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Thursday, January 29, 2004
Julia Child approves of genetic modification of food. "We have an ever-growing population and we have to feed them some way," she said in a recent Gourmet profile.
I was surprised. In my recent conversion to foodie-hood, I assumed that a concern for environmentally sound, locally grown food came with the territory. I've clearly been spending too much time in the Bay Area, where Alice Waters still holds sway. In my mind, good food is organic, heirloom, pasture-fed and free-range. Such delicacies are the new luxury items. We've become so used to year-round access to everything from banal bananas to choice caviar that home-grown and hand-made foods seem like special, exotic treats.
I just finished reading Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat which is an account of a year he spent trying to eat 4/5ths of his food from sources within a 200 mile radius of his home in Arizona. Despite Nabhan's sentimental prose and his proclivity for cheesy descriptions of love-making under the (always shooting) stars, I found his quest compelling. Not only did it raise awareness of the bounty of over-looked food sources right outside our door (roadkill, anyone? moth larvae?), it made me more conscious of the foods I eat and where they come from. I'd never realized that fruits and vegetables eaten out of season consume more natural resources than locally grown ones. Florida oranges and Mexican strawberries burn gallons of fossil fuel and freon to arrive on your supermarket shelf. If you eat what's grown in your local area, at the right time of year, it's not only fresher and better tasting, it's better for the environment. I always enjoyed shopping at the farmer's market, but now I feel righteous.
Nabhan also exposes the dangers of genetically modified foods. Although they allow for greater crop yields, they upset the delicate balance of insects, birds and other plants in the ecosystem that naturally enables crop growth. The genes of Bt corn include segments of microbial DNA that is lethal to pests. But in addition to the insects it is engineered to eliminate, it also kills endangered Monarch butterflies, who feed and spawn in the milkweed that grows alongside the corn. Its effects on other insects and animals responsible for the fertilization of both earth and plants is unknown, but the government has approved the planting and distribution of genetically modified corn without conducting environmental impact studies. Genetically modified crops now cover more than 1/4 of U.S. farmland, and because there are no labeling standards, there is no way to know whether your food has been engineered or not.
What's more, Bt corn's genetic homogenity increases the rate at which pests mutate in resistance to the modifications. New strains and varieties of corn will have to be developed in order to evade ever stronger pests, bringing a whole new range of unforeseen side effects.
It's a never-ending cycle of innovation and devastation. The greater the genetic ingenuity, the less fertile the land and ecosystem become. It reminds me of the machinations of the World Bank -- high finance driving waves of debt, corruption and poverty -- or the fears that accompany nanotechnology -- a mass of endlessly multiplying "gray goo" enveloping the world. That's what I imagine our food will look like, as we methodically rid our environment of the diversity that sustains it.
I like Julia Child. I like her warbly voice, her casual breeziness. She doesn't take herself or cooking too seriously. Life is short. Eating should be pleasurable. But a growing population is no excuse to mortgage the planet. Americans are getting fatter: the problem is excess, not scarcity. More isn't always better: sometimes it's actually less.
10:15 PM
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Wednesday, January 21, 2004
I didn't go anywhere over the MLK Jr. holiday, but I that doesn't mean I didn't escape.
Oliver and I saw The Company, the new Robert Altman film, which was beautifully shot and constructed and had nary a storyline to speak of, which wouldn't have been a problem if it had just been a documentary about the Joffrey Ballet. But a rather insipid romance between featured dancer (Neve Campbell -- who admirably did all her own dancing) and a sous chef (the terminally cute, James Dean-ish James Franco) just gets in the way of amazing footage capturing the beauty, humanity and craft of ballet. Watching the extensive dance sequences reminded me how engaging and moving dance can be -- a silent form of communication, it seems somehow more fundamental and appealing than more "abstract" forms like music or writing. Its basic unit is the body, expressing emotions and ideas in a language that most of us can relate to, whether or not we are familiar with ballet conventions. It's especially rewarding to watch on the big screen, where the lines and gestures of the dancers appear in more detail and, oddly at a more human scale than when viewed from the vantage point of an audience in a large hall. I also have to mention that Malcolm McDowell is fabulous and perfect as the company's by turns bitchy and paternal artistic director.
