Category: Reviews

reviews of films, books, art

Films on Food: Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a 2011 documentary film by David Gelb about the wonderful things that happen when a man (85-year-old sushi master Jiro Ono, in particular) devotes his entire waking (and dreaming) life to a single creative purpose: making sushi.

Jiro Ono is the owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny and unassuming sushi restaurant located underground within a subway station in Tokyo. This sushi restaurant serves exclusively sushi (the menu fixed each day according to a morning trip to Tsukiji fish market) and seats only ten. It also has three Michelin stars. Reservations must be made a month in advance and set menu prices are $300 per person or more.

Three Michelin stars, says a Japanese food critic interviewed in the film, means that it is worth a trip to Japan just to dine at this restaurant–which many do. Jiro receives them all in the same way, by staring at them impassively from behind the counter while they chew and swallow. They are eating his creations, after all; he would like to witness their reactions.

It would be hard to imagine a fine dining atmosphere more atypical than this humble sushi bar. I once had the pleasure of eating at a 2-star Michelin restaurant in France. We were served 22 courses over 5 hours, with impeccable table and wine service, and three different changes of location. A dinner at Jiro’s, on the other hand, might last 30 minutes–if you eat slowly. The decor is like any of the hundreds of small sushi-ya or ramen-ya or tempura-ya in the labyrinthian Tokyo subway underground. The service is accommodating but understated, and Jiro’s unwavering stare is rather unnerving, some of the diners remark good-naturedly. Those differences are moot, however. Jiro is not in the restaurant business to serve, but to serve sushi. In this incongruous environment he has labored since the restaurant’s opening to prepare what many consider to be the best sushi in the world.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi puts forward a profile of creative genius that is contrary to many of our Western cultural tropes. Quality sushi has a standard lineup of players that rarely changes and Jiro makes no exceptions, serving the same menu (at least on paper) as can be found in any sushi-ya. His technique, however, is constantly evolving, honed a little bit more every day in an untiring quest for perfection. A fascinating section of the film follows apprentices at the restaurant, who learn in the same way to slowly master each small task by incredible feats of repetition. A former apprentice at Sukiyabashi Jiro says that after ten years he was finally able to cook a decent egg sushi.

Jiro’s genius is not a mad flash of insight (Eureka!) or a chance epiphany (the apple falling from the tree)–it is persistence, routine, unceasing labor, and an insatiable striving for perfection. Even now, after more than 60 years of making sushi, Jiro says that there is room for improvement. He continues to work at his restaurant every day despite having a son in his fifties ready to take over, as well as a younger son with a sushi restaurant of his own. We are tempted to wonder if he has not sacrificed too much with regard to his family–interviews reveal that he was more of a stranger than a father to his two growing boys, and though left unsaid it becomes clear that there is little else to fill Jiro’s life except the craft of sushi. In family-values America we applaud successful professionals who step down from high-commitment positions in order to spend more time with their families. But Jiro is not looking to be a perfect dad, he is trying to make perfect sushi. Perhaps true creative perfection is at the cost of everything else. “One lives at the vampirism of one’s talent,” as Nietzsche has said.

This approach to artistic talent–that it is cultivated and earned with great effort and sacrifice over time, as opposed to inherit in the artist from the beginning, waiting to burst out–reminds me of a Top Chef episode I saw recently, in which highly skilled Japanese contestant named Kumiko was eliminated. Instead of reasserting her merit in the face of defeat, as so many of the other contestants do (“I know I still have what it takes” ; “My customers still know I’m the best,” etc.) Kumiko said simply, “I think I still have a long way to go to be a good chef.” Admitting imperfection, for her, and for Jiro, is not an admission of defeat. It shows just how high you are aiming.

 

Last Suppers

from "Last Suppers," James Reynolds

What would you request to be served for your last meal on earth?

Would it be a hamburger and fries? Pancakes with maple syrup? Lobster? Egg salad? Cigarettes and coffee?

Your last meal won’t likely be documented. But we have a morbid fascination with what executed criminals last dined on: Timothy McVeigh’s last meal before his execution by lethal injection was two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream; John Wayne Gacy was served a dozen deep-fried shrimp, a bucket of original recipe chicken from Kentucky Fried Chicken, French fries, and a pound of strawberries.

