Beefsquatch and the raccoon king: A criminological exploration of human-animal relations in Bob’s Burgers

Green criminology, media, and the social construction of animal harm

Green criminology provides a distinctly useful perspective for exploring animal harms and human-animal relations because it has long been proposed as a perspective and not a theory; it is therefore capable of adopting a ranging of theoretical positions (South, 1998; White, 2022). Early contributions to a green criminology of animals include Benton’s (1998) work on justice, rights, and animals, and Beirne (1999, 1995) and Cazaux’s (1999) work on animal abuse and a ‘non-speciesist’ perspective for criminology. This worked paved the way for animals to be a key emphasis in the growing sub-field of green criminology. Nurse (2016) offers a green criminological take on animal harm, exploring crimes against animals in contexts such as hunting and the wildlife trade, and Nurse and Wyatt (2020) advance the distinct branch of ‘wildlife criminology’ to capture novel insights on processes of exploitation and commodification that harm wildlife. Further, Taylor and Fitzgerald (2018) and Sollund (2020) have demonstrated the gendered aspects of animal abuse and wildlife trafficking, respectively. Regarding meat, Peggs (2023) examines the harms associated with eating animals that have been largely overlooked by both traditional and critical criminology. Presser (2013) finds meat eating is perpetuated by a power paradox that has people view themselves as both powerful and powerless. And Fitzgerald’s (2015) interdisciplinary exploration of the harms of industrial animal agriculture reveals a more complete understanding of the production, processing, and consumption of animals as food. What has remained a more peripheral focus within green criminological scholarship, is the exploration of animals and meat within the contexts of media. In this study, insights from constitutive criminology, green-cultural criminology, popular criminology, and zemiology provide an effective means for exploring the social construction of animal harms and human-animal relations through media.

Media sources like television, films, books, websites, and newspapers, provide an important lens from which to explore everyday discourses that inform our understandings of crime and harm. Green cultural criminology borrows from cultural criminology to offer a criminology of the everyday (Ferrell, 2013b), providing a means ‘to discover the ways in which various media forms influence, affect, and shape environmental attitudes, decision-making, and behavior’ (Brisman and South, 2014: 37). For example, Brisman (2019) explores narrative in applying green cultural criminology to the fable of The Three Little Pigs to imagine an allegory for climate change migration. Relatedly, popular criminology has emerged as a sub-field of criminology that takes popular understandings of crime as its focal point, using depictions in film, television, and literature as a source of commonsense ideas and perceptions about crime (Kohm, 2017; Rafter, 2007; Rafter and Brown, 2011). For example, Fawcett and Kohm (2020) utilize both cultural criminology and popular criminology to examine the video games Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, finding support for mainstream ideas about crime and punishment, as well as sources of critique.

Media sources can provide a window into the social construction of human-animal relations, including the ideas, norms, and practices that inform our interactions with animals. For example, Schally (2017) conducted a critical discourse analysis of texts, photos, and other images found on the website of Tyson Foods, exploring the use of language in the legitimization of harmful agribusiness practices. Further, Bateman et al. (2019) reviewed the role of news media articles and blogs in the social construction of meat and found that the taken-for-granted status of meat eating contributes to the glossing over of social problems linked to meat consumption. Also, according to Hart (2018), the repeated use of tropes around ‘meat-loving’ men in vegan food/cooking blogs work to reinforce traditional gender norms like the association of masculinity and carnivorism. Regarding companion animals, Fitzgerald (2010) examined depictions of victimhood in newsprint media coverage of a major pet food recall, finding companion animals rarely earned the status of victim. And Ezra (2019) examined two book series—Harry Potter and His Dark Materials—to explore depictions of complex human-animal relationships between witches and companion animals. Referring to it as an ‘ethics of familiarity’, Ezra (2019) points to the role of difference in social relations and the impossibility of occupying the space of another, ‘only standing with the other [emphasis in original]’ (p. 194). This resonates with Sandilands’ (1997) ecofeminist take on the 1976 novella Bear by Marian Engel, a controversial love story between a woman and a bear in northern Ontario, which effectively captures the impossibility of truly knowing and understanding nature. Adding to these explorations of human-animal relations in media, I aim to demonstrate how animated, fictional television shows like Bob’s Burgers draw from, and contribute to, meaning making regarding the social construction of animals, human-animal relations, and animal harm.

