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

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of Bob’s Burgers, a popular American animated television series, to contribute to criminological explorations of human-animal relations. Using critical discourse analysis, I examine depictions of meat and animals to better understand how the meaning of animal harm is constituted through media. Eating hamburgers and keeping animals as ‘pets’ are among the taken-for-granted depictions of human-animal relations in the series, which I argue have the potential to reify harmful normative assumptions and hierarchical human-animal relations. Conversely, the more cartoonish depictions of meat and animals showcase the show’s potential role in disrupting harmful axiomatic ideas about animals. For example, when Bob’s son Gene wears a burger costume and sasquatch mask to form ‘Beefsquatch’, or his partner Linda imagines their alleyway as a theater starring a raccoon king, normative assumptions and expectations about animals are interrupted, presenting pathways to re-imagine less harmful human-animal relations. This analysis is realized by drawing insights from constitutive criminology, green-cultural criminology, popular criminology, and zemiology to further advance green criminological scholarship on media, animal harm, and human-animal relations.

Introduction

The title sequence that opens each episode of Bob’s Burgers includes a close-up of a hamburger cradled in the hands of Bob Belcher, the show’s main character. The emphasis on burgers is a result of the show’s primary setting, the family restaurant, ‘Bob’s Burgers’, run by Bob, along with his partner, Linda, and their children, Tina, Gene, and Louise. While not every episode is centered on the burger-themed restaurant after which the show is named, depictions of meat, meat-eating, and human-animal relations form dominant themes throughout the series. The setting of Bob’s Burgers is an entire fictional world, with a wide range of recurring characters, all centered on a seaside town in the United States. While Bob’s Burgers operates in the boundaryless space of animated television where any storyline is possible, in comparison to other animated television series, the themes of each episode are decidedly ordinary. That is, some episodes of The Simpsons include aliens from outer space, and Family Guy features a talking family dog, whereas Bob’s Burgers is less surreal and outlandish, and more commonplace and realistic (France, 2021). As France (2021) writes, ‘Bob’s Burgers keeps its plots close to home. An entire episode will focus on relatively mundane dilemmas like a disappointing open house at the children’s school, finding a way to pay rent, or buying a couch’ (p. 5). Meat eating and other human-animal interactions are a part of these everyday contexts and discourses. It is the depiction of these interactions that caught my attention for their potential constitutive role in building meaning—informed by, and informing our understandings of, and experiences with, nonhuman animals. ¹ Examined through a green criminology lens that draws from constitutive criminology, green-cultural criminology, popular criminology, and zemiology, my interest lies in how meat-eating and animals are depicted in Bob’s Burgers, especially the ways in which these discourses contribute to meanings of animal harm and human-animal relations.

Green criminology is the criminological study of crimes and harms against nonhuman animals and the environment. Importantly, exploring more commonplace (and legal) actions that cause animal and environmental harms—such as, the harms associated with eating meat (Fitzgerald, 2015; Peggs, 2023; Sollund, 2024) and keeping animals as ‘pets’ (Sollund, 2011; van Uhm, 2018)—has become one of the hallmarks of green criminology. Exploring legal, everyday activities adds important nuance to studies of animal and environmental harms, as these practices are not crimes and, for many people in contemporary societies, are not even considered harmful. Therefore, understanding the ways in which animal harms are embedded into everyday social structures, interactions, and ideologies becomes essential for exploring their meaning, and ultimately, their effects. As Brisman (2014) notes, green criminology should ‘continue to illuminate not only how and why environmental crime and harm occurs, but also the meaning of such crime and harm’ (p. 29). Consequently, this exploration of human-animal relations in Bob’s Burgers draws from green-cultural criminology to examine the ‘meaning, significance, and representation’ of media constructions and depictions of environmental harms (Brisman and South, 2014). Further, zemiology and social harm approaches help maintain the broadened scope of green criminology beyond strict legal definitions (Walters, 2012; White, 2022). Popular criminology adds insight for using film, television, and literature as primary sources of cultural information about crime (Rafter, 2007; Rafter and Brown, 2011), or in the contexts of this study, cultural information about harm. Finally, constitutive criminology provides additional tools for analyzing and describing the ways in which humans shape, and are shaped by, their socially constructed and discursively organized social world (Henry and Milovanovic, 1996, 2000). Taken together, these criminological developments offer new routes for exploring a ‘politics of meaning’, as Ferrell (2013a) explains, whereby meaning is constituted through everyday situations and subcultures and is mediated through global media and popular culture. This meaning is generated and conveyed through ideologies, norms, values, and taken-for-granted assumptions about the connections and interactions between humans and animals. This paper examines mediated depictions of meat and animals that appear across dozens of episodes of Bob’s Burgers, focusing on the ways in which these depictions may contribute to the meaning of animal harm, thereby helping to further advance green criminological scholarship on media and human-animal relations.

