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On June 29 2020 14:24 Zambrah wrote:
Dont most places kind of bastardize foreign food for local tastes? God knows China does it, and god knows the US does it.
In fact, in China they have Dominos, and at first they served basically what they serve in the US, but China wasn't really into it, so now they serve stuff like corn and this weird egg mayo and steak fries pizza. Oh, and they had this pizza I loosely translated to "French style pizza" that had some sort of weird ingredient on it, sadly my translating sucks so I can't CONFIRM it had snails on it, but I do believe one of the words I read near that on the menu was maybe snail.
EDIT: And yeah, I've heard the entire Michelin star system has heavily biased fine dining towards French cuisine, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that bias exists with celebrity chefs.
Yeah it absolutely happens worldwide. I don’t think that’s inherently a problem in most cases, a lot of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese chefs who produce European foods are generally trained in Europe and make it pretty clear that their products are not entire authentic. A lot of the mid-range and high end European restaurants I’ve tried in those countries are exceptionally good and I don’t think many Europeans would have major issues with them.
The discussion in the article was less about that and more about the choice of people writing the cookbooks and recipes that try to sell their recipes as authentic. Chrissy Teigan isn’t going to make an authentic borscht but somewhere like Food Network will use her to sell her “authentic” Eastern European recipe because she’s more digestible for the domestic market than the Eastern European chef helping her. It’s a very American specific problem but it is definitely an interesting topic on whether or not this is fair on the cultures the media are appropriating for content. A lot of the time it isn’t that hard to bring someone from the culture to do the recipe properly.
That’s actually part of the problem Bon Appetit is going through where the ethnic chefs, who have worked in top class restaurants, got side-lined by the white hosts. Instead of getting them to show how to make an authentic tortilla, the white chefs just bumble along and produce some rough approximation of the real thing while kind of selling it as “authentic”.
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On June 29 2020 08:42 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 08:34 ChristianS wrote:On June 29 2020 08:28 Wegandi wrote:On June 29 2020 02:10 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Yeah I find the notion that the immigrants who are currently coming to america represent anything remotely comparable to the threat of culture and life of the people currently living in america as what was the case with Columbus and what followed kinda hard to fathom. Your idea of cultural displacement is either entirely too narrowly defined or you have a failure of imagination. What do you think "cultural appropriation" and hegemony does? There are people who lament globalization as eradication of local and indigenous culture around the world. My point is that there is risk with any immigration of displacing the dominant culture (it usually takes time, often hundreds of years), I just happen to think its relatively overblown and as much risk as there is to displacement from immigrants is displacement from within (I'd argue there's a far greater risk to the American identity and liberal traditional institutions/values from the native 18-35 generation than external immigration). It’s really weird that you’re talking about cultural appropriation or “displacement” in the context of genocide. I can’t tell if you just don’t see the distinction or if you’re willfully avoiding the subject? My first sentence addressed this. The majority of Native American deaths (and what genocide implies in intent) didn't occur until 200+ years after European immigration. I'm sure, given hindsight that Native Americans would have been quite ardent isolationists. You're the one missing the point. As you are aware there are significant demographic changes happening in the US. Who knows what is going to happen in 200 years, let alone in 100. It's not inconceivable that the dominant Anglo-Christian culture of the US is displaced.
Yeah, I’m not seeing how genocide is addressed by
Your idea of cultural displacement is either entirely too narrowly defined or you have a failure of imagination.
Is “displacement” as used here a euphemism for mass murder and forced migration? If so, why are you trying to draw a parallel between that and modern immigrants to the US? If Guatemalan asylum seekers were spreading small pox blankets or taking people’s land by force I’d understand what Tucker Carlson was so upset about.
I understand you’re trying to make a larger point about cultural syncretism, and I hate to stand in the way of an interesting discussion, but it’s hard to construct any kind of valuable analysis on the premise that Latin American migrant workers and asylum seekers are even remotely similar to European colonists. Are we just supposed to “aside from” away the murder, theft, sterilization, forced migration, re-education, etc.?
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On June 29 2020 14:41 StalkerTL wrote:
That’s actually part of the problem Bon Appetit is going through where the ethnic chefs, who have worked in top class restaurants, got side-lined by the white hosts. Instead of getting them to show how to make an authentic tortilla, the white chefs just bumble along and produce some rough approximation of the real thing while kind of selling it as “authentic”.
I dont generally care about these things, but with BA, its clear that the only good cook in the whole kitchen is Brad. No one else has knife skills better than me, a guy who only got his first actually sharp chefs knife 2 years ago.
Most of them generally remind me of Taleb's "Intellectual yet idiots" just transposed into food.
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On June 29 2020 14:33 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 14:30 Falling wrote:
Nobody goes to a fast food restaurant with the mind that they are getting the real deal for cultural food. If they are, they're fools. And I'm not sure where the Nazis comes into it with a fast food franchise chain. I was trying to establish a basic baseline of understanding how well-intentioned people could do wildly offensive things through cultural appropriation of food. As well as how it can get so out of hand as to entirely supplant the culture from which it was appropriated. The "taco" being a prime example. It's been part of the "woke" movement so more people know now, but most people have no idea they don't sell tacos at taco bell (some do, but those crunchy yellow things aren't tacos).
