I am sure all of my Canadian consumer's know of Jian and his ecelectic radio program, which airs on CBC One every morning from 10 to 12, but I urge my American readers to discover this facinating and enlightening emmission. It can also be found on Public Radio International and Sirius Satelite 159 in your country and around the world. Google it, it's cbc.ca/Q.
Jian is a Toronto-born Canadian of Iranian descent who represents all that is good about Canada. Yes, he has an ethnic background, but he is a Canadian first. I mean, the guy was the lead of the satirical rock group 'Moxy Fruvous' a while back. Ghomeshi's guests range from ego-maniacal Billy-Bob Thornton -- who delivered a vicous, ugly-'ole-southern-boy racist rant on air in response to Jian who said BB was mainly known as an actor (last time I checked BB, you didn't exactly have a number one hit, not even anything in the top 100) -- to authors, international wits and obscure intellectuals (boneheaded and otherwise)............but I digress..........back to Bill Deresiewicz.
"I used to think, back when all the foodie stuff was gathering steam (this would have been about 1994, when everyone was eating arugula and going on about, I don’t know, first-press organic broccoli rabe) that our newfound taste for food would lead, in time, to a taste for art.
"But what has happened is not that food has led to art, but that it has replaced it. Foodism has taken on the sociological characteristics of what used to be known — in the days of the rising postwar middle class, when Mortimer Adler was peddling the Great Books and Leonard Bernstein was on television — as culture. It is costly. It requires knowledge and connoisseurship, which are themselves costly to develop. It is a badge of membership in the higher classes," writes Deresiewicz.
He's right. When I was growing up, no one talked about food. It was just, well, food. You ate it at breakfast, lunch and dinner and that was it. We used to talk about our careers and what we'd like to do with our futures; food wasn't in the cards. I mean, if you got into the "food" industry, you had failed because you had become a waiter.
All that has changed, he points out. "Young men once headed to the Ivy League to acquire the patina of high culture that would allow them to move in the circles of power — or if they were to the manner born, to assert their place at the top of the social heap by flashing what they already knew.
"Now kids at elite schools are inducted, through campus farmlets, the
local/organic/sustainable fare in dining halls and osmotic absorption via their
classmates from Manhattan or the San Francisco Bay Area, into the ways of food," he continues.
"More and more of them also
look to the expressive possibilities of careers in food: the cupcake shop, the
pop-up restaurant, the high-end cookie business. Food, for young people now, is
creativity, commerce, politics, health, almost religion. "
The author recounts how it took him some effort to
explain to one of his students that he and his peers did not talk about food, unless it was to decide on which diner they were going
to for breakfast. Neither did my peers and I. We were more interested in which Hull bar we would hit on a Thursday night. “But food is everything!” his student said. He concludes:
"A good risotto is a fine
thing, but it isn’t going to give you insight into other people, allow you to
see the world in a new way, or force you to take an inventory of your soul.
"Yes, food centers life in France and Italy, too,
but not to the disadvantage of art, which still occupies the supreme place in
both cultures. Here in America, we are in danger of confusing our palates with
our souls."
CBC radio and 'Q' offer much.
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