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.

Methods and data

I chose Bob’s Burgers, an American animated television series created by Loren Bouchard (2011 to present), as a suitable source for discourses about meat and animals because it is a popular cartoon series in the U.S. and Canada with an overall premise centered on a meat-based restaurant. The success and popularity of Bob’s Burgers is well established. From 2012 to 2023, Bob’s Burgers was nominated for an Emmy 14 times for Outstanding Animated Program, winning in 2014 and 2017 (Television Academy, n.d.). TV Guide ranks them in their list of top 60 cartoons (TV Guide, 2013). The online aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes, lists the audience score for the show at 88%, which is the percentage of users who rated the show 3.5/5 stars or higher. Articles written about the show’s popularity include write-ups in The New York Times (Chocano, 2022), GQ (Phipps, 2022), and Variety (Otterson, 2020). Furthermore, the impact of Bob’s Burgers is well captured in the book The Genius of Bob’s Burgers: Comedy, Culture and Onion-Tended Consequences by France (2021). This thorough accounting of Bob’s Burgers includes the following statement about its popularity and appeal:

Bob’s Burgers makes broader, multivalent overtures in its attempts to appeal to an intergenerational audience. And Bob’s Burgers succeeds. [. . .] As screens have become less communal, Bob’s Burgers has become a hearth around which a wide variety of adults and children can gather. (p. 4)

Like France (2021), who ‘explores Bob’s Burgers as a cultural artifact’ (p. 8), this paper does not seek to ‘evaluate’ the quality (or popularity) of the series. The emphasis here is on discourses about meat, animals, and human-animal relations, mediated through television.

Although I was already familiar with the show, having watched many episodes since the show premiered in 2011, I took several steps to re-familiarize myself with the series and organize a thorough system of analysis, following several methodological insights from Kennedy’s (2021) analysis of Paw Patrol. First, I reviewed four complete seasons (1, 2, 7, and 14) capturing early, middle, and later iterations of the series, paying attention to depictions of meat, meat eating, and animals. Next, I examined the titles and brief descriptions for each of the 276 episodes across seasons 1–14, as well as the ‘thumbnail’ image that accompanied each description. To ensure the episodes I selected contained suitable content for analysis, I chose the episodes that indicated a clear emphasis on meat (usually burgers or turkey) or animals (broadly conceived). I picked a total of 40 episodes (see Appendix 1 for the list of episodes). A limitation of this approach is the likelihood that depictions of meat and animals appear in the other 236 episodes from seasons 1-14 not included in the analysis, but this was deemed a necessary limitation to ensure a thorough review of a manageable number of episodes. In the sections below, references to episodes are identified by the season (‘S’) and episode (‘E’) number (e.g. ‘S1:E1’ for Season 1, Episode 1).

