Random Question Time...

[phrasemuffin]

... in which fruitarians are required.

Guys, I have a problem. I can't decide whether anthropomorphised food would find cooking shows to be gore-fest horror shows, or something between a fashion show and kinky porn. Or is it a little from column A, a little from column B? Would cooking shows be considered snuff-film-style porn to food?

Now, obviously, you're saying to yourself "David, they slice, dice, roast and/or boil food on cooking shows, to say nothing of the taste-test at the end; how on earth can it be porn when they all die?!". And this is valid. Except... well, first of all they're all already dead, as would be any food watching your television unless you have one out on the farm. Second, for us the purpose of food is to be eaten, but I wonder if food actually wants to be eaten. Is an apple that doesn't feed anyone any less of an apple to all the apples in the orchard that do?

Also, would the state of the food pre-anthropomorphisation (i.e. fresh vs cooked/processed [eg anthro Apple vs anthro Apple Pie) change the way it viewed a cooking show post-anthrop.? I mean, for cooked/processed (depending on the process) it's like a home video of everything from foreplay to conception to the actual birth of a new food, while fresh it's... well, I'm not sure.

I'm serious about this, by the way. I want to know your thoughts.

Comments

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

Well, in Diane Duane's YA fantasy books, there's a sentient tree alien who gets totally grossed out/horrified by Earth humans eating vegetables.

But Terry Pratchett's got a description of heaven from a cow's point of view in Feet of Clay, and it involves horseradish and roast potatoes.

Not all food is already dead - most root vegetables keep growing (as in they sprout, as opposed to get bigger) if you leave them long enough.

I'm tempted to go with the idea that apples, for e.g., would consider it a good thing to be eaten, because it fulfils their purpose in existing.

*goes quietly insane*

[phrasemuffin.livejournal.com]

It's not so much about the eating, though. I know I mentioned that, but... cooking is like the prelude to eating, like S'n'M stuff could be seen as a prelude to death, which is why it's so kinky (to some). Which is sort of what raised the question (that's a lie).

I'm not quite sure what point you're making with the cow heaven... is it that the act of cooking doesn't kill them, only the act of eating?

Not all food is dead, you're right. I was thinking mainly of fruits, though, and meat when I wrote that. And Douglas Adams' creature that was bred with the sole desire to be eaten. But mainly fruit and real meat.

Ok, if I were to go with the idea that apples et al want to be eaten to fulfil their purpose, it could become a near spiritual experience. The preparation therefore would be a celebration. But what about meat? Does meat want to be eaten? What would meat think about cooking shows? Is that its purpose? Is our purpose to be eaten? We're meat... If our purpose is to be eaten, then not a lot of us are fulfiling our purpose. :P

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

No, the heaven thing is that they like the idea in the abstract - I'm not sure how they'd react to finding out that they're not the ones that get the horseradish to eat.

Hmm. Well, we don't generally get eaten as an everyday sort of thing - we definitely have huge taboos against people eating other people. And we get freaked out when other animals eat us - e.g. bears, wolves, sharks and so on. But bears and so on (and actually Duane addresses this in the context of humans featuring on alien species' cooking shows!) eat us, and they don't angst terribly about eating us.

The direct quote from Diane Duane, in A Wizard Alone, is:

"Is there really a cooking channel, uh, 'about' us?"

"There's lots of them."

"But how is something like that permitted?!"

"You go where you shouldn't go, you find out stuff you shouldn't find out. Like how you taste in a sweet-and-sour sauce with galingale. The universe is full of little surprises."

The "us" being humans, the questioner is the wizard's father and the answer is the wizard. For context, Duane's stuff is YA urban fantasy, where the wizardry is 'magic' with a scientific basis, or as much of a one as 'magic' can have. Such as: it takes a lot of energy to power a spell that takes you to the moon, because you have to clear the Earth's gravity well.