I think food is a pretty poor example for cultural appropriation/exploitation.
As others have said, food crosses cultures so much in ways that other pieces of culture don't and it is a pretty intentional (and widely accepted) cross-cultural act to change food in various ways to appeal to the receiving culture.
All of this kind of shoots the analogy in the foot.
Also, absolutely no one goes to a Taco Bell or any other generic fast food restaurant and thinks they're getting real Mexican food. I know we commonly say "no one says/does/thinks X" in a hyperbolic fashion, but I genuinely don't think that all but the absolute dumbest humans on the planet think that generic American chain restaurants are authentic anything. Anyone and everyone knows that you just go there for shitty fast food and, when you talk about Mexican food, you're talking about a legitimate restaurant and not a Taco Bell or Del Taco.
I think cultural appropriation discussions have much more salience when referencing things like music, language, clothing, etc.
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On June 29 2020 14:47 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 14:41 StalkerTL wrote:
That’s actually part of the problem Bon Appetit is going through where the ethnic chefs, who have worked in top class restaurants, got side-lined by the white hosts. Instead of getting them to show how to make an authentic tortilla, the white chefs just bumble along and produce some rough approximation of the real thing while kind of selling it as “authentic”. I dont generally care about these things, but with BA, its clear that the only good cook in the whole kitchen is Brad. No one else has knife skills better than me, a guy who only got his first actually sharp chefs knife 2 years ago.
The “support” staff can actually prepare food, the actual main hosts are all hot trash yes. Still they have some degree of influence on their intended crowd (clickbaity shit, people whose cooking skill is burning Kraft mac and cheese in the microwave).
But yes the easiest way to tell if a modern day person can cook is in how they prepare food and how clean their workstation is.
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On June 29 2020 14:41 StalkerTL wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 14:24 Zambrah wrote:
Dont most places kind of bastardize foreign food for local tastes? God knows China does it, and god knows the US does it.
In fact, in China they have Dominos, and at first they served basically what they serve in the US, but China wasn't really into it, so now they serve stuff like corn and this weird egg mayo and steak fries pizza. Oh, and they had this pizza I loosely translated to "French style pizza" that had some sort of weird ingredient on it, sadly my translating sucks so I can't CONFIRM it had snails on it, but I do believe one of the words I read near that on the menu was maybe snail.
EDIT: And yeah, I've heard the entire Michelin star system has heavily biased fine dining towards French cuisine, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that bias exists with celebrity chefs. Yeah it absolutely happens worldwide. I don’t think that’s inherently a problem in most cases, a lot of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese chefs who produce European foods are generally trained in Europe and make it pretty clear that their products are not entire authentic. A lot of the mid-range and high end European restaurants I’ve tried in those countries are exceptionally good and I don’t think many Europeans would have major issues with them. The discussion in the article was less about that and more about the choice of people writing the cookbooks and recipes that try to sell their recipes as authentic. Chrissy Teigan isn’t going to make an authentic borscht but somewhere like Food Network will use her to sell her “authentic” Eastern European recipe because she’s more digestible for the domestic market than the Eastern European chef helping her. It’s a very American specific problem but it is definitely an interesting topic on whether or not this is fair on the cultures the media are appropriating for content. A lot of the time it isn’t that hard to bring someone from the culture to do the recipe properly. That’s actually part of the problem Bon Appetit is going through where the ethnic chefs, who have worked in top class restaurants, got side-lined by the white hosts. Instead of getting them to show how to make an authentic tortilla, the white chefs just bumble along and produce some rough approximation of the real thing while kind of selling it as “authentic”.
I can’t imagine trusting some white rando to make a tortilla better than someone from Mexico, but at the same time I wonder if that doesn’t bridge into a weird place where you start just attaching random faces that are ethnically appropriate to food, though that sort of stuff is already more or less in place in the US.
I’d also be totally unsurprised if Americans are more apt to trust some white randos cooking over that of a person who actually is from that area and is specialized in that sort of cooking. It’s that sort of gross marketing cynicism that I detest.
EDIT: @Stratos, don’t forget that plenty of people still enthusiastically believe whatever Trump says, it shouldn’t be surprising that a disturbingly large part of the US might legitimately believe Taco Bell is authentic Mexican food, lol.
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Canada11339 Posts
@GH
Are you a prescriptionist or a descriptionist when it comes to language?
While being rather traditional myself and holding on to older meanings of words, in the English language anyways (without something like the French Immortals), a great many things come to mean something they didn't mean before and words that once held meaning, lose it. I don't much like it, (don't much care for the non-literal use of 'literally' for instance), but I am rather resigned to this endless march of changed meaning.
Maybe those crunchy yellow things can be rebranded as something other than tacos- though 'crunchy yellow things' is unlikely to catch on. But it's neither a supplanting of culture nor an appropriation. (Aside from the general all-pervasive mass culture from mass media- loss of local languages is probably a far great cause of the decline of smaller cultures.) People need a short hand to describe the thing they are eating and 'taco' has come to have a wider meaning over time- a reflection of the sort of food the fast food is riffing off of.