The social construction of animal harm is an essential focal point because animal harms are not necessarily crimes. Zemiology and social harm approaches emphasize that ‘crime has no ontological reality’; crimes have to be constructed (by the state) to exist (Hillyard and Tombs, 2007: 10). And while both ‘crime’ and ‘harm’ can be viewed as socially constructed, it is important to note that while crimes are determined by the state through criminal law, harms are defined in a productive and positive process, constituted through people’s experiences, attitudes, perceptions, and understandings of what is harmful (Hillyard and Tombs, 2007). For example, while the harms of industrial animal agriculture are widespread, they are not ‘crimes’ defined by law, however, the 2013 scandal involving the discovery of horsemeat within beef products is an example of food fraud, a crime defined by legal standards, regardless of any harms that result (Tourangeau and Fitzgerald, 2020). Also, Fitzgerald and Tourangeau (2019) use the concept of harm to reflect on the paradox of charging an animal advocate with criminal mischief for giving water to pigs on a transport truck, while legally permitting the harms experienced by pigs traveling long distances without food, water, or rest. Studying harm means exploring the cultural, emotional, financial, and physical harms that often escape the definition of crime (Hillyard and Tombs, 2007). In her book Why We Harm, Presser (2013) effectively demonstrates the ways in which meat eating is deeply embedded and institutionalized into the everyday to the point that harms to nonhuman animals from meat eating are often not acknowledged, or at least easily justified. Sollund (2012), drawing from Bourdieu’s work on doxa, explains how meat eating, and other human-animal relations like ‘pet’ keeping, are among the practices of ‘animal (ab)use’ that are so extensive, ingrained, self-evident, and unspoken that they become encoded subconscious elements of our social system (p. 96). This phenomenon of embedded and normalized meat eating is part of what Sollund (2024) refers to as ‘categorical discriminatory speciesism’ wherein the level of protection afforded to any given nonhuman animal is determined by their assigned role (i.e. pet or food). For Sollund (2024), the paradox of human-animal relationships was further illuminated by observing mixed reactions to a vegan barbecue at a symposium on animal abuse—the dish being roasted on the barbecue was a large soy-based version of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the titular character from the popular 1982 movie. Negative reactions to eating ‘E.T.’ demonstrate the complexity of human-animal relationships; even fictional characters form part of the discourses that constitute the meanings attached to food and animals.

In this study, the perspective of green criminology is amplified by green-cultural criminology, popular criminology, and zemiology, which collectively provide a means to examine the everyday depictions of human-animal relations within popular media sources to better understand the social construction of animal harm. This emphasis on harm and social construction offers an opportunity to also draw from constitutive criminology. Influenced by postmodernism, constitutive criminology ‘redefines crime as the harm resulting from humans investing energy in harm-producing relations of power’ (Henry and Milovanovic, 1999: 7). It is an approach that does not focus on finding the ‘causes’ of crime; instead, it examines the ways in which crime is discursively coproduced by human subjects and the social and organizational structures they produce, and how interventions in this coproduction can be made to reduce harms (Henry and Milovanovic, 1996, 2000). ‘Crimes’, from this view, are social constructions built through imbalanced power relations, making constitutive criminology well matched with social harm approaches that argue crime has no ontological reality (see Hillyard and Tombs, 2007; South, 2017). And from a green criminology perspective, it is important for the aims of this paper to consider how animals might be included in constitutive criminology’s understanding of ‘crime’. Sollund (2012) provides a possible connecting point, explaining that speciesism—understood as the prejudicial bias favoring humans above other species—can result from comparing other species to humans, and establishing hierarchies based on the ways animals are not like humans (i.e. ‘inferior’ to them). There needs to be more respect for difference to fully appreciate the unique, inherent values of animals, working toward ‘horizontalism’ instead of hierarchy; ‘by emphasising the uniqueness of each individual, as well as the specific properties of the species the individual belongs to, one could perhaps make a step forward’ (Sollund, 2012: 108). Constitutive criminology, with its emphasis on the social construction of crimes and the magnifying of differences between the powerful and powerless (Henry and Milovanovic, 2000), could be extended to other species to capture an even fuller, more complex understanding of how ‘crimes’ against nonhuman animals are constructed through harm-producing relations of power. Constitutive criminology provides a means of moving beyond modernist approaches to complex problems, taking on a more contingent and holistic approach, which offers a pathway for green criminology to explore human-animal relations in a way that maintains the complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity of animal and environmental harms (Tourangeau, 2022). This perspective on the contingent, socially constructed nature of animal harms is central to this study’s exploration of meaning making as ideas about meat, animals, and human-animal relations are mediated through television.

