SIGN WITH AN E

A recent article on Britney “Shears” talks about how the shaving incident is a good indicator of where we have gone wrong. Specifically, how ‘the focus on celebrity (mis)behaviour is helping to shift the line between what society considers to be a private matter and a public issue – to the detriment of both the private and public spheres.’

I think the line between public and private was shifted some time ago, and affects not only how we consume other people’s behaviours (celebrity, “Reality” TV etc.) but also how we structure our own. It is a very curious phenomenon because it straddles many more boundaries than those between public and private. It is deeply philosophical and also extremely simple. As I argued recently at a conference on Popular Culture, technology is key. The basic answer to the question of why people are flaunting and watching what should be private is that they can. You may argue that poor Britney didn’t (herself) post a clip on YouTube of a private moment between her and the shears, that she was “victim” of the paparazzi and so on, but neither did she do anything to avoid public glare, like stay at home. Cries of being tired of everyone touching her are then too ridiculous to merit sympathy.

I am not a celebrity – I can’t think of an even dubious claim to fame – but there is something here even for me, and perhaps for you. Blogging stems from the same impulse; a way to make public what often should be private. Mostly I find it a very good space because it keeps me writing and it’s a way to keep some people reading, whether for updates on my life (mother) or for a quirk on food (302). There is no doubt about the fact that blogging is an intensely egoistical exercise and also a rewarding one. I assume people care, and they do (you may be bored by now, but here you are).

But it’s also a potentially evil and stupid thing to do. Recent fuck-ups in my life have resulted in more than one late night post that I wake up regretting and have to rush to delete in the hope that not too much of the world has managed to glimpse it yet. Of course it never is much of the world that is reading my blog, but much of my world, and that’s the point. I often forget or misunderstand the difference between writing as sharing or catharsis – getting it out there – and writing in the hope that someone very specific is going to read it. That other people will potentially read it too is often desirable in the moment that you feel sorry for yourself, and here’s the line between public and private. Coded late night blogging as the new drinking and dialing is really not an interesting or admirable thing to do, especially when you remember how many millions of posts and blogs are out there detailing things that we’d frankly rather not know.

From Adrienne Rich: ‘They’re luckiest who know they’re not unique.’

I teach a course on the money side of food, and in it, we start by considering the question of ethics in business practices. If I were teaching it in Humanities I would probably talk about ethics as “ideology”, but these are Commerce students and they need to see some obvious links between what they learned last year (stuff on globlisation and ethics) and what they’re doing now. In other words, to answer the question, “food and money, huh?”. The course is designed to help them to think outside the box, so to speak. (The damn metaphors plague me).

This year one of them had an interesting analysis of why ethical behaviour is important to business. It was very simple: without it nothing can be a true transaction. It’s the word transaction that is key here, implying, as it does, equality of exchange.

It is a perspective which is beautiful in its theoretical simplicity, but as 302 said recently, if only it were so simple. Unfortunately any transaction, however apparently “equal” (I give you something and you give me something in return), is always more than that. When I buy half a litre of milk to the value of R4.95, I am expecting not only that the price is fair, but that the milk is good, that the coffee it goes into will be satisfying, that the day that follows will be worthwhile, and so on. I realise this only when I get home to discover that the milk is sour and everything that depends on it sours too. Here the question of “ethics” is a little obscure, because the example of milk is fallible. It is not (necessarily) the shop-owner’s fault that the milk is sour. But it demonstrates the extent of my emotional investment in a seemingly simple transaction.

What happens, then, when the thing you are buying represents a real person? Chef-branded commodities are not only cool kitchen gadgets, but a piece of so-and-so in your home that will inspire you to be (or cook) like them. How can you smash garlic in your Jamie Oliver mortar and pestle without thinking, “Go on, my son” or “Pukka”? How can you grill chicken on your Foreman grill without imagining yourself as a lean, mean machine? How can you wear orange crocs and not think of Mario Batali?

And here’s the question then. What do you do when you have the thing, when you’ve made it yours – the mortar and pestle, the grilling machine – and then you discover that the person that made you want it is not worth respecting anymore? If Jamie Oliver turned out to be a rapist or a serial killer, would you keep smashing garlic in the mortar? Or would you throw it out? Would you only then disassociate the thing from the brand and justify keeping it by telling yourself that it’s a good mortar and had nothing to do with Jamie in the first place?

The really interesting question is whether we have the right to be upset. Imagine the worldwide anger and disappointment if Oprah turned out to be a paedophile. How many of those angry people would stop to think that perhaps it is not Oprah who has conned them into trusting her, but that they have duped themselves?

Do we ever have the right to believe that we know anyone at all?

I say keep the mortar and pestle and smash garlic with a vengeance.

MFK Fisher on single men who cook:

‘Their approach to gastronomy is basically sexual, since few of them under seventy-nine will bother to produce a good meal unless it is for a pretty woman. Few of them at any age will consciously ponder on the aphrodisiac qualities of the dishes they serve forth, but subconsciously they use what tricks they have to make their little banquets, whether intimate or merely convivial, lead as subtly as possible to the hoped-for bedding down.’

Ah, for the sweet delight of learning to think in another tense…
(forgiving, of course, the bad punctuation of a 10-year old).