When speciesism is questioned and fought, all humans and animals can have liberation. The understanding of the intimate connection between humans and animals helps to convert the series main character George to veganism. Will the vegan feeling of Poker Face convert some viewers to veganism?
BRIGITTE N. McCRAY: In the opening sequence of episode 3 (“The Stall”) of the new hit murder mystery series Poker Face, the character George (Larry Brown), a Black pitmaster at a Texas roadside BBQ joint, stumbles guiltily and weepily from his trailer with a DVD copy of the film Okja gripped in his hand. The story of a young girl who takes on a powerful company that kidnaps her best friend, a super pig named Okja, has inspired a number of people to rethink eating animals, and George’s path is classic. For them, a film they’ve seen or a book they’ve read often creates a new framework for how they think about animals. Similar to a religious conversion, George abandons his old ways for the new, brought on by an external factor. That not only means a change in his diet, it means giving up the business that he shares with his white wife and brother, despite his fame as one of the best pitmasters in Texas…
Poker Face is a classic murder mystery featuring Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale, a human lie detector. In each mystery of the week, Cale uses her skills to uncover and bring the culprits to justice. The victim is introduced in the opening of each episode, providing viewers with the crime’s background, including the killers’ motivations. Interestingly, in this episode, Cale is the catalyst. Once she sees George’s small trailer on the wide, open landscape, she worries he will get bored. She provides him with DVDs—Okja, but also tellingly, Babe, a story of a pig on a family farm, and Charlotte’s Web, a story of a farm spider trying to save a pig from slaughter. While George’s conversion is accidental on her part, she is the only character who supports him. Cain establishes how much of an outsider a vegan feels in a non-vegan world, and this outsider status threatens their being. Rejecting that non-vegan world, George tells Charlie after his viewings, “I’m a murderer.” When he says he told his brother he was “out” she says, “Good for you. You know, it took guts to do that”…
George isn’t alone. Black veganism is on the rise. Meat-eating is a food culture that a large number of Black people have been rejecting. Indeed, Black vegans out pace white ones in their conversion – about eight percent of Black Americans identify as vegan versus three percent of all Americans, according to a Pew Research Poll. For some Black Americans, it means a return to some of the foods from their ancestors of the African Diaspora. But, more importantly, according to vegan activists of color Aph Ko and Syl Ko, in their 2017 book Aphro-Ism, speciesism, which means treating members of one species more important than members of another species, is responsible for not only the oppression of animals but the perpetuation of racism as well. When speciesism is questioned and fought, all humans and animals can have liberation… George’s understanding of the intimate connection between humans and animals helps to convert him to veganism. Will the vegan feeling of Poker Face convert some viewers to veganism? Just maybe. SOURCE…
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