[lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...

123hop at comcast.net 123hop at comcast.net
Sun Feb 27 16:41:31 PST 2011


----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Beggs" <mikejbeggs at gmail.com>

To be fair, I think Joanna's original post falls under the 'wry throwaway observation' category. Forces unknown swept it up into the Issue of the Weekend. -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Like I said, it struck me as a sign of the times kind of thing. Like Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess, like those parties in "Roger and Me" where rich people hired poor people to pose as statues.

I mean when you spend 23$ on an ice cream cone because it's breast milk, you've got to know where the fucking milk is coming from, and I'm guessing this gives it a little special extra charge.

I experienced something similar in Mazatlan where, in the restaurants that cater to tourists, there is a great show put on about the manual work involved in making some of the food. Some Mexican Adonis comes out and spends half an hour making Caesar dressing by hand...to dress one or two salads. Does this have anything to do with how good the Caesar dressing tastes? No, it's making a spectacle out of manual work and making the tourist feel Rich for being in a country where he can buy that much human time for practically nothing. That's the actual content of this spectacle. It's not about the dressing. The dressing would taste the same if it were made in large quantities with a blender in the kitchen.

I'm saying that part of what's going on right now is that the suffering of the poor provides content for the jaded lives of the rich. De Sade would understand me perfectly. It provides enjoyment -- that little shudder that you have escaped the worst and that in fact you can watch and taste someone else's powerlessness and suffering.

This goes a little beyond commodification.

Joanna



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