Emeril Lagasse, Paula Deen, Mario Batali, Pat and Gina Neely, and Ina Garten--Food Network stars--are fat in a way that might, from time to time, depress them. They overeat, which is probably a complicated issue for each of them. But it's their job to sell a lifetime focus on food as a simple thing: bliss as simple as it gets.
I'm thinking of that sadism in foodie T.V. (it is sadism to sell an ideal while burying its repercussions), because Anthony Bourdain's been in my neighborhood promoting a book. Bourdain's TV show, No Reservations, is typical of other food shows insofar as you watch him overeat and overdrink episode after episode, and he presents gluttony as a simple pleasure. Most of his shows end with him sitting like a stuffed penguin after his second 10-course meal in one weekend, watching the sunset, humming "Does it get any better than this?"
I think yes.
It's possible that food shows on T.V. sell the dream of guilt-free gluttony in the same way that Freud said the super-ego doled out punishment on a daily basis: On one level you've got an openly celebrated statement that "you can be like me and enjoy all I enjoy" ("Eat like Paula Deen and be happy like Deen"). But the promise is horribly undercut by the unspoken truth that "You cannot be like me" (or you'd be overstuffed and feeling guilty). As Freud said, it's a contrast between those messages-the celebrated, public one and the unspoken, eternal one--that keeps desire afloat: We give steady attention the public ideal but feel quietly depressed that we don't usually live with it.
That said, one nice thing about Bourdain's T.V. show that it is just dark enough. It does undercut the simple picture of bliss with a regular nod to the masochism behind all of our gluttony. Bourdain (who has written about his cocaine addiction and soft spot for heroin) is famously wise to the false notion of "simple pleasure." And he doesn't always gloss over what he's selling. We often see him doubling over with pain from overeating or bitching about his hangovers.
His own complicated understanding of pleasure makes a line in his recent book, Medium Raw, stand out for me. He's writing about tasting some Sichuan peppercorns which are so hot that they numb his tongue: "Pain, you were pretty sure, was always bad," he writes. "Pleasure was good. Until now, that is. When everything started to get confused." He's superficially speaking the language of "simple pleasure," but you know he never really thought in those terms. Bourdain is a guy for whom pain was never just pain and pleasure was never just pleasure. He knows that pleasure often gets its rise out of pain, insult to body, or risk of death.
Of course the interesting question behind that complex relationship between pleasure and pain is "why?", but I can't fathom all of our masochism. I'll just ask if you're attracted to some celebrity in the food world and what attracts you.
