Speaker 1: Cool Zone media. In this life, you get so few
Speaker 1: perfect moments. Right. There's the day you get your eighth
Speaker 1: grade school picture back, and the most beautiful girl in class,
Speaker 1: who lives down the street from you and was a
Speaker 1: fucking hockey player, says, nice picture, Jamie. There's a day
Speaker 1: in Sweden with an ex boyfriend when you manage to
Speaker 1: sneak into the Abba Museum and eat five hundred o
Speaker 1: d'ures before an engagement party realizes that they don't know you.
Speaker 1: There's the day last week when you're in line at
Speaker 1: the overpriced brunch place and a TV actor you were
Speaker 1: never quite a fan of says I'll get her bill too,
Speaker 1: and you're like, wow, he's kind of a creep, but
Speaker 1: I didn't need to pay for my bun. And then
Speaker 1: there's a day you wake up at seven am and
Speaker 1: receive an email with this subject line.
Speaker 2: Be involved in the world's largest sculptural hot dog.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, oh, my god, listener, there is a strong possibility.
Speaker 1: You know why this email came across my desk. The
Speaker 1: reason is I wrote a book about hot dogs last
Speaker 1: year called raw Dog, The Naked Truth about hot Dogs.
Speaker 1: And while you think, Jamie, surely you're sick to death
Speaker 1: of talking about hot dogs. Something I've learned about myself
Speaker 1: is that I am, in fact, inexhaustible when it comes
Speaker 1: to talking about hot dogs. In fact, if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this episode the day it comes out, I am
Speaker 1: on a plane at this very minute to attend the
Speaker 1: Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island for the
Speaker 1: third time. Because now I've gotten in at the after
Speaker 1: party and it's going to be a hell of a
Speaker 1: year because the fifteen year champion, Joey Chestnut is officially
Speaker 1: leaving the contest. We think I wouldn't rule out a
Speaker 1: ww E style jump scare appearance putting that on wax Oh,
Speaker 1: where is Joey going? I'll tell you to face his
Speaker 1: old rival to Karo Kobayashi on Netflix on Labor Day.
Speaker 1: And it's just a thrilling time to be a fan
Speaker 1: of hot dogs. Anyways, as I'm reading this email, I
Speaker 1: learn that the proposed largest sculptural hot dog will be
Speaker 1: installed in Times Square, which introduces a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: Who got permission to airdrop a giant hot dog in
Speaker 1: Times Square? And not to be conspiratorial, but why the
Speaker 1: name of the project was hot dog in the city.
Speaker 1: And as much as I love the hot dog, people
Speaker 1: who strongly associate themselves with the idea of the hot
Speaker 1: dog runs the risk of some very sinister American nationalism.
Speaker 1: So placing a massive hot dog in the middle of
Speaker 1: Times Square uncritically might have been something I was not
Speaker 1: on board with, which I know might sound weird, But
Speaker 1: a symbol so closely associated with a very troubled country
Speaker 1: needs to be understood in context with who is using
Speaker 1: that symbol. Right, So, I love hotig do, but I
Speaker 1: am extremely skeptical of people who hawk hot dog imagery.
Speaker 1: An uncritical symbol of America is not something that you
Speaker 1: want to be rooting for during an election year where
Speaker 1: one candidate is shrugging his way through funding a genocide
Speaker 1: of the Palestinian people, and the other candidate is Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who said this, Well.
Speaker 3: As you know, we just worked with the meat processes.
Speaker 3: The companies that we're talking about, you know the ones
Speaker 3: I'm talking about, because they're all they all become very
Speaker 3: well known.
Speaker 4: They were well known.
Speaker 3: Anyway, they're big companies, but they're now being treated fairly.
Speaker 3: They're thrilled.
Speaker 5: How do you think the workers do in those plants?
Speaker 6: What are you doing.
Speaker 4: Well, we're doing that.
Speaker 3: We're going to have a report on that probably this afternoon.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have good form of protection and through quarantine,
Speaker 3: when we find somebody that's not we're going to be
Speaker 3: very they're going to be very careful they are as
Speaker 3: to who's going into the plant, and the quarantine is
Speaker 3: going to be very strong. And we're going to make
Speaker 3: people better. When they have a problem, we're going to
Speaker 3: get them better. Hopefully they're going to get better.
Speaker 1: Yes, Trump and many presidents before him have a role
Speaker 1: in one of the more infuriating aspects of what the
Speaker 1: hot dog has come to represent, the furious and brutal
Speaker 1: production of meat in America. The clip you just heard
Speaker 1: is Trump back in twenty twenty placing an executive order
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of COVID lockdowns in which meat production
Speaker 1: was declared as essential in the US. As time went on,
Speaker 1: it became clear that this order gave carte blanche to
Speaker 1: and in fact was drafted by meat processing CEOs at
Speaker 1: Tyson and Smithfield Farms. This legislation was first of all, unnecessary.
Speaker 1: Meat production is not essential, and because of other factors
Speaker 1: like decreased union power, tremendous employer intimidation, and employees fear
Speaker 1: that their government would not provide any other financial relief
Speaker 1: during lockdown led to lives being lost at exc extremely
Speaker 1: high rates within this industry. At one point during lockdown,
Speaker 1: the only place more dangerous to work at than a
Speaker 1: hospital was a meat processing plant in the US. And
Speaker 1: that doesn't even start to address the animals. So I
Speaker 1: mean it when I say a symbol, even when as
Speaker 1: silly as a hot dog, comes with a lot of baggage,
Speaker 1: even when it's a symbol of the only remaining perfect
Speaker 1: food on Earth. Sorry, the email at seven in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I'm staring at my phone where this mysterious email
Speaker 1: is begging me to answer it. And what I need
Speaker 1: to do is make sure that the person on the
Speaker 1: other side of this email is overthinking the topic as
Speaker 1: much as I am. Listener, I am thrilled and relieved
Speaker 1: to report that they were. The message came from art
Speaker 1: duo Gen Catron and Paul Outlaw, who had been commissioned
Speaker 1: to create a sixty five foot long hollow hot dog
Speaker 1: sculpture to put in the middle of Times Square. Even
Speaker 1: more amazingly, this sort of work was their specialty. Their
Speaker 1: previous work was fucking weird. It was incredible. The message said.
Speaker 2: Here's a bit more about us. A project deck is
Speaker 2: attached and will also leave you with this inspirational gift
Speaker 2: below smiley face.
Speaker 1: The gift giff sounds weird to me. Maybe that's a
Speaker 1: generational thing. Maybe I'm old. I don't want to say it.
Speaker 1: The gift did not disappoint. It showed a massive hot
Speaker 1: dog on a dump truck bed, lifting into the air
Speaker 1: and shooting confetti in front of a tourist bus and
Speaker 1: an ad for the Lion King on Broadway. And you
Speaker 1: have to understand. You see this and it sounds fake,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. Jen and Paul went on to describe
Speaker 1: the project.
Speaker 2: Like this, a symbol and a food found throughout Times Square.
Speaker 2: The hot dog shares elevated status as a New York
Speaker 2: City icon, alongside the yellow taxi cab, the pretzel, the
Speaker 2: Deli cup, and the playbill. A humble handheld sausage with
Speaker 2: roots linked to German immigration in the eighteen hundreds, the
Speaker 2: wiener has also become inextricably linked to American culture, from
Speaker 2: baseball games and the Fourth of July to hot dog
Speaker 2: diplomacy as an enduring tactic of US international relations.
Speaker 1: Okay, so here was the deal. Jen and Paul weren't
Speaker 1: just making a gigantic hot dog. They wanted to say
Speaker 1: something about the hot dog and wanted to call people
Speaker 1: in to help craft events that would make that intention clear.
Speaker 1: Their entire body of work reflected that, finding the darkest
Speaker 1: corners of American culture to comment on, using bright, interactive,
Speaker 1: occasionally sinister feeling projects that drew you in visually before
Speaker 1: you even realized how fucked up the subject matter was.
Speaker 1: They wanted to examine the hot dog as a symbol
Speaker 1: by creating a monument of a hot dog. Yeah, by
Speaker 1: the end of this email, I was in. I was
Speaker 1: absolutely in, and I hadn't even gotten out of bed yet.
Speaker 1: Jen and Paul were these puzzle box artists that disguised
Speaker 1: fascinating questions inside of really audacious, freaky, large scale art.
Speaker 1: And not for nothing. But this wasn't just going to
Speaker 1: be a hot dog sculpture. It would be a hot
Speaker 1: dog sculpture that raised in the air, erect an ejaculated confetti.
