The Gallery of Regrettable Food
By Jeff Roberts
I think that one of the most interesting things about the internet
is the
variation in specificity with which content can be presented. That
is,
there are the "broadcasting" functions of the internet,
which include the
Yahoos, the CNN.coms, the AOLs, which are aiming to catch a large
portion of
the market in order to make money off of advertising, like with television.
But then there is the "narrowcasting" function, where anyone
can post
information about whatever specialized and specific topic which might
be of
interest to any one person. I'm a student of comedy, and I find a
great
deal of enjoyment in thinking about the simple yet strange aspects
of our
culture, most of which can now be found on the internet. Thus I point
to
the Gallery of Regrettable Food, an entire web site dedicated to disgusting
pictures of food found in old cookbooks.
That's all it is. It is a series of pictures clipped from old cookbooks
of
the most disgusting, unpalatable food products ever photographed.
As
described on the page, the page's author (James Lileks) finds these
cookbooks in antique stores and finds them so amusing, so outdated,
that
they just have to be seen on the internet. He does a good job explaining
the background of these books, saying "They're not really recipe
books.
They're ads for food companies, with every recipe using the company's
products, often in unexpected ways. (Hot day? Kids love a frosty Bacon
Milkshake!) There's not a single edible dish in the entire collection.
Besides making witty commentary about the pictures themselves, Lileks
makes
some insights into the social patterns revealed by these books: "you
have to
enjoy the spirit behind the books-cheerful postwar perfect housewifery
is
taught in every book."
Different sections of the gallery include "Cooking with Seven-Up!"
and "Meat
and Romance", based on a film-o-mercial created in the 30s by
the Meat
Board. The pictures in each of the books are as disgusting as the
premises
are ridiculous; you just have to see them for yourself.
This page is part of a larger site created by Mr. Lileks called "The
Institute of Official Cheer", which similarly looks at some of
the more
disgusting parts of 60's and 70's pop-culture. It is described as
the place
"where old pop culture is subjected to our patented Re-Ironization
Process,
and converted into chipper, spiffy, feather-light postmodern commentary
on
commercial culture. Or, to put it another way: there's enough here
to kill
two, maybe three lunch hours."
Again, this is all meant for humor. But it's very simple humor-the
kind you
can't see much of on television these days. That's because everything
on TV
has to be carefully (not to mention expensively) produced and marketed
to
appeal to a large section of the public. There are very few opportunities
in the other forms of media to take some old books and simply show
off their
complete lack of taste, forcing us (or, some of our older friends)
to ask
"what were we thinking?" The beauty of the internet, and
the many low-cost
low-labor "specialty" web pages it exhibits, is that even
the most simple,
specific things can say a lot about our culture, (in this case, our
past
culture). It will be interesting to watch the future of these grass-roots
productions as the internet becomes increasingly mass-marketed and
commercially-oriented.