For the first phase of the analysis, I watched each of the 40 episodes via a popular streaming service and took detailed notes for each. Second, I compiled the notes in a table using a word processing program, with a column reserved for coding. I then coded the notes for each episode, using descriptive codes and concept codes. As defined by Saldana (2021), descriptive codes are like the ‘tags’ used in social media that are often preceded by a hashtag (‘#’)—they summarize the topic of a given passage of text in a single word or short phrase. Concept codes are used to capture the ‘big picture’ of a given passage of text (Saldana, 2021). Third, I completed subsequent passes over the notes and codes, identifying patterns and themes between and across the episodes. Considering this project’s focus on mediated and socially constructed meanings, the phases of coding, and subsequent analyses of codes and themes, were informed by critical discourse analysis.

Fairclough (2003) explains the analysis of discourse is more than just an analysis of text, and includes a consideration of a text’s social effects, which depend on processes of meaning making. According to Fairclough (1995), ‘language is a socially and historically situated mode of action, in a dialectical relationship with other facets of the social’—language is both socially shaped, and socially constitutive (pp. 54–55). Three key tools of discourse analysis were used to explore meaning making—‘intertextuality’, ‘assumptions’, and ‘mediation’. First, intertextuality is the tendency for texts to be dependent on and constructed by references to other texts to generate meaning (Mills, 2004). Reviewing for intertextuality involves looking for the presence of (e.g. reference to) other texts and voices, within a given text (Fairclough, 2003). As Fairclough (1995) notes, ‘the question one is asking is, what genres and discourses were drawn upon in producing the text, and what traces of them are there in the text?’ (p. 61). Second, assumptions about what exists, what is being said, and what is valued (i.e. what is good or desirable) are an important component of discourse analysis; ‘all forms of fellowship, community and solidarity depend upon meanings which are shared and can be taken as given, and no form of social communication or interaction is conceivable without some such “common ground”’ (Fairclough, 2003: 55). In addition, the assumptions embedded within a given discourse can also have ideological significance, with assumed meanings taken as given being linked to the maintenance of hegemonic power relations (Fairclough, 2003). Third, many texts, Fairclough (2003) notes, are mediated by the mass media. As Silverstone (1999) defines it:

Mediation involves the movement of meaning from one text to another, from one discourse to another, from one event to another. It involves the constant transformation of meanings, both large scale and small, significant and insignificant, as media texts and texts about media circulate in writing, in speech and audiovisual forms, and as we, individually and collectively, directly and indirectly, contribute to their production.

Meanings about meat, animals, and human-animal relations are mediated through episodes of Bob’s Burgers, transforming the ways in which animals and meat might be imagined by any given viewer. These three tools (‘intertextuality’, ‘assumptions’, and ‘mediation’) inform this analysis, and taken together, showcase the ways in which socially and historically embedded ideas are translated through media and impact our understandings of the social world.

Findings

Three overlapping themes capture the most notable depictions of meat and animals within the episodes reviewed: (1) meat eating as axiomatic; (2) anthropomorphism and zoomorphism; and (3) feelings of love and guilt. Together, these three themes demonstrate the ways in which Bob’s Burgers both reflects and disrupts normative assumptions by showcasing meat eating as accepted and commonplace, while also illustrating the funny and bizarre ways in which human-animal relations can include empathy, fascination, and love.

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).

Discussion

Bob’s Burgers offers a unique site for studying the depiction of meat and animals in popular animated television. The focus here is on the production, evolution, and power of meaning—including how the normative power of meaning can show the social effects of discourse (Fairclough, 2003; St. Pierre, 2008). This exploration of meaning in Bob’s Burgers reveals how intertextuality and assumptions convey mediated ideas and ideologies about meat and animals, such as the ubiquity of meat eating and the paradoxical relationships people have with animals. Such depictions have the potential to contribute to the ways human-animal relations are constituted, including understandings of animal harm. Through the three identified themes of meat eating as axiomatic, anthropomorphism and zoomorphism, and feelings of love and guilt, Bob’s Burgers provides a range of scenarios on which the complexity of human-animal relations can be studied. I argue that overt references to meat eating (and other human-animal relations, like ‘pet’ keeping) can work to reproduce dominant and often harmful norms about meat and animals, while more subtle references quietly advance a more complex relationship with meat and animals that helps disrupt hierarchical social dynamics (see Ezra, 2019; Sollund, 2012).

