Denial and Delight: A Cross Cultural Analysis of Meat Eating
| Written by Erin Jennings |
| Monday, 20 October 2008 |
| I’ve been living in Korea now for six weeks. Upon arrival, my culture shock was unprecedented, despite having lived abroad a number of times. One of the most striking differences between Korea and Canada was in the culture of meat eating. The distinction became apparent on one of my first nights here, when I went out for Kam Ja Tang with some friends. Before entering the restaurant, my fellow diners gently warned me that the meal I was about to experience would look slightly appalling and might take a bit of effort to eat, but that it was in fact very delicious and definitely worth the trouble.
They weren’t kidding. When the dish arrived, I felt a subtle lurch in my stomach. What arrived at the table was a large communal pot that included, amongst other things, a steaming hot pile of meat, still attached to the very recognizable spine of a pig. This is something I don’t usually like to think about as I bite into a meal. I prefer to have a comfortable dining distance that indirectly assures me that I’m just eating food, and not something that once roamed the earth, alive and well. Meat and flesh are different in my mind (although in the German language, they are apparently one and the same) and I certainly don’t like to blur these particular boundaries while eating dinner. Once I recovered from the initial visual shock of the dish, I decided to dig in. I served myself the largest portion of spine I could find and promptly attacked it with my chopsticks. It took me almost the entire duration of the meal to get through that one piece. I was deeply engaged in the process of eating it and understanding the intricacies of urging the meat off the bone. I had to take a smoke break half way through. But in the end, it was a delicious and eye-opening experience. The intensity of the dining process was unprecedented. I felt as if I had just had a dirty weekend with that soup. There was a certain uncanny intimacy I felt during the meal that I rarely get when eating at restaurants in Canada. Instead of scandalizing me, the meal threw me into a whole new realm of appreciation for meat-eating. Korea is full of similar in-your-face meat practices, and there is no urge to disguise the fact that what we are about to consume was once a living, breathing animal. Restaurant signs often have images of big, smiling cartoon pigs welcoming us in. These are coupled with pictures of sliced raw pork arranged in decorative displays. Other signs show pictures of live cows roaming in vast, green fields alongside images of bleeding beef chunks. Seafood restaurants display live fish and squid (that unfortunately look like floating dildos with beady eyes) in tanks that will swim until the moment your order them to the grill. For galbi, one of Korea’s most famous and delicious dishes, the meat comes out uncooked on a platter and diners are meant to cook it themselves on grills located in the centre of their tables. They receive a pair of scissors with the meal that allow them to easily cut the meat as it is cooking. In all of these cases, the acknowledgment of the food’s source is out in the open. In Korea, there is an up-front acceptance of the fact that we are eating animals. This is quite different from North American food culture, where it seems like we try to distance ourselves from the animal source as much as possible. Even self-righteous meat eaters who dismiss vegetarians with a sneer of loathing often want their chicken breasts boneless and lean, their fish skinned and vacuum-packed, and their beef in pre-cut slices for ready made fajitas kits. All of this amounts to a fraudulent and cowardly way to consume meat. In The Nasty Bits, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s recent collection of essays, he describes how the best parts of the animal are often the forgotten fragments like snouts, ears, and organs that are often discarded. He is the same author who once said that “vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans…are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.” Despite his obvious hostility towards all people tofu-loving and Birkenstock-wearing, I have come to regard his method of eating animals to be the only decent approach.
I am convinced that our persistent denial of meat’s source is related to our denial of our own corporeality and, consequently, our own mortality. The prolific French writer Georges Bataille succinctly says, “I can deny my dependence, denying sexuality, filth, death, and insisting that the world submit to my action. But this negation is fictitious. I finally have to tell myself that the carnal origin of which I am ashamed is my origin nonetheless. And however great my horror of death may be, how can I escape the fated appointment?” Denying our own meatiness is not going to change matters. The fact is that like the animals at the dinner table, we are also made of flesh. And like it or not, we probably taste like chicken. |
Unfortunately, I had just finished reading American Psycho, so the mental image of tortured prostitutes and dismembered bodies was still freshly engraved in my mind. It looked so obviously like a dead body that I didn’t think I’d be able to eat it. But then I had a sudden moment of clarity: I am eating a dead body.
In the church of Anthony Bourdain, true enjoyment of food has to involve a willingness to get dirty, which seems to be something that people are very unwilling to do these days. For me, that means sucking the heads of shrimp, eating blood soup (good for hangovers), gnawing on pig spine and ultimately, when eating meat, being willing accept the fact that it is coming from an animal.
