In this blog post, we will look at the background behind modern media’s focus on food and cooking, and how the media deals with the sense of “taste” to communicate with the public.
Turn on your television right now. As you flip through the channels, you may come across a program where a famous restaurant owner is teaching cooking. Or you may come across a program where talented chefs compete against each other in a cooking contest. Now, let’s go online. You will inevitably come across cooking recipes and information on restaurants on Facebook, personal blogs, or online news sites. The recent phenomenon of people seeking value in “taste” is an undeniable reality. With cooking shows popping up everywhere, chefs receiving celebrity treatment and frequently appearing in the media, and information about restaurants overflowing, why is the media so obsessed with food? And what does this situation mean?
When you think about it, the media has consistently fulfilled its role of entertaining us. It’s just that the field has changed a little. Most media convey information through screens (visual) and speakers (auditory), so their main purpose can be said to be to satisfy our visual and auditory senses. Even decades ago, there were famous music programs, and we can still enjoy the singers of that era through recordings left behind in the media. We can also get a glimpse of the movies and dramas of that time through the vague memories of our parents’ generation.
On the other hand, with the rapid development of the internet, the media, which has grown enormously, may not be satisfied with just satisfying our senses of sight and hearing. Finally, the public began to pursue “taste” as a form of entertainment. Of course, media does not satisfy only one sense. Rather, the senses that are satisfied by media accumulate. Just as we enjoy watching cooking programs with our eyes and ears. However, it is monumental that “taste” has become the center of the enjoyment conveyed by media.
Paradoxically, however, “eating well” is one of the oldest and greatest pleasures of mankind. Imagine this. Living organisms must consume energy sources in order to survive. Unless humans grow roots from their toes and leaves from their heads to perform photosynthesis, they must survive by eating something else. Tasting is an essential process for survival that cannot be ignored. This contrasts with the fact that we can live without music or movies. Furthermore, scientific evidence such as Penfield’s somatosensory map shows the importance of taste in our senses. Therefore, the emergence of taste in the media can be seen as natural.
This emergence has brought about significant changes in the media and its users. Unlike other forms of entertainment that focus on sight and hearing, the food we encounter in the media is not just something to be watched, but something to be made, or at least tasted, in order to fully enjoy it. Therefore, the general public who encounter it want to experience the pleasure of taste in the real world outside the media, even if only in a simple way. It is as if the media is suggesting that we seek enjoyment outside of the media.
This may raise a question. Is there an essential difference between taste and sight or hearing? Isn’t it possible to watch a music program from the past and want to play the guitar? Of course, this is true, but there is one crucial difference between cooking programs and other programs. Due to the nature of media, taste cannot be satisfied at all. No matter how much we watch samgyeopsal being grilled on the screen and listen to the sound, the taste will never reach us beyond the screen, and the only way to experience it is to grill the meat ourselves. In addition, the essential nature of food mentioned earlier also contributes to this difference. Eating is a more universal and general process that is essential for survival, which gives viewers a greater justification for pursuing that pleasure. In this way, food in the media is presented to us without the most universal sense of “taste,” and it is up to us to fill in the gaps.
For quite a long time, we have been handing over the initiative of pleasure to the media. In the past, when the media was less active, it was rare for entertainment to be provided to us as it is, and it was entirely up to us to find pleasure. At that time, the emergence of the media provided us with entertainment in a complete form, such as movies and music. On the other hand, it can be said that the more so, the more our dependence on the media increased. Now, in a sense, the media is offering us something new. Thanks to the dishes that appear in the media, we are being handed the part we need to play ourselves, beyond the screen. The current cooking boom may be the starting point for entertainment to return to us.