But same with the Polish example (or let's say some hippy is making some vegan substitute and calling it Mennonite sausage)- it's only offensive, if I'm offended by it. It might be annoying- but I think there's where getting out of your bubble more is helpful. A great side benefit of some of my friends being Chinese or Japanese descent is they take me around town and show me where the real stuff can be found. Then I show other people where it is. I don't know- mass fast food, mass media, mass culture- it's all overwhelming to every form of culture- it's an unthinking, all-consuming behemoth. But if you search, you can find.
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On June 29 2020 15:00 Falling wrote:
@GH
Are you a prescriptionist or a descriptionist when it comes to language?
While being rather traditional myself and holding on to older meanings of words, in the English language anyways (without something like the French Immortals), a great many things come to mean something they didn't mean before and words that once held meaning, lose it. I don't much like it, (don't much care for the non-literal use of 'literally' for instance), but I am rather resigned to this endless march of changed meaning.
Maybe those crunchy yellow things can be rebranded as something other than tacos- though 'crunchy yellow things' is unlikely to catch on. But it's neither a supplanting of culture nor an appropriation. (Aside from the general all-pervasive mass culture from mass media- loss of local languages is probably a far great cause of the decline of smaller cultures.) People need a short hand to describe the thing they are eating and 'taco' has come to have a wider meaning over time- a reflection of the sort of food the fast food is riffing off of.
But same with the Polish example (or let's say some hippy is making some vegan substitute and calling it Mennonite sausage)- it's only offensive, if I'm offended by it. It might be annoying- but I think there's where getting out of your bubble more is helpful. A great side benefit of some of my friends being Chinese or Japanese descent is they take me around town and show me where the real stuff can be found. Then I show other people where it is. I don't know- mass fast food, mass media, mass culture- it's all overwhelming to every form of culture- it's an unthinking, all-consuming behemoth. But if you search, you can find.
I think this part: it's only offensive, if I'm offended by it. It might be annoying- but I think there's where getting out of your bubble more is helpful. is unintentionally revealing of what I think is part of the core reasoning I mentioned to Drone was being revealed as inadequate at the moment regarding sexual misconduct and to a lesser degree (as evidenced by the "displacement"- genocide thing imo) racism.
I think Stalker (ChristianS on the genocide thing) is better equipped to bridge the gap between our positions (meaning you too Weg) in a way I can then reengage with.
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On June 29 2020 14:58 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 14:41 StalkerTL wrote:On June 29 2020 14:24 Zambrah wrote:
Dont most places kind of bastardize foreign food for local tastes? God knows China does it, and god knows the US does it.
In fact, in China they have Dominos, and at first they served basically what they serve in the US, but China wasn't really into it, so now they serve stuff like corn and this weird egg mayo and steak fries pizza. Oh, and they had this pizza I loosely translated to "French style pizza" that had some sort of weird ingredient on it, sadly my translating sucks so I can't CONFIRM it had snails on it, but I do believe one of the words I read near that on the menu was maybe snail.
EDIT: And yeah, I've heard the entire Michelin star system has heavily biased fine dining towards French cuisine, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that bias exists with celebrity chefs. Yeah it absolutely happens worldwide. I don’t think that’s inherently a problem in most cases, a lot of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese chefs who produce European foods are generally trained in Europe and make it pretty clear that their products are not entire authentic. A lot of the mid-range and high end European restaurants I’ve tried in those countries are exceptionally good and I don’t think many Europeans would have major issues with them. The discussion in the article was less about that and more about the choice of people writing the cookbooks and recipes that try to sell their recipes as authentic. Chrissy Teigan isn’t going to make an authentic borscht but somewhere like Food Network will use her to sell her “authentic” Eastern European recipe because she’s more digestible for the domestic market than the Eastern European chef helping her. It’s a very American specific problem but it is definitely an interesting topic on whether or not this is fair on the cultures the media are appropriating for content. A lot of the time it isn’t that hard to bring someone from the culture to do the recipe properly. That’s actually part of the problem Bon Appetit is going through where the ethnic chefs, who have worked in top class restaurants, got side-lined by the white hosts. Instead of getting them to show how to make an authentic tortilla, the white chefs just bumble along and produce some rough approximation of the real thing while kind of selling it as “authentic”. I can’t imagine trusting some white rando to make a tortilla better than someone from Mexico, but at the same time I wonder if that doesn’t bridge into a weird place where you start just attaching random faces that are ethnically appropriate to food, though that sort of stuff is already more or less in place in the US. I’d also be totally unsurprised if Americans are more apt to trust some white randos cooking over that of a person who actually is from that area and is specialized in that sort of cooking. It’s that sort of gross marketing cynicism that I detest. EDIT: @Stratos, don’t forget that plenty of people still enthusiastically believe whatever Trump says, it shouldn’t be surprising that a disturbingly large part of the US might legitimately believe Taco Bell is authentic Mexican food, lol.
