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

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.