My Lord! Lordy, Lordy, Lord! (to use a phrase from Stephen Fry). That does it. I had been planning to write something more substantial later about Baudrillard and his concept of hyperreality, but with today's newspaper in mind, I can't help myself.
Appartenly (according to this article in today's De Standaard) a new social phenomenon has sprung up in Flanders! Friends, colleagues, etcetera are massively imitating the TV show Komen eten. If you'd like to pretend you don't know it (because we all do, even if we all say we don't watch stuff like that), here's the show's premise. Four people (could be five, dunno) go over to each other's house, have a meal, talk pompous shite involving words like cuisson, bisque or cappuccino without knowing what they mean, and then übercritically rate each other's cookery in categories of food, atmosphere, and so on. Each day of the week figures one dinner (hmm, could be five participants after all, logic suggests), and at the end of the week one's declared the winner.
So apparently, people in Flanders are now doing just that. Good heavens. If the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) were still alive, he'd have a field day. Without going into too much detail, Baudrillard claims consumer culture has forced modern man into a dissatisfaction with reality. In fact, reality is not real enough anymore, hence modern kids prefer playing tennis on the Nintendo Wii instead of on a clay court. And so now the same thing has happened with food. Entertaining guests at home and cooking a nice meal for them has been the backbone of social culture for centuries. Now, people are fed up with it and need to imitate a television show of entertaining and cooking to enjoy real-life entertaining and cooking. (Of course, Baudrillard would contend that the only 'real' cooking has become the one on TV).
Frankly, I'm fed up with it. Fed up with kids wanting to be on a TV show that takes them back to the fifties and then proclaiming that discipline is good for you. Fed up with people who want to be Made on MTV, because it's 'a unique opportunity to change their lives' (TV changes our lives, not vice versa anymore). Fed up with people who want to videotape themselves while having sex, because they can't enjoy real sex anymore without being reminded of fake sex (pornography).
Hyperreality sucks walrus-ass, as Adam Carolla would say...
Appartenly (according to this article in today's De Standaard) a new social phenomenon has sprung up in Flanders! Friends, colleagues, etcetera are massively imitating the TV show Komen eten. If you'd like to pretend you don't know it (because we all do, even if we all say we don't watch stuff like that), here's the show's premise. Four people (could be five, dunno) go over to each other's house, have a meal, talk pompous shite involving words like cuisson, bisque or cappuccino without knowing what they mean, and then übercritically rate each other's cookery in categories of food, atmosphere, and so on. Each day of the week figures one dinner (hmm, could be five participants after all, logic suggests), and at the end of the week one's declared the winner.
So apparently, people in Flanders are now doing just that. Good heavens. If the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) were still alive, he'd have a field day. Without going into too much detail, Baudrillard claims consumer culture has forced modern man into a dissatisfaction with reality. In fact, reality is not real enough anymore, hence modern kids prefer playing tennis on the Nintendo Wii instead of on a clay court. And so now the same thing has happened with food. Entertaining guests at home and cooking a nice meal for them has been the backbone of social culture for centuries. Now, people are fed up with it and need to imitate a television show of entertaining and cooking to enjoy real-life entertaining and cooking. (Of course, Baudrillard would contend that the only 'real' cooking has become the one on TV).
Frankly, I'm fed up with it. Fed up with kids wanting to be on a TV show that takes them back to the fifties and then proclaiming that discipline is good for you. Fed up with people who want to be Made on MTV, because it's 'a unique opportunity to change their lives' (TV changes our lives, not vice versa anymore). Fed up with people who want to videotape themselves while having sex, because they can't enjoy real sex anymore without being reminded of fake sex (pornography).
Hyperreality sucks walrus-ass, as Adam Carolla would say...
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