Meat eating is depicted in Bob’s Burgers as commonplace and axiomatic, reaffirming the culture of meat consumption found in much of contemporary society. From a green-cultural criminology standpoint, this analysis advances understandings about the social construction of animal harms and human-animal relations through media (Brisman and South, 2013). Eating meat is a taken-for-granted assumption for many people (Presser, 2013), and is a social practice deeply rooted in capitalism, colonialism, culture, religion, and many other parts of our collective history (Chiles and Fitzgerald, 2018; Fitzgerald, 2015). Moreover, the hamburger is one of meat’s most enduring symbols (Adams, 2018). While the dominant theme of meat in Bob’s Burgers is well established through depictions of the family restaurant, scenes reifying the secondary placement of vegetarianism/veganism further demonstrate the ways language maintains assumptions around the inevitability and naturalness of meat eating (Stibbe, 2001). Furthermore, the ways in which meat is anthropomorphized in Bob’s Burgers can reveal an embedded animal hierarchy, that places humans at the top (i.e. anthropocentrism). These hierarchies are, as Sollund (2012) notes, based on the view that animals are inferior to humans, thereby providing mediated characterizations of meat that match the status quo. Whether it is Bob talking to eggs (S8:E1), chuck steaks (S11:E11), or turkeys (S9:E7; S10:E8), these interactions with meat and eggs contribute to instrumentalized understandings of meat and animals. Such interactions rely on—and reaffirm—underlying assumptions about meat eating being normal and benign, effectively dissociated from any images/ideas about animal harm. Or, from a social harm perspective, the harms of meat eating are far removed from any association with wrongdoing or ‘crime’ (Pemberton, 2007). Bob’s Burgers reproduces and reinforces narratives about the ubiquity of meat eating, which has the potential to reify a hierarchical relationship between humans and animals and contribute to the invisibilization of harms connected to industrial agriculture and high-meat diets. Importantly, Bob’s Burgers also includes moments that disrupt these dominant narratives by engaging with the paradox of meat eating, such as: the taboo of eating human flesh (S1:E1); Moolisa the cow being tied up out front of the restaurant (S1:E3); the restaurant receiving horsemeat instead of beef (S7:E4); and the Belchers rescuing (‘pardoning’) one turkey before eating another one (S9:E7). A show about a burger restaurant was bound to reaffirm the meat-eating status quo, but these scenes of disruption reveal potential routes for challenging dominant narratives that harm animals (see Tourangeau, 2022). Like Rafter’s (2007) popular criminology treatment of movies, this study treats Bob’s Burgers as ‘a source of cultural information, most of which simply rattles around in our heads, waiting to be called upon, but some of which feeds into our ideologies and other mental schemata’ (p. 416). The inclusion of disruptive narratives about meat has the potential to feed into, and help to transform, longstanding ideologies about meat eating.

Assumptions about the hierarchy of animals which places humans at the top are deeply embedded in culture and history, for example, with the anthropomorphized gods of ancient Egypt and animal exhibitions in Roman and Greek antiquity having an influence on the present-day social constructions of wildlife (van Uhm, 2018). Certain examples in Bob’s Burgers warrant a closer look, however. It is the Belcher children’s use of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism that provides more unique (if not strange) examples of human-animal relations that may reveal opportunities for disrupting normative ideas that harm animals. Or, in Sollund’s (2012) words, make a step toward a ‘horizontalism’ instead of a hierarchy of species. This includes Tina’s friend, Bruce the Goose (S9:E14), and brief acting role as Topsy the elephant (S3:E16), Louise’s spider named Phoebe (S12:E17) and constant appearance wearing a hat with bunny ears, and Gene’s fascination with plankton (S9:E17), and ‘Beefsquatch’ alter ego (S2:E9). These examples present more complex forms of human-animal relations that are less focused on instrumentalizing and objectifying animals; instead, they are more representative of a wonder and fascination with nature and not easily categorized as sources of harm. Indeed, they are reminiscent of Sandilands (1997) ecofeminist take on the 1976 novella Bear by Marian Engel which points to the value of recognizing the limits of language and inability of knowing nature. She writes,

