*Insert some kind of witty title about Hopper and cows*: Talking about the 'Roast Beef' shirt
So there's this reoccurring motif where Hopper's attempted suicide is foreshadowed by him eating beef. Yes, I'm serious.
This is first established in S3 and the best symbol of it is Dustin's Roast Beef shirt.
The most noticeable thing about this shirt is that it's bright orange. I think it's important to remember that at this point in S3 orange was primarily used for two things: Hopper's curse and Kali's illusions. These then combined to indicate Vecna's curse/illusions.
Since there are a lot of newer theorists since 5x08, and our whole understanding of the show has been re-contextualised, we've often been working backwards. One of the side effects is that we have a tendency to disregard chronology when it comes to symbols. I do this all the time myself so I'm not saying this from a high horse, but I think without considering the timeline of a symbol we lose dimension from its meaning.
I'm not saying the writers did not know what they would come to represent when they first created the symbols, but rather that they might have intended their meaning to unfurl rather than already be fully formed the first time we see them.
Anything to do with Hopper's curse is a really great example of this. The tiger, the colour orange, the cave analogy, the 'curse', the black hole, are all introduced first to explore Hopper dealing with the loss of Sara.
The tiger and the cave analogy both evolve during S3 to apply more broadly but the colour orange is still overwhelmingly Hopper's until S4.
Remember that at this point we were still theorising about why Hopper might be feeling so guilty over Sarah's death. We haven't yet been told about Hopper's experience in Vietnam so all the orange everywhere is still foreshadowing the Agent Orange reveal in S4.
Orange in S3 is serving a specific purpose to a specific character because of its relevance to a specific plot-point. Once the attached plot-point has been revealed then it can be peeled back, expanded upon, create parallels, imply things for other characters and thus...
...the colour orange gains evolved meaning in seasons 4 and 5.
This is why it is so jarring to see Dustin in S3, whose t-shirts typically foreshadow the fate of other characters (Parachute S1 -> El catching Mike's fall, Byte S4 -> Steve and Eddie bitten by bats, etc), wearing this bright orange for the majority of the season.
What is even weirder is that it has the words 'Roast Beef' on it. The only other place we see beef is when Hopper buys and eats it from 7-11.
How much they emphasise this beef stick is honestly crazy. It gets a dedicated shot of Hopper taking a bite and then he proceeds to do the WHOLE scene with it hanging out of his mouth.
It's in shot for such a suspiciously long time that it feels like the writers are hitting you over the head with the fact it's of symbolic importance.
I also think this is another symbol amongst a mountain (spinning records, "she's got you", sunglasses, uncontrollable anger, eating cereal of Mike (frog) specifically, sweating, head trauma, etc.) that suggests Hopper was flayed by S3. This is because the flayed are also symbolised by meat in S3 and this seems to be when this symbol is established clearly for Hopper, but I would have to double check on a rewatch. I agree with the theory that the spores flay you and Hopper inhaled A BUNCH in s2. The government tell him he's all clear but they said exactly the same about the soil and Will and we all know how that turned out.
So we've got the orange colour, we have the association with beef, but then we also have the pun. The shirt is a cow on vacation with the text 'roast beef'.
So, Hopper is beef (presumably because of the slang terms 'beefy' or a 'beefcake'? which means stocky, strong, muscly or fat and aligns with his repeated description by other characters).
But, like the pun on Dustin's shirt, he really gets sent on 'holiday'. To Russia. A considerably more miserable fate than Dustin's shirt suggests. Though I guess the cow was gonna die.
Dustin is also involved a couple of other times in S3 with foreshadowing Hopper's fate. Most obviously when he straight up says "he's going to die" about Hopper.
In S5 we get the return of the beef and once again they make a big deal of it. They have another whole scene about it.
El asks Hopper for something to refuel her battery and Hop eats... beef jerky.
Then, what does Hopper try to do in 5x04? Blow himself up again. A return of the beef alongside the return of Hopper self-sacrificing for El.
There's a lot wrong with the Enzos meal but Hopper eating a Filet Special? Bad. That's usually beef.
And, like father like daughter, what does Hopper inspire El to eat as well? Beef.
AND THEN SHE 'KILLS' HERSELF.
Bonus: little return of the orange plaid symbol which connected scenes to do with Hopper's curse and the loss of his daughters because when Kali encourages El to kill herself she is wearing orange plaid. To Hopper what she represents is the curse taking his daughter again. Like, look at the shot of Kali touching Sara's hairband.
But my absolute favourite instance of the beef symbol is in 4x01 (still not beating the 'Ems' favourite episode' allegations) because, when Joyce gets evidence that Hopper could still be alive, what is she wearing? COW GLOVES.
Get it? Because he's not beef any more? He's alive! Fully a cow. I'm sorry but is that not hilarious? This show is so UNSERIOUS at times.
Unfortunately, this symbol might have originated from the grim reality of the high suicide rates amongst farmers. When looking into some news articles it seems dairy farmers were once believed to have the highest suicide rate of any occupation. However, this evidence has since been retracted. There's a lot of discussion of 'cowboy up' culture and Cowboy Up seems to be a suicide prevention charity.
Some other stuff that might be relevant
And the El and Hopper as cows thing might also connect to the weird dairy/butter thing?
But basically there's attention drawn to AA batteries.
And that they need "Eight" (that seems pretty self explanatory).
And we see the Grade AA of butter a few times.
^ There's other examples if I remember correctly but I think I read about it in a pre-s5 post and I unfortunately can remember very little of it. I don't remember a clear conclusion.
And this is the dialogue from the S5 beef jerky scene. El is eating the beef to refill her battery. Are they saying butter would be better? Lol. (how do cows power their electronics? butteries lmao). Anyway, I think that's probably something to be investigated some other day.
There's also other references to cows in S3. I'm not going to go into all of them out of laziness but there is a cattle prod which does seem to be foreshadowing Hopper's fate as well. They use one to knock out or kill this scientist and the electricity is very much like the arcs coming off of the particle accelerator when it explodes.
Joyce then uses a cattle prod to save Hopper in s4 in a nice little full circle moment that has a few different parallels to them just before Hopper's sacrifice. This is presented as a reversal of what happened in S3.
And Hopper being a cow has wider implications as we get this misidentifying a dog as a cow moment at the start of s4 which I theorised is about how Hopper's Kamchatka storyline is a proxy for Mike's Camazotz storyline.
Anyway, thanks for reading and I'm sorry it took this long lol. I promised to make this post months ago 😭.