Meat eating as axiomatic

Meat eating is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a fundamental, taken-for-granted assumption embedded in this series, and is the most prevalent theme identified. Almost exclusively through subtext, meat eating is depicted as a common place, normatively entrenched assumption in most of the episodes reviewed. Of course, being a television series centered on a burger restaurant, this is to be expected. Yet, the show’s additional emphases on turkey and seafood serve to firmly establish eating animals as ‘normal’ and commonplace, and vegan/vegetarian diets as ‘abnormal’. This matches the dominance of meat eating around much of the globe, as most countries include some form of meat in their diets, and the rates of meat production and consumption have increased significantly over the last half-century (Ritchie et al., 2019). Indeed, burgers (and fries) for dinner and turkey on Thanksgiving are entrenched elements of the quintessential American imaginary (Fitzgerald, 2015). And the ‘burger’ is effectively a cultural icon (Adams, 2018).

The first episode of Bob’s Burgers directly confronts the topic of meat eating as a social phenomenon. The series premiere, ‘Human Flesh’, focuses on the health inspector (Hugo) placing the restaurant under investigation based on a rumor (created by Louise) that the burgers are ‘made with human remains from the crematorium next door’ (S1:E1). Appropriately placed as the first episode, eating human flesh is depicted as the normative tipping point where eating ‘meat’ becomes taboo. Flirting further with this taboo, the episode ends with a tour bus full of 25 ‘adventurous eaters’ wanting to try a burger made from human flesh (S1:E1). Television and film are uniquely suited routes for broaching this subject and making light of cannibalism—shows like iZombie and Santa Clarita Diet being examples (Giannitrapani, 2018). As the show’s broadcast premiere, this episode introduces key characters, the main situational contexts, and sets the comedic tone. Similar to other axiomatically presented norms like the nuclear family, meat eating as status quo is firmly established in the first episode.

In addition to the premiere, Episode 3 of Season 1 (‘Sacred Cow’) also engages directly with the topic of meat eating. During the promotion of his ‘100,000th burger’, Bob is confronted by animal rights activist and filmmaker Randy Watkins who ties up a live cow outside the restaurant as part of a stunt to force Bob to meet his ‘victims’ (S1:E3). The cow is dressed in a blonde wig, which Randy says is meant to ‘humanize her’, and explains that the cow, named Moolisa, is going to be ‘processed’ (ridiculing meat industry terminology) at the end of a 5 day ‘Cow-ntdown’ unless Bob spares the cow’s life. Bob responds by saying ‘This is ridiculous. It’s not a crime to make burgers’ (S1:E3). The episode is replete with jokes about meat eating, relying on the audience to accept the paradox of wanting to eat meat while not wanting to harm animals. Additionally, Louise rouses Bob by calling him a ‘murderer’ throughout the episode, Linda talks openly about eating the cow in front of five (grimacing) customers eating burgers, and Tina makes quick (albeit wholly imagined) friends with the cow (S1:E3). While the treatment of meat eating as axiomatic is emblematic of the entire series, it is in these two episodes from Season 1 wherein viewers are tasked with directly confronting the notion of eating meat.