You're more just confused about the average pallet of white people, particularly the now culturally dominant white progressive 20-40 year olds. I am not one of them, but am obviously well versed in them. For someone like me, the best mexican I've ever had was from a cart in Pilsen that was likely not licensed and cost $1 a taco, $4 a burrito. OTOH I went to the "best" new taco place with a sister in law and it was really bland and not tasty.
Even though I am white, I consider myself much better at making authentic Mexican food than that Mexican-pwned restaurant serves. That's because its just a famous Mexican chef playing on the sentimentality and taste buds of rich white progressives.
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On June 29 2020 14:58 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 14:41 StalkerTL wrote:On June 29 2020 14:24 Zambrah wrote:
Dont most places kind of bastardize foreign food for local tastes? God knows China does it, and god knows the US does it.
In fact, in China they have Dominos, and at first they served basically what they serve in the US, but China wasn't really into it, so now they serve stuff like corn and this weird egg mayo and steak fries pizza. Oh, and they had this pizza I loosely translated to "French style pizza" that had some sort of weird ingredient on it, sadly my translating sucks so I can't CONFIRM it had snails on it, but I do believe one of the words I read near that on the menu was maybe snail.
EDIT: And yeah, I've heard the entire Michelin star system has heavily biased fine dining towards French cuisine, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that bias exists with celebrity chefs. Yeah it absolutely happens worldwide. I don’t think that’s inherently a problem in most cases, a lot of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese chefs who produce European foods are generally trained in Europe and make it pretty clear that their products are not entire authentic. A lot of the mid-range and high end European restaurants I’ve tried in those countries are exceptionally good and I don’t think many Europeans would have major issues with them. The discussion in the article was less about that and more about the choice of people writing the cookbooks and recipes that try to sell their recipes as authentic. Chrissy Teigan isn’t going to make an authentic borscht but somewhere like Food Network will use her to sell her “authentic” Eastern European recipe because she’s more digestible for the domestic market than the Eastern European chef helping her. It’s a very American specific problem but it is definitely an interesting topic on whether or not this is fair on the cultures the media are appropriating for content. A lot of the time it isn’t that hard to bring someone from the culture to do the recipe properly. That’s actually part of the problem Bon Appetit is going through where the ethnic chefs, who have worked in top class restaurants, got side-lined by the white hosts. Instead of getting them to show how to make an authentic tortilla, the white chefs just bumble along and produce some rough approximation of the real thing while kind of selling it as “authentic”. EDIT: @Stratos, don’t forget that plenty of people still enthusiastically believe whatever Trump says, it shouldn’t be surprising that a disturbingly large part of the US might legitimately believe Taco Bell is authentic Mexican food, lol.
To our point about what American's think Mexican food is:
It's not Taco Tuesday, but you may want to head over to Taco Bell after reading this!
The popular fast-food restaurant was named America's best Mexican restaurant by the Harris Poll. Moe's held the title last year and Chipotle in 2016.
The poll surveyed more than 77,000 consumers, who assessed more than 3,000 brands across more than 300 categories.
abc7.com
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On June 29 2020 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 14:58 Zambrah wrote:On June 29 2020 14:41 StalkerTL wrote:On June 29 2020 14:24 Zambrah wrote:
Dont most places kind of bastardize foreign food for local tastes? God knows China does it, and god knows the US does it.
In fact, in China they have Dominos, and at first they served basically what they serve in the US, but China wasn't really into it, so now they serve stuff like corn and this weird egg mayo and steak fries pizza. Oh, and they had this pizza I loosely translated to "French style pizza" that had some sort of weird ingredient on it, sadly my translating sucks so I can't CONFIRM it had snails on it, but I do believe one of the words I read near that on the menu was maybe snail.
EDIT: And yeah, I've heard the entire Michelin star system has heavily biased fine dining towards French cuisine, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that bias exists with celebrity chefs. Yeah it absolutely happens worldwide. I don’t think that’s inherently a problem in most cases, a lot of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese chefs who produce European foods are generally trained in Europe and make it pretty clear that their products are not entire authentic. A lot of the mid-range and high end European restaurants I’ve tried in those countries are exceptionally good and I don’t think many Europeans would have major issues with them. The discussion in the article was less about that and more about the choice of people writing the cookbooks and recipes that try to sell their recipes as authentic. Chrissy Teigan isn’t going to make an authentic borscht but somewhere like Food Network will use her to sell her “authentic” Eastern European recipe because she’s more digestible for the domestic market than the Eastern European chef helping her. It’s a very American specific problem but it is definitely an interesting topic on whether or not this is fair on the cultures the media are appropriating for content. A lot of the time it isn’t that hard to bring someone from the culture to do the recipe properly. That’s actually part of the problem Bon Appetit is going through where the ethnic chefs, who have worked in top class restaurants, got side-lined by the white hosts. Instead of getting them to show how to make an authentic tortilla, the white chefs just bumble along and produce some rough approximation of the real thing while kind of selling it as “authentic”. EDIT: @Stratos, don’t forget that plenty of people still enthusiastically believe whatever Trump says, it shouldn’t be surprising that a disturbingly large part of the US might legitimately believe Taco Bell is authentic Mexican food, lol. To our point about what American's think Mexican food is: Show nested quote +It's not Taco Tuesday, but you may want to head over to Taco Bell after reading this!
