"Protest Packaging" State of the Art

Animal Rights meets the Supply Chain? (…And what makes these people so good at political theater?)

Here’s the caption:

Animal rights activists from the group ‘Animal Equality’ lie wrapped in meat packaging as they stage a protest during “Day Without Meat” event in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, March 20, 2013.

This works on so many levels. Besides forcing man to viscerally relate to his “fellow animals,” it plays on people as raw consumables in a world of high-tech and bottom-line driven mass production.

I should also add (although I know this extends beyond the physical protest and the animal rights context), the news photo itself throws back at us how images of slaughter, as a regular staple of our media diet, also come routinely packaged as public consumables.

(photo: (Emilio Morenatti/AP)