Out of the Kitchen, Into the History Classroom

The favorite bourgeoisie food scribe, Michael Pollan, recently published a whining screed about how people don’t cook anymore, they just watch other people cook. Of course, as with all Pollan articles, by ‘people’ he means the bourgeoisie; white, upper middle class social strivers with disposable income and well-examined navels.

These people, the bourgeoisie, have always aspired to NOT cook. Julia Child, who Pollan appreciatively credits with his mothers, and his, “culinary awakening”, is not so disingenuous as to pretend to be a defender of some sacred social ritual. In a 1989 interview, Child states simply that

“I grew up in the teens and ‘20s, when most people had—middle class people—had maids or someone to help.”

She goes on to say that her mother only knew two dishes, and herself, none at all. None of this should be surprising. The aristocratically wealthy have always had cooks amongst their servants, and the bourgeoisie have always longed to emulate, as far as possible, the wealthy above them. Today, everyone can afford what for Child’s parents took an upper-middle-class income – namely someone else to cook your food. Anyone can walk into any fast food chain on any corner and walk out with a days calories for less than one hour of minimum-wage work. It should not surprise anyone that an awful lot of people avail themselves of such.

This is always what irks me about Pollan. He has some good ideas buried in the dross of his writing, but they are so covered up in a-historical, unthinking tripe as to make then all but useless. Yes, people’s health, wealth and environment would be better off if they embraced, in a mass-movement sort of way, the quotidian chores of home, cooking among them, and approach them as crafts to master. No, the lack of bourgeoisie doing so now has nothing to do with a flight from history. It is exactly the status quo ante that existed before Julia burst on the scene. His contention that this is the first generation to flee the kitchen is myopic in it’s self-absorption, which is true of most of Pollan’s writing, and certainly of the thinking of the kinds of people who bob their heads in smug agreement to his dashed off claptrap.