The media is increasingly interested in food these days. The abundance of culinary shows and restaurant information on the internet is a reflection of the public’s need for gustatory pleasure. The media tries to satisfy not only the senses of sight and sound, but also the senses of taste.
Turn on the television right now. As you flip through the channels, you might come across a program where a famous restaurant owner teaches cooking, or one of those shows where talented chefs compete in culinary competitions. Next, go online. You can’t help but come across recipes and restaurant tips on Facebook, personal blogs, or internet news. It’s undeniable that people are looking for flavor these days. With cooking shows popping up all over the place, chefs being treated like celebrities, and the media being inundated with information about where to eat, why is the media so obsessed with food, and what does it mean?
If you think about it, the media has always done a good job of catering to our pleasure. It’s just been doing it differently. Since most media conveys information through screens (visual) and speakers (auditory), its primary purpose has been to fulfill our visual and auditory pleasures. Even a few decades ago, famous music broadcasts existed, and we can still get to know the singers of that time through the records left behind in the media, and we can glimpse the movies and dramas of that time in the fond memories of our parents’ generation.
On the other hand, the media, which has become huge thanks to the rapid development of the Internet, may not be enough for the visual and auditory pleasures. The public has finally come to pursue “taste” as a form of entertainment. Of course, media does not satisfy the pleasure of only one sense. Rather, the senses that are satisfied in media are cumulative. Just as our eyes are pleased and our ears are pleased when we watch cooking programs. But it’s monumental that “taste” has become the center of media’s pleasure.
The paradox is that ‘eating well’ is one of our oldest and greatest pleasures. Imagine this. In order to survive, living things need to consume energy. Unless we’re growing roots out of our toes and leaves out of our heads to photosynthesize, we need to survive through the act of eating something else. Taste is an essential part of survival that we can’t ignore. Contrast this with the fact that we can survive without music and movies. Furthermore, scientific evidence, such as Penfield’s somatosensory map, shows the importance of taste to the senses. Therefore, the emergence of taste in the media can be seen as a natural progression.
But it also represents a significant shift for media and the people who consume it. Unlike other forms of entertainment that are centered on sight and sound, the enjoyment of food in the media does not end with watching it, but rather with making it, or at least tasting it. As a result, the public wants to experience the pleasure of taste in the real world outside the media, even if it is in a simple way. It’s as if the media is suggesting that we find pleasure outside of the media.
This may raise a question. Is there an inherent difference between taste and hearing or seeing? Isn’t it conceivable that watching a past program, say a music program, might make you want to play the guitar? You’re right, of course, but there’s one crucial difference with cooking programs. The nature of the media is such that your taste buds are never satisfied. Even if we see the pork belly being grilled on the screen and hear the sound of it, the flavor never reaches us beyond the screen, and the only way to experience it is to grill it ourselves. The aforementioned necessity of eating also contributes to the difference. Eating is a more universal, common, and necessary process for survival, which gives the viewer a greater sense of entitlement in pursuing the pleasure. As such, food in media is presented to us without the most universal sense of “taste,” and it is up to us to fill in the gaps.
For quite some time now, we’ve been ceding the reins of pleasure to media. In the past, when media was less active, entertainment was rarely handed to us, and it was up to us to find it. The advent of media gave us ready-made forms of entertainment like movies and music. Meanwhile, our dependence on media has only increased. Now, in a way, media has a new proposition. Thanks to the cuisines featured in the media, we are being handed our share of responsibility beyond the screen. The current culinary boom may be the beginning of a shift back to us being in charge of our own entertainment.