The popular fast-food restaurant was named America's best Mexican restaurant by the Harris Poll. Moe's held the title last year and Chipotle in 2016.
The poll surveyed more than 77,000 consumers, who assessed more than 3,000 brands across more than 300 categories. abc7.com
I don't really disagree with your other points, but looking at the harris poll page linked from that article, I'm not sure that this poll is a good reflection of how good people think the food actually is--it's a measure of the brand itself (and "best" is a nebulous word that can be twisted to mean anything).
Looking at the harrispoll website, they measure three categories: Familiarity, Quality, and Purchase consideration. Of these, only one actually measures the quality of food which will vary because taste is subjective, while the other two are going to greatly push up a global brand like Taco Bell. Everyone has heard of Taco Bell, so it will get near max points in that category while a locally owned one will get nothing. Purchase consideration could be a measure of a lot of factors such as price vs. quality/amount of food, and again the fact that it's familiar to everyone will probably get it some sort of bump here. Something relatively cheap like Taco Bell is probably not going to get hurt much here, because the fact that it's one of the most well known franchises means people buy from it.
So Taco Bell is the "best mexican restaurant" here because it's well known and good enough that people will buy it. That said, there's probably an argument to be made that the fact that it's such a huge brand is reflective of something
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On June 29 2020 15:50 TomatoBisque wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 29 2020 14:58 Zambrah wrote:On June 29 2020 14:41 StalkerTL wrote:On June 29 2020 14:24 Zambrah wrote:
Dont most places kind of bastardize foreign food for local tastes? God knows China does it, and god knows the US does it.
In fact, in China they have Dominos, and at first they served basically what they serve in the US, but China wasn't really into it, so now they serve stuff like corn and this weird egg mayo and steak fries pizza. Oh, and they had this pizza I loosely translated to "French style pizza" that had some sort of weird ingredient on it, sadly my translating sucks so I can't CONFIRM it had snails on it, but I do believe one of the words I read near that on the menu was maybe snail.
EDIT: And yeah, I've heard the entire Michelin star system has heavily biased fine dining towards French cuisine, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that bias exists with celebrity chefs. Yeah it absolutely happens worldwide. I don’t think that’s inherently a problem in most cases, a lot of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese chefs who produce European foods are generally trained in Europe and make it pretty clear that their products are not entire authentic. A lot of the mid-range and high end European restaurants I’ve tried in those countries are exceptionally good and I don’t think many Europeans would have major issues with them. The discussion in the article was less about that and more about the choice of people writing the cookbooks and recipes that try to sell their recipes as authentic. Chrissy Teigan isn’t going to make an authentic borscht but somewhere like Food Network will use her to sell her “authentic” Eastern European recipe because she’s more digestible for the domestic market than the Eastern European chef helping her. It’s a very American specific problem but it is definitely an interesting topic on whether or not this is fair on the cultures the media are appropriating for content. A lot of the time it isn’t that hard to bring someone from the culture to do the recipe properly. That’s actually part of the problem Bon Appetit is going through where the ethnic chefs, who have worked in top class restaurants, got side-lined by the white hosts. Instead of getting them to show how to make an authentic tortilla, the white chefs just bumble along and produce some rough approximation of the real thing while kind of selling it as “authentic”. EDIT: @Stratos, don’t forget that plenty of people still enthusiastically believe whatever Trump says, it shouldn’t be surprising that a disturbingly large part of the US might legitimately believe Taco Bell is authentic Mexican food, lol. To our point about what American's think Mexican food is: It's not Taco Tuesday, but you may want to head over to Taco Bell after reading this!
The popular fast-food restaurant was named America's best Mexican restaurant by the Harris Poll. Moe's held the title last year and Chipotle in 2016.
The poll surveyed more than 77,000 consumers, who assessed more than 3,000 brands across more than 300 categories. abc7.com I don't really disagree with your other points, but looking at the harris poll page linked from that article, I'm not sure that this poll is a good reflection of how good people think the food actually is--it's a measure of the brand itself (and "best" is a nebulous word that can be twisted to mean anything). Looking at the harrispoll website, they measure three categories: Familiarity, Quality, and Purchase consideration. Of these, only one actually measures the quality of food which will vary because taste is subjective, while the other two are going to greatly push up a global brand like Taco Bell. Everyone has heard of Taco Bell, so it will get near max points in that category while a locally owned one will get nothing. Purchase consideration could be a measure of a lot of factors such as price vs. quality/amount of food, and again the fact that it's familiar to everyone will probably get it some sort of bump here. Something relatively cheap like Taco Bell is probably not going to get hurt much here, because the fact that it's one of the most well known franchises means people buy from it. So Taco Bell is the "best mexican restaurant" here because it's well known and good enough that people will buy it. That said, there's probably an argument to be made that the fact that it's such a huge brand is reflective of something
I didn't bother looking at the particular methodology because the headline (and likely faulty methodology) is sort of the point. But I agree with pretty much everything you raised.
