By now many movie-goers have bared witness to the shocking, lewd, and subsequently, hilarious film, Sausage Party. Amid crude sex and ethnic jokes and innuendos, Seth Rogen's film touched on an underlying concept that is prevalent throughout the world. In no way, shape or form do I believe Rogen's and the other creators' message involve the premise that all kinds of food have lives and feelings that we as humans can only perceive by shooting bath salts. The powerful and taboo concept that is brought along, all the time underlying and disguised in bawdy animation and stereotypes, is the consequences of religiosity dominating a society.
Before exploring in depth what the film began demonstrating, this examination should be prefaced with a brief recap of what society actually existed in this movie. The setting for the majority of the film was a generic shopping market where all the food and other human accessories were the members of the society, and all of the humans, the employees and shoppers were treated as gods. Everyday begins the same way where all the food takes part in a zealous ritual where they are singing and praising the gods, the humans, and want more than anything to be taken to the 'great beyond,' a pretty straightforward metaphor for heaven. Every food and human item in the shopping market is happy because they all know if they are selected to the great beyond they will be cherished and live with the gods and for pairs of food that can copulate together, like Frank, the sausage, and Brenda, the aptly designed counterpart hotdog bun. Only there, in the great beyond, is it kosher for the sausage to copulate with the bun.
As merciful and great as the gods are, Brenda and Frank are chosen together and everything is going according to plan. Due to an unexpected suicide from mustard, someone who had been to the great beyond and back, Frank and Brenda leave their packages and are no longer "fresh" and "pure". Brenda attributes their later trials and tribulations to the fact that they must have angered the gods because they impiously touched tips while they hadn't yet reached the great beyond. However, Frank begins slowly but surely straying into the land of disbelief as he hears the testimony of mustard before committing suicide. Frank is a clear and obvious representation of a believer turning agnostic and by the end of the film, atheist. His room for doubt and skepticism begins budding early in the movie and only grows as he learns more bits and pieces of the truth.
This fantasy really gets shattered before the food and audience members' eyes when the harsh reality sets in that the humans, in fact, aren't benevolent gods but some crazed old testament/Aztec-esque food-eating monsters. There are two parallel stories taking place that serve to demonstrate the truth to the rest of the food Brenda and Frank were with that made it to the great beyond, and Brenda and Frank's own journey to make it back to their shelf. Due to a quarrel about the truth of the gods, Brenda and Frank split up, where Brenda's only concern is to get back in a package and make it to the great beyond, and Frank is determined to find the truth in the cutlery section.
Frank does find the truth in a book and even when he makes it back to the register's microphone and shows everyone what he deems as proof of the gods' savage killing and eating of them, in the end the food simply chooses their former beliefs because they would much rather believe something pleasant and untrue than true and horrific. This is a classic example of how many religious discussions between believers and non-believers unfold. Certain forms of evidence don't necessarily convince a community that follows unyielding dogma and don't allow for reason nor rationality. What is convenient, pleasant and advantageous is what is often taken over reality, evidence and facts.
As Frank is righteously frustrated at his fellow foods' stubbornness and ignorance, a clever mission from a group of food that knows the truth is able to shoot toothpick-laced bath salts at all of the humans, revealing to all of the food the true monstrous nature of the gods now that they are able to directly interact with the food. The beginning of what would have been a massacre, scares all of the food enough that they abandon their former position and belief of the gods and they fight back. After a battle that has enough gore to be Tarantino approved, the food have secured a victory for a short while. And here in the final minutes of the film is what is so palpable and interesting as a piece of commentary on the nature of intelligent life.
Their world has come crashing down. There are no more gods, in the sense that there are no more gods they believe in that are benevolent. As the main driving component of their lives has been turned on its head, they submit themselves to a completely hedonistic, desire-driven, orgy. It is insane. There are literally minutes of unadulterated food sex on screen and it is more than a powerful message. It attempts to drive home the point that a group that followed such a dogma and were such devout worshippers, if you strip that from them, they will be possessed by their id and lustful nature because there can be no repercussions nor negative consequences from the gods whom they discovered already want to kill and eat them. This is a very interesting subject that would require more analysis of human nature, both historically and psychologically. It would be interesting to see or review an example of something like this happening to us humans in the past but there is not such a case of this magnitude happening. I do agree that sexual repression is something so obvious when religiosity becomes applied but I do not agree with the devout to barbaric transition that occurs almost as quick as the flick of a switch. Perhaps having taken something so essential from someone might produce some similar behavior but the absence or removal of a religious dogma to follow/indoctrinated does not cause the effect of the lascivious and primal behavior exhibited at the end of the movie.
