Molly O'Neill's new article "Food Porn"

[Carrot Top]

I am in the midst of a daydream.

I am standing in front of a room filled with people.

And out of my mouth comes these words:

"Improve each shining hour".

...........................................................

Naturally, the room falls apart with howls of derisive laughter.

[srhcb]

Naturally, the room falls apart with howls of derisive laughter.

←

At least they were howls and not hoots!

SB (been there .....

[Carrot Top]

Naturally, the room falls apart with howls of derisive laughter.

←

At least they were howls and not hoots!

SB (been there .....

←

Why do you think they call that place "Hooters"?

It's a righteous shout out to those who hoot.

What *is* on that menu anyway?

[srhcb]

[

What *is* on that menu anyway? 

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Before we get "sanctioned" I'll try and swing this thread back on topic.

While a franchise like Hooters is far from pornographic in either intent or execution, it does owe much of its success to an aura of "naughtiness".

So .... if Hooters were a food it would it be ....

a banana split?

SB (never been to a Hooters)(honest)

[Carrot Top]

And to keep the subject "on topic" I'll add to your thoughts of banana splits, sb.

"Food Porn" is something that when you look at it is composed of two words.

Once upon a time I went to the dictionary and looked up the meanings of several words.

One word was: pornography.

The other word was: pandering.

For somehow the two words flew together in my mind - I have no idea why it should be so.

I forgot to look up "food" but rather based my definition upon my own knowledge. Oh well.

.............................................

In reference to the article, I am no good at finding specific quotes to point to then reference this and that to the pointing finger.

All I know is that food is a marvellous and sensual thing. That's what *I* know.

And my personal feeling is that porn(ography) is a caricature of sexuality - and that there is little or no aspect of the sensual held within it.

..................................................

I like words. It pisses me off when they seem ill-fitted to me.

For then often, as our world is defined by the ways we use words, the reality follows the words used.

Sigh.

Must go find some ice-cream. Or a stiff drink.

[scordelia]

On the topic of Food Porn, the October 2005 Harper's Magazine has a very amusing report on the Food Network who is dumping Sara Moulton (not sexy enough, it's her last season) and creating more shows that are less about actually cooking and more about sensual pleaures of food. Kaufman even has a porn director analyze the lighting and camera techniques of the sexier food shows and compares them to how they shoot porn. It is quite amusing.

Unfortunately, Harper's does have a link to the article, but here is title if you want to read it at your local library:

Debbie Does Salad

The Food Network at the frontiers of pornography

Frederick Kaufman

[MarketStEl]

In reference to the article, I am no good at finding specific quotes to point to then reference this and that to the pointing finger.

All I know is that food is a marvellous and sensual thing. That's what *I* know.

And my personal feeling is that  porn(ography) is a caricature of sexuality - and that there is little or no aspect of the sensual held within it.

←

Porn is also fantasy. It is something the consumer of it dreams of--pure, wild, reckless sex, without any of the effort required to get it or the baggage that may come with it.

I chuckled when I read the following passage in O'Neill's article:

When reporting a story for The New Yorker several years ago, I found that the less people cook, the more money they spend on cooking appliances. Like the people who stood in line to buy my cookbook, people bought professional-grade ranges in the hope that they would one day use them.

In other words, the appliance is itself pornography: desire displayed as though the display of it were its fulfillment. I assume the purchasers have hired help to wipe that sticky stuff up off the kitchen floor in front of the range.

[Steven Blaski]

On the topic of Food Porn, the October 2005 Harper's Magazine has a very amusing report on the Food Network who is dumping Sara Moulton (not sexy enough, it's her last season) and creating more shows that are less about actually cooking and more about sensual pleaures of food. Kaufman even has a porn director analyze the lighting and camera techniques of the sexier food shows and compares them to how they shoot porn. It is quite amusing.

Unfortunately, Harper's does have a link to the article, but here is title if you want to read it at your local library:

Debbie Does Salad

The Food Network at the frontiers of pornography

Frederick Kaufman

←

Kaufman did a radio interview on this topic that we've been discussing

here.

