13 Dec Food…Sensuality…Schtick
I find it terribly interesting, yet predictable, that much of what is being touted as a “sensual” approach to food lately is little more than soft-core porn with some food thrown in. Or on.
In the past two months I’ve seen a naked woman on the cover of a cookbook a la 9 1/2 Weeks, and the Food Network try to call itself “sensuous” (which did provide much laughter, so it’s not all bad), along with the usual litany of “food porn” descriptions. I find this…disturbing yet boring.
It is disturbing because suddenly the arena is filled with those who would use an intellectually cheap, sex-driven angle as a means to get to food, missing the point entirely; and it’s boring because that has been done already — to exhaustion. It conveys the idea “people don’t want to think — go right for the sex organs.” Nevermind the soulfulness of cooking, and the way it engages the whole self through the engagement of the mind and senses. Nah, too hard to explain — go straight for the money shot so people tune in.
Perhaps I’m most irritated because we have been talking about food and sensuality in a meaningful way for almost a year now, and by those who don’t know better, our approach will be considered akin to these pedestrian “T&A” approaches. I’ll not have it.
Sensuality is a state of mind — it is not a tit shot. Until our culture knows the difference — on a mass scale — the philosophical and ethereal rewards of food and cooking will be lost to cheap “food porn.”
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