In his photo series “Last Suppers,” graphic designer and photographer James Reynolds restaged the last meals of unnamed former death row inmates from various prisons across the United States. Some of the meals–fried chicken and French fries, a hamburger, a frosted doughnut with sprinkles–are familiar, psychologically soothing comfort foods, precisely what you might expect from a man confronting his last evening in this world. Other requests are more ambiguous: a single black olive, six bottles of Coke and one saltine.

Other artists have recreated and photographed last meals, for example, Julia Ziegler-Haynes and Helen Thompson, but Reynolds’ photographs are stylistically distinct. His photos of the dinners, each one framed dispassionately from above on orange plastic lunch trays recalling institutional regularity, have a plainly clinical and depersonalized quality to them. But the contents of these orange lunch trays are as intimate a window into the individual personalities of these executed men as the public has access to. What childhood memories and life events contributed to make one develop a taste for ice cream, another for exotic fruit? What might have gone through their minds as they started their dinners? Appreciation for some last few minutes of terrestrial pleasure? Denial? Anger? Loneliness? Peace? How did the inmates eat–slowly and deliberately, to savor these very last sensations of taste and texture and transformation; or, quickly, distractedly, mechanically? Or maybe some, when faced with the odorous, steaming evidence of certain death, lost their appetite? Perhaps the flavors of the food were heightened in some sort of ecstatic hyper-perception brought on by nervous excitement; or maybe everything was bland and dead, the tastebuds dulled by fear and anxiety. And isn’t it a kind of malicious joke to offer to respect, in his last hours only, the wish of a criminal to whom we’ve denied the most fundamental human right–the right to live? Or is it an expression of our justice system’s sympathy and humaneness, to afford him the choice of one last pleasure?

Moreover, what beyond taste and hunger might motivate the choice of a meal? Victor Ferguer, executed in Iowa in 1963, is the face behind Reynold’s photo of a single black unpitted olive. A sobering meal, ascetic, bitter, brief. We have an urge to read a symbolic meaning into Ferguer’s choice. Why a black olive? Why only one? Why unpitted? Or maybe it meant something completely different to Ferguer. We’ll never know. James Edward Smith (Texas, 1990) requested to be served rhaeakunda dirt, a component of voodoo rituals. He received yogurt instead.*

Not every whim is indulged. Last meals remain a request, not a right, and are subject to certain restrictions varying by state. Alcohol is refused, and often the cost of the meal must fall under a prescribed limit (in Florida, $40; in Oklahoma, $15). Often brand name foods are not allowed. Some states restrict the choices to those already on the penitentiary kitchen’s habitual menu, and often requests are not honored to the letter (for example, a request for a pound of barbecue pork might not receive the full pound).

Texas, the state with the highest number of death row executions, stopped accommodating last meal requests in September 2011 following a complaint from the Democratic State Senator John Whitmire, who was incensed by the last meal request of Lawrence Brewer, a white supremacist executed for a brutal race murder. Brewer’s meal was hefty: two chicken-fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions; a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger; a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños; a bowl of fried okra with ketchup; one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread; three fajitas; a meat-lover’s pizza; one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream; a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts; and three root beers. When served, reportedly, Brewer chose not to eat.

Senator Whitmire protested what he considered special treatment for an unrepentant (and wasteful) criminal: “His victim was not given a last meal,” said the senator, according to an LA Times article.

I wonder if last meal requests, even outrageous ones, even if left deliberately and maliciously uneaten, can be considered wasted. The point, certainly, is not physical nourishment. It’s to give the opportunity for a few last moments of intimacy with the physical world, before one leaves it forever. It’s to offer one last act of human agency, of personal preference, before this preference is inexorably denied. Abstaining from consuming food is a conscious act with meaning and purpose just as legitimate as savoring every crumb. As long as capital punishment exists, perhaps we should afford the men and women we put to death this one small recognition of their humanity.

What’s clear is that as long as last meals exist, an intrigued public will follow and record the menus. There is a wealth of documentation surrounding last meal requests, due to the efforts of many people who chronicle these requests online through recreated photographs or blogging. Dead Man Eating Weblog records an extensive history of last meal requests and executions from 2002 to 2010. The website Famous Last Meals has recreated and photographed selected well-known inmates and their last meals.

Just for the record, if I had to submit my last meal request, I would choose a cheese plate with cuts of extra-sharp cheddar, Beaufort, Comté (18 months), Reblochon, Tomme de Savoie, fresh goat cheese; a loaf of good bread; beurre demi-sel; and tap water.