Speaker 1: And so the moment of truth, a sixty five foot
Speaker 1: hot dog is knocking at the door will you answer,
Speaker 1: I replied, Oh, my God, of course I want to
Speaker 1: be a part of the gigantic confetti hot dog celebration. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was all caps, And three months later I was
Speaker 1: there in Times Square watching an enormous hot dog come
Speaker 1: mustard colored confetti all over the squealing masses. It was horrific,
Speaker 1: it was perfect. The hot dog has been a cultural
Speaker 1: main character for oh for a century, but every once
Speaker 1: in a while, it becomes the Internet's main character.
Speaker 5: To the sixty five foot hot dog in Times Square.
Speaker 1: Your sixteenth minute starts now.
Speaker 2: Six s six.
Speaker 5: Oh, this is exciting for me.
Speaker 1: It is hot dogs season, and with hot dog season
Speaker 1: comes the inevitable and necessary questioning of why and how
Speaker 1: a hot dog came to symbolize America.
Speaker 5: I know what you're thinking, Jamie.
Speaker 1: You just wanted to talk about hot dogs.
Speaker 2: Yes I did.
Speaker 5: There was a sixty.
Speaker 1: Five foot one in Times Square. Are you gonna tell
Speaker 1: me I'm wrong? And it's the first episode of sixteen
Speaker 1: minute to discuss a viral work of art. Kind of
Speaker 1: an underrated subgenre of main character, I think, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Consider that terrifying restored fresco of
Speaker 1: Jesus by an eighty one year old woman in Spain
Speaker 1: that looks like, well, you've seen it, not Jesus Monachelabi's
Speaker 1: data illustrations that make crucial underreported stories pop up right
Speaker 1: in your Instagram feed. Ooh, here's a deep cut those
Speaker 1: Hamilton Tumblr fan art illustrations that reimagines famous slaveholder Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson as a queer furry taking Japanese lessons or works
Speaker 1: of art that come around every so often and are
Speaker 1: received rapturously. There's a comic I see every once in
Speaker 1: a while from the incredible artist Hallie Bateman that shows
Speaker 1: people passing each other in a busy city connected by
Speaker 1: tenuous primary colored lines, with the caption It's a miracle
Speaker 1: we ever met. As I was getting ready for this episode,
Speaker 1: I was kind of comforted that what makes a piece
Speaker 1: of artwork get popular on the Internet is still kind
Speaker 1: of a mysterious thing. They can be digital pieces, but
Speaker 1: they aren't always digital pieces. Sometimes art gets to you
Speaker 1: through the algorithm. Sometimes it's how the artwork itself connects
Speaker 1: to a cultural moment. And sometimes the artwork is bad
Speaker 1: and there's nothing that drives engagement like cyberbullying.
Speaker 5: An elderly woman who lives in Spain.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's because the art in question isn't just
Speaker 1: in It pulled you out of looking at your phone
Speaker 1: in the first place, at least for a second before
Speaker 1: it occurs to you to take a selfie with it
Speaker 1: because of the gigantic hot dog? What were you gonna
Speaker 1: do not take a picture with it? I find this comforting.
Speaker 1: The powers that be who fund public works of art
Speaker 1: can't really predict how people will.
Speaker 5: Respond to it.
Speaker 1: And it is from this great tradition of public art
Speaker 1: that people grow irrationally attached to and angry at that
Speaker 1: we find the sixty five foot hot dog in Times Square.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about what constitutes public art.
Speaker 1: So public art, the non founding father monument type has
Speaker 1: been around since the late nineteenth century, give or take,
Speaker 1: following the World's Fair of eighteen ninety three in Chicago. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: a lot of the false narratives around who invented the
Speaker 1: hot dog came from this same World's Fair, but that's
Speaker 1: for another day. The point is publicly funded art comes
Speaker 1: alongside industrialization and the increase of people living in urban centers.
Speaker 5: When I say public art in.
Speaker 1: This episode, I mean pieces that were made possible by
Speaker 1: at least partially public funding, so not overt advertisements, and
Speaker 1: usually touching on themes that funders think will be relevant.
Speaker 5: To everyday people.
Speaker 1: Although the way that public art has been funded over
Speaker 1: the years has changed, but thankfully it's still a part
Speaker 1: of our landscape today, which is amazing, especially if your
Speaker 1: mom's mission in life is to get a selfie with
Speaker 1: this Chicago being. For some reason, the kind of public
Speaker 1: art that leads to a gorgeous feminine phallic object in
Speaker 1: Times Square can be traced back about.
Speaker 5: One hundred years.
Speaker 1: The book Modernism for the Masses by Jody Patterson gets
Speaker 1: into this history in detail. Arts funding, as we know
Speaker 1: it really took off in the US in the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties during the New Deal era under President Roosevelt, and
Speaker 1: was meant to keep artists working and developing a more
Speaker 1: distinct national art style to compete with other countries invested
Speaker 1: in a similar mission, because countries love to use art
Speaker 1: as soft propaganda to demonstrate how awesome it is here. Actually,
Speaker 1: Navy recruitment went up five hundred percent after Top Gun
Speaker 1: came out.
Speaker 4: To reach for something bigger, a master, a more challenging
Speaker 4: world to feel the confidence and pride of knowing who
Speaker 4: you are and what you can do.
Speaker 7: Show the world your US Navy Live the Adventure Paul one,
Speaker 7: eight hundred three to seven.
Speaker 1: Maybe, but these New Deal programs were net good.
Speaker 5: They ended up nurturing a lot of.
Speaker 1: Artists who are a part of American canon today, employed
Speaker 1: them so that they didn't need to leave their respective
Speaker 1: creative fields, and expanded the average Americans access to art
Speaker 1: by putting it on display for free and using other
Speaker 1: money to open community centers in underserved cities. And this
Speaker 1: gave many marginalized Americans access to arts and arts education.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of stuff that we don't really invest
Speaker 1: in today, and it made a big difference. Slight propaganda
Speaker 1: intent aside this New Deal program, the Federal Art Project
Speaker 1: generally worked for artists. They were, of course, dead broke
Speaker 1: during the depression, and while censorship within these grants were
Speaker 1: about the issue you would expect, there were technically only
Speaker 1: two rules for a Federal Art Project at this time.
Speaker 1: They were no nudes and no politics. Best of luck
Speaker 1: with that, Franklin. Many artists n these things in any ways,
Speaker 1: and were still provided with the living wage, studio space
Speaker 1: and public audience they needed to establish a career. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this program went away in the early forties when America's
Speaker 1: involvement in World War II increased, but the spirit of
Speaker 1: it made a short comeback in the nineties seventies under
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon.
Speaker 5: Oops did he slay there?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.
Speaker 1: No, he was a bad guy regardless. From nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three to nineteen eighty. According to Jody Patterson in an
Speaker 1: interview with Fox's Alissa Wilkinson, a Nixon program called the
Speaker 1: Comprehensive Employment and Training Act ended up employing about ten
Speaker 1: thousand artists during this time. I was not aware of
Speaker 1: most of this information, and I was honestly a little
Speaker 1: surprised to hear that public art has been around for
Speaker 1: so short a time. In the way we're thinking of it,
Speaker 1: these full salary, government funded programs have largely dried up.
Speaker 1: One of the most effective ways of getting funded today
Speaker 1: are through private public sector collaborations, which is how Hot
Speaker 1: Dog in the City gets made. So instead of being
Speaker 1: government funded like artists of the late nineteen thirties, this
Speaker 1: system has the public partially funding the project and the
Speaker 1: rest of the money coming from insert corporation name here.
Speaker 1: Another popular way to get funding is from a still
Speaker 1: operational New Deal policy called Art in Architecture, which to
Speaker 1: this day institutes that half a percent of construction costs
Speaker 1: to all American government buildings be used to commission public
Speaker 1: American art to go in front of them. So if
Speaker 1: you've ever asked, why is this gigantic clothes spin in
Speaker 1: front of my government building?
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 1: But what I love about public artworks is when they
Speaker 1: get people mad, and that happens with pretty great frequency.
Speaker 1: Some of my favorite examples include the Gorilla Girls' billboards
Speaker 1: do women have to be naked to get into the
Speaker 1: Met Museum from the nineteen eighties. What I learned about
Speaker 1: last year was Paul McCarthy's tree, which is advertised as
Speaker 1: a gigantic green inflatable tree heavy air quotes that many
Speaker 1: correctly saw as a giant inflatable green butt plugs, hygewayways,
Speaker 1: good fences, make good neighbors from back in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: that commented on America's growing hostility towards immigrants. And there
Speaker 1: was some controversy with hot Dog in the City, But
Speaker 1: we'll get there. The sixty five foot hot dog was
Speaker 1: funded by Times Square Arts, a public arts fund that
Speaker 1: was founded in nineteen ninety two, and they actually sought
Speaker 1: out Gen Catron and Paul Outlaw. At the time of
Speaker 1: this writing, Times Square Arts is funded in a public
Speaker 1: private way, so part of the huge hot Dog was
Speaker 1: funded by the city, the state, and the National Endowment
Speaker 1: for the Arts, and the other part was funded by
Speaker 1: drum Roll, Please Meta and Morgan Stanley, and obviously Times
Speaker 1: Square is a huge get for a public installation artists.
