A sushi conveyor belt at restaurant. As the belt moves the plates of sushi, they start coming to life, dancing and twerking for the almighty consumer's attention. All in the midst of this fight to be consumed, a sushi rice man ponders about the meaning of life. At a first glance, Calleen Koh and Amanda Teo's short animation “Sexy Sushi” seems like a pretty bizarre funny story, but a closer look shows us a complex and insightful take on consumerism.
“Sexy Sushi” is Screening at Cartoon Underground
“Sexy Sushi” criticizes the rampant fetishization of food in our consumer society. Sexual allusions fill up the screen – rice that looks like erected penises, tongue-looking tuna that “licks” up the wasabi, and so on and so forth. The sushi itself is presented as a sexual act between two bodies, reminding us of the pseudo-philosophical waxings on food being the harmony between ingredients or between opposing forces. Well, there's no harmony in here, only fight for attention done in the catchiest way possible – through hyper-sexual behaviour like twerking.
The sexualization of the ingredients makes us think of the numerous food porn shows that litter the media landscape, as well as the grossly offensive sex comedy “Sausage Party”, but it is a kind of a reversal on its premise. It starts with sex and ends with the realization of the pointlessness and brutality of existence, whereas in the Seth Rogen-produced CGI comedy, there is some kind of victory of the products over their consumers.
Koh's short comments on the fact that everything is fetishized and made into product into our world of constant consumption and instant gratification. We are products, too, just like the sushi on the conveyor belt and as much as we enjoy the somewhat pointlessness of life, we are going to be consumed and destroyed at the end by powers bigger than us – conglomerates. That's because in a sense, we are like the rice man – we exist to feed a much larger anonymous and unknowable machine.
The animation fits the tone of the short very well. The sushi rice man is reminiscent of numerous Japanese characters and mascots posted by Mondo Mascots while managing to have his own personality. Moreover, some of the postures he and and the toppings take during the first minute remind us of one of the wilder Nissin commercials of recent past. This creates an atmosphere of total madness that conveys the messages of the film very well.
What separates “Sexy Sushi” from many other shorts, and what it makes it an incredible film, is the fact that it manages to explore many contemporary problems in great depth and all in the span of only two minutes. Who knew that a short story about a bunch of sex between rice and his toppings could be so thought provoking?
