Buffalo chicken tenderizes flu

With the threat of the swine flu hanging over the world's head, the city council of Buffalo, New York has decided to launch a preemptive campaign for flu shots this fall.

Drawing on 40s superhero nostalgia, designers have come up with a new campaign to help motivate the elderly into getting a seasonal flu shot. The new campaign will feature two characters specially designed for it: Commander Chicken and Comrade Influenza.

“The idea is to go for that notion of the good old days before hippies and post-modernism forever robbed America of its true vision of good and evil. You can tell by the cut of Commander's cape and the patriotic flag emblazoned on his chest that he is the good guy and, most importantly, American,” said Mark Goldberg, one of the designers.

The gaudily dressed poultry does battle against the amoeba-esqe looking Comrade Influenza. Comrade's distinctive look borrows from the portrayal of Russians during the McCarthy era. In one of the posters set to go on display Wednesday, Comrade menaces Commander from behind a wall. Comrade's heavy beard and fur cap are all that can be seen, and yet still manage to convey a subtle aura of menace to the viewers as a towering “Winter 2009” prepares to drop on Commander Chicken.

“What I set out to do in helping design Commander Chicken was actually to help remind people of the decision to make women's suffrage a universal human right, and to subvert the seeming masculine authority of the title of 'Commander' by putting an empowered woman behind it and thereby toppling the regime. Because, you see, boy chickens don't lay eggs, but you need eggs to make vaccines,” said Cynthia Porter, another contributing designer.

Vaccines are grown in fertilized chicken eggs, and then removed to be used by humans. This method of production is slow and has fallen under critique for years. Scientists have been working to come up with new methods of vaccine creation, but it still takes many months to become fully prepared for a given flu season even after the decision has been made about which of the previous season's primary strains will resurface. The city council states this as one of the other motivating reasons for the early launch of their campaign.

“If it's going to take months to get enough, we should be reminding people during those months that they'll need to get the vaccine come winter. We hope it will help cut down on hospitalizations. Though, we are partly worried by one thing a designer told us, it could cause our plan to encourage the elderly to backfire almost entirely,” said Sherry Baker, a city council member.

The potential problem stems from one of the more controversial methods of interpreting the art and science behind the posters.

“You see, obviously, if Commander there feels she needs to be known as a man, she must be a transsexual. We aren't even trying to hide it. She's saying, 'Yes, I'm a woman biologically, but I feel so much better as a man.' It's almost a cry for help really. And Comrade? Obviously asexual typecasting as the creepy neighbor. I'm sure it is a very nice flu bug when people aren't busy trying to blame the world's problems on it,” said Gary Brooks, another designer on the project.

The state of New York has congratulated the Buffalo City Council for its proactive stance towards flu prevention, and Mary Allaman, who proposed the original idea, is set to receive an award in July for her commitment to public health.