As visual spectacle, and an up-close examination of the communicative possibilities of movement, The Company provides not only food for reflection, but the time and space in which to do it. Despite its narrative shortcomings, I found the lyricism and visual beauty of the dance sequences mesmerizing and evocative -- like much of Altman's work, it's open-ended, suggesting avenues of thought in different directions.
In a similar vein, I also saw a show by jazz trio Games (Art Hirahara, Todd Sickafoose, Scott Amendola). Their brand of pop/free jazz draws as much from Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk as from Radiohead and Vince Guaraldi. Ok, maybe a little more from Ornette and Monk -- their wide-ranging compositions and covers are hardly accessible radio fare -- but they managed to blend the coalescing cacaphony of improvisation with more structured themes: alternately plaintive and driving melodies and beats more reminiscent of 80s Bruce Hornsby or Bill Frisell.
I hadn't listened to anything resembling free jazz in awhile, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. Not least because, like The Company, it created a little capsule of time and space to think about stuff. Free jazz, even in this adulterated form, has always been thought-provoking for me, especially the work of Ornette Coleman. I never fully understood his fascination with outer space until I heard Games cover one of his compositions. It was like a cosmic cloud spinning through space, always just about to come apart in a million directions, but held together by sheer momentum, eventually coming to rest, gently, on some far off planet. :) Ornette was making music for outer space! Which doesn't seem like such a revelation -- especially since I've seen Ornette: Made in America, a documentary in which Ornette envisions himself, ahem, a hermaphroditic space traveller -- but I had never actually felt it before.
The show also brought back memories of more innocent days. Just out of college, I lived with a trombone-playing graduate student who introduced me to the likes of Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. While I found much "experimental" jazz esoteric and masturbatory, looking back, its earnest openness seems to mirror much of the optimism and hopefulness that accompanied those first years out in the big world. It seems to suggest that anything is possible, an attitude I haven't felt in what seems like a very long time.
The thing about Robert Altman films and free jazz is precisely that open-endedness. It not only makes space for the viewer/listener, it invites us to extrapolate, to free associate, to escape into the logic and language of a parallel world. Perhaps it's irresponsible to be escaping off into the ether of speculation, memory and free association, but I don't know how we're supposed to envision anything any differently if we don't have the space to think about and around it for awhile in the safety of abstraction.
12:47 PM
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Friday, January 16, 2004
Children doing a "North Korean Physical Education Dance." Good clean fun.
I found this link on Mimi Smartypants' blog.
4:53 PM
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If you've ever bought a fruit or vegetable just because you liked the way it looked, then Romanesco is for you. I found this beauty at the farmer's market last week:
Ok, that wasn't a picture of the ACTUAL specimen I purchased, but there's a remarkable resemblance.
It's the only vegetable I know of that's also a fractal.
Romanesco is an heirloom Italian broccoli, although it tastes more like a cauliflower, only richer. It's like a cauliflower with the volume turned up. More eloquently put by someone named Paige:
"The flavor of Romanesco is more delicate and sweeter than regular cauliflower with somewhat nutty undertones."
Just like a fine wine. More information from Paige on Romanesco can be found in this PDF from Harmony Valley Farm, Viroqua, WI.
2:31 PM
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Thursday, January 15, 2004
Does the rise of Metrosexuality make straight Asian American men more attractive?
