Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Food Festival Addendum

Yesterday, while talking to a student about the food festival, I finally managed to realize and verbalize what was so bizarre for me in the whole experience. There was stark contrast between the survivalist, let's-eat-'cause-tomorrow-there-ain't-gonna-be-any-food attitude of the folks and the luxurious, toy-like dishes served. It was, at the same time, a feeling of apocalypse and decadence which made the festival into a military operation of fast gorging of delicacies, rather than the sort-of-Roman-feast it was supposed to be.

2 comments:

Shunra said...

Yeah, that about nails it.

The determined look in the would-be eaters' eyes, like a dog after a bone. Or a dog who smells a prospective mate.

There was something sexual - obscene, prurient, pornographic - about watching some of the people heading into the TAFF with a last-chance-to-eat 'tude.

Hadar said...

I was thinking more Momik's parents in David Grossman's See Under: Love. Which is a survivalist attitude that somehow sits better with me with big pots full of chicken soup and strew, than with delicate paper plates with neatly arranged sushi and tapas.