It is a continuing assumption throughout the series that most characters on the show consume meat, including Bob, Linda, and their three children. In addition to eating beef burgers at their restaurant, other depictions of meat eating are noteworthy. For example, during ‘Lobsterfest’, the entire town (save for Bob, who is allergic to lobster) is buzzing over the prospect of eating lobster in the yearly festival—‘It’s not fun being a burger man in a seafood town’, proclaims Bob, in the opening scene (S1:E12). The entire episode is focused on eating lobster, including a scene where the Belcher children boil their own lobster in secret from Bob, and another where the whole town rejoices when the giant vat of butter that Bob fell into is approved for consumption by Hugo the health inspector, who proudly proclaims: ‘The butter is grade C to D-minus’ (S1:E12). All set within the show’s comedic tone, the episode effectively demonstrates the underlying assumption that the town is full of meat eaters who happily consume both burgers and lobster without labeling it as harmful. This is indeed the norm in the U.S. where only 4% identify as vegetarian and 1% as vegan (Jones, 2023). Or in the words of Carol Adams, who connects the dominance of meat to its association with masculinity, ‘meat is king’ and it ‘is upheld as a powerful, irreplaceable item of food’ (Adams, 1990).

Some of the secondary characters in Bob’s Burgers are vegetarian, such as the school counselor, Mr. Frond (S1:E2), a teen boy named Brian that Tina meets at the mall (S10:E5), the shirtless speedo-wearing roller-skater often seen skating around town (S5:E4), Randy Watkins, the filmmaker-activist (S9:E22), a neighbor’s girlfriend (S10:E8), and (apparently) Linda’s sister Gayle’s cats (S4:E5). Collectively, these characters depict long-standing assumptions about vegetarian/vegan diets being uncommon, outside-the-norm, and popular among people supporting animal and environmental causes. Also, in the episode ‘Foodtruckin’—which centers on the family operating a food truck version of the restaurant—the undesirability of vegetarianism/veganism is illustrated (S2:E5). Toward the start of the episode, Bob says ‘Good luck with your terrible vegan food’ to Randy Watkins, in reference to his food truck ‘Ode to Soy’, and later Gene says to Bob, ‘It’s not a lie if you lie to vegetarians. You taught us that’, to which Bob concedes, ‘I did teach you that’ (S2:E5). Viewers’ default view of meat-eating is only interrupted in these rare instances where minor characters are introduced as vegetarians/vegans. Matching current realities, vegetarianism has become more popular but has long held a negative connotation (Fitzgerald, 2015), as well as being socially constructed as feminine (Adams, 1990).

In contrast to the negative connotations attached to references to veganism and vegetarianism, Bob’s Burgers makes several positive references to buying higher-quality meat, such as discussions about more sustainable or ‘humane’ farming practices. For example, in ‘Foodtruckin’, Tina gives out samples at a food truck rally, with customers asking if the meat is ‘organic’, ‘free-range’, ‘grass-fed’, and ‘cruelty-free’ (S2:E5). In another episode, Bob finally gets the ‘heritage turkey’ he has been wanting from a place called ‘Riverbrook Lake Farms’ (S10:E8). These scenes illustrate intertextuality with meat terminology, and the recent prioritization of animal welfare and sustainability among meat-eaters (see Pilgrim, 2013). In many ways, Bob’s Burgers matches contemporary views about meat—it is a dietary staple, appearing in each meal, so it is ‘normal’ to care about the quality of the meat, and it is ‘odd’ to not eat meat. In this fictional animated universe, these taken-for-granted norms are upheld in ways that make the characters and storylines relatable; as the stories in Bob’s Burgers simultaneously inform (and are informed by) understandings about meat, the dominance of meat eating is both expected and reified.

Anthropomorphism and zoomorphism

Anthropomorphism—attributing human characteristics and/or features to an animal, object, or deity (Guthrie, 2024)—is a common means of depicting and conceptualizing animals within human-animal interactions. This is particularly true with family ‘pets’, as Sollund (2011) notes: without a natural place in the home, companion animals are often treated as children. Bob’s Burgers includes numerous scenes depicting animals and meat anthropomorphically, as well as multiple instances of zoomorphism—the attribution of animalistic characteristics and/or behaviors to humans. These represent some of the more nuanced depictions of human-animal relations in Bob’s Burgers, providing opportunities to consider the ways in which this show not only reproduces dominant narratives about meat and animals, but how it may also help challenge, or even supplant, them.

