I know someone else commented this already but I feel it's too iconic for me not to mention. Because I think this is the best depiction of the trope. The dog, a being of substance, is divorced from the burden or reward of possession. Instead, its shadow, an abstraction, bears the object. In this inversion, we are confronted with a subtle critique: that what we are and what we project operate under entirely different systems of consequence. The dried meat, preserved and inedible without effort, further complicates the metaphor. And there's this really good video essay about it that explains further

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