I know this has been on the Slog before and is all over cyberspace…

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… but I want to give it a little more thought. Here we have something like a return to the original, to the beginning, as it were. Why is this so? Because what is kissing but the act of eating without the act of devouring, a feasting without the bite and the processes of digestion. Kissing is wonderful and Utopian because it is eating minus death. Even to swallow saliva or other fluids of love is not the same as swallowing food. To eat something is destroy the thing, the whole object; to swallow the fluids of love does not decompose or harm the object of love. In the Burger King picture, the desire of kissing returns to the desire of eating. Meaning, death returns to love making.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

14 replies on “Devouring Death”

  1. Uh, didn’t most people get the impression that these ads were not at all about kissing, or at least not about kissing someone else’s *mouth*? The phallicism of the sandwich is obvious and the Cyndi-Lauper-ish woman’s face looks like she is being forced to engage in an activity of which she does not seem to be fond of…

  2. I agree with #1, here. My first impression was oral sex, not kissing. Look at her face, that is not a romantic look, that is the look of a woman about to attempt something she’s not too sure about.

  8. Charles- NO ….It isn’t…Sucking someone’s cock until they shoot a hot load down your throat is quite different from kissing them…Sure…both involve the mouth…but ummmm…WHAT are you talking about?

  14. 10 & 11 – are you capable of scrolling? seriously, you have the constitutional right to ignore them. feel free to use those rights.

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