In ‘Adventures of Chinchilla-Sitting’, Louise takes home the ‘class pet’, which happens to be a chinchilla that suffers from a range of maladies—‘weird fur, seizures, runny nose, runny eyes, runny everything’, declares Louise (S5:E15). Along with her classmate Wayne who typically looks after the animal, Louise imagines and engages the chinchilla as human-like throughout the episode (S5:E15). Mr. Business, one of Gayle’s cats, appears in multiple episodes and is described with many characteristically human qualities; he likes it when you sing to him, especially something ‘jazzy’ (S6:E4), and almost becomes the commercial face of cat food brand Chef Cat when being recruited by cat agent Ian Amberson, who also engages in anthropomorphic dialog with his poodle-secretary (S7:E10). Other depictions of animals that appear anthropomorphic include: a dog in a tutu who falls in love with a snake (S3:E18); Tina’s imaginary horse named Jericho (S6:E17); a turkey named ‘Drew P Neck’ who is supposed to be pardoned by the Mayor, and ends up being saved by the family (S9:E7); a goose named ‘Bruce the Goose’ who Tina befriends and engages in long conversations (S9:E14); a dead fetal pig that haunts Tina’s dreams after a dissection lesson at school (S10:E4); a spider Louise finds and names Phoebe (S12:E17); and, as mentioned earlier, a cow in a wig named Moolisa (S1:E3). In addition, the series includes an ongoing discussion of anthropomorphized raccoons in the alleyway behind the restaurant. Linda names one of the raccoons ‘Little King Trashmouth’ and talks about him like a character in a story, such as having a relationship with another raccoon named Gary who may be away on a ‘business trip’, which she explains is ‘when he goes to other dumpsters’ (S14:E7). Importantly, in each depiction of an animal that is anthropomorphized with human characteristics, the animal is engaged with empathically and earnestly in ways that do not immediately objectify or instrumentalize them; instead, they are afforded extra compassion and care. Such positive depictions of human-animal relationships are less possible when it is meat that is being anthropomorphized.

Depictions of anthropomorphized meat occur when Bob engages in conversation with his food, including changing his voice when imagining replies. These instances include Bob talking to eggs when the restaurant opens for brunch (S8:E1), Bob talking to chuck steaks before using them in a last-minute Valentine’s Day menu (S11:E11), and Bob having conversations with the turkeys he prepares for Thanksgiving dinners (S9:E7; S10:E8). In one episode, after years on a waiting list, Bob gets a turkey named ‘Popcorn’, which is a ‘Riverbrook Lake Farms heritage turkey’ that was ‘raised in the best conditions’ (S10:E8). After saying goodnight to each of his three children, Bob opens the fridge and says, ‘Good night, Popcorn’ and replies ‘Good night, Bob’ in an altered, higher voice (S10:E8). In another episode, Bob points out the anthropomorphic nature of talking with meat. A scene shows Bob looking into the fridge talking to a marinating turkey about the town’s turkey pardoning, saying ‘I know, right? So dumb. Treating the turkey like it’s a person’, then Bob replies as the turkey, saying ‘Yeah, idiots! Wait, but don’t you. . .’ (S9:E7). When pretending to be the raw turkey, Bob realizes his own engagement in anthropomorphizing. Arguably, when Bob is depicted as engaging in conversations with raw meat, this reinforces an instrumental view which objectifies the once living animal, demonstrating a denial of the animal’s significance and subjectivity (Leitsberger et al., 2016).

Aside from Louise constantly wearing a pink hat with bunny ears (her signature look), instances of zoomorphism were less common than depictions of anthropomorphism, mostly involving humans dressed in some form of animal costume. Two examples of humans in animal costumes are related to meat eating. One is during ‘Lobsterfest’ where a first-aid volunteer is dressed up as a giant red lobster and many festival attendees are wearing red lobster hats with claws, eyes, and a tail (S1:E12). This supports the ‘meat eating as axiomatic’ theme by depicting lobster as only a food item and not an animal. The second example is when Tina and her classmates dress up as turkeys (and one as a pig) to perform a school play she wrote called the ‘Quirky Turkey’ (S7:E6). Tina’s play evidently reinforces the norm of eating turkey on Thanksgiving, which Louise makes more grotesque by incorporating exploding giblets into the play. Here, lobster, turkey, and pig costumes reinforce a hierarchical social dynamic wherein these animals are being imagined in terms of their instrumental roles as meat and seafood (see Ezra, 2019; Sollund, 2012).