*according to murderpedia.org

Favorite Food Mags

Just as much as I love cooking food and eating food, I enjoy reading about food. Food magazines are great for adding to my recipe book and collecting new ideas for dinner parties, but beyond this I believe that in order to eat well we have to think about what’s on our plate and how it got there. We have to participate in a discussion about food and cooking, and food journalism makes this possible. The act of eating is a fundamental biological and cultural activity shared by all of humanity, and as such it is worth examining to reveal what exactly this act means to us and how it defines us, both as individuals and members of common societies and cultures. Naturally, I lean towards publications that approach food within a cultural context or with a certain critical depth to the writing, so you won’t find Gourmet or Vegetarian Times here, though these magazines may be just fine in other respects.

Here are my five favorite food magazines in the United States (not in any particular order):

1) Meatpaper

Why, you ask, would a vegetarian read a magazine entitled Meatpaper, the pages of which are filled with  graphic illustrations of dead animal flesh and greased with the evidences of modern America’s meat culture?

If you ask this, then you don’t know me (that or the magazine) very well! Meatpaper is *precisely* what I’m all about. The self-described “fleischgeist chronicler” is more interested in getting at this spirit of the meat than the consumption of meat for appetite’s sake . . . that is, looking at how that hot dog got to be a hot dog, and what it means to eat one. As well as taking a good look at how meat is produced, packaged, and sold in this country and who’s involved (and never with predictable activist outrage), Meatpaper covers any and all subjects touching on the idea of meat in some way, including a meditation on porcupine hunting, the fabrication of Lady Gaga’s meat dress, and the use of meat glue in forward-thinking kitchens.

Often the debate between whether or not to eat meat is explicitly discussed (obviously the editors do eat meat, but when you get to writing about the many facets of meat-eating the subject is inevitably at hand), and I’m glad to see this hotly contested subject treated with intelligence–and ambivalence. So often when the veg/non-veg issue comes up, even in print, there’s this idiotic division of sides that forms with each camp protesting the other’s moral blindness, or lack of humanity, or “extremism,” and it all becomes very tiresome and pointless. 

Meatpaper is neither tiresome, nor pointless. It’s words are very, very relevant–to meat-eater and non meat-eater alike. If you think you’ve got meat figured out, you’ll be surprised how much more there is to say.

2) Lucky Peach

McSweeney’s, teamed up with David Chang, has delved into the world of food writing and come out with another very cool, very cult hit. No surprise there–David Chang, along with his series of six+ Momofuku restaurants, is already a hit, and McSweeney’s publishing group (McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Believer) consistently delivers the best American writing in our modern times.

A celebrity mix of chefs and writers and chef-writers (including Chang, Anthony Bourdain, and Mario Batali) are scattered profusely throughout these pages, because Lucky Peach, while being a magazine about food, is first and foremost a magazine about the chefs making food, and more specifically, the chefs making food trends. So, there’s a particular emphasis on practiced technique and the “food scene” (which is reflected in the recipes: “cured fish & manischewitz cocktail”), but–since this is a cool magazine, remember?–at the same time there’s an utter rejection of the fine-dining experience and everything fine-diners hold dear (“multipurpose pineapple upside-down cake”).

I’d have never thought that a food magazine would make it without those glossy, color saturated, perfect-contrast photos you find in Bon Appetit and Gourmet–but the photos in Lucky Peach look like they were taken with a pocket camera under particularly bad fluorescent lighting, and who’s complaining? The covers are fantastic, the recipes are designed like little choose-your-own-adventure mazes with the page turn revealing a surprise outcome, and issue #2 came with cute little stickers–like the kind you find on bananas and peaches at the grocery store. Pretty neat.

The old-boy club inclusiveness of this magazine does get on my nerves, however. Each issue so far (there have only been three) heads off with a transcripted conversation between Chang and a medley of other reputed chefs, reveling in their own in-jokes and “colorful” language and reminisces of being in so-and-so’s kitchen.  I get it, they’re famous. So we’re supposed to hang on every word? If I wanted to be in a boy’s club, I’d go loiter on the set of Anchorman 2–oh wait, I’ve never wanted to be in a boy’s club. It’s undeniable that the world of culinary arts is dominated by men, and this masculinity rubs off big time in Lucky Peach.

But as I said, good stuff here. The writing sparkles like trick candles on a baked Alaska, the art direction is nothing short of delightful, and the breadth that one 176-page issue achieves on a single topic (Issue #1 is Ramen, #2 The Sweet Spot, #3 Cooks and Chefs) is simply great reading.

