“SEASONED CHICKEN” COMMERCIALS WITHIN SPECIESIST AND SEXIST CONTEXT

Tv commercials to which we are increasingly exposed in audiovisual media have a crucial place in creation of discourse network in building society and accordingly the cultural structure as well as the description of the products. This study argues that animal bodies that are marketed as the products in commercials are created through manipulative setups involving speciesist and sexist discourse and discusses it through the analyses within the vegan and feminist criticism. Within this scope, Seasoned Chicken commercials of Popeyes which represent the animals symbolically through anthropomorphism constitute the findings of this study. These commercials were analyzed at denotation and connotation levels through semiology within the speciesist and sexist context. In conclusion, it was observed that the animal was made insignificant culturally in these commercials in which the animal was symbolized as the conductor of misbehaviors to express the social rules of people through anthropomorphism. Presentation of violence as an element of humor and the definition of the character as a male in these commercials are the indicators of the sexist discourse approving masculine violence. Describing the animal as a “meat” hides its real meaning. It is possible to state that the culture maintaining the relationship between the myths that naturalize eating meat and speciesist commercials that market the animal body pieces literally is cultivated the interaction of speciesist and sexist structures