Speaker 1: The square itself has been the hub of American consumerism
Speaker 1: and pop culture and Elmo impersonators the costumes ventilated at
Speaker 1: the neck for over one hundred year. About half a
Speaker 1: million people pass through there every day, and if you're
Speaker 1: an artist being asked to make something, there's few places
Speaker 1: on earth where there's more visual noise to cut through.
Speaker 5: Enter Jen and Paul.
Speaker 1: Come with me if you will. Two today, a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, basically today, Inside Out Too is doing great
Speaker 1: at the box office, and if it does better than Minions,
Speaker 1: I'll walk into traffic. Record heat is once again sweeping
Speaker 1: the globe. The American government continues to aid in event
Speaker 1: Israel and the genocide and starvation of Palestinians, and I
Speaker 1: have my period today.
Speaker 5: This is the world.
Speaker 1: That the sixty five foot hot Dog takes place within.
Speaker 1: Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw were asked to pitch some
Speaker 1: ideas to Times Square Arts for the spring of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, and Gene Cooney at Times Square Arts was
Speaker 1: right to ask them because they were uniquely suited a
Speaker 1: large scale public project like this. After they met getting
Speaker 1: their MFAs at Crankruk Academy of Art in the late
Speaker 1: two thousands, Jen and Paul banded together and moved to
Speaker 1: New York. They've worked on both huge, fun public projects
Speaker 1: and smaller, sometimes more somberly themed gallery pieces for the
Speaker 1: better part of fifteen years. Whether they're interactive and outside
Speaker 1: or in a gallery, they all share the same visual language.
Speaker 1: So I'm no art critic. I literally just told you
Speaker 1: I'm a big Manions fan. But whether Jen and Paul
Speaker 1: are making something for fun or using a miniature sculpture
Speaker 1: to envision what Alex Jones's depression bathroom might look like,
Speaker 1: the work is colorful and it dares you to interact
Speaker 1: with it physically and intellectually. I really like what they do,
Speaker 1: but going through their catalog, I especially love their public
Speaker 1: and their performance pieces.
Speaker 5: Back in twenty fourteen, there was their double.
Speaker 1: Decker bus tour of Chelsea's art galleries, which included a
Speaker 1: gift shop that poked fun at the abundance of white
Speaker 1: men whose work populated those galleries, as well as making
Speaker 1: up random artists of their own and the hopes that
Speaker 1: people would notice.
Speaker 6: Hi, I'm Jen Katrine about Paul Outlaw, and you are
Speaker 6: here at Gen and Paul's one stop shopping Souvenir City
Speaker 6: and Chelsea Bus Tours.
Speaker 4: This is our big bus, Chelsea, New York City.
Speaker 7: This is where all the blue chier galleries gather to play.
Speaker 6: So we're here to give the inside scoop and what.
Speaker 5: Really goes on in these galleries.
Speaker 6: Now, the Chelsea art thing can be very very confusing.
Speaker 6: Why does some artists make so much money?
Speaker 4: Why are most artists white?
Speaker 7: Mouse? We don't know, We don't know, but we have
Speaker 7: a pretty good guest.
Speaker 5: And it got a reaction.
Speaker 1: Chelsea Art galleries were pretty annoyed at this big, homemade,
Speaker 1: double decker gaudy tour bus careening down their fancy little district.
Speaker 1: Another early amazing project from them was back in twenty
Speaker 1: ten with Genden Outlaws Fish Fry Truck before the Big
Speaker 1: Food Truck Boom, where the two bought a retired food
Speaker 1: truck off breakflast, added hydraulics, and then almost pop up
Speaker 1: book fold out animatronic restaurant where they would serve fresh
Speaker 1: crawfish inspired by their rural upbringings. And even after the
Speaker 1: truck closed, the performance kept going. They were on Chopped.
Speaker 7: And finally Chef Gen Catron and Chef Paul Outlaw, We're
Speaker 7: the chefs and owners and chin and Outlaws Fish Frout
Speaker 7: Truck and crawfish Boil.
Speaker 5: I heard that southern Illinois.
Speaker 7: I'm from Perio, Balabama, on the Gulf coast, looking to
Speaker 7: New York City.
Speaker 4: We'd filled the missing boy in New York for.
Speaker 7: This mud bug from Louisiana.
Speaker 4: When Jane lights up every ring she walks into. The
Speaker 4: biggles are good, Paul, I could be the best.
Speaker 6: Everything he does.
Speaker 4: I'm not afraid of losing because I've never done it.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it's like. Chin It Outlaws, curl Fees.
Speaker 1: They were not professional chefs and yet they ended up
Speaker 1: on Chopped. In their gallery work, you get a chance
Speaker 1: to see Jen and Paul with a little less chaos
Speaker 1: and a little more overt political messaging. They created miniatures
Speaker 1: that referenced right wing conspiratorial moments like Pizzagate, like Alex Jones,
Speaker 1: an acknowledgment of colonialism, a sculpture about the violence it
Speaker 1: takes for a banana to get into your hands at
Speaker 1: a local grocery store. But their public projects usually tend
Speaker 1: to be more interactive. You were on the bus on
Speaker 1: the art tour, you were eating the crawfish. They once
Speaker 1: designed a giant mechanical pair of tongs that picked up
Speaker 1: a big, fake giant meatball and a big fake giant
Speaker 1: plate of spaghetti. They're really creative, and they're all about
Speaker 1: messing around with contexts, and this hot dog project was
Speaker 1: no different. It wouldn't just be a sixty five foot
Speaker 1: long hot dog. It was a hot dog that would
Speaker 1: rise and come at noon every day and was all
Speaker 1: so hollowed out to host very small events, Which brings
Speaker 1: me to the event, which was another crucial part of
Speaker 1: Jen and Paul's mission with this project, because while the
Speaker 1: hot dog itself was meant to draw tourists in in
Speaker 1: Times Square, the six weeks that the hot Dog was there. Yes, sorry,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, it's already too late. They've programmed a
Speaker 1: series of events that either played into or directly contradicted
Speaker 1: the jingoistic americanness that we're trained to see in the
Speaker 1: hot Dog. They talk about it a little here in
Speaker 1: a promo video.
Speaker 6: Hot Dog being kind of this very deeply entrenched American
Speaker 6: symbol has permeated our culture, So the hot Dog means
Speaker 6: a lot to who we are, and also the darker
Speaker 6: or sinister parts of how the hot Dog came to be,
Speaker 6: I think is also reflective of our larger American culture.
Speaker 6: So we think it's such a good and fitting symbol
Speaker 6: to blow up at this massive scale.
Speaker 7: Along with the hot Dogs, we also have a lot
Speaker 7: of additional programming that's going to help really shape and
Speaker 7: formulate the story that we're trying to tell.
Speaker 6: We're hoping that through this wide range of avenge that
Speaker 6: we can tell the largest story the hot Dog and
Speaker 6: kind of the larger story of ourselves too.
Speaker 1: Before the Hot Dog's grand unveiling in Times Square on
Speaker 1: April thirtieth, Gen and Paul announced the following programming. The
Speaker 1: Hottest Dog, a canine beauty pageant, a hot dog gating
Speaker 1: contest with Nathan's hot Dogs just like the Fourth of
Speaker 1: July show on Coney Island, a condiment wrestling match featuring
Speaker 1: the Extreme Wrestling Alliance, which is a local backyard wrestling organization,
Speaker 1: and Chokehole, a New Orleans drag performance group.
Speaker 5: A video series that explored.
Speaker 1: The highs and lows of being a street vendor in
Speaker 1: New York when street vending laws are more restrictive than ever.
Speaker 1: And a day long academic summit on the Hot Dog,
Speaker 1: which brag I spoke and hosted at, which also featured
Speaker 1: street vendors who were organizing on behalf of their peers.
Speaker 1: A high school debate team arguing Ketchup versus Mustard Mustard
Speaker 1: one huge upset. There was a professional eaters panel, and
Speaker 1: there was a speech by one of the most famous
Speaker 1: vegan feminists ever, Carol J.
Speaker 5: Adams.
Speaker 1: And this all took place in a Broadway theater on
Speaker 1: a Sunday afternoon. These events were in addition to massive
Speaker 1: opening and closing events for The Hot Dog on April
Speaker 1: thirtieth and June thirteenth, And while these events were dispersed
Speaker 1: throughout the run, every day at noon the hot dog
Speaker 1: would be hoisted onto its side and would shoot confetti
Speaker 1: that the delight and confusion of tourists and costumed elmos.
