Abstract In August 2022, the U.S. restaurant chain Cracker Barrel introduced a meatless sausage patty—the “Impossible Sausage”—to its breakfast menu. A viral social media backlash against the restaurant ensued. Using Fabio Parasecoli's theory of gastronativism as a theoretical lens, we perform a critical rhetorical analysis of online commentaries regarding Cracker Barrel's Impossible Sausage with an eye toward synecdochic representation. We contend that the online “culture war” that ensued within and beyond Cracker Barrel's social media pages is representative of plant-based meat alternatives’ gastropolitical resonance in U.S. American identity construction. Two synecdoches emerge through our analysis, the Cracker Barrel restaurant as right-wing sacred space embedded in “tradition” and the Impossible Sausage as a leftist, progressive, contagious intrusion into this space. Discourses of faux-Southern identity, right-wing appeals to traditional ways of life, and white masculine victimhood are entrenched in these synecdochic tropes. Understanding the Cracker Barrel's meatless menu debacle as a manifestation of gastronativist synecdoche demonstrates the ideological significance of meat and plant-based meat in contemporary U.S. political imaginaries. Given plant-based foods’ increasing popularity among health- and environmentally conscious consumers, rhetoricians concerned with the intersections of food, power, and identity should take note of how flesh (non)consumption symbolically (re)constructs U.S. American gastropolitical identities.

Abstract This essay performs a critical rhetorical analysis of out-of-court texts pertaining to Naruto v. Slater, colloquially known as the “Monkey Selfie Lawsuit.” By veering from a legal positivist perspective on law and turning toward theories of the public screen, it argues that while People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) formally lost its case on appeal, it successfully litigated their case in the court of public opinion. It further offers the concept of the “litigious event”—a staged lawsuit designed for mass media dissemination—to explain my perspective. By latching onto the already-viral monkey selfies at the center of the copyright dispute, PETA took advantage of the public screen by bringing a private, logocentric civil suit into a public, image-based digital sphere. Increased coverage of the case allowed PETA's legal team to harness the power of digital media to disseminate important arguments about legal rights for animals. Naruto v. Slater functioned as a trial for media, as a strategic lawsuit for public participation—in other words, as a strategically sound and rhetorically powerful litigious event.