“For example: A writer sets out to write science fiction but isn’t familiar with the genre, hasn’t read what’s been written. This is a fairly common situation, because science fiction is known to sell well but, as a subliterary genre, is not supposed to be worth study—what’s to learn?
It doesn’t occur to the novice that a genre is a genre because it has a field and focus of its own; its appropriate and particular tools, rules, and techniques for handling the material; its traditions; and its experienced, appreciative readers—that it is, in fact, a literature. Ignoring all this, our novice is just about to reinvent the wheel, the space ship, the space alien, and the mad scientist, with cries of innocent wonder. The cries will not be echoed by the readers.
Readers familiar with that genre have met the space ship, the alien, and the mad scientist before. They know more about them than the writer does. In the same way, critics who set out to talk about a fantasy novel without having read any fantasy since they were eight, and in ignorance of the history and extensive theory of fantasy literature, will make fools of themselves because they don’t know how to read the book. They have no contextual information to tell them what its tradition is, where it’s coming from, what it’s trying to do, what it does.
This was liberally proved when the first Harry Potter book came out and a lot of literary reviewers ran around shrieking about the incredible originality of the book. This originality was an artifact of the reviewers’ blank ignorance of its genres (children’s fantasy and the British boarding-school story), plus the fact that they hadn’t read a fantasy since they were eight. It was pitiful. It was like watching some TV gourmet chef eat a piece of buttered toast and squeal, ‘But this is delicious! Unheard of! Where has it been all my life?’”
I did say that food from immigrant cultures has partially filled in the void left by the annihilation of traditional recipes. Like you look at old British recipes and they're often going to be more flavorful than mid-to-late 20th century recipes, and there are material reasons for that. I can't speak to the state of things in the UK now, but in the US it seems like there's a sort of renaissance of people trying to relearn how to actually cook (in a similar fashion to how breweries started producing better beers and rediscovering how to do better than just making pre-skunked slop by the ton) and a lot of more flavorful adaptations from other cultures are becoming standard foods to edge in on 20th century American food which is also having to innovate a bit and start to be made better.
That is an awful deal. You can get an actually good beer for that much a bottle in a six pack from the grocery store, and you can get cheap garbage beers for like 50 cents a can or bottle sometimes. Bottom shelf vodka and store-brand soda is even better, working out to like a quarter per drink.
I want to stress that there's a difference between good food and expensive food. Even the cheapest ingredients can easily be turned into amazing food, and expensive foods are often lazy garbage that's just trying to rest on the decadence of its ingredients. Which sort of circles back around to my point, that people when limited in their options innovate and find methods of cooking what they have available in a way that makes it good, while the glut of cheap "decadent" ingredients combined with the push for shelf-stability over quality has had the exact opposite effect, where instead of learning methods to make something good people just slap something expensive (or something that should be expensive given the material costs its production has) in a pan and settle for that.
You are massively condescending! When I say good food I mean good food! Don't assume I mean expensive. When I say at the bar I mean at the bar, like with a bartender involved! Its actually more expensive than that because you have to tip. Take your shitty vodka and faygo back to middle school, that is actually disgusting and worth being a snob to avoid!
I already know all that shit, don't talk to me like a child! Did you just learn all this or something, that you need so much to lecture about it? Are you writing a paper? You are repeating yourself needlessly, you were perfectly clear originally. And correct but I don't care! I like ploughman's lunch and shephard's pie. I like a cornish pasty. I mean, I'm vegan now but I liked them plenty before I was. These are bad food? Categorically? What a sad life to be such a hater!
:downbear:
"I want to pay top-shelf prices to have a beleaguered food service worker hand me a can of bottom shelf slop, for some reason. I really have a pressing need to feel power over someone, so I can clap and squeal with glee as I throw money around to make them take a can out of a box for me."
Not everyone can afford to pay a 300% markup on slop for the "fun" of being waited on.
Vodka and tap water is better than any cheap beer, at a tenth the cost. It's awful, but it doesn't taste like cheerios, sugar, and metal with an undercurrent of rot the way the absolute worst beers do. Bad beers just really have no place: they're way too expensive for how bad they are, and they're not meaningfully cheaper than much better beers. Beer of all fermented drinks has such a cheap practical ceiling on quality that you hit it around the point where you start getting into the price range of bottom shelf wines (which also have no place because they're as bad as bottom shelf beer but cost way more). For bad cheap drinks nothing beats liquor, and for good cheap drinks good beer is still affordable enough to justify over bad beer.
“I want to pay top-shelf prices to have a beleaguered food service worker hand me a can of bottom shelf slop, for some reason. I really have a pressing need to feel power over someone, so I can clap and squeal with glee as I throw money around to make them take a can out of a box for me.” basically yes you have got me exactly, except there is often also loud music and the clapping and squealing is sort of along to the beat.
Just flippin it on you, I don't actually hate vodka. I pretty much like anything. Except malt liquor
impossible to be condescending to a brit. they are bog humans lacking a capacity to understand insults
Ok? That's not really relevant to me