Speaker 1: After the announcement, Evil seemed generally pumped, The programming sounded cool,
Speaker 1: and the sixty five foot distinction made it officially the
Speaker 1: largest hot dog sculpture ever made, with apologies to that
Speaker 1: other guy, and Jen and Paul were all set for
Speaker 1: the big opening because with that opening would come the reviews.
Speaker 1: So it's the day of the Times Square unveiling April thirtieth,
Speaker 1: The advanced promotion for the project has gone over very well.
Speaker 1: The poster features Paul, who's painted pink and lying in
Speaker 1: a gigantic hot dog bun covered in mustard and naked
Speaker 1: except for a loincloth, while Jen looms above him and
Speaker 1: a hot dog metallic bikini like the Venus de Milo.
Speaker 1: She's about six months pregnant. Because did I mention, Gen
Speaker 1: and Paul are partners in life and in art, and
Speaker 1: their sixty five foot hot dog is unveiled literal days
Speaker 1: before Jen gives birth to their second child. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are two people on Earth living the dream, and
Speaker 1: it's these two. There's a crowd gathered around the hot
Speaker 1: dog looking at its wondrousness, and Jen and Paul are
Speaker 1: dressed to the nines. He's wearing a suit, she's wearing
Speaker 1: a sheer dress covered in applice daisies. And to open
Speaker 1: the event, they go for a comical amount of American imagery.
Speaker 1: On one side of the hot dog there was a
Speaker 1: professional cheerleading squad, and on the other side of the
Speaker 1: hot dog there was the Late show's gospel choir performing.
Speaker 1: It felt like the marriage of American religion, pro sports
Speaker 1: and religion. A few days later was the Condiment Wrestling match,
Speaker 1: which contrasted these scrappy backyard wrestlers with nipple twisting drag performers.
Speaker 1: And it was here where the more polarizing coverage began.
Speaker 1: So I gathered some initial press reactions to this hot dog,
Speaker 1: and one of these things is not like the other.
Speaker 1: Let's see if you can spot it.
Speaker 2: It's both a celebration of the food item as well
Speaker 2: as a Marxist critique of the labor conditions so many
Speaker 2: vendors face, and of the meat packing industry more broadly.
Speaker 2: Where Claude Oldenberg meets up to Sinclair.
Speaker 1: Times Square, the capital of capitalism amplifies the messages of
Speaker 1: the artists who suggested the origins of the hot Dog,
Speaker 1: and what today makes it the almost perfect American capitalism
Speaker 1: story in good ways and in bad ways.
Speaker 2: Not only enhances the entropy of Times Square, but also
Speaker 2: dominates the palette entirely. Amid the sensory overload of slow
Speaker 2: moving crowds, creepy costumed characters demanding paid selfies, the infamous
Speaker 2: naked cowboy, and Retina singing digital billboards.
Speaker 1: The mood was joyful and astounded even the scene. At
Speaker 1: all Times Square security guards laughed and Onion pummeled another
Speaker 1: character in the corner of the ring pure delight. Chohl
Speaker 1: got rounchy howls. The hot Dog ascended skyward.
Speaker 2: Times Square's Giant hot Dog is apparently a meat manifesto
Speaker 2: about toxic masculinity.
Speaker 5: Wait, we found it now.
Speaker 1: Those other reviews are very art world, They're very heady.
Speaker 1: They're using names that you're like. I was supposed to
Speaker 1: read them in high school, But did I for that
Speaker 1: last pull as a headline from the New York Post.
Speaker 1: So before that, I quoted a lot of liberal, art
Speaker 1: world friendly publications. The most popular publication I quoted was
Speaker 1: The New York Times, who still actively failed to report.
Speaker 5: On the genocide in Gaza.
Speaker 1: So I'm not meaning to say that any one publication
Speaker 1: is better than the other.
Speaker 5: However, it is The.
Speaker 1: New York Post, with the historically right lan that takes
Speaker 1: the bait of the Giant hot Dog's message. They heard
Speaker 1: the word masculinity and realized, wait, that's one of the
Speaker 1: words we put in headlines to make people all mad.
Speaker 1: This headline, I'm square Giant hot Dog is apparently a
Speaker 1: meat manifesto about toxic masculinity, was written by columnist and
Speaker 1: reviewer Johnny Oliniski, author of important articles like bear Breasts,
Speaker 1: Suicides and Floco NYC can't handle public art and the
Speaker 1: biggest problem with House of the Dragon, I can't remember
Speaker 1: anyone's name.
Speaker 5: Look, no hate.
Speaker 1: I used to write clickbait for a living, too, only
Speaker 1: making fun of him because this guy seems like an asshole.
Speaker 1: Let's hear what he has to say about the concept
Speaker 1: of masculinity. I'm sure he's very reasonable.
Speaker 2: Their Titanic sausage is apparently meant to quote examine consumption, capitalism,
Speaker 2: class and contemporary culture. Times Squared Arts website amazingly reads
Speaker 2: that must be why every day at twelve pm, the
Speaker 2: installation lifts off the ground, angles up to sky, and
Speaker 2: becomes a confetti cannon. The explosion of euphemism is supposed
Speaker 2: to reference the quote hyper masculinity and showmanship often associated
Speaker 2: with American culture and patriotism end quote.
Speaker 5: I'm sure it is. And later on there are.
Speaker 2: Even events pegged to this best of worsts, which is
Speaker 2: in town till June thirteenth. One called the Condiment Wars
Speaker 2: will feature the wrestlers of a New Orleans based drag
Speaker 2: group known as Choke Cole, who will quote take down masculinity,
Speaker 2: corporate America, and capitalism end quote. Yeah, I sense a
Speaker 2: trend here. Later on there's a canine beauty pageant one
Speaker 2: hundred percent approve, a hot dog eating contest makes sense,
Speaker 2: and then an on stage talk at town Hall debating
Speaker 2: the merits of the food uh oh. Among the panelists
Speaker 2: at that chat will be a feminist, vegan, writer, and activist.
Speaker 2: I have a sneaking suspicion she won't be pro hot dog.
Speaker 5: Loser.
Speaker 1: Shut up. Bullying is bad except when I do it
Speaker 1: to this guy right now, loser, But when you think
Speaker 1: about it for a second, this guy and the New
Speaker 1: York Post have played directly into Gen and Paul's hands.
Speaker 1: They set a trap and he fell into it. But
Speaker 1: when you think about it for a second, this guy
Speaker 1: and the New York Post have played directly into Jen
Speaker 1: and Paul's hands. They set a trap and he fell
Speaker 1: into it. I wanted to know more about how this
Speaker 1: project came together, and we're better to go than the source.
Speaker 1: So the day after that hot Dog summit that Johnny
Speaker 1: owen Eski hated so much, I took the subway over
Speaker 1: to Gen and Paul studio in Brooklyn, where they were
Speaker 1: in the process of cooking up the closing ceremony for
Speaker 1: June thirteenth. Here's our interview.
Speaker 5: I am Jen.
Speaker 4: Catrin and I'm Paul Outlaw, and.
Speaker 6: We are the artists behind Hotdog in the City.
Speaker 5: Hi guys, Hi?
Speaker 1: Was this the room that the hot Dog was conceived
Speaker 1: inside of?
Speaker 4: This is where we conceived all our children?
Speaker 1: Wow, including the two real ones.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we've been in this room for We've been in
Speaker 7: this building for eleven years, and in this particular room
Speaker 7: for eight eight years maybe.
Speaker 5: Yeah. How long have you been sitting on the hot
Speaker 5: Dog idea?
Speaker 1: How?
Speaker 5: What was the genesis of it.
Speaker 6: We really do like working with food as far as
Speaker 6: our studio practice goes. So we have actually been making
Speaker 6: like hot dogs for a little like pregnant hot dogs
Speaker 6: for a while.
Speaker 5: Like that went over there.
Speaker 7: We should mention food in all its forms, like food sculptures, yeah,
Speaker 7: and actually start cooking and serving food. Yeah, food as
Speaker 7: the grotesque.
Speaker 6: And then we started to think about like Times Square
Speaker 6: approached us about doing a project, and so we presented
Speaker 6: several ideas to them, but you know, the hot dog
Speaker 6: just kind of started to make the most sense because
Speaker 6: Times Square. You know, like when people think about about
Speaker 6: times we're going to think of street vending and the
Speaker 6: hot dog and just New York City in general, like
Speaker 6: asar as like where we should geographically place it.
Speaker 5: It just made sense to put it in Times Square.
Speaker 7: We had a number of proposals with Times Square Arts
Speaker 7: as well, but the hot dog kept reappearing as the
Speaker 7: that's the favorite of the panel.
Speaker 5: Am I to know what any of the sure? Yeah.
Speaker 6: It was like a massive cake where like you would.
Speaker 4: Go in birthdake, multi tiered Bertha cake.