It's an expansion on this point and the following one
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On June 29 2020 14:50 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2020 14:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 29 2020 14:30 Falling wrote:
Nobody goes to a fast food restaurant with the mind that they are getting the real deal for cultural food. If they are, they're fools. And I'm not sure where the Nazis comes into it with a fast food franchise chain. I was trying to establish a basic baseline of understanding how well-intentioned people could do wildly offensive things through cultural appropriation of food. As well as how it can get so out of hand as to entirely supplant the culture from which it was appropriated. The "taco" being a prime example. It's been part of the "woke" movement so more people know now, but most people have no idea they don't sell tacos at taco bell (some do, but those crunchy yellow things aren't tacos). I think food is a pretty poor example for cultural appropriation/exploitation. As others have said, food crosses cultures so much in ways that other pieces of culture don't and it is a pretty intentional (and widely accepted) cross-cultural act to change food in various ways to appeal to the receiving culture. All of this kind of shoots the analogy in the foot. Also, absolutely no one goes to a Taco Bell or any other generic fast food restaurant and thinks they're getting real Mexican food. I know we commonly say "no one says/does/thinks X" in a hyperbolic fashion, but I genuinely don't think that all but the absolute dumbest humans on the planet think that generic American chain restaurants are authentic anything. Anyone and everyone knows that you just go there for shitty fast food and, when you talk about Mexican food, you're talking about a legitimate restaurant and not a Taco Bell or Del Taco. I think cultural appropriation discussions have much more salience when referencing things like music, language, clothing, etc.
I never understood the whole "cultural appropriation" discussion. It seems like a really defensive vision of what culture is - as if culture was a commodity you own and that you lose if people imitate it. Culture is meant to be crossed and shared. And if other people "appropriate" your culture, it's a success, not a defeat. Culture is meant to radiate, and in the process, to change, adapt and merge. I think we should rethink the whole "authentic" label. First because usually there is not really such a thing in the first place, secondly because it's on both sides of the argument just a commercial argument.
When it comes to food, the problem with Taco Bell is the same than with Mc Donald or Domino's pizzas: it's that it's absolutely shit. I see it much more as a general problem with garbage food and big chain being popular than any "cultural appropriation" issue. Why do people go to Taco Bell when they can go to a real restaurant that is not really much more expensive and makes real food with people who might even actually care?
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Norway28620 Posts
In Norway, bastardized taco is ubiquitous, and it's nothing like authentic mexican tacos, however it's also branded as tex-mex, not mexican. (I'm not gonna claim that this is necessarily something all Norwegians do or know, but everybody I know with any interest in food are well aware of the fact that the tacos eaten for taco friday (a very real thing in Norway) are not real mexican tacos.
But I mean, this applies to all really good food everywhere (because good food gets replicated), and I can't help but feel that the same principle that would make it 'morally objectionable' for a white guy to serve bastardized mexican food claiming that he's serving tacos would also make it morally objectionable for a black guy from chicago to serve deep dish pizza while having pizza in the name of the dish served. Italians generally don't consider what many americans consider pizza, pizza, and indeed, if you have pizza in Italy, you'll notice it differs greatly. And hell, many people who come to Italy, home of the pizza, are actually somewhat disappointed by the Italian pizza because they feel it needs more topping..
Chinese food in the west is very different from Chinese food in China. But it's generally made by Chinese immigrants, be it first or second or third generation, and they made the calculus themselves that a) genuine chinese food wouldn't sell that well and b) difference in availability of ingredients would mean some adjustments would have to be made either way.
I mean, at some point along the journey, the white guy's mexican food chain having mariachi bands of white guys wearing sombreros and fake over-sized mustaches and eminem singing my salsa becomes offensive. But I fundamentally disagree that there's anything intrinsically wrong with people whose 'heritage' is with one culture making food with it's origins from another culture, and indeed, being opposed to this principle sounds like arguing for cultural segregation, which I'd consider really negative. There are ways for the fusion of cultures to be done in a tasteful manner and ways for it to be done in a tasteless manner, and I'm totally in agreement that there should be done a better job communicating that the bastardized food does not resemble the authentic food.. (Although, again, Chinese people serving westernized Chinese food might not want to do this.)
So I really can't agree that only people from culture x should be allowed to make food from culture x. And I can't really envision that there's any way to possibly effectively 'police' that it should always be done in a tasteful manner. Furthermore, I think some of the most interesting culture is 'produced' through the meeting and melding of cultures. Again - this is why I consider myself a multiculturalist, it's because I think the blending of different cultures produces some fantastic outcomes. Food is one area, the nearby store selling asian ingredients has vastly enriched my dining experience, even if I can't claim to make authentic asian food. Music is another. Listening to The HU blending mongolian throat singing with rock/metal is amazing, aforementioned eminem did actually make some very good rap, there's some great rock produced by a whole lot of white people.