3) Gastronomica

The most recent issue of Gastronomica quotes Gertrude Stein on its contents page: “Nothing is more interesting than something that you eat.” Contributors to this “journal of food and culture” are university professors, artists, established journalists, popular food magazine editors, and restaurant owners, to name a few.

As with Meatpaper, almost anything and everything marginally related to food culture is discussed, but here the tone is decidedly more academic, the creative writing is more artistically refined, and the subjects are more political/anthropological. From Gastronomica I have learned about the “hummus wars” between Israel and Lebanon, “Freegans” and the NYC dumpster diving scene, and examined mug shots of food service workers from the early 20th century.

This journal is the caviar ice cream of food publications, not to be missed for anyone seriously interested in food issues. The scope is widely international and rigorously academic, which I do appreciate.

4) Saveur

Saveur combines three of my loves: food, travel, and great photography. A commercial magazine belonging to the Bonnier Corporation publishing group, it ranks up there with Gourmet and Bon Appetit and Food & Wine, but the style is fresher with a modern take on “authentic cuisine” from around the world. The issues are themed around a place (Las Vegas, Mexico) or a food staple (Bread, Cake) and explore how these particular foods are treated within culinary traditions.

Thorough reporting on international culinary histories and attention given to little-known dishes makes the content of this magazine stand out from the rest. It’s a firm guarantee that in every issue of Saveur you’ll find one (most likely many) recipes that you’ve never heard of but will feel a strong desire to make as soon as possible. Vivid travel photos showing locals preparing, eating, or selling their food is a big plus as well.  I’d admire any magazine that encourages Americans to eat more inventively, diversely, and with an open mind, and Saveur is exactly this.

5) Cook’s Illustrated

Cook’s Illustrated is my go-to guide when the bottom of my quiche keeps turning out soggy, or my oven fries aren’t crispy enough, or I want to know the difference between cooking green, white, or purple asparagus.  It’s a clear, concise, scientific approach to food. Each recipe reduces the number of dirty dishes down to the lowest possible value–so you can have faith that the recipes are equally economical on your cooking time and effort.

I like the use of illustrations instead of photos, and the mini-charts of varieties of crab, or squash, or tomatoes on every back cover. This gives the magazine a timeless, good old American home-cooking feel.

The test kitchen reigns supreme in these pages, and nothing is given to chance. Every problem is tested and re-tested until a consistent solution is found. In every issue of Cook’s Illustrated I gain a valuable insight into the how’s and why’s of this chemical reaction we call cooking…emerging as a more knowledgeable and technically skilled home chef.

Cook’s Illustrated gives you the idea that in order to be a good cook you have to know your stuff–learn as much as you can about each food and the techniques of cooking, and practice, practice, practice. Which I think is about right.

Four Fish

Most people are vaguely aware that eating fish is good for your health, but may be bad for the ocean. Exactly what is bad (overfishing? Mercury contamination? Fish farming?) is somewhat fuzzy, and how bad it is (probably should not eat whale, and shrimp trawling is worrisome, but catfish seems to be fine…right?) is fuzzier still. Some species are almost blacklisted (Bluefin tuna) while some have no wildlife advocates in sight marching for them (tilapia, cod).

All this confusion is understandable, considering the number of fish species commonly available at supermarkets or on restaurant menus. After all, “fish” represents an entire class of vertebrates—imagine a picky child refusing to eat “mammals”—though we often lump them together as a single unit comparable to chicken, pork, and beef, or turkey. Not to mention the inclusion of shellfish and “seafood,” which would extend the category to everything from scallops to octopus. Bring all this up to someone shopping for dinner with hungry children in tow and it would be understandable that she would choose to ignore the details in favor of simplified instructions. Fish sticks: yes or no? Chicken of the sea: good to go?

In Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food (2010, Penguin Press), Paul Greenberg has done all the hard work for us, simplifying the wide issue of responsible fish consumption to the four major species dominating the modern seafood market: salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna. If you are like me, you have only the vaguest of notions to what animals these names even signify; before reading this book, I knew that tuna fish were large and made good sushi, that salmon was pink and swam upstream to spawn, that cod was something white and fried, and sea bass was—well, I didn’t really know what sea bass was (besides a fish).

