Times Square’s giant hot dog is apparently a meat manifesto about toxic masculinity

nypost.com:

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 12:30 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.