What, No Beef?
1943 · 1m · Canada
During wartime rationing, Plugger complains about empty butcher shelves at home. His wife explains that beef is needed for soldiers overseas, and he cheerfully settles for chicken instead.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A wartime PSA that *wants* to be subversive but capitulates the moment it matters—Plugger's cheerful surrender to chicken is exactly the consensus move every propagandist dream of, which makes it fascinating as a document of coercion, if not as cinema.
A perfectly calibrated industrial short from the NFB's golden era: economical animation, clear ideological throughline, and the formal confidence of an institution that knew exactly how to marshal whimsy toward citizenship. This is craft in service of state, executed without irony.
The brilliance is in the timing of Plugger's about-face—one beat of hesitation before acceptance—which transforms a compliance message into something that almost acknowledges the sacrifice, a miniature performance choice that redeems what could have been pure propaganda.