Heartless Chefs Hold Lifeless Pigs
On this cover of this week’s The Phoenix—Boston’s free weekly—you will find a photo of a young male chef holding a headless pig carcass across his back. The cover story, written by Cassandra Landry, is entitled “Fresh Blood.” Notably, the carcass that the chef hauls into the kitchen is bloodless. His hands are relaxed and he smiles.
It’s a colossally vapid article, a promotional piece of junk studded with every food writing cliche imaginable. What led to me read the issue, though, were the illustrations. The cover, it turns out, offers the thoughtful critic a gateway into an emerging world of hipster-chefdom that reminds me more of the World Wrestling Federation than Careme or Haute Cuisine.
First, there’s the iconic pose of the pig on the back. Iconic? Indeed:
It’s difficult to imagine what message carrying a pig carcass is supposed to convey. I guess it says “your chef is strong.” But who cares about that? More likely, it suggests that your chef is so experienced and knowledgable about the food he or she is about to prepare that nothing about strapping a pig to the back is at all weird. Look at them, after all: happy and cool and casual. It’s as if they’re carrying a sack of meal.
Next there’s the question of the chefs’ mentality. Intended message aside, part of me wonders what’s going on inside the heads of these chefs when they pose with pigs for posterity. It seems safe to suggest that the chefs want to appear in charge, both physically and mentally. In essence, they are saying to the eater, I can handle this, you sit back and enjoy your BLT, I’ll do the dirty work of, literally, bringing home the bacon on my back. They thump their chest, of course, as they say this.
But this leaves to me wonder what exactly is so powerful about slaughtering an innocent and very intelligent animal and wearing his carcass like a shawl. I think that the chefs who agree to pose next to meat as if they have done something brave and heroic know that they are, deep down, compensating for something. In so doing it’s hard not feel sort of bad for them (although not as bad as for the animal).
I say this because the interior illustrations (of men, mostly) reveal chefs trying very hard—way too hard—to appear very cool while, in actuality, appearing very insecure. Prodigious tattoos are displayed. Large knives are wielded. One has, no kidding, a skateboard. He’s tells the intrepid reporter, “I’m kind of a live wire. I’m not consistent, and most people can’t really read me most of the time. As soon as you think I’m some hard-ass prick, I’ll go soft on you.” Awesome to know.
The whole idea, I guess, is to be “edgy.” The idea of edginess here, though, is a little warped. All these chefs are really doing is creating a parody of themselves to appeal to the basest and cheapest instincts of consumers. They think they are being rebellious when in fact they are confirming an utter lack of creativity and imagination.
So I have a suggestion for these chefs, and I’ll be polite since they are hiding behind big sharp knives. Be a real man, a real woman, and a real leader. Do what your consumers, who you know will follow you wherever you lead them, don’t expect or even want you to do. Do what you know is right. Hug a pig. Do it. Here is what your little revolution might look like:
tomorrow: thoughts on John Brown and activism
Don’t forget Naomi Pomeroy’s photo from her Vogue Magazine shoot a few years ago.
http://magdalen.blogs.com/.a/6a00d83451fc7a69e20120a5c6eabd970b-popup
At the time, the Portland chef’s restaurant — I kid you not — “Beast” REFUSED to offer any vegatarian options, and although Pomeroy repeatedly talked about using only “humanely raised” and “local” animals for her food, she had never bothered to actually set foot on any of the “local” farms that raised and killed these animals — an odd choice for a chef who conceivably has nothing else to do.
Don’t forget Naomi Pomeroy’s photo from her Vogue Magazine shoot a few years ago.
http://magdalen.blogs.com/.a/6a00d83451fc7a69e20120a5c6eabd970b-popup
At the time, the Portland chef’s restaurant — I kid you not — “Beast” REFUSED to offer any vegetarian options, and although Pomeroy repeatedly talked about using only “humanely raised” and “local” animals for her food, she had never bothered to actually set foot on any of the “local” farms that raised and killed these animals — an odd choice for a chef who conceivably has nothing else to do.
GREAT post James… I’m getting so damned sick of “foodies” for whom nothing is sacred… An example: a food writer in Canada (where I’m from — and I won’t give him the satisfaction of naming him and giving him one more notch in his Google rankings)… he’s titled his latest book (gag) “My Canada Includes Foie Gras”. I’m sure he thinks he’s the cat’s ass… But what he really comes across as is a conceited fart.