Speaker 6: Where people would have to wear candles on their heads
Speaker 6: and like go inside and their heads would pop out
Speaker 6: and be like the candles for the cake while they
Speaker 6: had like woke and coffee, but.
Speaker 7: We can serve them a cup of coffee and be
Speaker 7: like a coffee shop. But uh, but on top of
Speaker 7: a six story birthday cake.
Speaker 6: And then what was the other one we had?
Speaker 7: We had we had several ideas that involved large piles
Speaker 7: of trash and rotten food with oh, with flies that
Speaker 7: were drones, barrel barrel sized flies that were all whoa.
Speaker 5: Back down, But we can't do drones.
Speaker 7: Sometimes the flies would go up in times square and
Speaker 7: do they would do They would be choreographed. Yeah, they
Speaker 7: would put on a production and then land back on
Speaker 7: the pile of trash.
Speaker 6: But yeah, yeah, we could not do it there. They
Speaker 6: are huge restrictions on Yeah, so we have a bunch
Speaker 6: of create Our brainstorming sessions are honestly just like really wacko.
Speaker 6: Like it takes us a while to finally land on
Speaker 6: something that's both crazy and actually physically possible to do.
Speaker 6: But for a while when we're talking about all these things,
Speaker 6: we just we just like let loose, like it doesn't
Speaker 6: matter if this is actually physically possible or if you know,
Speaker 6: we can actually do it.
Speaker 5: We're just going to talk about it.
Speaker 6: But then we commit with the hot Dog, and then
Speaker 6: we knew the hot dog was not enough, Like we're like, no,
Speaker 6: it needs to be like it needs to speak to
Speaker 6: Times Square to like this corporate masculine capitalism that's just
Speaker 6: like overbearing in this area.
Speaker 8: It was Paul.
Speaker 6: Eventually, I believe it came up with the idea to
Speaker 6: kind of well, we started from like a missile treck, honestly,
Speaker 6: like raising up in the air.
Speaker 7: Yeah, a ballistic hot dog was kind of the origins
Speaker 7: of that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know, just like shooting up and then shooting.
Speaker 7: Out confetti North Korea style military parades.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, making its.
Speaker 7: Way through the New York City and then and then
Speaker 7: lifting up towards skyward.
Speaker 6: The sordid parts of the hot Dog make the sordid
Speaker 6: parts of America. So as we started like digging and
Speaker 6: we're like, well, this actually makes a lot of sense
Speaker 6: to put in Times Square.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I want to take it back a little
Speaker 1: bit and talk more about your lives specifically, how did
Speaker 1: you get from where you came from to working together?
Speaker 6: I grew up in southern Illinois. There was no like
Speaker 6: art scene obviously, just like a lot of farm farmland,
Speaker 6: but I was always just doing weird shit performative type
Speaker 6: things that I didn't know as art. And then eventually
Speaker 6: I think I came to the conclusion that what I
Speaker 6: was doing, the only category fit it would be art
Speaker 6: and so yeah.
Speaker 4: Such as what oh well, yeah, well, I had.
Speaker 6: Like a bunch of pet animals, but like weird ones,
Speaker 6: Like I had two pet raccoons, and like I was
Speaker 6: always out in the woods like training them to do
Speaker 6: things like like what, well, I had to train them
Speaker 6: to like live off the land because their mom died,
Speaker 6: so I was like teaching them to catch crawdads in
Speaker 6: the creek and things like that. But then I don't know,
Speaker 6: I had like little performance elements that they would do too,
Speaker 6: and I was always really interested in like getting these
Speaker 6: like weird pets of mine to do like performative things
Speaker 6: with me. So like yeah, yeah, like a circustrate exciting.
Speaker 6: But I will say like eventually I did, like I released,
Speaker 6: they weren't ever in a cage. They actually always just
Speaker 6: lived in a woodpile and they were always.
Speaker 5: Free to come and go. But eventually I had to
Speaker 5: like force.
Speaker 6: Them to go because they were getting like older, and
Speaker 6: they needed to be like away from me because I'm
Speaker 6: not a raccoon. I can't really teach them, like they
Speaker 6: just can't be with me forever because the raccoons, I'm
Speaker 6: a person. So I had to like send them out
Speaker 6: into the countryside and I had to like take them
Speaker 6: in a truck and like release them into a woods
Speaker 6: far away so they wouldn't be like so depending on me.
Speaker 6: But at that point I knew that they were like okay,
Speaker 6: Like they would go out for the day and like
Speaker 6: get their crawdads and like eat their food, and then
Speaker 6: I was like, Okay, they're free to go.
Speaker 5: It's like they were sending them to college.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, but not just raccoons.
Speaker 4: Gin is progress to other animals.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, well, well this is going to start feeling
Speaker 6: like I'm going to get in trouble.
Speaker 4: So it was just mine, none of much trouble.
Speaker 7: You graduated the mice, yeah you did, chickens, yeah, quail
Speaker 7: I did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but it was all very.
Speaker 4: We're all wearing funny hats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was all very I know.
Speaker 6: I feel like this sounds so borderline as whether I'm
Speaker 6: like like I'm mistreating animals, but I swear I'm not
Speaker 6: mistreating animals. And yeah, they just I just had like
Speaker 6: pets and they just they hung out with me.
Speaker 5: I did fun things with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah you had you had as many circus I did,
Speaker 1: Like I had like a little circus anyway, So I
Speaker 1: just say that that was art and that I could
Speaker 1: be an artist.
Speaker 7: And then I'm from Alabama, small town Alabama, but but
Speaker 7: I was always uh doing artwork of some sorts and
Speaker 7: ended up ended up just finding my way into a
Speaker 7: sculpture program in college and getting serious about it, and
Speaker 7: then just after that just moved to New York. After
Speaker 7: a few years working as studio assistant. In New York,
Speaker 7: I went to Cranbrook and outside of Detroit for graduate school,
Speaker 7: which is where Jennifer also happened to be going. That's
Speaker 7: where they recognized her natural talents and ability for training animals,
Speaker 7: and they allowed her to come to Cranbrook also.
Speaker 5: Yeah shocking.
Speaker 7: We actually went to school together for a couple of
Speaker 7: years in Detroit and then moved back to New York
Speaker 7: after that, and we've been we kind of started working
Speaker 7: together and in at Cranbrook helping each other out with projects.
Speaker 7: I would help jen rig up her mice, ferris wheels
Speaker 7: that operated, and Jen would help me put on game
Speaker 7: shows at the student gallery. So our work just kind
Speaker 7: of started melting together. When we go to New York,
Speaker 7: it just became kind of second nature to be working
Speaker 7: together all the time. We actually do a lot of
Speaker 7: performance work in our in our in our studio practice
Speaker 7: as well. We do a lot of sculptures, and we
Speaker 7: do environments and use a lot of audience participation, and
Speaker 7: they're all kind of extension of what the idea of
Speaker 7: performance work is, including the hot dog. It is a
Speaker 7: sculptural object, but there's also a performative aspect of that.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think that Jen and I both started really really
Speaker 7: using performance in our work at grad school.
Speaker 6: And then I think for us, public art needs to
Speaker 6: have different level of approach because you are dealing with
Speaker 6: public who may not be as they don't have the
Speaker 6: same like art history understanding. And that's not a criticism,
Speaker 6: that's just you know, that's just what.
Speaker 5: It's just the world. It's just the world.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: When we make public works to make something that is
Speaker 6: at least approachable on a certain level, and then you know,
Speaker 6: as people dig in and hopefully we hold their attention
Speaker 6: and keep their attention and then they can start maybe
Speaker 6: thinking about the more critical elements that we're trying to
Speaker 6: bring out to light.
Speaker 1: So that's part of what I love about the approach
Speaker 1: to your public work, where like you can enjoy it
Speaker 1: if you get it, and you can enjoy it if
Speaker 1: you don't get it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like that is what makes a great piece of
Speaker 5: public art.
Speaker 1: Could you give me a dumb person an idea of
Speaker 1: how you build a sixty five foot long hot talk?
Speaker 7: Well, I mean it is the magic of engineering, I suppose,
Speaker 7: but it's like it's it is. It does start on
Speaker 7: we start with drawings of what we wanted to look like,
Speaker 7: what kind of scale might be taking, and what the
Speaker 7: what the overall shape looks like obviously like any artwork
Speaker 7: would start. And then after that we dive deep into
Speaker 7: the computer. Uh so it gets engineer drawings for something
Speaker 7: like this that is very much in the public realm
Speaker 7: and very very large. It also has to get engineering
Speaker 7: stamps and approvals from engineers. So we have to have
Speaker 7: the internal structure all has to be built to speck
Speaker 7: and all the materials have to be SpecEd out and
Speaker 7: then get approved by the engineer. That part is basically
Speaker 7: a welded steel frame that's connected to a semi trailer
Speaker 7: that would have been like a dump trailer for like
Speaker 7: dumping dirt rocks up the boat.