Also, there's been a discussion recently of Sarah Moulton's switch to PBS this thread.

Edited October 19, 2005 by Steven Blaski (log)

[Carrot Top]

In reference to the article, I am no good at finding specific quotes to point to then reference this and that to the pointing finger.

All I know is that food is a marvellous and sensual thing. That's what *I* know.

And my personal feeling is that  porn(ography) is a caricature of sexuality - and that there is little or no aspect of the sensual held within it.

←

Porn is also fantasy. It is something the consumer of it dreams of--pure, wild, reckless sex, without any of the effort required to get it or the baggage that may come with it.

I chuckled when I read the following passage in O'Neill's article:

When reporting a story for The New Yorker several years ago, I found that the less people cook, the more money they spend on cooking appliances. Like the people who stood in line to buy my cookbook, people bought professional-grade ranges in the hope that they would one day use them.

In other words, the appliance is itself pornography: desire displayed as though the display of it were its fulfillment. I assume the purchasers have hired help to wipe that sticky stuff up off the kitchen floor in front of the range.

←

Porn *may* be fantasy - but I've had better dreams that emerged from my own imagination than anything I've ever seen anyone package up in an attempt to sell it for purposes of being able to afford their own "third wife" (a term I remember someone using here recently). And my dreams come without baggage, just as any second-hand media representation that was doled out to the world would.

The idea of using the word "porn" attached to food just plain bothers me.

I mean, what is next? (Right now, I am having some rather strange images run through my mind. . .phew.)

If I were a banana split, I would definitely feel like following Rodney Dangerfield in saying the line "I don't get no respect."

......................................................

Yes, kitchen appliances as porn now, too.

Ouch.

[Pontormo]

Carrot Top:

I, too, share your concern about the way that Molly O'Neill's title has become ubiquitous.

Quite frankly the term is over-, mis-, a- and poorly used by too many writers and Web site designers who prefer intertexuality to writing original copy.

However, in the case of Molly O'Neill, the title had a great deal of significance. Look at the beginning of the essay and the personal anecdote that inspired her to write.

She was sitting at a table at a book-signing event. Her mother, the woman who used to drive her to ballet lessons and change her sheets, was there to witness how many people gushed over her daughter and what Ms. O'Neill acknowledged was not her best effort. When pressed, there were confessions from the buyers in line that they clipped recipes and bought cookbooks but just never got around to using either, tee-hee.

There was something disquieting and uncomfortable about it all. Voyeurism is a major factor in the food world. You and I may admit to looking through cookbooks as if they were fashion magazines, which, even though we DO cook, means there is something seductive going on there between the sheets of paper. But what's with all those people who just like to look?

It's the whole celebrity, trendy, flashy, unsettling stuff caught up in and evoked by the event in that bookstore in California that prompted the reference to pornography. It is precisely because the word "porn" makes you and me feel bad that it was and is appropriate. Why is food now so superficially sexy? What's the sleaze factor?

How might we who are the objects of the gaze peel off the fishnet stockings that others see when they dress us with their eyes and gain both greater professionalism and respect?

[Carrot Top]

"Food" is coming of age, Pontormo.

At least "food" as we know it and speak of it in a general sense, here in our culture in the great US of A.

And it is not coming of age prettily, in some ways.

It would seem to me that a recalibration in terms of outlook would be desirable for many reasons.

But those who are gawking at the apple cart would probably not agree that it should be upset.

What can one do in an MTV world?

[Megan Blocker]

For the sake of good, lively discussion, I'm going to briefly take on the role of Devil's Advocate.

I would like to know what the inherent difference is between someone who doesn't cook thumbing through, say, the Bouchon cookbook and me reading Pride and Prejudice for the fiftieth time (as I currently am!). Both are forms of escapism in their own ways - peering into worlds in which we can never really participate, enjoying stories or pictorials that vary hugely from our own experiences.

Is reading Austen (or any other novelist) somehow better than being an avid cookbook-reader-non-cook? If so, how?

