Eating Alone
An essay by Maki Tagi excerpted from Public19: Lexicon 20th Century A.D. Volume 1 of 2:Meals have always been an important social ritual where people gather together and digest much more than food. Regular meals involve chewing over and swallowing ideas, discussing people and places, neighborhood rumors and political conspiracies. Eating can be a vehicle for expressing affection towards family and friends, workplace loyalty, forbidden lust.
Globalization has changed the meaning of meals. People from the countryside have moved to urban areas to survive. The traditional group has disappeared. For a time meals were reduced to no more than the swallowing of food, and eating became a time when people experiences loneliness. The birth of the fast food industries was a response to this "aura" of loneliness. The longer one took preparing, eating, and cleaning up, the more unbearable the loneliness. McDonalds and Dairy Queen offer relief by eliminating both the anticipation that the preperation of a "meal" involes, and the tragic afterglow of loneliness produced by post-meal dish-washing.
It is no surprise that many people can be found in fast food restaurants: families with children in search of Disney products, students cramming for examinations, and vagabonds; they all spend time there. They do not need to communicate but can all exist together in a way that minimizes lonliness. There is no stress. But this is not "eating" in the traditional sense. What can we name this new concept?
--Posted 06/13/01 12:50PM