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EPICALLY ABSURD - ITS NOT A TUMBLR, ITS AN INTERACTIVE ESSAY →
Yeah, so this is one of my finals I’m submitting tomorrow. I have expanded my Bacon Essay into a Tumblr and expect to get an A+. How many academic Tumblr’s have y’all seen?
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In my last photo essay, The Bacon Revolution Has Already Begun, I analyzed the connection between the visualization of ridiculously unhealthy and some would say irresponsible food preparation practiced in the online community by such institutions as the Epic Meal Time Youtube Channel and the now defunct yet influential website thisiswhyourefat.com. In that work I concluded that food so intensely caloric could not possibly be meant for human consumption, at least not for sane (or sober-minded) human consumption, and therefore the food itself is a satire of Western consumption habits. The overlap between everyday Western consumption and this intense re-imagining of it serves as a magnifying glass for everyday excess.
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Compare and contrast this website’s motto with a statement made in this Epic Meal Time video.
“At Epic Meal Time, we eat our burgers, we eat all our burgers.”
Clearly, the importance of visualizing people eating the food in these representations should not be underestimated. It is not about just looking at how ridiculous the food itself is, for that would be a truly wasteful approach.
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A NOTE ON INTERNET EPICNESS
Epic: adj:
Heroic or grand in scale or character (Google Dictionary)Example: There was the most epic thread on 4chan last night - i thought this guy was trolling us, but then he convinced us he wasn’t, and then he was after all.
Scenarios depicted in internet media achieve a level of “epic” when they accomplish a representational feat that would normally be inhibited by laws of physics, international copyright law, perception, and limitations of the space/time continuum (or the human belly). In this Youtube series entitled Epic Rap Battles of History, director Peter Shukoff brings together cultural, political, and historical figures from across the ages, and fictionalizes them as competent rappers caught in a battle of boasts.
Here, I see echoes of the self-aware, comedic Caucasian appropriation use of hip-hop slang in Epic Meal Time, but I also see something bigger at work. The rap battle is epic because it visualizes the impossible, yet imaginable clash of minds. It is also interesting to note how the announcer insults the intelligence of the viewer with his “retarded” tone of voice, and yet the viewer might “accidently” learn something by the end of the Rap Battle, for example, about Steven Hawking’s Black Hole Theory and the number of known particles in the universe. By the same token, might someone who is reasonably aware of how our food system works be disgusted by Epic Meal Time’s creations, and choose to be more responsible with their food choices? And yet, they are also unable to look away?
Epic.
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I can’t drive this point home enough that there is no other word to describe this than Epic.
(via pauladeenridingthings)
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(Start watching @1:37)
Jumping off from the point about Adam hitting on too many girls while filming his TV show, we now look at a more openly ridiculous, and less insidious extension of that. The past couple of months for the EMT channel have seen them trying to “sex up” their image, albeit in a very knowing and sort of sarcastic way. It IS funny how the girl is given the less messy bacon cup cake, and eats it very daintily, while the “douchebag” character known as MusclesGlasses gets chocolate-covered bacon all over his face. The series is deriving humor from navigating through pre-coded gender roles and performing them in an over-the-top way.
Just as they (sort of accidently) approach a satire of Western consumption habits, gender roles are a source of exploration and humor as well. In the Maximum Mac ‘n Cheese Video, our host tells us “We got all these bitches eatin’ our food. You mad, hater?” While he says this, a long table of college-aged women stare blankly at the camera, while some are heard laughing off-screen. The ridiculousness…no, TEH EPICNESS!!!111 is simply too much to keep a straight face. And that’s what keeps viewers like me laughing, too. Humor is revealing.
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I’m flying, y’all!
The feminine equivalent to Epic Meal Time’s excessive cooking style seems to be Food Network Chef/Host Paula Deen. She uses so much butter, the Food Network website even recommends that you play a drinking game and take a drink every time she adds a tablespoon of butter to her current dish.
Unlike some other programs on the Food Network, such as Grill It! w/ Bobby Flay and portions of Ina Garten’s program Barefoot Contessa, in every episode of her show I’ve seen Paula Deen visually remains within the confines of the kitchen and the immediate dining areas. Other professional cooks in media are often depicted outside the kitchen, including women such as Garten, buying the ingredients to make the food for example, but within the context show Paula remains within a highly gendered space.
The internet, however, had other ideas. The meme of “Paula Deen Riding Things” liberates Deen’s likeness from the gendered space of the kitchen and into more Epic pastures. This shows the power of the internet for audience reception to become audience production, to reshape their favorite “characters” in a more interesting light, and to liberate these characters from television’s constraints.