Importantly, two examples of zoomorphism present a more complex and nuanced depiction of human-animal relations. The first example is in Season 2, Episode 9, wherein Linda helps Bob try out for a cooking segment on local TV. While recording the audition tape of Bob cooking his ‘Onion-tended Consequences burger’, Gene interrupts wearing his burger costume (used for promoting the restaurant) plus a sasquatch mask. It is their vaudeville-esque double act that lands Bob (and Gene) the TV segment and leads to Gene naming his new character ‘Beefsquatch’. The episode proceeds with the two creating a comical duo that starts a feud over who is the star of the show, and as typical with the show’s heart-warming tone, ends happily (S2:E9). While Gene’s ‘Beefsquatch’ alter-ego clearly reinforces meat eating, it does so in a strange and unpredictable manner—a child who imagines a meat eating half sasquatch-half hamburger chimera. This playful transformation of meaning allows meat to take on both expected and unexpected forms, building a narrative that helps to show the paradox of meat eating as both absurd and commonplace.

The second example of a more complex and nuanced depiction of zoomorphism is when Tina dresses up as ‘Topsy’ the elephant, with empty toilet paper rolls painted gray and taped together to make the elephant trunk (S3:E16). Tina is dressed as an elephant to help Louise, who’s substitute teacher is obsessed with Thomas Edison and makes her do a project on him instead of re-using her volcano science project from last year. Seeking revenge, Louise plans to complete her project on Topsy the elephant to expose how the elephant was apparently electrocuted by Edison (S3:E16). When practicing the skit, the Belcher children use actual electricity to create the scene, which triggers Tina into a fear-induced daydream of Topsy that anthropomorphically depicts the elephant convincing Tina to do the skit to show how she died (S3:E16). This depiction highlights the challenge of seeing life from the perspective of another species. Perhaps this example presents an opportunity for ‘standing with the other’ [emphasis in original] and providing an allegory for ‘potentially nonhierarchical social dynamics’ with animals (Ezra, 2019). Overall, these anthropomorphic and zoomorphic depictions are key discourses for helping to imagine the ways in which humans’ construction of meat and animals impacts human-animal relations, and as a result, impacts animal lives (see Leitsberger et al., 2016; Spencer and Fitzgerald, 2015).

Feelings of love and guilt

Depictions of love and guilt inform some of the more extensive human-animal interactions in Bob’s Burgers. Love is expressed in varying ways to animals (and to meat, by Bob), and guilt appears in more specific and reactionary scenes. At times the themes appear together.

One of the more unique connections formed between humans and animals appears in ‘What about Blob?’, an episode wherein Gene learns about the marvels of plankton (S9:E17). Gene is fascinated by the way plankton glows in the dark, remarking ‘You are gorgeous, whatever you are. I love you, magic water?’ (S9:E17). He later learns that it glows because it is bioluminescent plankton, inspiring him to rally his sisters and friends to save it from being bleached/killed by the yacht club owner (S9:E17). Interestingly, this episode also includes two different scenes of Gene eating oysters (S9:E17)—an example of the contradictory elements of human-animal relations that inform the subtext throughout the series. Love toward animals is depicted in numerous other instances. Gayle showcases love for her cat Mr. Business in several episodes, including concern for his welfare when auditioning for a cat food commercial (S7:E10). An elderly woman shows love for her lost dog ‘Bitsy’; as she awaits his return she sits next to a shrine of candles and a picture of Bitsy in a tutu (S3:E18). Love is displayed by both Louise and her classmate Wayne in the bond formed with their class ‘pet’—a chinchilla that Wayne calls Princess Little Piddles, and Louise renames Shinobu (S5:E15). Tina finds love and friendship in ‘Bruce the Goose’, telling him about her troubles with friends at school, making him a friendship bracelet, writing fictional stories about their love, and (while acknowledging the irony) feeding him a turkey sandwich (S9:E14). Tina’s love for horses is tested when attending a horse-riding camp, where she fails to form a connection with the horse assigned to her at camp, leading her to re-affirm her love for Jericho, her imaginary horse (S6:E17). Tina’s obsession with horses is thematic across the series, influencing other storylines, such as in ‘“They Serve Horses, Don’t They?”’, an episode where Bob’s new meat supplier sells him horsemeat instead of beef, which is bad for business and traumatic for Tina (S7:E4). These depictions of love demonstrate the role of perception when it comes to (not) linking meat eating to eating animals. As Joy (2020) writes about dogs, ‘we love dogs and eat cows not because dogs and cows are fundamentally different—cows, like dogs, having feelings, preferences, and consciousness—but because our perception of them is different’ (p. 13). Perceptions about love for animals are typically removed from perceptions of meat eating throughout Bob’s Burgers, except for this reference to horsemeat. Relatedly, the theme of guilt mostly appears in stories about animals, not meat.

