image courtesy poetryfoundation.org
predicament, quagmire, conundrum, perspective
Seems like there are no small problems in the world any longer. Seems like the world is so complex that complexity IS the problem? Anyway, when did Food become a World?
It would seem as though Shakespeare, a person who’s iconic work I sadly and uncouthly admit to having spat over (figuratively) in high school, as if interned in a chamber of torture, seems to creep up on the pages of this blog more often than I would have ever predicted. Is it deja vu or some form of freudian instant-messaging? The image shown above ironically evokes the exact level of piercingly-serious thought over which this post is written. Perhaps I must be forced to consider, some 40 odd years later, that Shakespeare did indeed teach me some things, although they may not be those that he necessarily intended……….
Much Ado About Nothing was written around 1598 and was a comedic work. Today’s reference is nothing of the sort. However, the brilliant mind of Shakespeare gave us an idiom, against which we can test a number of complex issues. “Food World” may be one of them.
is the food world a problem? of what proportions?
Earlier this morning, I read with great interest, a post entitled, “Something is Amiss in the Food World”, by Alison Cayne which attempts to intermingle a myriad of issues. This article left me with a good deal of conflict, perhaps as intended. This is something I don’t like to have happen. It caused angst, much as the article Katie Parla posted while I was in Italy in September. It was by Alice Waters and it discussed how “local” food is not really local enough, and was during the days I was gleefully junketing around the food markets there. I prefer all of my food experiences to be, well, happy ones, as often as possible. (So, I’m naive, silly and foolhardy.)
It is articles such as today’s, and Alice’s (and lots of other Food Ethicists) that make me conflicted – at the very same time as I am attempting to enjoy my own daily-cum-long-term obsession with food studies, on every level, I am forced to concede that there are issues to be brought to bear about food that we all find to be fraught with concern and worry. I wondered, after reading this one, not only what there was to extrapolate from all of this, but also, where the boundaries of “normalcy” begin and end. Are there some issues that are so complex and intermingled, that they can not be brought together in one problem-solving exercise, as the attempt to dissect them into workable pieces leaves one exhausted and forlorn and near crazy (kind of like the news)?
Now, we all know the pitfalls of being concerned with “normalcy”. I wondered, when and where we cross over from concern to neurosis, and how problems should be viewed and solved. Is there anything to be gained by highlighting the fact that Beyoncé’s vegan business venture may appear to some as misguided and frivolous when indeed people are starving and we are at this very moment careening like a meteor toward burning up the planet? However, as this topic seems to rear up quite a lot these days, it does bear cause for consideration on a number of levels. Is this all generational, or is there something deeper cooking? At least some of what is raised in this article is not cause for alarm. But, some is.
One thing I would agree with: the subject of food is perhaps more complicated than it has ever been on our planet. At the very same time as food is required sustenance for every living organism, the how, why and where we forage, procure, construct, design, reap, sow, photo, destroy, arrange, flavor, re-purpose, process, genetically modify, hybridize, purify, liquify, roast, fry, boil, grill, braise, bake, steam, re-cycle, compost, condense, freeze, freeze-dry, otherwise media-ize and otherwise manipulate from the cell-level to the big-picture has become a quagmire fraught with obsessive-compulsive under-the-microscope fixating. We, the collective we, each and every one of us, spend some time, every day, pondering food and, no, we may not be diligent, healthful or thoughtful in our endeavors or behaviors. And then, some of us, spend all day thinking about food. When and how does this make us “bad”, I wondered……..
Food-centric, we may all be all quite pre-occupied with it. Last week, for instance, I was quite perplexed when I heard Fran Lebovitz, famed photographer and cultural guru of sorts, proclaim, in so many words, on a television show that millennials are all too concerned with taking pictures of their food. This was from a famous photographer, someone who uses as her muse and earns her living from snapping away at what many would consider to be inane and superfluous images, and then has them published in the likes of Vanity Fair magazine…….. Huh? I wondered if she, like me, is also confused.
Well anyway, perhaps more than our preoccupation with what we eat ourselves, we are/have become border-line neurotic, if not paranoid about food issues. You’ll find no argument here about the damage that is being done to the health of the planet and individual bodies, by factory farming, fishing and ranching and the transportation and wholesale polluting/poisoning of said product. Then there are the forces that market and entice us to eat badly vs the forces that don’t want to pay for the subsequent healthcare that is required when we do, as humans succumb to the marketers’ and frailties of our own species in our time. Oh gosh, let me not begin listing the contradictory, not to mention, well-funded opposing forces we face every day.
Being that I am no scientist, just a curious person who tries to make some sense of some things, I have no idea how to evaluate whether the food predicament is worse say, than the affects of burrowing beneath the crust levels of the earth in order to extract various virgin or by-products of crude oil and subsequently force-feed water and inert materials below the surface in return. Or, of flying airplanes, driving cars, paving over, and over-populating various and sundry locales. Or, of ignoring the starvation of human beings, let alone the abuse of animals of every species, on this and other continents in the world. Or, of knowingly ignoring the political and physical destruction of human beings and other animals and species in many, not to mention particularly, ecologically-threatened locals, including the oceans, rain-forests or other ecological micro-climates. Granted, a couple of those examples may not apply directly to food issues, but in my mind, as goes humanity, goes the planet and visa versa.
I have to admit that to filter down the article that Ms. Cayne wrote and try to weigh out the issues she raises, I tried to step back from the direct inspection under the microscope. It would seem to me that, throughout history, there have been fetishes of sorts concerning many a human behavior. Is the current food craze just one of those? I believe Da Vinci, as one tiny example, spent a great deal of time studying if not obsessing over his exact drawings of the human body, using cadavers and various other props to fulfill his profound interest in his subject. Which leads me to one hypothesis: perhaps that on one hand, food is just the latest expression of artistic obsession, and being that it is also such an ubiquitous subject on so many levels, it is merely catching flack as it sits on its own pedestal of generational interest?
One thing I believe can be said for certain – that the potential for psychologically-draining obsession over the selection, source, ramification of every caloric morsel that is on the chopping block of media, markets, tables, and forks for every day of every meal, is indeed an exhausting proposition. Question is, do we need to turn everything about food, its art, ingestion and production, into a festering neurosis? Or, conversely, are we so far down the path to destruction that we are unable to see the abyss?
Bottom line, I would hope that we do not choose to obsess over things that are not worth obsessing over – like Beyoncé. I would hope that in a world where we are overrun with issues, problems, threats, disease, pestilence and daily reports of genocide, that we do not choose to make food an issue that is borderline neurotic – whenever and wherever it can be the source of artistic endeavor, creativity, happiness and fulfillment.
If Beyoncé wants to sell vegan smoothies, I’m not going to obsess about it. Go ahead, knock yourself out.
I will, however, worry about the people, especially children, the world over who are hungry every day. My Mom used to say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” And to this I say, no it wasn’t but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working on it. There are millions of people working on thousands of different food-related problems each and every day. Hopefully, their results will coalesce better than this article did for me. Hopefully.
It would seem that I have indeed not solved one single thing here. It is hard to accept that when one is so enjoying so many elements of a world out there, that there have to be critical-nature issues beaming in to disrupt all the free-flowing positiveness of it all. I guess that’s where the term “mixed-blessing” may come in…… for all we have to celebrate, there is none without a price………
Perhaps simply, it is the use of the term, “Food World” that bothers me. Has food become a universe unto itself, to be dissected, analyzed and peered at as one cultural phenomenon?
Whew, I know, I’m exhausted. I think I’ll go find something to eat.