Victim to the feminization that befalls all things Asian within American culture, Asian American men have been emasculated virtually since the day they first set foot on this continent. One need only look at the desperate, aggravated heterosexism masquerading as righteous self-reclamation in a film by a self-styled Asian American pornographer [name removed due to conflict of interest] to see the twisted legacy of decades of contradictory gender and racial stereotyping. If he just wanted to be an Asian American pornographer, I'd say more power to him, but he has to go and make an "experimental" video juxtaposing scenes of heterosexual Asian American sex with a continuously scrolling text documenting all sorts of anti-Asian violence. Implicit are assertions about the need for "yellow menz and womynz" (I kid you not, those are "z's") to fornicate with one another in order to propagate, thereby averting genocide and restoring racial pride. I suppose it's intended to make us feel the psychosexual damage "down there." Aiyah.
By enforcing heterosexuality as the route to liberation, this unamed person buys into the binary logic (male/female, white/Asian, straight/gay) that oppresses him in the first place, setting progressive movements back by, oh, about 40 years. Thankfully there's an alternative to this testoterone-fueled pandering to a thoroughly Western concept of masculinity -- Metrosexuality. Born out our fascination with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and the continuing Ikea-fication of America, Metrosexuality is the name given to a class of urban straight men who have adopted the fashion, hair products and general fascination with all things aesthetic that is traditionally coded "gay." Although it borders on the fetishization of gay-ness by reducing it to a codified set of styles and rules -- the "Fab Five's" helpful tips on everything from nose hair to broccoli rabe, for example -- Metrosexuality offers some intriguing cultural and political options.
With the rise in profile of all things "gay" in popular culture, straight men have finally realized why straight women are attracted to gay men. While the real reasons for this attraction are many, the most salient one has to do with shared interests in grooming, fashion and shopping. Traditionally the exclusive territory of the feminine, these interests are now colonizing the realm of the masculine as well. The consumer implications of straight men's awakening to their "feminine side" are not lost on corporations: there's a whole new market segment out there who can't wait to exchange their Dockers for Diesel. Hence the rise of the Metrosexual. Masculinity has never looked so feminine.
Considering that he is already feminized, the Asian American man should find himself ahead of the pack, no? While some of my righteous Asian brothers (you know who you are) still scowl when they see a white man/Asian woman couple on the street, I've been noticing an ever-so-slight increase in the number of reverse pairings. Perhaps this is just a function of moving from New York to Asian-dominated San Francisco, but there are emerging signs of increasing gender/race parity among Asian and white heterosexuals. In my mind, this phenomenon has less to do with a drop in racism among white, straight women and more to do with the growing attractiveness of Metrosexuality. Men who were beneath notice before the advent of Will & Grace are now starting to show up as little yellow blips (sorry, couldn't resist) on the sexual radar.
Despite its roots in naked capitalism, I think Metrosexuality is a good thing. By giving it a name, if only jokingly, we've acknowledged another point on the gender/sexuality matrix somewhere between the extremes of butch and femme, gay and straight. We've also validated an alternative vision of masculinity, one that doesn't shun the feminine. I recently attended a cousin's baby shower where a fellow (female) attendee observed authoritatively, "You can buy blue for girls, but you can't buy pink for boys." Femininity has long accommodated aspects of masculinity. It's about time the boys wore pink.
3:14 PM
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Wednesday, January 07, 2004
This is a great thing -- trenchant, funny and irreverent 30 second commercials giving the lie to George Bush:
www.bushin30seconds.org
Thanks to Theresa for forwarding this link!
4:02 PM
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The Satsuma Mandarins are nearing the end of their season. I've been following their progress each week at the farmer's market. Instead of small and tightly round, as they were in November, they are now large and lumpy. Their skin is dry and smells more like a flower than a fruit; it pulls away from the flesh like a loose stocking. Inside, they are heavy and swollen and velvety to the touch, but it's all a come on. November's tart sweetness has given way to a mellower tang, tinged with bitterness.
