The Ernest Becker Foundation

"You are what you eat," says the old adage. We treat chickens as pets and surrogate children, even as we slaughter them by the millions, chew and digest them. We love living things, but we also have to kill and eat them every day in order to stay alive. Like sex, eating is a compulsion: if you skip it, life stops.

The documentary film "The Natural History of the Chicken" shows some of the surprising ways people relate to chickens. Kirby Farrell uses the film to illustrate how we use cultural fantasies to manage the deep conflicts that would otherwise tear us apart. Chickens open a window on our attitudes toward intimacy, warfare, religion, and tonight's dinner. Kirby reminds us that every day we turn denial into creative behavior that makes life worth living. Look at the bigger picture, he argues, you'll never see food and your own creaturely existence the same way again.

Kirby Farrell has long been a mainstay of the EBF. He is a professor at the University of Massachusetts and the author of many scholarly books and novels, most recently "Post-Traumatic Culture" and, coming this spring, "Berserk Style in American Culture."

Both the film and Kirby’s in-depth analysis are now up on YouTube, and are highly recommended.