In Danger and Extreme Duress the Middle Road is Certain Death
I’m vegan and a fan of all salad bars. Fresh Choice is Silicon Valley’s version. You pay $9.49 for all-you-can-eat salad, soup, pizza, potatoes, pasta, and ice cream. It’s difficult to find a seat if you go at certain hours of the day. Last night I was there and I thought a little too much about the way this restaurant works.
It was one eight year old kid with a whooping cough about five people behind me at the bar. He had one of those coughs that sound like they came from some deep cave in the chest where a virus has grown a luxurious home. Of course, he stood level with the food so with each itch in his throat I watched a pile of veggies get covered with the convulsing elements of that deep, luxurious cave.
Is it too germaphobic to also unlike the fact that each customer in the restaurant handles every one of the tongs used to place the lettuce, tomatoes, olives, etc., on your plate? It’s also clear that silverware and dishes are never adequately cleaned. It doesn’t seem that I mind all these health risks because I, like so many, keep coming back to Fresh Choice. And it’s not just Fresh Choice, is it? The Soup Plantation, Sweet Tomatoes have become staples of America’s suburban restaurant landscape. It is a much healthier step up from McDonald’s, certainly. But why did this model of the self-serve and the endless portion suddenly become such a keen way to go out to eat in the past five years? What is interesting is that Fresh Choice has eliminated that middleman position known as the waitress. Like Trader Joe’s has eliminated the major middleman distributors such as Del Monte, Dole, and Green Giant. Like IKEA’s allen wrench system has eliminated furniture assemblers.
In these new compelling, even aesthetically and economically ‘progressive,’ franchises are we witnessing the first baby steps of a socialized marketplace? Or, rather, simply the elimination of that other great 20th century middleman called the middle class?
Fresh Choice or Free Choice?
Rich always gets me thinking. He asks the right questions – questions which shake complacency out of every day. While it is easy to recognize what is in a picture, it is infinitely difficult to expose what is missing, especially when the picture attempts to distract the viewer from the fissures and chasms upon its surface. Any ordinary customer making the rounds at Fresh Choice would not stop to wonder where the waitresses/waiters have gone. Broadcast music fills the space of reflection silence makes easy. And all those clanking plates and vibrations of the ice-cream machine serve as reminders of more to be eaten. Hundreds of options to be eaten.
But then Rich sits back in the midst of all-you-can-eat onslaught and begins to draw conclusions as though nothing is in the room – or as though everything is working like a transparent system which he then proceeds to take apart.
The middleman is in a state of obsolescence.
The middle class is in a state of cooptation.
And everything is promoted with words that sound less like opinion and more like fact. I begin to wonder at what point insinuation extinguishes desire and free choice. I can’t seem to buy anything without a computer-generated response of “customers who purchased this item also purchased these items,” or “based on your interest in this item, the following items are recommended.” Behind these words are endless mathematical proofs calculating potential steps I haven’t even taken. Sometimes, I stop looking for what it is I really want and begin to click on all those suggestions I never before considered. These websites are not open. Rather, they are closed circuits of libidinal energy which inseminate and perpetuate themselves from within. One could get lost on these pages, clicking and buying along an endless source of suggestion. And all those customer reviews, the golden stars, the number of readers who found the write-ups helpful – all this feigns to insist again freedom of choice. If these texts have bad ratings, I won’t buy them. Or if they have good ratings, I’ll make a choice to add them to my collection. But then those individuals writing the reviews are, too, caught in this incestual regression. Everyone is following everyone who is no one but a series of algorithms standing where we believe someone to be. And while we are chasing each other, we remain within the net, buying in a vortex of closed selection.
So these thoughts are not new. Adorno wrote so beautifully of the Culture Industry’s ability to reiterate rather than produce, to replace desire with repetition. But who knew a salad bar would lead us there?
The next time I go to Fresh Choice, I will look and listen. I will see how all the pickles and olives and yellow peppers are grouped together. I’ll notice how my salad is made for me before I arrive. I will realize I am ensured not to try anything different. Heaven help us if the Thousand Island dressing isn’t adjacent to the French variation. And the Italian shouldn’t be far from the vinaigrette.
Thanks, Rich. You are right. These are the first baby steps of a socialized marketplace, fostered by the schema of mass culture. This is the elimination of the middle class mind, a mind which chooses not according to its inherent desires but rather in answer to a sly hint instilled subtly and artfully in the garb of free choice. There ain’t nothin’ fresh about that.
Comment by kiersten — January 31, 2007 @ 3:07 am
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Comment by mordenti — January 31, 2007 @ 12:08 pm