ABSTRACT
Through an analysis of Louie Psihoyos’s 2019 documentary The Game Changers and discussion of the recent popularity of the Beyond Burger, “Merchandizing Veganism” examines the paradox of veganism as marketable merchandise. Central to the discussion here is media’s tendency to obscure and misrepresent the history of veganism and to ignore the structural issues linking meat-eating with gender, race, and class issues. This chapter argues that the recent success of veggie burgers and the sudden growing acceptance of vegetable diets for men may have very good effects; however, to have such hope in the current trends—in what we might call the new veganism—is to fall victim to a deceptively sexist and ecophobic guiding narrative. “Merchandizing Veganism” shows that the muscular veganism The Game Changers promotes is at core sexist and ecophobic and that vegan theoretical analyses of media representations of veganism are more urgent than ever because they draw attention to what Laura Wright has called “absences and silencings” and to how these are increasingly putting human lives (and all other lives) in mortal danger.
