Neil Patrick Harris has yet again faced a wave of backlash after a photo of his 2011 Halloween meat platter, dubbed "Amy Winehouse corpse", resurfaced online.
The platter, which was initially thought to be a cake, graphically resembled a rotten corpse with Winehouse's signature hairstyle and tattoos. For those still doubting the identity of the corpse, a handwritten card near the platter read "The Corpse of Amy Winehouse". According to reports, the platter consisted of “beef ribs, pulled pork, [and] chicken sausage in a spicy BBQ sauce".
The controversial set of appetisers was offered to guests of the 2011 Halloween party at the place of Neil Patrick Harris and his then-husband Justin Mikita, just a couple of months after Winehouse's death. It was Mikita who posted a photo of the platter via his social media, quickly deleting it shortly thereafter.
The reaction was strong even back in 2011, but when today's outrage-culture-driven netizens discovered the disturbing incident for the first time, they found it even more shocking.
"Y’all, the Neil Patrick Harris/Amy Winehouse thing is even worse than it looks because that wasn’t a cake, it was a meat platter made to look like her dead body. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google it. You will be disgusted and no longer a NPH fan," one user wrote, adding that "people treated Amy Winehouse like sh*t before and after she died, and this is just an extreme example of it."
Warning: the following content is graphic and may offend sensibilities.
Screenshot of the now-deleted 2011 tweet by Justin Mikita, ex-husband of Neil Patrick Harris, that shows a photograph of the meat platter titled "Amy Winehouse corpse"
© Photo : Twitter / @JustinMikita
More than a decade later, social media users lambasted Harris' party trick as "cruel", "tasteless" and "disgusting".
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© Photo : Twitter / @judeinlondon2
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© Photo : Twitter / @Buster_n_Dottie
With many users clarifying that it was in fact not a cake but a meat platter, the whole picture became even worse for many people.
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© Photo : Twitter / @TheHauntsman
The resurfaced photo prompted debates regarding how society treats female celebrities, often exploiting one's addictions and mental health issues.
Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27 in July 2011 from alcohol poisoning after struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. Back in fall 2011, when Harris and Mikita decided to pull off the disturbing party trick, the controversy was quickly dismissed, and neither of them addressed the incident.
Following the new wave of online outrage over the "corpse" meat platter, both Harris and his ex-husband also remain tight-lipped.