Speaker 6: Okay, which is brilliant because when something already exists, it's
Speaker 6: like much easier to get an engineer to stamp it.
Speaker 6: That was Paul's idea. Actually, he's like, well, this already exists,
Speaker 6: so we'll just so you're just using like a dump truck.
Speaker 4: So we took it.
Speaker 7: It's a dump bed, a dump bed trailer, semi trailer.
Speaker 7: We removed the tub so it's just the trailer frame
Speaker 7: and the hydraulics, and then we built our own interior
Speaker 7: frame at a steel for that. It isn't two pieces.
Speaker 7: It bolts together on site. Because the length was going
Speaker 7: at sixty five feet long, it was too long for
Speaker 7: an actual semi trailer, so we did cut it into
Speaker 7: two pieces.
Speaker 4: Ok There.
Speaker 7: Once the frames done, then we get back to the
Speaker 7: fun art part and we basically clad the whole thing
Speaker 7: in Pham that is carved to be shaped like the
Speaker 7: hot dog, to look like to look like our drawings
Speaker 7: and our pictures and our renderings.
Speaker 1: It seems like I got away with feels dramatic, but
Speaker 1: it feels like you guys got away with so much
Speaker 1: in the creation of this hot Dog, Like I'm just
Speaker 1: in awe of how much you got away with.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, they were surprisingly accommodating, like they were enthusiastic about it.
Speaker 4: They let us do really.
Speaker 6: The wrestling show, and I was like, this is going
Speaker 6: to be wild. And I think as they as they
Speaker 6: saw the show unfolded're like, oh, this is wilder than
Speaker 6: we thought it would be.
Speaker 1: But they still were like, Okay, this is a nice Yeah,
Speaker 1: ask for forgiveness later.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What are interactions or things you've heard anecdotally about the
Speaker 1: public interacting with this hot dog that stick out to you.
Speaker 7: Really remarkable response, like like people absolutely love it. They
Speaker 7: show up there just to see it. They come to
Speaker 7: Times Square just to see the hot Dog.
Speaker 4: Uh, they want it when we're there doing.
Speaker 7: We do the confetti pop off every day at noon,
Speaker 7: and when we're there they want to make sure they
Speaker 7: didn't miss it or is it still on schedule?
Speaker 4: And and there's a.
Speaker 7: There's a there's a there's a crowd every every day
Speaker 7: of the hot Dog waiting for this little little micro
Speaker 7: confetti blast that comes out comes out the end of
Speaker 7: this hot dog.
Speaker 4: Uh, they're very pumped up about it.
Speaker 7: The social media reaction has been has been huge. I
Speaker 7: think we've heard like a billion impressions around the.
Speaker 4: Around the social media.
Speaker 7: One of the things that I've I found I was
Speaker 7: super happy with is on its face, it was it
Speaker 7: was it's just a hot dog.
Speaker 4: It's just a hot dog.
Speaker 7: We we we have we have reasons for it for
Speaker 7: it being a hot dog that we've we've dropped hints
Speaker 7: to and and why what we want the sculpture to
Speaker 7: speak to. But but we didn't push that too hard.
Speaker 7: And on the surface, it was just a hot dog.
Speaker 7: But as soon as people started thinking that it's more
Speaker 7: than a hot dog and then it's really really has
Speaker 7: a little more a critical uh theory behind it, they
Speaker 7: they kind of took that and ran with it into
Speaker 7: exactly the way that I expected them to, in the
Speaker 7: way I kind.
Speaker 4: Of wanted them to walk me through that example.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So so for example, the New York Post, they
Speaker 7: they first announced it awesome, here's a big hot dog story.
Speaker 7: They announced that once here's a giant hot dog in
Speaker 7: Times Square. It's gonna be so cool, it's gonna be great,
Speaker 7: and then like a week later they kind of caught
Speaker 7: wind of some of the some of the ideas that
Speaker 7: we that we think the hot Dog represents, which are
Speaker 7: which are not even that that horrible. It's more of
Speaker 7: a reflection on the society, for better or worse. You
Speaker 7: kind of take it as it is. It is, it
Speaker 7: is who we are, it is where we came from,
Speaker 7: it is what we what we look like. They immediately
Speaker 7: took sides on it, and they immediately uh, I.
Speaker 6: Think the headline was apparently the hot Dog is about
Speaker 6: toxic masculinity or.
Speaker 5: Something like that.
Speaker 6: Right, They were like jumping to some conclusions and getting
Speaker 6: their base fired up. And that's when that's when the
Speaker 6: hate mail came. Was after that article obviously.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, had you ever been through like a round
Speaker 1: of uh hate mail reaction to stuff before?
Speaker 4: I don't know, so yeah, yeah, well not on this
Speaker 4: scale by any means.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but it was it was just calling us morons
Speaker 6: and and you know, I mean, nothing too crazy, just
Speaker 6: I feel like you've gotten so much worse than we have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's suffer as bad as you think
Speaker 1: it's going to be. But every once in a while,
Speaker 1: you're like, Wow, that took a lot of time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's remarkable the amount of effort that.
Speaker 6: You have to go mail address to make a big
Speaker 6: email address. They find our emails, they like, you know,
Speaker 6: just to.
Speaker 7: Say hot dog equals moron because another publications fill right
Speaker 7: in line on the other side of the.
Speaker 8: New York Times, you know, which is we're careful.
Speaker 7: We're careful not to not to necessarily criticize too too
Speaker 7: hard in our work.
Speaker 4: We do believe that we're.
Speaker 7: A reflection well, I mean what society is. And if
Speaker 7: that reflection is bad, that's not that's not our fault.
Speaker 7: It's it's society's fault. You don't like the reflection that
Speaker 7: you see what I mean, who's wise? Who's probably whose
Speaker 7: fault is that? Realizing that the hot dog is a
Speaker 7: reflection of of of society, then then they immediately took
Speaker 7: sides and immediately went well, and.
Speaker 5: We we said some maybe.
Speaker 6: I mean, anytime you talk about America and you're not
Speaker 6: like saying, yeah, America, this is the best, Like I
Speaker 6: feel like that's like, yeah, that's like a trigger.
Speaker 5: You're going to get a lot of emails calling you moron.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And we were sabotage. The hot Dog was sabotage.
Speaker 7: Someone at some point in time when went under underneath
Speaker 7: the hot Dog and just ripped every hose an electrical
Speaker 7: component and and and broke all the kill switches and
Speaker 7: the choke candles on the on the both motors that
Speaker 7: we have underneath there, and unplugged all the hoses and
Speaker 7: messed with the hydraulics. And it was a violent intentionally, Yeah,
Speaker 7: it was dismantling of the.
Speaker 4: Of the motors that operate the hot dog.
Speaker 7: That's pretty again, like talking about how much work it
Speaker 7: takes us in an email, it takes even more work
Speaker 7: to go try to physically vandalize hot dog sculpture. Oh,
Speaker 7: in the day before that, someone called basically a bomb
Speaker 7: threat on the on the hot Dog. They called the
Speaker 7: police and said that a suspicious man was underneath the
Speaker 7: hot dog. Looks like he's planting C four.
Speaker 1: Well, where do you go from sixty five foot hot Dog?
Speaker 1: Because is there anything that you're like, what happens post
Speaker 1: sixty five foot hot Dog? I trust that you have
Speaker 1: crazier ideas. We do have crazy idea yes for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like I.
Speaker 6: Said, our brainstorming sessions are really like we'll see who
Speaker 6: will let us do it.
Speaker 5: I think that's always the question mark, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think from here we definitely go into corporate art.
Speaker 8: They're going to love us.
Speaker 1: I really can't overstate my debt to Jen and Paul.