Maybe there's a different discussion to be had around whether the commercial profits derived from product originating from culture x should go to culture x or culture y, but I don't think that really relates to the topic of cultural appropriation vs cultural appreciation, and I overwhelmingly favor a different distribution of wealth and income from what we see in both the world and within individual countries anyway. (However, I think adding a tax to tex-mex products claiming to be mexican and giving the money to mexican communities really doesn't sound like a practical way of going about this. )
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On June 29 2020 17:56 Liquid`Drone wrote:+ Show Spoiler +In Norway, bastardized taco is ubiquitous, and it's nothing like authentic mexican tacos, however it's also branded as tex-mex, not mexican. (I'm not gonna claim that this is necessarily something all Norwegians do or know, but everybody I know with any interest in food are well aware of the fact that the tacos eaten for taco friday (a very real thing in Norway) are not real mexican tacos.
But I mean, this applies to all really good food everywhere (because good food gets replicated), and I can't help but feel that the same principle that would make it 'morally objectionable' for a white guy to serve bastardized mexican food claiming that he's serving tacos would also make it morally objectionable for a black guy from chicago to serve deep dish pizza while having pizza in the name of the dish served. Italians generally don't consider what many americans consider pizza, pizza, and indeed, if you have pizza in Italy, you'll notice it differs greatly. And hell, many people who come to Italy, home of the pizza, are actually somewhat disappointed by the Italian pizza because they feel it needs more topping..
Chinese food in the west is very different from Chinese food in China. But it's generally made by Chinese immigrants, be it first or second or third generation, and they made the calculus themselves that a) genuine chinese food wouldn't sell that well and b) difference in availability of ingredients would mean some adjustments would have to be made either way.
I mean, at some point along the journey, the white guy's mexican food chain having mariachi bands of white guys wearing sombreros and fake over-sized mustaches and eminem singing my salsa becomes offensive. But I fundamentally disagree that there's anything intrinsically wrong with people whose 'heritage' is with one culture making food with it's origins from another culture, and indeed, being opposed to this principle sounds like arguing for cultural segregation, which I'd consider really negative. There are ways for the fusion of cultures to be done in a tasteful manner and ways for it to be done in a tasteless manner, and I'm totally in agreement that there should be done a better job communicating that the bastardized food does not resemble the authentic food.. (Although, again, Chinese people serving westernized Chinese food might not want to do this.)
So I really can't agree that only people from culture x should be allowed to make food from culture x. And I can't really envision that there's any way to possibly effectively 'police' that it should always be done in a tasteful manner. Furthermore, I think some of the most interesting culture is 'produced' through the meeting and melding of cultures. Again - this is why I consider myself a multiculturalist, it's because I think the blending of different cultures produces some fantastic outcomes. Food is one area, the nearby store selling asian ingredients has vastly enriched my dining experience, even if I can't claim to make authentic asian food. Music is another. Listening to The HU blending mongolian throat singing with rock/metal is amazing, aforementioned eminem did actually make some very good rap, there's some great rock produced by a whole lot of white people.
Maybe there's a different discussion to be had around whether the commercial profits derived from product originating from culture x should go to culture x or culture y, but I don't think that really relates to the topic of cultural appropriation vs cultural appreciation, and I overwhelmingly favor a different distribution of wealth and income from what we see in both the world and within individual countries anyway. (However, I think adding a tax to tex-mex products claiming to be mexican and giving the money to mexican communities really doesn't sound like a practical way of going about this. )
So I really can't agree that only people from culture x should be allowed to make food from culture x.
Isn't the proposition. It's that there's more to appreciation than exploitation. Cultural appropriation deals with the latter.
The notion that only culture x can make food from culture x is a poison strawman, often made unwittingly, to undermine the concept of cultural appropriation.
This is very much "don't you get the joke/It's not fair if they can do it/I don't see the big deal/etc" replaced with "don't you get it's adoption/appreciation" and the other two are the same.
I'm telling folks it's offensive (and destructive, not collaborative), they google it and find scores of literature on the topic (so not something I made up), they can accept it as real, read up on it and ask informed questions/make informed critiques, or just keep supporting/maintaining the offensive position. Beyond that I'm fine just disagreeing on it and hoping the extremely racist stuff (the white mariachi band doing My Salsa stuff) is as universally discouraged as possible.
EDIT: I feel like I have to say this explicitly. There's a way for any peoples to make (almost) anything from any other peoples but we're basically talking about a sort of conscious cultural attribution.
I'd hope it a given I'd not be advocating a capitalist notion of copyright but more of a Creative Commons concept with respect to the relative cultural value of the thing (food and the surrounding ceremony is usually very high if people think about it), and the power/political dynamics ( which is what I was going for with the vegan nazi dogs replacing kielbasas in poland example).
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I agree with Drone. Hell in our national cusine with have bastarized versions of dishes from other cultures, this 'bastardization' happened long time ago (few handred years in some cases) so it is now suddenly inappropriate becuase 200 years ago someone took this jewish recipe and thought "I will make this better???".
Doesnt make much sense to me.
