Continuing the festive theme of hypocrisy and contradiction,
the global production and consumption of food is one of the biggest ethical
issues of our time, and it’s an interesting reflection of the multiple
realities which most of us inhabit that we can be simultaneously aware of those
issues, whilst still being in thrall to celebrity chefs wiffling urgently about
shards of butterfly wing on truffle-encrusted piglet nipples, in an operatic
cookery contest which makes not the slightest reference to sustainability,
seasonality, or even nutrition.
Arguably, such television programmes (MasterChef and its ilk) are more to do with the “human interest” of watching kitchen
gladiators slugging it out in their chosen arena than they are to do with a
serious attempt to change our eating habits. In other words, decadence as
entertainment, vicariously accessible to us all, not just to the privileged few.
Declining civilisations have often been characterised by
extreme decadence, whether as a symptom or a cause, but this is maybe the first
time it has been so channelled and broadcast through a toxic combination of the cynical
& manipulative mass media and the rapacious & relentless commodification
of every aspect of our lives.
The positive side is that future historians
should have an easier time seeing where it all went wrong.
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