Speaker 1: They were so kind to involve me and many other
Speaker 1: hot dog heads throughout this process. So throw your impossible
Speaker 1: dogs on the George foreman as We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a second. Baby, Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm still
Speaker 1: not vegan somehow, and today we're talking about the sixty
Speaker 1: five foot hot dog in Times Square, and right now
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to someone who's very disappointed that
Speaker 1: I'm still not vegan somehow. Earlier in this episode, I
Speaker 1: mentioned that at the hot Dog Academic summit I spoke at,
Speaker 1: there was a featured talk by a prominent vegan feminist
Speaker 1: and for many the vegan feminist. And I want to
Speaker 1: tell you more about her, because not only do I
Speaker 1: find her to be an incredibly cool person, she also
Speaker 1: has unique insight on the Internet. I'm talking about one
Speaker 1: Carol J. Adams, the author of the now legendary text
Speaker 1: The Sexual Politics of Meat, a feminist vegetarian critical theory,
Speaker 1: first published back in nineteen ninety And I know the
Speaker 1: title sounds a little bit intimidating, but I really recommend it,
Speaker 1: and I wish i'd known about it when I was
Speaker 1: writing my book. She talks a lot about the intersection
Speaker 1: of animal suffering with how people subjugate each other. And
Speaker 1: when I saw her speak at the Hot Dog Summit
Speaker 1: in town Hall, I was truly blown away. In forty
Speaker 1: five minutes, this extremely funny woman laid bare how meat
Speaker 1: is marketed to us in America, how we're trained to
Speaker 1: view it in relation to us, down to the sexualized
Speaker 1: images of cartoon pigs and cows smiling telling us it's
Speaker 1: not just okay to eat them, it's what they want
Speaker 1: us to do. And where does that sexual visual language
Speaker 1: come from an advertising the way that we're conditioned to
Speaker 1: see women be objectified. The cartoon of a sexy pig
Speaker 1: and a bikini on the side of a food truck
Speaker 1: carol tize the suffering and murder of animals, to the
Speaker 1: idea that Westerners are sold that animal meat is inherently masculine,
Speaker 1: that consumption is masculine, and objectification is feminine. She's cooking
Speaker 1: in this book, and the most famous concept from the
Speaker 1: sexual politics of meat is the concept of the absent reference.
Speaker 2: That's defined as behind every meal of meat is an absence,
Speaker 2: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes.
Speaker 2: The absent reference is that which separates the meat eater
Speaker 2: from the animal, and the animal from the end product.
Speaker 2: The function of the absent reference is to keep our
Speaker 2: meat separated from any idea that she or he was
Speaker 2: once an animal, to keep the moo or cluck or
Speaker 2: ba away from the meat, to keep something from being
Speaker 2: seen as having been some one. Once the existence of
Speaker 2: meat is disconnected from the existence of an animal who
Speaker 2: was killed to become that meat, meat becomes unanchored by
Speaker 2: its original reference, the animal, becoming instead a free, floating
Speaker 2: image used often to reflect women's status as well as animals.
Speaker 2: Animals are the absent reference in the act of meat eating.
Speaker 2: They also become the absent reference in images of women bushered, fragmented,
Speaker 2: or consumable.
Speaker 1: When I started working on this episode, I knew I
Speaker 1: needed to talk to Carol J. Adams, because not only
Speaker 1: was I deeply moved and motivated by her talk, it
Speaker 1: completely took me off guard. I also then had the
Speaker 1: pleasure of walking with her her son Jen, haul Times
Speaker 1: Square Arts and the entire audience over to the giant
Speaker 1: hot dog to watch it explode confetti, and when we arrived,
Speaker 1: I'll never forget we got to go into the giant
Speaker 1: hollow hot dog together. It was just one of those
Speaker 1: perfect moments. And one of my questions for her was
Speaker 1: one of the same questions that the New York Post had,
Speaker 1: Why did you, as a vegan feminist, agreed to talk
Speaker 1: at a hot dog convention? And her answer was simple.
Speaker 1: She said that the hot dog in Times Square was
Speaker 1: a vegan hot dog, and she really enjoyed the vegan
Speaker 1: hot dogs being served at the event and was just
Speaker 1: as interested as myself and Jen and Paul were analyzing
Speaker 1: the hot dog as a food and as a symbol,
Speaker 1: but Carol looked at it very optimistically. She looked at
Speaker 1: it as a symbol that would be able to grow.
Speaker 5: And change with us.
Speaker 1: She's a fascinating person and it's not shocking that as
Speaker 1: a feminist and a vegan activist for the last fifty years,
Speaker 1: she's been the subject a lot of unwarranted harassment. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear about why she agreed to fly
Speaker 1: from Texas to New York to celebrate a symbol that
Speaker 1: felt far afield from her interests, and then we began
Speaker 1: talking about how these harassment techniques from the right have
Speaker 1: a volt in her experience, from the right wing radio
Speaker 1: Rush Limbaugh era to Jordan Peterson sending his audience to
Speaker 1: harass and threaten her in the middle of his wait
Speaker 1: for it all meat diet that almost killed him. Carol
Speaker 1: has seen it all, and I wanted to hear more. Wait,
Speaker 1: there's because I've had a carrot dog before, but not in.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 8: I liked beans and franks growing up, you know, so
Speaker 8: I do use regular hot dogs.
Speaker 1: How long have you noticed this like association with American
Speaker 1: men and meat?
Speaker 8: Oh my god, you're not going to believe it. Fifty
Speaker 8: yearsty years ago, I became a vegetarian and I was
Speaker 8: living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I was studying feminist studies,
Speaker 8: feminist history, and I started I remember walking towards Harvard
Speaker 8: Square thinking about all the associations that I thought, Oh
Speaker 8: my god, there's a connection between med eating and masculinity,
Speaker 8: and you know, I sort of felt like I'd levitated.
Speaker 8: And then I started collecting examples and information and as
Speaker 8: you know, writing a book. You can't just have good material.
Speaker 8: You have to know what you're trying to shape and say,
Speaker 8: and what was my theory about that? So that took
Speaker 8: fifteen years, and when the sexual politics of meat came out,
Speaker 8: I thought, oh, well, now I'm done with that. What
Speaker 8: else am What am I going to do next? But
Speaker 8: people started sending me examples, and since nineteen ninety I
Speaker 8: have gotten examples from around the world that connect meat
Speaker 8: eating and masculinity, photos, quotes, ads, you know, just the
Speaker 8: sort of chalk misogyny. If you're walking down in La
Speaker 8: Street and there's a restaurant and they're selling you know,
Speaker 8: burgers or something, but the burger has very shapely female
Speaker 8: legs with high heels underneath it. You know, that's an
Speaker 8: example of chalk misogyny. So you know they're here today,
Speaker 8: gone tomorrow. But there are examples of how it penetrates
Speaker 8: throughout our culture, this assumption. And you know, then you've
Speaker 8: got vegan men who have to how do they respond
Speaker 8: to breaking the stereotype.
Speaker 1: Meat is so often sexualized from this very male gaze perspective,
Speaker 1: publicly presenting the experience.
Speaker 5: What was the initial reaction?
Speaker 1: Has the reaction changed over time?
Speaker 8: There. Perhaps we could say there are three different reactions,
Speaker 8: predictable reactions. The first reaction is this is an example
Speaker 8: of whatever the right wing calls liberal principles at that time.
Speaker 8: So with Rush Limbaugh, this was an example of political
Speaker 8: correctness gone too far. And now this would be this
Speaker 8: is wokeness gone too far, or this is the radical
Speaker 8: left going too far. Can you believe that this person
Speaker 8: is saying there's a connection between meat eating and masculinity
Speaker 8: like this, I call that category loud mouse and blowhearts.
Speaker 8: But as I discuss in the New Introduction, and as
Speaker 8: I discussed at the Hot Dog Summit, this got more
Speaker 8: intensified after Obama was elected president that somehow the idea
Speaker 8: of an African American man being president just set the
Speaker 8: right wing into such a tizzy. And how do they
Speaker 8: express it. One way they express it white supremacy. It's
Speaker 8: so fascinating, is claiming of drinking mam million milk and
Speaker 8: meat that. And so you saw this discourse sort of
Speaker 8: very non ironic in response. So that's one. The second
Speaker 8: is say vegan men or liberals, well, yeah, there's a connection,
Speaker 8: but they don't want to call it the second politics
Speaker 8: of meat. They don't want to politicize it. It's just
Speaker 8: whatever it is. You can look at recent articles about
Speaker 8: these sort of carnivore diets and they're dripping with testosterone
Speaker 8: in their discussion of these men. But it's all non politicized,
Speaker 8: like it has no relationship to the fact that feminists
Speaker 8: and LGBTQ people have gained a foothold that you know,
Speaker 8: you've had an African American president. There's no recognition that
Speaker 8: this could be a reaction to a sort of sense
Speaker 8: of insecurity that's occurred, especially with white men. So that's
Speaker 8: the second, and then the third vegans and animal rights
Speaker 8: activists when the book came out, they were just so
Speaker 8: excited because my book made sense of the idea that
Speaker 8: caring about animals is part of its social justice agenda.
Speaker 8: It put with it a social justice activism framework, the
Speaker 8: fact that we can look beyond the human species.
Speaker 1: Because you know, the book came out and you came
Speaker 1: to prominence. Free internet being widely adopted. Has the Internet
Speaker 1: had a meaningful impact on how your work is received?