Four Fish will interest readers in one or both of two ways: First, as a story of humankind’s relationship with these four species of fish as food, as well as an account of the rather recent processes of domestication and implementation of fish farms. Secondly, as a guide to what should be done to ensure sustainable wild populations of fish. Paul Greenberg succeeds wonderfully on the first count, but is not so clear about the second.

Greenberg’s writing is easy and entertaining but still highly informative, giving a well-colored picture of each fish’s current situation and future prospects in the modern fishing industry. Greenberg has been a non-professional fisherman all his life and he connects easily with the professional fishermen he interviews. It’s clear that he has profound respect for these animals and an intimate knowledge of their behavior. He treads the line between wildlife advocate and practically-minded industry professional, steering clear of hard lines that turn many people off of conversations on ethical eating, while acknowledging the need for sustainable fishery practices. Much of his arguments center around a discussion of whether to fish from the wild or domesticate fish to raise in farms—and which, if either, might be better for individual species. Unlike cows, pigs, or chicken, which have been domesticated for millennia, fish production relies on wild catches in huge numbers. Though we are now at a turning point; aquaculture is the fastest growing food production system today, and farmed production of fish has likely already surpassed wild production.

The book begins with salmon, a species with a close relationship to humans. They often populate the rivers and streams flowing through our communities, and they have been domesticated going back several centuries. Salmon were the first fish to suffer from human industrialization, notably the pollution of rivers and streams and the damming of local waterways that serve at the salmon’s spawning routes. Salmon numbers have declined drastically. There are only two significant remaining wild populations of salmon: inEastern Russia and Alaska. Now virtually all the salmon available on the market is farmed, as salmon are well-suited to controlled breeding. But salmon monocultures produce an astounding quantity of refuse and encourage disease, polluting the ocean and exposing fish to horrible conditions. Additionally, wild populations may continue to shrink as farmed salmon (that have not been bred to survive in the wild) escape and invade their fragile numbers.

Greenberg nicknames sea bass “the holiday fish,” referring to its past image as a high-quality fish suitable for special occasions. Sea bass is the fish commonly seen on menus as branzino, or bar and loup de mer in French. Sea bass is widespread and universally well liked, but it is particularly ill-suited to domestication—decades of dedicated research led to its domestication by the 1980s. Barramundi, on the other hand, is an ideal species for domestication. They live off of mostly vegetable feed and are highly efficient at converting the feed to protein gain. They are the only fish that can create omega 3 fatty acids from vegetable oils. The sole problem is one of marketing—people don’t know what barramundi is, and they don’t buy it.

Cod is our industrial fish, and as such (no surprise here) seriously overfished. But farming cod presents many of the same problems as farming salmon. Cod are carnivorous and require a lot of protein feed to gain weight—actually, farmed cod can produce a net loss of protein. That’s a lot to pay for fish sticks and Fillet-o-Fish sandwiches. Greenberg concludes that cod should be fished in the wild on a small scale, not farmed. His solution? Tilapia or the Vietnamese freshwater fish tra, two options which he argues are much more economical for farmed industrial operations—they multiply quickly, are hardy and cheap to raise, naturally abundant in the wild, and have “unfishy” tastes that appeal to a large market. This could be a practical substitute for cod.

Tuna is a thorny issue. There are many kinds of tuna: longfin albacore, which is used for canned tuna, and ahi (yellowfin and bigeye). Atlantic bluefin tuna are just about the biggest, fastest, strongest fish in the world. Greenberg describes these animals with reverence, while fishermen revere them for the prices they bring in. One bluefin can sell for $150,000. Their numbers are perilously low and the demand is still rising. Forays have been made into farming bluefun but the costs are prohibitive. Greenberg seems reluctant to admit this, but perhaps, he says, we shouldn’t eat tuna. The Japanese will miss their sushi but Greenberg brilliantly points out that the seemingly unquenchable taste for toro, or fatty tuna belly, is a relatively recent phenomenon, motivated by availability and cheap supply. He seems to want to promote tuna out of the group of animals that we eat and into the group of animals that we like. People refuse to eat whale or dolphin nowadays, out of respect for these animals, but at the time of Moby Dick whales were just a fish like any other. Why can’t we change the public perception of bluefin too?

In sum, what Greenberg advocates to save declining numbers in the wild of each of these fish is industrial farming. But, he says, we should choose carefully which species to farm based on their success in intensive conditions and their feed conversion rates. Species that convent efficiently and are able to digest vegetable feed should be valued in order to minimally impact the environment. Polycultures should be developed to minimize waste and close the natural cycle. Wild fishing should exist in small-scale operations, avoiding trawling and other environmentally damaging methods.