There is no other image that so readily raises my ire and upsets my stomach. Can you imagine the outrage and cries of “Inhumanity!” if someone dared publish a picture of a dead human child slung over someone’s shoulders like a sack of potatoes? This goes way beyond insensibility – it is deep in the heart of evil.
Young thugs boastfully post videos and pictures of their crimes on FB and are subsequently caught and brought to justice. The murder of an animal for the purposes of so-called haute cuisine or food of any sort is the only way a human being (sic!) can gleefully boast about an act of violence and not have to do time for it or be widely considered as a psychopath. When one can argue that’s exactly what they are…
It looks like caveman mentality, bringing home the ‘beast.’
Another great post. I hope you (and others) will let The Phoenix know your thoughts.
Here’s the text:
http://tinyurl.com/bgbn3xr
and the contact info:
http://contests.thephoenix.com/contact
And we all see, too often, that romanticized form of self-validation through butchery — i.e. claiming an exclusive intimacy with the animal through killing and dismembering her. An excerpt from another foodie/chef blog: “I look down at my keyboard and see death under my fingernails. I smell the fat and gore and meat of dead ducks upon me; it’s been a good week of hunting. And because I eat everything on a duck but the quack, I have become intimate with the insides of waterfowl. Over the years, I’ve gutted and taken apart so many animals that I know the roadmap blindfolded. And that road leads to meals long remembered. I reach into a deer’s guts without thought: I want those kidneys, and that liver. I turn my arm upwards and wrap my fingers around its stopped heart, slick and firm. It will become heart cutlets, or jaeger schnitzel.” And the coda: ” I am at peace with killing my own meat because for me, every duck breast, every boar tongue, every deer heart is a story, not of conquest, but of communion.”
There is one possible good I see coming from these kind of pictures: that it will trigger empathy in someone who eats pork but who doesn’t like to think about what it actually is they are eating. Perhaps a few people will say, “OMG. That’s really what I am eating. I have to stop.” Well, we can hope.
Thanks Lori. I will admit that I go back and forth about whether or not to display these images at all. Not only are they deeply disturbing but they lend more publicity to egomaniacal chefs who are perfectly happy to garner more attention to their callousness. I thus appreciate your comment and do hope there’s some truth in it.
jm
In addition to strength and “edginess,” the shots of mostly young-ish, white, male chefs is an attempt to evoke or construct a sense of “authenticity.” I agree with ingrid’s comment about “romanticized self-validation through butchery” — you see similar reasoning about the experience of hunting, as the quote zie gives from the chef indicates. It’s also related to arguments about what’s “natural” and about an anxiety about alienation from the natural, which is itself a nostalgic construct, as you and others elsewhere have pointed out (most recently, perhaps, with respect to the paleo diet). But the demographic we see represented even in this single example are suggestive of precisely who is feeling this alienation and this need to establish an “authentic,” “natural” connection to other animals, especially one that reinscribes the (supposedly) inherent superiority of humans and thus shores up a comforting vision of the world.
This post reminds me of a photo album from a local restaurant (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150974205379216&set=pb.114496834215.-2207520000.1362011082&type=3&theater) that is equally heartless. No less than three photos of someone with a pig carcass (possibly the same pig). The photo of the dead pig with its mouth open, straight on and upright, as in a post-mortem grin, is beside the “chef” who is not smiling. Not smiling “chef” = “superiority” or “domination”? I would guess so.
I saw the second image you posted on the cover of a cookbook at a Barnes and Noble recently and was astounded. It was at eye-level for children, not adults. Did the person who set up the book display think that adults would not want to look straight on at that image and want to see it askance? Does that say something about how portray cruelty? Because showing a full animal to behavioral carnivores is sometimes, in certain situations, taboo. The trend in chicken is individual serving-size cutlets.
James,
I’ve been walking past this issue everyday going to and from work and it has disturbed me with every passing. You’ve hit the nail on the head and put in words my emotions!! Thank you!
Quite the keen observation. When I think of strong shoulders I think of kind ones… Ones that support a friend in grief, Help a stranger in trouble — Comfort a newborn startled by a noise. These are powerful things that take strong, courageous, broad shoulders.
Draping an innocent murder victim around in front of a camera pales in comparison. What a waste to use good shoulders for such self serving purposes. Very ugly indeed.