It's been interesting to follow the season's changes at the farmer's market. As the weather grows colder, the number of stalls dwindles and tomatoes, peaches and corn give way to apples, pears and squashes. I've never been so conscious of the season's changes, used as I am to the supermarket's perennial bounty. Perhaps it's the legacy of my grandfather, a produce-man at Ralph's, that I intuited that apples and oranges were fall and winter fruit, while strawberries and nectarines were better during the summer months, but I never really thought about it much. You could get strawberries nearly year round, if you really wanted them and were willing to pay the price.
But the more interested I become in food and eating and cooking well, the more I understand the importance of fresh, local produce, not only from the standpoint of taste, but in terms of economics and ecology. But taste is where it started, and I think the big turning point for me was tomatoes. At the farmer's market, in addition to several shades of red, tomatoes come in green, orange, pink and yellow. And they actually taste GOOD, not like the mealy, watery, pallid things you get at the supermarket. I'd never liked tomatoes, especially raw ones, but I was eating the ones from the farmer's market all by themselves, with just a little salt and olive oil. I used to gag when my mother reminisced about eating whole tomatoes, "just like apples, " she'd say. But I finally understood -- it was these tomatoes she was thinking of.
12:48 PM
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Monday, January 05, 2004
I've been researching the life and work of Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Center, and I'm struck by the widely divergent readings of his design for the WTC.
In its passionate, if sometimes hyperbolic reading of the Twin Towers' ideological and metaphorical implications, Eric Darton's Divided We Stand paints a picture of Yamasaki as misguided misanthrope, seduced by a high-profile world of corporate patronage and corruption, his WTC designs more focused on ego inflation than the requirements of human habitation. Written before 9/11, the book eerily foreshadows the Towers' demise, dubbing Yamasaki, the "Architect of Terror." And in a post-9/11 article, Darton goes so far as to compare Yamasaki to Mohammad Atta (who was an architect before he became a terrorist), asserting that both the construction and destruction of the towers required the same process of ideological abstraction, the same disregard for the particulars (and value) of individual human life.
While this argument at first glance seems preposterous -- how could a 1960s building design possibly prefigure the spectacular and devastating impact of a massive terrorist attack in 2001? -- Darton is pointing to a larger truth here (oddly enough, by taking his argument to a higher level of abstraction), a paradigm so powerful that it transcends good guys and bad guys, uniting them in a vicious cycle of creation and destruction:
"Whether a master plan entails casting away stones, or gathering stones together, the project rests upon the creation of an abstract, quantitative logic that supposes itself to operate on a higher plane than that inhabited by the human material beneath it. Package fifty thousand people in a ten million square foot office block accounting for weight and windloads and, as Yamasaki did, proclaim it a 'symbol of world peace.' Sure, no problem. And on the other end: calculate the structural properties of the target, the projectile's velocity on impact, the necessary payload of jet fuel. No problem. You just do the mathematics."
Darton's comparison foregrounds the numbness to human suffering implicit in both endeavors. Yamasaki's brutally repetitive design reduces human presence to a matter of square feet; Atta's brutal attack reduces it to a physics equation. In both cases, human emotional, spiritual and physical existence is reduced to a series of abstract numbers and measurements. Unfortunately, although his argument is compelling, Darton doesn't gloss his sources establishing Yamasaki as a social climber and approval-seeking product of an authoritarian father (let us hope he is not assuming that because Yamasaki's father was Japanese, that he was necessarily "authoritarian"), although he does reference a New York Times article profiling Atta's training in architecture and his cultural and political alienation in Germany. As Times critic Richard Bernstein noted in reference to Darton's pre-9/11 comparison of Yamasaki and terrorists, it is "a resemblance without a similarity."
