SEX PORN/FOOD PORN

The makers of Canon cameras have added a “food mode” to one of their models.  Why? Taking food photos is all the rage. “Are you one of the few people left who doesn’t take pictures of your meal before eating?” asked a Huffington post story. More stylized photos are often categorized as “food porn.” Food porn?  Yes, that label, introduced in the 1980s, has stuck.  Does this represent the wisdom of folk psychology, some crafty marketing ploy, or a superficial, ultimately mistaken identification? 

What might the differences and similarities be?  First of all, the very root “porn” comes from the ancient Greek for prostitute, so it’s link with sex is narrow and traditional.  Also pornography’s function as an aid to masturbation marks a functional difference.  The ancient philosopher Diogenes did not need pornography when he masturbated in public.  He was a fan of the “follow nature; all social conventions are contrived and unnatural” kind of philosophy.   When challenged about his public practice, he offered a straightforward retort: “I only wish I could relieve my hunger by simply rubbing my stomach.”  His answer highlights an important difference: Food porn does not seem to offer the same opportunity for direct physiological satisfaction.  In that sense at least, there is a disanalogy.  

So, beyond the similarity of gazing at provocative photos, speaking of both sex and food “porn” ignores some important differences.  

On a wider level, both food porn and sex pornography manifest some identical,  basic, and related human temptations:  Abstraction is preferred over concreteness; the triad of vulnerability, risk and responsibility is shunned, certain habits are cultivated. 

Abstraction, this may strange coming from a philosopher, is evil.  It’s most basic meaning signifies isolating certain factors and ignoring, in effect, erasing, what in actual circumstances accompanies them.  Such constricted focus, unrecognized and uncriticized,  is central to evil.  Take racism, rooted in a straightforward abstraction: highlighting skin color, i.e. abstracting from all other dimensions of the actual, concrete human being in front of us.  Similarly, the carefully posed naked female in pornography is actually more concealed than revealed. At least in the sense that her concrete, complex personhood is abstracted from.  Instead one dimension, that which excites the male libido is isolated and highlighted.

Selective attention is unavoidable, but it must be recognized as the tool it is and not confused with concrete actuality.  This is easier said than done. The temptation toward abstractification of reality is reinforced by certain comforts it brings with it.  In an abstracted, purified, simplified realm, certain accompaniments of concrete, ordinary existence just disappear. Prominent among these is the liability triad of  vulnerability, risk, responsibility. The consumer of pornography need not worry about getting feelings hurt, suffering disappointment, being asked to wash dishes, engage in fair-minded give and take.

As the multi-dimensional becomes uni-dimensional, the level  of the liability triad drops to zero. 

It is here that sex porn/food porn overlap.  The sex photo is detached and disconnected from ordinary human interactions.  The enticing dish of food porn is also set apart from ordinary interactions. Vulnerability, responsibility and risk recede.  Concerns about health and girth? Ignore them.  Time needed for planning, shopping, preparing, cooking and especially cleaning? Poof, they disappear.

On another level, both  also overlap with the general category of ethics.  Pornography is about shaping habits.  And, in general, shaping habits is what ethics is all about.   The very word “ethics” comes for the ancient Greek term for habits and customs. As humans we manifest plenty of spontaneous inclinations.  Sorting them out, cultivating the proper ones, transforming them into habitual dispositions, developing the kind of character that is optimal, this defines the terms of “ethics” as Aristotle understood it.  

The habit shaped  by sexual pornography isolates and encourages the tendency to think of women first and fundamentally as sources of sexual satisfaction, as good places for an orgasm.  Once the habitual disposition becomes second nature, it appears that any other tendency is merely an artificial imposition of culture over “nature.” (We continue to be a lot more like Diogenes the Cynic than we like to think). Similarly the habit shaped by food porn is to think of food, one-dimensionally as simply a source of pleasure.

 So, maybe the “porn” label in “food porn” is not that outlandish. Both food and sex porn embrace constricted abstractness.  Both limit the liability triad.  Both succumb to the temptation of embracing fantasy over reality. What is not fantasy is the shared habitual disposition that is encouraged: fostering connection without vulnerability.  

The Hands of Time

The Culinary Institute of America has a wall full of hand prints.   Not just random prints but those of well-known chefs. That the CIA would memorialize chefs via their hands makes eminent sense.  Everything about the cooking process involves hands: planting, harvesting, cutting, peeling, handling skillets, cleaning up.   Before she got famous with Chez Panisse, Alice Waters worked at a Montessori school. “Montessori went straight to my heart, because it’s all about encountering the world through the senses. That how kids learn best. The hands are the instrument of the mind--that was how Maria Montessori put it.”

Sadly, when it comes to philosophers, the mind-hand couple linked by Montessori tends to be disconnected.  The general trajectory has been decidedly one-directional: moving away from the concrete realm of lived experience (hands) and toward the a more abstract, more simplified, more artificial one (mind).

Take time.  We still use expressions like “springtime,” “lunch time,” “having a rough time” or maybe the “time of one’s life.”  Such expressions remind us of an older, more concrete,  take on time:  a span defined by ongoing activities, permeated by a qualitative dimension.  

We might call this “baseball time.”  

The question “how long a time does a game last?” cannot be answered by referring to a fixed clock counting down the instants.  The “time” of a game, depends on the activities taking place on the field.  Similarly, on the more traditional take,  “noon” is not marked by a clock but by the sun’s position in the sky.  There is no separate, quantitative, “time” running independently of ongoing (qualitative) activities, the two are interwoven.

Our world is filled with phrases like “killing time,” “wasting time,”  “time is money.” To get there required a philosophical shift indicating a more artificial take on time. Instead of thinking time in terms of events, i.e. the day/night cycle, think of it on the model of a detached, homogeneous line composed of separate dots.  The dots, instants, keep disappearing and the line is quite separate from ongoing activities. Think, not of baseball, but of sports regulated by a clock. Springtime, summertime, wintertime, as qualitative markers, fade away. Instead, we highlight a  time-line that ignores the specifics of ongoing activities.  The newer take on time both creates and celebrates the world of 24/7.  In such a world there would, ideally, be no pauses, no suspensions of busy-ness, no limitations on the dominance of commerce in life. Instead of baseball time we now have Las Vegas time.  

Let’s say it’s the 4th of July, Independence Day. So what?  The casinos, working 24/7, don’t differentiate between this day or any other.  Sunshine is fading, night is arriving.  So what?  Why sleep?  The gaming rooms are open 24/7.   The natural cycle of day/night, along with the cultural cycle of historical/political, religious celebrations become annoyances, frustrations, interruptions in the nonstop frenzy of Las Vegas time.

The 24/7 world of all commerce all the time, transforms many traditional activities associated with hands into  wastes of time.  The handprints at the Culinary Institute remind us of an area which has taken a special hit, cooking.  As mentioned in a previous blog, a Silicon Valley engineer has even invented a food substitute, the ready-made drink Soylent, that can be utilized in  lieu of meals.   Eating food that is the product of loving hands, the preparation and clean-up of which often involves the helping hands of others, becomes more and more an exception rather than the rule. 

  

The personal world of the hands has not disappeared. But, as philosophy goes so goes daily life, and much philosophy has taken us into the world of abstractions.  24/7, along with the outsourcing accompanying it, transforms key instances of natural and cultural time into annoyances and limitations.  How to resist? Well, humans are, after all, the only animals that cook.  They are also the only animals that engage in relaxed conversations. Perhaps using hands to produce meals, cooperating with the helping hands of others in preparation and cleaning up, all the while engaging in conversation, is one way to establish a beachhead.