Speaker 8: Let me first say the Internet had an impact on
Speaker 8: how I received information from my readers, so that when
Speaker 8: the book came out, my publisher started receiving packages of things,
Speaker 8: you know, sexist t shirts about animals. I've got a
Speaker 8: whole box. It could be a museum exhibit. The turkey hooker,
Speaker 8: which was is a hook that you hook a dead
Speaker 8: carcass with to pull it out of the pad that
Speaker 8: you've cooked it in for Thanksgiving. It's like a joke gift,
Speaker 8: but it's called the turkey hooker, and it shows a turkey,
Speaker 8: you know, seductively raising her leg again. As I said,
Speaker 8: you know, the only time animals are supposed to have
Speaker 8: a desire is after their death, when they desire to
Speaker 8: be consumed. So all of this started coming to my publisher,
Speaker 8: and then that forwarded to me. Once there was Facebook
Speaker 8: and Twitter, if they knew I was on there, that
Speaker 8: hashtag that at me. But they could also just hashtag
Speaker 8: sexual politics of meat. So for like ten to twelve
Speaker 8: years on Twitter, all I had to do was search
Speaker 8: sexual politics of meet and there were all these examples,
Speaker 8: so I never had to go trawling through this sexist
Speaker 8: apparatus that operates as culture because somebody else saw it
Speaker 8: and they always said, we're so thankful we could send
Speaker 8: it to someone who could make sense of this. So
Speaker 8: how it affected me. I mean it also means that
Speaker 8: people who disagree with me can find me. You can
Speaker 8: email me from my website. I participated in an Oxford
Speaker 8: Union debate in twenty twenty one. Oxford Union sponsors all
Speaker 8: these debates, and this one was this House must move
Speaker 8: beyond Meet and there were three of us defending it
Speaker 8: and three people against that. And one of the people
Speaker 8: against it was Jordan Peterson's daughter. And Jordan was in
Speaker 8: the audience. Jordan Peterson, the Canadian right wing successor to
Speaker 8: Rush Limbaugh, you know, from Loudmouth to blow Hard, and
Speaker 8: his daughter came up with the Mikayla I should give
Speaker 8: her a name, not just associator with her father. Mikayla
Speaker 8: Peterson came up with the Lion's diet and it is
Speaker 8: truly just meat. I mean, it's we all ate together.
Speaker 8: We were at the head table and I was on
Speaker 8: the other side of the oxygen did president and I
Speaker 8: watched him, you know, it was I understand that they
Speaker 8: ordered a very specific weight exactly how it should be cooked.
Speaker 8: Apparently could also treat vodka and water, but that's all
Speaker 8: they had. They had that had that as their appetizer
Speaker 8: and then they had it as their main course, and
Speaker 8: they sent half of it back. He sent half of
Speaker 8: it back. In fact, I took a photo of it
Speaker 8: because I was so shocked. If you know exactly how
Speaker 8: much you're eating, why do you order extra? Anyway, Joe
Speaker 8: Rogan was Joe Rogan was also foul that. So when
Speaker 8: Jordan Peterson went on Joe Rogan a couple months after
Speaker 8: the debate, he could not stop talking about my ludicrous ideas.
Speaker 8: From his point of view, you know that I connected
Speaker 8: it to white supremacy and masculinity and how I must
Speaker 8: not be loved and what a lonely person I was
Speaker 8: and this so I think this so excited the Oxford Union,
Speaker 8: who they'd videoed our conversations. They immediately released them and
Speaker 8: then they said, as heard about on the Joe Rogan Show.
Speaker 8: So the minute Peterson had that, he posted that to Twitter,
Speaker 8: you know, the Left going too far, and that's all
Speaker 8: he had to do. That set all his followlers in motion.
Speaker 8: They you know, went to the YouTube website and then
Speaker 8: they commented, and then they commented. I think there's probably
Speaker 8: twelve hundred comments at this point, and I started a
Speaker 8: file of it. Where is it hostility?
Speaker 5: Hostility.
Speaker 8: Wow, it's amazing that you think you are educated. You
Speaker 8: either got your diploma from the Internet or you're just stupid.
Speaker 8: Wikipedia has more correct facts and what you presented. Oh
Speaker 8: my god, you need a mental health check asap. Your
Speaker 8: theories are made up and unscientific. Everything you say is
Speaker 8: designed to draw attention to yourself, et cetera. Please go
Speaker 8: take a nap somewhere subject f you stupid c. You
Speaker 8: would not be where you are today if it wasn't
Speaker 8: for men. Okay, get that. And it's not because we
Speaker 8: stole power. It's because that's the way things naturally went down.
Speaker 8: You get that, you stupid fing c.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 8: I just wanted to let you know I find you
Speaker 8: a total and other basque case, a nut job extraordinary.
Speaker 8: You medam or cancer upon this world. The world needs
Speaker 8: urgent chemo treatment for mentally disturbed people like you. Anyway,
Speaker 8: you get the idea. Yeah, And the thing is that
Speaker 8: Peterson knows what he's doing all he has to do,
Speaker 8: and so that's the you know, we know how many
Speaker 8: women have been ducked and all the attention that's that
Speaker 8: comes on women who who challenge conventional ideas. I mean,
Speaker 8: these aren't even you just never can predict who they're
Speaker 8: going to attack. I kind of wish they could spell
Speaker 8: and make a syntactical sentence. It would be more interesting.
Speaker 8: And then you.
Speaker 5: Get there's something to engage with at that point.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but I don't answer them. So I think also
Speaker 8: it gives people a chance to find me get more
Speaker 8: information if they want to know about the reference I've noticed,
Speaker 8: like when The New York Times discusses my ideas, now
Speaker 8: there'll be a link to that section of my website.
Speaker 8: I just heard from someone who could not find my
Speaker 8: Texas sheet cake recipe and you know, begging me please,
Speaker 8: I need that Texas Sheetcake recipe, please please. So I
Speaker 8: never know you know what I'll get in my inbox.
Speaker 8: And I love that it's made me available. I've just
Speaker 8: heard from someone who wants to translate the work into Indonesia.
Speaker 8: So's it's made contact with like a Serbian women center
Speaker 8: that wanted to translate it. It's sped up contact. But
Speaker 8: I think it also created the possibility that you could
Speaker 8: be in touch with an author who mattered to you,
Speaker 8: or an author whose work changed your life. But I
Speaker 8: also learned that courage is simply stepping forward, and the
Speaker 8: courage you get from the first step gives you the
Speaker 8: courage to take the next step. We weren't going to
Speaker 8: back down, so I just had to find that courage.
Speaker 8: And you only have to kind of go through that
Speaker 8: sort of experience once and be on the other side
Speaker 8: to realize these people don't like my book. Okay, don't
Speaker 8: like it, but you don't like it, and you've got
Speaker 8: to talk about it non stop like Russia Limpa did
Speaker 8: one summer non stop. I mean he could not stand it.
Speaker 8: I thought, you've got an issue, Gui, and it is
Speaker 8: so great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're the one living in his head. Rent Free.
Speaker 8: I think I'm an optimist. We're not going to achieve everything. God,
Speaker 8: I've bet a vegetarian for fifty years at a vegan
Speaker 8: for you know, thirty five or something. Just keep marching,
Speaker 8: keep making good vegan meals, keep making care of dogs,
Speaker 8: keep serving people, keep not calling attention to what they're eating,
Speaker 8: and let them incubate it later. It's not impractical.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much to Carol J.
Speaker 1: Adams, who is quickly becoming a hero of mine, and
Speaker 1: please read The Sexual Politics of Meat and follow her
Speaker 1: work at Caroljadams dot Com and so sweet listeners wherever
Speaker 1: you are. I hope you try a plant based hot
Speaker 1: dog this season, because a hot dog is a symbol,
Speaker 1: and a symbol should be consumed very carefully. Hell, even
Speaker 1: Joey Chestnut is sponsored by Impossible Dogs Now, so anyone
Speaker 1: can make a change, even me. And if you're interested
Speaker 1: in more about hot dog lore, you can grab my
Speaker 1: buck Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about hot Dogs, or
Speaker 1: watch my favorite piece of hot dog media ever, Rick
Speaker 1: Seabeck's a hot dog program on PBS, which is celebrating
Speaker 1: its twenty fifth anniversary this year. I really hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode. This is my favorite topic in the
Speaker 1: entire world, and I'm so thrilled that hot dogs once
Speaker 1: more became the main character. And so for a moment
Speaker 1: of fun today, here's some audio I recorded at the
Speaker 1: hot Dog in the City closing ceremony on June thirteenth,
Speaker 1: after we did a comedy roast of the hot dog
Speaker 1: in the one hundred degree weather and the confetti came
Speaker 1: for one last time, n you.
Speaker 5: Yeah Way. L sixteenth Minute is.
Speaker 1: A production of pol Zone Media and iHeart Radio. It
Speaker 1: is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Lostus. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The amazing
Speaker 1: Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our
Speaker 1: theme song is by Sad Third Teamians and pet Shout
Speaker 1: outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and Casper,
Speaker 1: and my pet Rockbird, who will outlive us all Bye.