Reuben Dylan Fong
Those Who Lay Eggs: Institutional Sexual Violence and Carnism in Chicken Run
Abstract: Vegetarian ecofeminism posits that all forms of oppression (both human and nonhuman) are linguistically and ideologically interlinked. In her book, The Sexual Politics of Meat¸ Carol J. Adams argued that both consumption and depictions of meat literalize and feminize the metaphor for sexual violence against women, as well as patriarchal conceptualizations of women and intersectional with institutional oppression of animals. The mutually constructive conceptualizations between the oppression of women and the oppression of meat-purposed animals are exemplified in Peter Lord and Nick Park’s 2000 film, Chicken Run. In the film, this dyad of oppressions is primarily depicted in three forms: The regulations of egg-laying as feminine gender capital to achieve the institutional compliance and passivity of women, trading eggs for tools with masculine rats as a patriarchal bargain, and the chickens’ eventual freedom from their oppressors, restoring their reproductive rights through the reclamation of their eggs as childbearing systems.
Keywords: Anthropomorphism, Carnism, Children’s Films, Sexual Violence
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