Does Austen portray a realer (if bygone) world, thereby making the whole thing less vapid? Is it because her words are not tarted up by a marketing machine? I'm very curious to understand how there is something truly disturbing about the voyeurism in the food writing world versus the other arts.

I am comfortable with O'Neill's call for more serious food-related journalism, but do not necessarily make the leap (nor does she, I think) to the idea that all "softer" food writing is corrupt.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into your post, Pontormo? (Or reading it incorrectly!)

Love the fishnet stocking reference!

Edited October 19, 2005 by Megan Blocker (log)

[Oceangroveguy]

I once took a course in erotic literature (those were the days) and despite the passage of years I remember that the primary difference between erotic literature and porn was that the sex in porn was utopian - every person was a remarkable physical specimen, every orgasm (and there were always orgasms) was volcanic, no one got pregnant (unless it advanced the "story"), no one got STD's.

The porn version of sex was as shiny and unreal and unattainable as the rooms in Architectural Digest (which along with its shelter mag ilk we call "House Porn" in my house). We've also been known to call Gourmet and its ilk "Food Porn" (tho I don't remember if the O'Neill article was the source of that). Stereophile is "Stereo Porn" for the same reason - in each case the highly stylized, lavishly depicted and described and extremely expensive stuff is, for most folks, unattainable, as are the situations depicted in sexual porn.

Where I - sort of - take issue with O'Neill is the characterization of what she does as 'Food Porn' - while some of her fan base may indeed have untouched Garlands and empty Sub-Z's, I submit that a fair number of readers (the E-Gullet legions included) read those things and put them to use. I loved her stuff in the Times - her prose was graceful and her recipes often useful.

The Sunday NY Times article about the ex-Microsoft guy and his kitchen - now that was some might hot food porn, if you ask me.....

[srhcb]

Ithe sex in porn was utopian - every person was a remarkable physical specimen, every orgasm (and there were always orgasms) was volcanic, no one got pregnant (unless it advanced the "story"), no one got STD's.

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This was the "traditional" view of porn, as exemplified by Burt Reynolds character in the movie "Boogie Nights", who couldn't believe the public would ever pay to see "normal" people have sex. Then the VCR, and later DVD and the internet, revolutionized the pornography business.

Meanwhile, cable televison, and The Food Network in particular, brought exotic food and celebrity chefs into the average home, so in this respect technology had the opposite effects on the porn and food industries.

SB

[Carrot Top]

There is something about the idea of "porn" (in whatever field, which now seems to include food) that removes the reader (or viewer) further afield to an even greater distance from the actual (or usual or general) reality of things than any other metier of disclosure would.

It does not strive for reality, nor does it really strive for beauty. It strives to reflect back upon itself in a simplified mirror-like fashion of self-involvement and narcissism.

Whatever the thing is that is held in its gaze becomes somewhat demeaned, in this process somehow. It becomes objectified. It becomes the thing that is taken from a natural state and blown out of proportion into the desired shape of the author or media person that is shaping it. And they are shaping it for the purpose of pandering (which means "to cater to the lower tastes or desires of others, or to exploit their weaknesses").

It becomes the thing that talks about the thing that talks about the thing in ways that go round and round in incestuous circles till nobody even remembers what the original thing is - or what the original thing could become.

The thing becomes fixed in time, something that has been chewed to death by chat and poking. It no longer glows.

Fishnet stockings are wonderful things. They can be lots of fun in all sorts of ways.

But I really don't want to see them draped coyly over the apple I buy from the grocery store.

[Pontormo]

Edited to remove all content.

I just would like to draw your attention back to the interesting question that Megan posed regarding the pleasure one gets from reading cookbooks and Austen: is there a difference? See Carrot Top's thoughtful remarks on problems that arise during moments of profound transformation. See Sandy Smith's reflections on specific terms of O'Neill's argument.

I invite those of you interested in this thread to go back and find the link that Gifted Gourment kindly supplied. Please read the article or reread it if you haven't looked at it for a long time.

Edited October 19, 2005 by Pontormo (log)