This is a recognition of a moment in nature that overflows our ability to describe it. It is wild. It is not simply the diversity of nature, or our diversity as nature, but ’unspeakable’ complexity, a web of relations and experiences so complicated and diverse that it goes beyond—even defies—linguistic appropriation and can only be experienced as strange or wonderful. (p. 148)

Humans necessarily try to connect with animals in ways that are human, and more easily see themselves in/as different animals through a human lens. But there are ‘limits of knowing nature’ (Sandilands, 1997), and there is much more to learn from our failed attempts to fully understand the needs and minds of animals. Tina fails to fully befriend and understand ‘Bruce the Goose’, and Gene is bewildered and mesmerized by the bioluminescent plankton, both representing the complicated and diverse human-animal relations that can be told and re-told through media like animated television. Sollund (2012) explains that animal harms are related to our inability to fully comprehend animals, likely ‘connected to the fact that they and their lives are not part of ours – we do not share the same sphere of experience, and thus we don’t feel (sufficient) social nearness to be able to empathize with them’ (p. 107). The impossibility of knowing and understanding animals, however, is also embedded in the themes of love and guilt, which show an interesting depiction of empathy for animals, such as in Linda’s interactions with the raccoons in the alleyway behind the restaurant, and Bob’s relationship with Moolisa the cow. When Linda tries to save an injured raccoon that she calls ‘Little King Trashmouth’ from animal control, who will most likely euthanize him (S14:E7), the dominant social construction of raccoons as an urban pest and nuisance is superseded by love, empathy, and compassion. When Bob dreams about having a conversation with Moolisa, who convinces him to make burgers out of him after he dies from a heart attack (S1:E3), common assumptions about meat eating are disrupted. Here, a storyline is presented wherein the fact that the cow died from natural causes is what absolves the associated harm of meat eating, replacing the dominant narrative that slaughtering a healthy, living animal for meat is always acceptable. Love and guilt provide the backdrop to several storylines involving (often anthropomorphized) animals and meat that might provide less harmful directions in the evolution of human-animal relations. Drawing on constitutive criminology, these storylines might provide a ‘replacement discourse’ to convey alternative meanings that can supplant some of the long-established, more harmful, ideas about animals (see Henry and Milovanovic, 1996).

Conclusion

Exploring meat and animal discourses in Bob’s Burgers provided this study a route for expanding the scope of green criminology through an emphasis on the social construction of animal harm and human-animal relations in animated television. This expanded field of view provided a means for uncovering a more complete account of the meaning, etiology, and production of animal harms. In this animated TV show, the meaning of animal harm is transformed through the dialogs and themes constituted, in part, by pre-existing ideas, values, and ideologies about animals and meat eating. These transformed meanings are released through the conduit of media, both reaffirming meat-eating as commonplace, and adding new narratives about guilt, love, and the ambiguity and uncertainty of ‘not knowing’ in human-animal relations. So, while Bob’s Burgers contributes to the ongoing discursive space that maintains meat eating as axiomatic, the wholesome and relatable style of Bob’s Burgers allows for themes that contribute positive messages about the inherent and intrinsic value of nonhuman animals. Future research is needed to better understand the unique role of popular, fictional television in the reproduction and transformation of meaning about animals and human-animal relations.