There is always a separation between personal experiences of cooking and food processings shown on assorted media. The extent of elaboration and artistry presented through images and videos, at least to me, is just ironically equivalent to how awkward and tedious I prepare the foods in person. There seemingly exits a perceptual battleground to fight over the location of “food” — Whether food is the embodiment of high-quality life which is worthy of ample attention; or it is merely necessities to fulfill physic needs of basis, so that people could just deal with daily dishes as casual as possible, like full liquid diet as food we usually see in the sci-fi films; or whatever else. Anyway, when we talk about food, it is intricate to identify to what degree the “food” we mean is naturally formed, or is more likely shaped by disparate media, restaurants, professional societies, cooking schools, so-called as “knowledge infrastructure”. Food is thus bonded with far more meanings besides the basic taste: if expenses of food directly signify the economic capacity, dining etiquette and sense of taste yet implicitly suggest the social statues of diners; if delicate and mystified visualization of food processing somehow meets the bourgeois preferences, explicit and quantitative teaching videos yet appear more appealing to the underlying masses.
However, it is interesting to think about the uniqueness of food, of which those symbolic features of food seem no different from the other daily articles like clothes, vehicles, houses, especially when visualization, symbolization, contextual experience are not already a fresh fashion to look through. Food, in my view, is essentially antimedialized. It is admitted that all the senses should be engaged in the process of food tasting, nevertheless, the central elements are always the smell and taste, which function before and after we visually see the food. When the food is displayed in the common media, except some new media which is expected to be invented to deploy all senses, a large amount of information has been omitted, where we can only imagine through the reaction of diners and visual images. Interestingly, the imaginary experience on the other hand amplify the pleasure of taste, and even gives birth to a new occupation called “Mukbang”. Through watching the anchors eating, audiences gain more satisfaction compared with the previous static food display, where the missing sense of smell and taste are mobilized in an empathized manner.
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