our throats, who package us up neatly into styrofoam vacuum sealed portions and ship our body parts off to be sold at grocery stores. How do we free ourselves when all we know is the role of the cattle and all they know is the role of the butcher?
I recall the first time I bit into a steak—-I was eleven years old, sitting inside an indoors outdoors restaurant in Guangdong. The backs of my thighs were slick from the vicious southern chinese summer. They would glide back and forth over the glossy wooden benches while the rest of my body was covered by a thick film of dust and sweat, perfuming me with a humid musk peppered with notes of cigarette smoke and seafood open air markets.
There is an out of body component to being so conscious of the griminess of your physical one. I disliked tackiness and desperately wished to be comfortably situated on either end of the completely dry to drenched spectrum. Tackiness, however, suggested a defiant and tenacious third option, which brought about an omnipresent discomfort. And so I found a bit of consolation in tracing my fingers along the slickness of my thighs, the only part of my body that was wet instead of sticky. The lubriciousness of a thin, odorless liquid against skin allowed my mind to imagine being under the warm downpour of a shower head.
This is when our waiter brought out three sizzling steaks on charcoal plates. I distinctly recall my dad reaching over the table, expertly slicing my portion into smaller, chewable pieces. I closely watched the way the razors broke apart the thin diagonal strips of pink flesh, the rich scent of smoke and iron wafting into the air as a rust colored juice erupted with each pressured incision. I distinctly remember the elasticity of the meat—-the way it would bend to the will of the knife but return to its original thickness—-as if it was expressing a weak resistance to being deformed and digested.
Maybe it was the heat that implicated my reduced appetite or maybe it was the physical discomfort of being unclean, but regardless, I put a piece to my lips despite the lingering reluctance in the back of my mind. I will never forget the feeling of my teeth sinking into what I could only think of as flesh—-raw, bloody, and sinewy—-and suddenly the only picture I could conjure was that of a hungry lion piercing its teeth into the neck of a gazelle, ripping apart its tendons and crushing its bones, its wispy, golden beard staining red and blood dripping rhythmically from its bared canines.
I could not finish my steak that day. Although I had never considered myself a carnivore, meat was a regular part of my diet—pork, chicken, beef, seafood—among other niche animals commonly incorporated into Chinese cuisines, such as jellyfish and eel. But in the twenty seconds of what I could only describe as gnawing, a strange, subconscious carnality crawled across my skin.
This moment had become a far away memory, but was brought back to the forefront when watching Mila Zuo’s Carnal Orient1. A precondition for carnality is desire, but a desire of desperation. In Zuo’s short film, this feeling is expressed perfectly—the lack of decorum, the aggressive sloppiness, not swallowing before introducing another mouthful, and being driven solely on an insatiable craving for more.
Rather, it is not about actually needing more, rather believing you need more. Carnal Orient1 comments on commodification and consummation of the yellow woman, blurring the line between reality and fantasy. How can watching and craving to watch act as a form of carnality or hunger? How can flesh—something inherently physical and organic—evoke feelings of mental or physical satiety? How do we separate the abstraction of fetishization—especially in a gendered and racialized context—from the tangible need for repletion?
These are all questions I have yet to find answers to. As I’ve grown and been fortunate enough to have quickly learned how it feels to experience carnal desires from other parties, I think it is especially interesting to parallel these experiences with eating steak for the first time. All it takes is a glance to be denoted as prey from the harrowing carnal gaze of another human being, and in that split second you are slaughtered, cut up, aged, basted over a knob of butter, and served on a platter all to be pitifully dissolved in stomach acid. It is frustrating to accept that you have no agency in the ways in which others perceive you, that no matter your futile efforts to resist the will of the knife, you will be cut, chewed up, and shit out.
References
- Zuo, M. (Director). (2016). Carnal Orient [Film]. Produced by Camille Mana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYLVGQ4HU3M
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