Feelings of guilt are displayed in an episode wherein Tina inadvertently causes the death of a bird (S13:E17). In trying to attain a new badge in ‘Thundergirls’ (an intertextual reference to the Girl Scouts), Tina takes up birdwatching with Bob’s help. Against the warnings of a park ranger, Tina decides to bait birds with bread to spot more bird species, and as a result a dove is attacked/eaten by a hawk, causing Tina to feel very guilty, and hyperventilate—a common reaction of hers throughout the series (S13:E17). Guilt, and perhaps compassion, also drives the family to fulfill their promise to a turkey (who was supposed to be ‘pardoned’) by rescuing it from slaughter in an episode called ‘I Bob Your Pardon’ (S9:E7). Acknowledging the inherent contradiction in pardoning turkeys on Thanksgiving, Bob says to his family while driving to save the turkey: ‘By the way, you’re all hypocrites. You know we’re going to eat a turkey tomorrow, right?’ (S9:E7). At the end of the episode, Louise gives a Thanksgiving toast wherein she ‘pardons’ the cooked turkey (before they all eat it), on behalf of the turkey they saved (S9:E7). References to the practice of turkey pardoning (S9:E7) rely on intertextual language and imagery adopted from a longstanding U.S. tradition of a turkey being saved from slaughter each Thanksgiving by the standing U.S. President (Monkman, n.d.). What is particularly interesting here is that the storyline focuses on ‘bearing witness’ to an animal destined for slaughter, which Joy (2020) explains can disrupt the dissociation that supports the ideology of meat eating. While the family was moved to save the turkey, the episode’s ending presents an immediate return to the ‘cultural blinders’ of dissociation between meat eating and the death of animals (Fitzgerald, 2015: 111). The family is depicted saving an anthropomorphized turkey from slaughter, then, in a later scene, consuming a different turkey that is cooked for Thanksgiving dinner.

Guilt is perhaps most dramatically displayed in ‘Pig Trouble in Little Tina’ (S10:E4). Tina attempts to ingratiate herself to classmates by mocking the appearance of her fetal pig during a dissection lesson, and the incident plagues her with guilt throughout the episode (S10:E4). Adding interesting subtext, Tina seeks comfort in Louise’s bed because of a nightmare about the pig, and then Gene walks in eating cured meat, saying ‘I’m trying to have a nice midnight charcuterie’. (S10:E4). Such contractions are also evident in episodes like ‘Sacred Cow’ (S1:E3) which includes an explicit depiction of how love and guilt coalesce. At the end of the episode, when Moolisa the cow (who turns out to be a steer) dies of a heart attack, Bob faints and then dreams of a conversation wherein the cow comforts Bob and convinces him to make burgers out of him, with the dream ending with them kissing (S1:E3). In ‘The (Raccoon) King and I’, the themes of love and guilt are both evident when Linda’s long-time passion for observing raccoons in the alley leads to more than just observation when she notices the raccoon she calls ‘Little King Trashmouth’ is injured. Linda calls animal control to help the raccoon, then Teddy (a friend and constant customer, who also enjoys the alleyway raccoon theater) tells Linda, that ‘animal control isn’t who you call when you wanna help an animal’. The remainder of the episode shows the guilt-ridden Linda struggle to save the raccoon from animal control (S14:E7). Guilt, perhaps even more than love, can play an important role in the shifting of perceptions about animals. The conflict between how we feel about animals and how we treat them can be resolved, and it is therefore essential to cultivate the perceptions and sensibilities that help to achieve this (Fitzgerald, 2015; Thomas, 1991).