But I think Greenberg’s argument is based on a false premise: that the world needs a greater and greater supply of fish. Certainly increasing populations in areas that are dependant on fishing for food supply, Senegal for example, will demand a greater supply of fish. But in the United States, where two-thirds of us are overweight, do we really need more and more fish, especially industrially produced processed fish that makes its way to us in fish sticks and fried filet sandwiches? Greenberg writes, “at the world’s present rate of consumption, humanity needs about 40 billion pounds of codlike fish annually.” Really? We need it? Greenberg seems to take current consumption levels as indisputable. Perhaps what we need is to decrease our consumption of fish (and all animal products, if you ask me).

I admire the respect and attention Greenberg gives to the lives of these wild animals that most people never give a thought to. However, I am uncomfortable with his distinction between wild fish deserving of our respect and those merely “suitable” for industrial farming. He seems to imply that what he considers a beautiful, impressive animal such as a bluefin tuna should be rescued and protected—but tilapia? An organic machine to produce protein, is all.

The most serious problem with Four Fish is how it approaches the issue of consumer choice. This is the question we’ve all been waiting for: so how will all this information help me become a more responsible consumer? Greenberg’s answer is, it won’t. He essentially debunks informed consumer choice as if it’s a myth. He dismisses a change in personal eating habits as ineffective and unreasonable difficult. This is a man that ordered bluefin tuna carpaccio in a restaurant days after publishing an op-ed in the New York Times counseling against its consumption. “To most people an animal is either food or wildlife” he writes, suggesting that people are incapable of respecting the welfare of animals and eating them at the same time, at least on an industry scale. He continues to say that if a fish is put on the market, people will inevitably eat it. So the solution is to prevent that fish getting to market, not campaign to reject it once its there. But historically, campaigns against the consumption of specific animal products, whether for reasons of health or welfare, has worked. There was an anti-cholesterol campaign in the 1980s, which significantly reduced the amount of beef Americans consumed. Ditto for butter, and an anti-cruelty campaign against veal pretty much removed this meat from general consumption in theUnited States.

In the case of bluefin tuna, however, evidence suggests that for every person who refuses to order there are two people more than happy to step in. It’s undeniably true that government action is more effective at effecting change than consumer choice. Regulations are needed to protect vulnerable wild populations of fish and make sustainable fishing lucrative for the industry. I respect Greenberg’s view that any individual participation in preventing fish from extermination or harm should be attentive and informed, beyond a color-coded eating guide from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. People need to be actively political, instead of naively believing that choosing chicken over salmon will save the species. I’m reminded of the recent controversy over the KONY 2012 campaign—tweeting about Joseph Kony is only helpful if it inspires people to inform themselves further about the issue and take real political action.

And yet for the day-to-day, the one thing that every single person can control is what they choose to buy and eat. This gives us agency in a world where our food is produced in ways beyond our control or understanding. Does Greenberg really expect someone who continues to eat farmed sea bass to convincingly champion their cause? What message would it send to others, sitting down to a fish and chips dinner and proclaiming the environmental waste of cod aquaculture? I believe in consumer choice. I believe in learning about where your food comes from too.

My advice is: read Four Fish and get to know your salmon fillet, fish and chips, and maguro sushi. But don’t forget that at the end of it you can still choose not to eat them.

Art of Eating: Julie Pochron

"Beet," Julie Pochron

If the voluptuous jewel-toned contours of a beetroot have never suggested to you a svelte female form (or vice versa) you may want to examine Julie Pochron’s composite self portraits and look again. In her series “Umami” she photographs isolated parts of her own body and juxtaposes the images with commonly eaten foods such as a strawberry or chicken breast. Careful composition evokes a common sensuality to both forms, and an emphasis on strikingly vivid color and texture against a deep black background evinces a sense of mystery and fantasy that heightens the tension between them.

"Chicken Breast," Julie Pochron

While the premise of Pochron’s compositions is simple—two incongruous figures mirroring each other; for example, a spindly crab leg and a smooth red-shoed woman’s leg, the demure curve of a peapod and a woman’s spine—the resulting combinations arouse, rather unsettlingly, feelings of attraction verging on disgust. We are on a very uncertain boundary here—the beautiful against the grotesque, the mundane against the uncanny. Suddenly these familiar physical landscapes and kitchen ingredients have turned bizarre and unfamiliar.