Too bad Darton didn't have Mab Segrest on his side. In her essay "Of Soul and White Folks" (in her wonderful book, Born to Belonging: Writings on Spirit and Justice), Segrest delves into this numbness, which she traces back to the anesthetic effects of the master/slave dynamic. In order to beat, rape and otherwise dominate the slave, the master must anesthetize himself (usually "him," sometimes "her") against the human impulse to identify with the pain and suffering of the slave. It's no coincidence that the products that finally made the slave trade profitable were substances that enabled sensory anesthesia: tobacco, coffee, rum and sugar. Segrest's point is that we are all damaged by the legacy of slavery (and colonialism, and imperialism, and capitalism) -- the will to total domination not only disfigures the slave, but scars the master as well. Anesthetized to any human suffering beyond his own, he has lost his connection to humanity and the natural world, which enables him to enact creation or devastation of unprecedented scale and reach. The creation and destruction of the World Trade Center (not to mention things like moon and Mars landings) are conceptually rooted in the same global numbness.
But in further reading about the World Trade Center, other interpretations of Yamasaki's work shed different light on his intentions. For example, Darton criticizes the narrow, vertical windows that form a uniform band around every floor of the Towers, asserting that the width of the external columns (twenty-two inches) interrupts what should be a panoramic view of the city. Conversely, Angus Kre Gillespie (in Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's Trade Center, published in 1999, the same year as Darton's book) finds a human scale in the windows, noting that they are "shoulder width" (eighteen inches) and asserting that Yamasaki's window design was a clear and intentional rejection of the prevailing International Style, with its undivided expanses of floor-to-ceiling glass. Yamasaki stated that he always felt vertiginous and insecure standing inside a skyscraper walled in glass, as if he were about to fall right off the edge. The WTC's exterior columns were not purely a structural requirement, but were intended to make the inhabitants feel more secure in their perch so high above the ground. In a similar concern for the buildings' inhabitants, Yamasaki rejected windowsills, allowing workers in the interior of the building access to natural light and some of the spectacular views through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Despite his staunch criticism of the Towers' height as an expression of hubris and dominance, Darton still expects the most unnatural of views upon arriving at the top: a panorama. In Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, Rem Koolhaas charts the trajectory of the New York skyscraper, locating its origins in the fusion of the "globe" and the "needle." The "globe," beyond its obvious "global" symbolism, is also the most efficient geometric form, containing the largest volume within the smallest surface area. The "needle" is the concept behind the first observatories: tall structures erected at World's Fairs and tourist attractions (think Eiffel Tower) to give visitors a bird's-eye (god's-eye?) view of their environs. The expectation of a panorama -- the power of surveillance and the sense of dominance that accompanies it -- arises out of the impulse behind these earliest skyscrapers. Combine it with the urge to contain the largest volume of things and people in the most space-efficient manner (the goal and raison d'etre of modern engineering) and you have the modern skyscraper. By desiring a panorama at the top of the World Trade Center, Darton buys into the prideful logic of the skyscraper that he elsewhere so vehemently critiques.
But this contradiction does not invalidate the rest of his argument, but only points out the complexity of the issues at hand. Darton rankles at the unbridled ambition he imputes to Yamasaki, but can't quite deny its allure himself. Yamasaki's defense of his WTC interiors, unimaginatively identical from floor to floor, could have been mere rationalization for structural and business requirements. As I read more about Yamasaki, I see a career riddled with contradictions. Darton calls him "multifarious," (which is a little too close to the Fu Manchu-style "nefarious" for me -- Darton seems to really need a bad guy), but I believe there's still another explanation.
Perhaps Gillespie sums it up best when he positions Yamasaki at the juncture between the fading of the International Style and the emergence of post-modernism. Yamasaki was looking for a way out of the modernist strictures, laid down by Le Corbusier, which formed his architectural education. Looking to Japanese, Arabic, Indian and even Renaissance and Gothic architecture for inspiration, he tried to balance a concern for the human experience of the building with his modernist principles and an interest in how a building's form reflects the cultural values and aspirations of the society in which it exists. In the end, it seems that his scale always tipped too far in one direction or another. His work is often dismissed as decorative modernism -- modernist buildings decked out in superfluous, ornamental filigree -- but in this move towards a more expressive, sensitive architecture, Yamasaki's work foreshadowed the histrionic, acrobatic gestures of post-modernism.
5:54 PM
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