brown cows, sacred cows
a belief that i absolutely, resolutely hold, is the fact that animals provide the mirror of narcissus to any given culture: how a culture perceives specific animals vs others can reveal a lot about them. india, where i was born, is a great example. sacred cows exist, and while that belief may seem bizarre or primitive to someone outside the country, it IS pretty reasonable considering how agrarian india still really is. the sacred cow figures as a source of wealth, sustenance, survival, as well as traces of historical silt from previous cultural incarnations. plus, indian zebu are cute.
brown jersey cows, however, are a curious phenomenon.
if you're terminally online, you'd remember a funny factoid:
7% of Americans believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows
now of course you'd be thinking:
haha those dumb americans think that milk -> white -> white cows,
so chocolate ->brown -> brown cows.
and tbh it would be funny if it WERE true, except thats not what's happening.
in 1999, hershey's put out a 'tutorial ad' on how to make chocolate milk, featuring a brown cow and hershey's signature chocolate syrup. and this simple fact changes how we can view the previous factoid.
america isn't like any other country. on one hand, it is a country which is heavily, thoroughly mediatized. it exists on and through media representations, and unlike other cultures which have pre-existing self representations in folk, myth, oral+written cultures (india's sacred cows for example), america is a country which uniquely self-cognizes through television. important things happen on the TV: historical events of national importance (moon landings, 9/11, civil rights, presidential assassinations), cultural transmission (children's shows, infotainment), civil coordination (breaking news, documentaries, national heartthrobs). simply put, america never had folk media play the national self cognition role like most other cultures, this function was always accomplished by mass media. the tv isn't just communication, it is thought itself. the brown cow is simply an advanced outcome of a culture that is so dependent on tv for social coordination that whatever is pumped out through tv and radio is, as hard as it may be to believe, is far more likely to be taken as literal fact.
secondly, america is not a normal country. scientific-technological miracles are part of the american self conception of the US being a world leader. it is a country that basically 'invented the modern world': tv, cars, refrigerators, the computer, space travel, the internet, nukes, genetically engineered food, abominations like this. america is a place where the transgression of sacred boundaries has in some sense already occurred: the frontier must always expand. the limits of artificiality, especially when it comes to consumer products, isnt that unbelievable, like conceptually far out there, unlike a lot of other cultures.
if america can create computers , little hyperdimensional devices of infinity, why would a brown cow that creates chocolate milk BE that big of an ontological leap?
examining two cows provides interesting contrast. one is a pot of gold for a rainy day, a religious artifact, a cultural object. the other is product, an industrial outcome, a commodity in the circuit of capital.
both are subjects that reveal something interesting about the cultures in which they are situated.