Pochron’s photographs hold a certain punch, I think, because they are kinky in the truest sense of the word—not because they are obscene, vulgar, or “extreme” (far from it), but because they combine familiar desires with unconventional ones.  Although very sophisticated, the images of Pochron’s body are routine sexual fare. Mixed in with images that we don’t usually associate with sex (food) and yet which provoke feelings very similar to desire and attraction (hunger, cravings), a weird, uncomfortable relationship is produced. After all, there is nothing weirder or more uncomfortable than our complicated relationship to sex itself: the excitement depends on being simultaneously attracted and repulsed; we both desire the object and revile it.

"Octopus with Soy Sauce," Julie Pochron

The relationship between food and sex (and especially the female sex) is not a strictly arbitrary one. As a culture, we fetishize both the female body and food. We derive immense pleasure from viewing and consuming these products, literally and psychologically. On TV, one of the most common selling strategies for food products is to sexualize it, Arby’s thickburgers being an infamous example (in a confounding move for the Food Network’s Padma Lakshmi), or POM’s recent ad featuring Eve tempting Adam with her hourglass-shaped POM bottle and a bare smattering of leaves. On one of the classic episodes of Seinfeld, George tries to combine his two greatest pleasures in life: sex and a pastrami sandwich. Think of all the euphemisms for sex and sexual organs: weiner, sausage fest, nuts, cream, melons, cherry, piece of meat, etc. and so forth.  If we did not want to look at and consume food items as much as we do, there wouldn’t be entire websites devoted to “food porn,” a kind of Martha Stewart response to every other kind of porn.

On her website, Pochron has written a brief statement to effect that her images seek to redeem the feminine form (supposedly from abuses like Thickburger commercials) in “visions” that speak to desire and attraction without presenting a woman who is readily consumable. Her work, she writes, “digests these apparitions and reforms them, leaving icons of solid strength and beauty in their place.”

Ultimately Pochron’s photographs are weird in a wonderful, beautiful way, re-establishing that the female body is a very strange place indeed—still inscrutable, and still in control of its own secrets.

 

The Cove: in defense of dolphins, et. al

My compliments to The Cove for making “activism thriller” into a new documentary film genre. Not since Jaws 3 has there been such chilling ocean-inspired horror—except in this one it’s Japanese fishermen who are spilling dolphin blood into the waters. As the movie opens and dolphin activist and mission leader Ric O’Barry ominously recounts the death wishes pronounced against him, we realize that for an important few, dolphin fishing is very serious business indeed. Backing O’Barry up in his face-off against industry bad guys is an impressive team of OPS cameramen, free-divers and former army guys, staunchly aided by the newest technological developments in covert camera equipment (some of it camouflaged as rocks and nests). After some thwarted reconnaissance missions and run-ins with the police, the film culminates in an undercover night expedition that finally turns up some real dirt: a recording of the dolphin slaughter that takes place annually in the eponymous cove in Taiji, Japan. Tastefully, the scene cuts away from the coup de grâce to a shot of seaweed swaying gently underwater, rocked by bloody waves.

Ric O’Barry’s own background couldn’t be more tragically ironic if you made it up: the trainer who coached Flipper the dolphin into 1960s television stardom watches his bottlenosed associate commit suicide in his arms, and promptly does a 180 to devote his life to freeing dolphins from captivity. Now that’s a story! If only PETA would take note and revise their marketing strategy to woo the male demographic with action sequences instead of XXX hot & hungry vegan ladies.[1]

 The Cove goes deeper than dolphin slaughter, way deeper. Taiji, a small fishing village in central Japan whose dolphin drives kill 23,000 annually, is also a town that ostensibly loves dolphins and whales. You can go to the Whale Museum and dolphin shows to learn about these fascinating animals and watch them perform (as you watch, you can eat dolphin sashimi from the food stand). The entertainment business is connected to the slaughter of dolphins for meat, Ric O’Barry tells us, because without the income generated by the sale of dolphins to marine parks and swim-with-the-dolphins programs, there wouldn’t be an economic incentive to hunt dolphins for meat. A dolphin chosen by a trainer goes for up to $150,000, whereas the same dolphin for meat would get only $600. Though dolphin is prepared for consumption in Japan, it is only eaten by a very small minority.