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On June 29 2020 17:56 Liquid`Drone wrote:
In Norway, bastardized taco is ubiquitous, and it's nothing like authentic mexican tacos, however it's also branded as tex-mex, not mexican. (I'm not gonna claim that this is necessarily something all Norwegians do or know, but everybody I know with any interest in food are well aware of the fact that the tacos eaten for taco friday (a very real thing in Norway) are not real mexican tacos.
But I mean, this applies to all really good food everywhere (because good food gets replicated), and I can't help but feel that the same principle that would make it 'morally objectionable' for a white guy to serve bastardized mexican food claiming that he's serving tacos would also make it morally objectionable for a black guy from chicago to serve deep dish pizza while having pizza in the name of the dish served. Italians generally don't consider what many americans consider pizza, pizza, and indeed, if you have pizza in Italy, you'll notice it differs greatly. And hell, many people who come to Italy, home of the pizza, are actually somewhat disappointed by the Italian pizza because they feel it needs more topping..
Chinese food in the west is very different from Chinese food in China. But it's generally made by Chinese immigrants, be it first or second or third generation, and they made the calculus themselves that a) genuine chinese food wouldn't sell that well and b) difference in availability of ingredients would mean some adjustments would have to be made either way.
I mean, at some point along the journey, the white guy's mexican food chain having mariachi bands of white guys wearing sombreros and fake over-sized mustaches and eminem singing my salsa becomes offensive. But I fundamentally disagree that there's anything intrinsically wrong with people whose 'heritage' is with one culture making food with it's origins from another culture, and indeed, being opposed to this principle sounds like arguing for cultural segregation, which I'd consider really negative. There are ways for the fusion of cultures to be done in a tasteful manner and ways for it to be done in a tasteless manner, and I'm totally in agreement that there should be done a better job communicating that the bastardized food does not resemble the authentic food.. (Although, again, Chinese people serving westernized Chinese food might not want to do this.)
So I really can't agree that only people from culture x should be allowed to make food from culture x. And I can't really envision that there's any way to possibly effectively 'police' that it should always be done in a tasteful manner. Furthermore, I think some of the most interesting culture is 'produced' through the meeting and melding of cultures. Again - this is why I consider myself a multiculturalist, it's because I think the blending of different cultures produces some fantastic outcomes. Food is one area, the nearby store selling asian ingredients has vastly enriched my dining experience, even if I can't claim to make authentic asian food. Music is another. Listening to The HU blending mongolian throat singing with rock/metal is amazing, aforementioned eminem did actually make some very good rap, there's some great rock produced by a whole lot of white people.
Maybe there's a different discussion to be had around whether the commercial profits derived from product originating from culture x should go to culture x or culture y, but I don't think that really relates to the topic of cultural appropriation vs cultural appreciation, and I overwhelmingly favor a different distribution of wealth and income from what we see in both the world and within individual countries anyway. (However, I think adding a tax to tex-mex products claiming to be mexican and giving the money to mexican communities really doesn't sound like a practical way of going about this. )
Absolutely. At that point Norwegian taco is really a thing in itself and part of the culture. And it has little to do with the Mexican ones, it's really become its own thing.
Just the same way (to stay in nordic countries) that Finnish tango is now an extremely important musical genre. I haven't heard Argentinians getting offended. If anything, it's really cool that argentine tango, both as a dance and a music can have "offsprings" in other cultures, that become completely distinct.
Funnily enough, because of the immense popularity of Finnish tango, argentine tango is now bigger than ever too in Finland, with various festivals inviting Argentinian artist to play, dance and teach.
On June 29 2020 18:32 Silvanel wrote:
I agree with Drone. Hell in our national cusine with have bastarized versions of dishes from other cultures, this 'bastardization' happened long time ago (few handred years in some cases) so it is now suddenly inappropriate becuase 200 years ago someone took this jewish recipe and thought "I will make this better???".
Doesnt make much sense to me.
Yep. Actually croissants, this quintessentially french and iconic culinary item, is actually a viennese invention. We call the family of croissants-like items "viennoiseries" in France.
Again, I find the whole cultural appropriation concept a pretty sad one.
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Biff's argument kinda succinctly demonstrates how
The notion that only culture x can make food from culture x is a poison strawman, often made unwittingly, to undermine the concept of cultural appropriation.
This is very much "don't you get the joke/It's not fair if they can do it/I don't see the big deal/etc" replaced with "don't you get it's adoption/appreciation" and the other two are the same.
Cultural appropriation isn't about Norwegian tacos existing, but making it about that makes the conclusion that:
I find the whole cultural appropriation concept a pretty sad one
self-evident, rather than absurd.
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1- Why don't you address me directly. It's basic politeness.
2- If my position is absurd or a strawman explain why and what yours is. With examples. Not just general claims. And explain why other examples are not relevant.
We've been there.
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So GH, I think I understand what you're trying you say, but maybe we should understand the rules of the game a bit better in general so we don't all talk over each other because of misunderstandings.
At what point does cultural adoption/appreciation become appropriation?
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EPT
