Dog Culling for Everyone

L'Équarrissage pour tous is a play by Boris Vian, first written in 1947 as an anarchic farce in three acts and revised in 1948 into a single act. It is set in Arromanches on 6 June 1944, the day of the Allied landings in Normandy. Its protagonist, a knacker indifferent to the surrounding destruction and to the wider geopolitical events, is preoccupied with arranging the wedding of his daughter to a German soldier who has been living in his home and with whom she has had a long-standing relationship. He invites another daughter, a paratrooper in the Red Army, and his son, a paratrooper in the American army, to the ceremony. Soldiers from several sides also arrive, among them Germans, Americans and Japanese, and indulge in all sorts of excess; almost every character ends up, in the end, at the knacker's yard.

The work is an antimilitarist satire which, through derision and burlesque, criticises war, several aspects of American society (imperialism, puritanism and propaganda) and the institution of the family. Vian treats the soldiers of both camps with irony. The scene in which Germans and Americans swap uniforms and sing each other's national songs illustrates the idea that military identity is interchangeable and patriotism little more than a garment. The knacker's two children, one in the American army and one in the Soviet, place future Cold War adversaries on a morally equal footing, which calls into question the simplistic picture of the Liberation. Last-minute resistance fighters are mocked too, and the protagonist's house, the only structure left standing amid the ruins, is demolished by an official of the Ministry of Reconstruction for not being "aligned".

Its style rests on irreverent humour built on exaggeration, absurdity and theatrical techniques rather than on wordplay. René Barjavel described it as an "anarchic vaudeville", a label Vian later adopted. Vian defended his approach by arguing that it was preferable to make people laugh at the expense of war, a sneakier but more effective way of attacking it.

The premiere took place on 14 April 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, staged by André Reybaz and the Compagnie du Myrmidon. The audience initially responded well, but several critics who had been amused the previous evening published negative reviews the following day. Attendance fell and the play was withdrawn from the programme in May, while others, including Jean Cocteau and Barjavel, offered more favourable assessments. The episode deepened Vian's dissatisfaction with critics, which he expressed in the first published edition of the text later that year.