At 11:31 AM -0400 07/12/2000, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
>Hrrmph! [eyes shiftily swing from side to side] Yes, well then, sorry
>about that....
It's okay, I know *you people* can't help it! :p
Sorry Marvin, I didn't really mean to remind you of your sham democracy
with my "ha's", but I'm sorry if I did. *grin*
I wouldn't necessarily say that mock apple pie needs to be something that
is currently consumed for it to be a springboard for discussing, say, hot
dogs. After all, as you've pointed out, one can be pretty understanding of
the circumstances involved (I guess). When I say starting point, I think
it's different than a "demonstrative example". As you write:
>Ok, I understand you point a little better, and I agree that the study of
>how we come to embrace factually unhealthy things as signifiers of health
>or rightness is fascinating, but the pie still isn't a very good starting
>point, because nobody eats the mock pies anymore, at least nobody I've
>ever met. AFAIK, nobody ate the bloody things unless they couldn't get
>the indredients for a *real* pie.
Right, but my point is somewhere around the attachedness to symbols, around
the
>So the mock pie really isn't symbol at
>stake, it's the *real* apple pie that's the symbol, if any. The mock pie
>demonstrates our willingness to go out of our way to preserve and consume
>the sentimental/symbolic food, but the mock pie isn't itself the symbol.
Right, but it's demonstrative that it's not the food itself, but the
symbolic function of that food, that we are attached to. Right? That's why
it's a good starting point, because then you can proceed on to the foods
that actually do harm, or whatever. Ooops, I realize now I'm talking about
starting point as a rhetorical or argumentative starting point.
Or, if you wished to speak about cars. Well, people already have a massive
set of assumptions about what cars are and what they mean and so on. Before
you can get even close to talking pragmatically about, say, the question of
whether mass car ownership is a good idea, say discussing whether an idea
say that might be wisely exported to the rest of the world, you need to
clear away a lot of the fantasy of what cars are, mean, and do. And when
you start in on that, you are bound to hit a wall of inertia, because part
of that romanticization has inbuilt defense mechanisms (or so it seems),
and some of it relies on blind spots and assumptions about how the world
works on a basic level (a rudimentary example might be how a little kid
might not realize for years that chicken meat in a package is made out of
slaughtered chickens).
So you start by talking, maybe, about motor scooters and the way they were
seen as sexy or manly or feminine and chaste, depending on the model of
scooter, because that is slightly left-field, irrelevant, and *not*
invested in by your audience. That's your in. Once you get them to admit
that we do construct all kinds of weird meanings into foods, vehicles,
clothing, sexuality, and the other quotidian stuff of life, then you can
turn to what they *have* a lot invested in. For example, that the basis of
any given meal is the meat component (in my family, even when I was
vegetarian -- "Whats's for supper?" "Roast beef." "And?" -- this was the
case for years and years, until my parents changed their diet when my dad
was sick with lymphoma. Not a complaint, just a note about what's conceived
to be the meal. I've seen it a lot in other houses, and the outlay of menus
and main dishes in many restaurants seems to support it.).
>One could probably go a long way, though, by looking at the
>"Americanization" or naturalization of apple pies, hot dogs, hamburgers,
>etc., foods that are tasty but not very healthy and which get pushed on us
>at every turn because they're "American" and it's somehow patriotic to eat
>them on holidays--or worse, how it's unpatriotic not to.
While that's true, you should try doing it sometime. :) People act really
weird about others diet, as you noted at the end of your last paragraph.
Leave alone critiquing others' diet . . . if yours differs, that in itself
is something plenty of people have enough problems with that they get
either defensive, or judgmental, or both. Hence the sneaky, transverse
approach through apple pie might be one way to go . . . just to initiate
the approach. I think this kind of sideways approach is not rare as a tool
in SF, generally. :) Anyway . . .
And "tasty", by the way, is a really interesting assertion in and of
itself. It was a matter of economics and my ex-wife's digestive system that
I had to switch back to being an omnivore, and that burgers and dogs were
not all that "tasty" back then. I still can't eat hot dogs, actually, they
taste nasty, though spicy sausages are sometimes okay. Another example, my
French relatives here eat all kinds of stuff I can't eat, like this
hyper-sweet maple-sugar-type tart . . . it's so sweet it makes my whole
body cringe with just one bite.
>Or how about the Americanization of circumcision thanks to Dr. Kellog's
>efforts 100-odd years ago? It's interesting how this Jewish ritual of
>purification was picked up as a way to discourage masturbation (yeah,
>right!), thus allegedly encouraging Christian anti-sexual values (by
>reducing temptation), and thus supposedly increasing the health and
>patriotism of the body politic.
Then again, wasn't Kellogg also into stuff like colonic enemas too? Or was
that just in the movie with whatshisname from Ferris Bueller? (I didn't
bother to check, as Kellogg didn't intrigue me all that much.) The history
of people trying to discourage sexual temptation is a very interesting one,
at least the stuff I've read about (mainly Western European). Nobody seemed
to have come to the conclusion that most people WILL have sex no matter how
many barriers you erect. ;)
>Hrm. Circumcising the body politic...great line, need to figure out what
>it means.... A way of making sure the males are "all-American?" Strange.
And you were worrying about me having Gradschoolitis. :) That sounds like a
good line, though, form some kind of gender-theory bio-semiotics analysis.
>> But . . . I'm still gonna make the pie for the next party I go to here, and
>> if it makes me sick, I'm gonna retract the above paragraphs! :)
>
>Frankly, I wouldn't touch the thing.
But how would you know? It's supposed to be an indistinguishable fake (at
the right temperature). Oh no . . . this brings us back to old Uncle Turing
and "is-consciousness-emulatable?" debates. Aaaaaaugh!!!!!!
Gord
