One of the gravest mistakes a person can make is overthinking a hot dog.
Just accept that the frankfurter, which has been sitting all day in cloudy water, is delicious, slather it in mustard and don’t ask too many questions.
But blissful ignorance is not the mindset of the Brooklyn-based artists behind the new 65-foot, giant hot dog sculpture that landed in Times Square this week.
Buckle up. Because these sculptors, Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw, have delivered a meat manifesto.
Their titanic sausage is apparently meant to “examine consumption, capitalism, class and contemporary culture,” Times Square Arts’ website amazingly reads.
A kooky press release added this epic Wiener of the World will expose “the patriarchy of meat-eating.”
That must be why every day at 12:00 p.m., the installation lifts off the ground, angles up to sky and becomes a confetti cannon.
The explosion of euphemism is supposed to reference the “hyper-masculinity and showmanship often associated with American culture and patriotism.”
Um, sure it is.
Times Square, with its onslaught of noise, light and indecipherable smells, is an awfully funny place for deep thinking.
Walking to work in a hurry on Wednesday, I strolled by this colossal tube steak and said, “Oh. A big hot dog.”
My automatic shrug at the abnormal sight, besides that being all New Yorkers’ default attitude, could be because its neighbors include a massive M&M, a three-story Olive Garden and a Krispy Kreme so enormous it’s deemed the company “flagship.”
Big is Times Square’s shtick.
Plop “Hot Dog in the City” in Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park and the visual would be way more striking — like the monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” except the monkeys are shirtless dudes playing frisbee.
Frankly, though, my reaction would probably be the same.
“Oh. A big hot dog.”
I guarantee you that nobody in the throngs of tourists taking pictures Wednesday stopped to consider that the installation could be a stinging indictment of American excess. If anything, they thought it was a celebration of imported German cuisine.
Mostly, though, they figured it’s another Instagram opportunity; a Cawker City, Kansas World’s Biggest Ball of Twine to call our very own.
There are even events pegged to this best of wursts, which is in town till June 13.
One called the “Condiment Wars” will feature the wrestlers of a New Orleans-based drag group known as Choke Hole, who will “take down masculinity, corporate America, and capitalism.”
I sense a trend here.
Later on, there’s a canine beauty pageant (100% approve), a hot-dog eating contest (makes sense) and then an on-stage talk at Town Hall debating the merits of the food (uh oh).
Among the panelists at that chat will be a feminist-vegan writer and activist. I have a sneaking suspicion she won’t be pro-hot-dog.
Clearly the point of this undeniably impressive piece of visual art is to get the viewer to open their eyes and see the hot dog as emblematic of the dark, crude, ravenous underbelly of American society.
Unfortunately it has only made me want to go to Gray’s Papaya.
New York Post
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