…Which is why dolphin meat is often falsely labeled and sold as whale meat, which is commonly consumed in Japan (as you would expect, the film is also quite down on commercial whale fishing). Dolphin meat, however, has dangerously high levels of mercury; because dolphins are at the top of the food chain, the mercury amounts in their flesh are multiplied. For the horrors of mercury poisoning, see W. Eugene Smith’s photographs of “Minamata disease.” Fitting with the pattern of modern industrial farming, the economic incentives at work here are provoking environment degradation, disregard for the welfare of animals, and threats to human health.

Ironically, it seems that the whole catalyst for this violence against dolphins is people’s love of dolphins. Ever since Flipper’s cute smile, acrobatic flips, and uncanny intelligence were exposed to us on screen, we have had a cultural fascination with dolphins, resulting in a multi-billion dollar industry of dolphins performing in captivity. Of course, humankind’s interest in animals doesn’t necessarily lead to their health and happiness. People line up to look at elephants at the zoo, although it’s been shown that these large animals die significantly earlier than their wild counterparts. Dog purists will breed their dogs into deformation and disease, while horse lovers cheer on their favorites at the racetrack. How many children scream with delight at the stressed and exhausted circus chimpanzee? Restless bottlenose dolphins and orca whales trained for shows at SeaWorld are just one example of a culture that “loves” animals (I resist including “to death”) and simultaneously rejects their well-being in favor of entertainment.

Dolphins, though, might be a special case of animals we care about. Clearly, dolphins are awesome. These animals show many of the same traits that we think of as quintessentially human: they communicate with language, they are self-aware, they pervert natural instinct by having sex for fun. They explore and play and have been known to save human lives. They are often said to be one of the most intelligent species. It seems easy to understand why dolphins are so pervasive in stuffed animal collections, on pendant jewelry, and on bathroom wallpaper borders, and why The Cove provoked such widespread outrage over the slaughter of these magnificent creatures.

But at this point an obvious question presents itself. Given that we agree that dolphins should be spared the harpoon and not be eaten, why do we accord respect to a dolphin’s well-being, and not, say, a pig’s? 100 million factory farm pigs end their short, miserable lives in slaughterhouses each year in the United States alone. Domestic dogs and cats are commonly cared for with the same attention and affection one would give to a child. And yet many more pigs and chickens (millions and billions more, respectively[2]) are raised in conditions so unendurable they go insane. Dolphins are highly intelligent and emotive, yes—so are pigs. Pigs too, have sex for pleasure (so do other animals). Our cultural preference to eat beef over dolphin, chicken over cat is entirely arbitrary. This is clear from the dietary taboos of certain cultures and historical periods: Jewish and Muslim dietary codes prohibit pork, and eating beef is sacrilegious to Hindus. Until the mid-nineteenth century, lobster was considered unfit for consumption or very poor fare. The respectable westerner is revolted to learn that dog is commonly served in Korea and China. The evident conclusion is that our perception of animals as a society is by no means objective or logical. The distinctions we make between the worth of different animals—for food or companionship or entertainment or whatever—seem very much like they serve our own motivations.

Lassie, Flipper, Mr. Ed, Milo and Otis, and Free Willy are a few live animal characters that come to mind as television or movie stars that people would be upset to see mistreated or hurt. What about Babe, the pig who aspired to be a sheepdog? Fondness for Babe doesn’t seem to strike much conflict in viewers frying up bacon the next morning.

Whatever our various and complicated relationships to animals are, they’re not simple. Our emotional rapport with domestic animals can reach a level of close intimacy, as much as a friend or family member. Stuffed animal manufacturers are fond of tigers and ducks, but shy away from vultures or hyenas. Certain animals inspire disgust or horror that is so widespread and profound it seems biologically ingrained—though this is more malleable than you might think; for many people snakes, tarantulas, rats, and giant scarab beetles are cherished pets. Much our conflicting fascination and repulsion for animals, I think, comes from our awareness that we are animals too. Stem cell research and new insights into animal behavior are changing the way we think about the boundaries between human and animal. We should be careful to stay away from anthropomorphism and a naïve “animals are our friends” mentality. And yet—they are not so far from us.

I think the question merits some thought: why would you refuse to eat dolphin but not think twice about beef or chicken? There is no logical answer to this question. If dolphins deserve thought and moral consideration, then other animals do as well.

 

For further information:

http://www.malibumag.com/site/article/after_the_cove/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cove_(film)


[1] Don’t say I didn’t warn you: PETA ad

[2] numbers of pets and animals killed for food