NOTED #8
a compilation of cultural fodder (and cultural discourse) to see you through the weekend. This week: re-appraising histories.
THE WHAT:
Is an All-Meat Diet What Nature Intended? by Manvir Singh, The New Yorker
‘We’re on TikTok? What’s TikTok?’ The forgotten bands going supersonic thanks to gen Z by Dorian Lynskey, the Guardian
In the Shadow of the Holocaust by Masha Gessen, The New Yorker
Bring It On with Tessa Coates – Sentimental Garbage, hosted by Caroline O’Donoghue
THE WHY:
Is an All-Meat Diet What Nature Intended? by Manvir Singh
A couple of weeks ago, whilst scrolling through reels on Instagram (ahem), a woman popped up on my screen who was snacking on a block of butter, wrapper folded down like it was a banana or burrito; she then proceeded to make ‘muffins’ from eggs, ground beef, and butter. I was vaguely aware of the doctrine of the all-meat eater but seeing someone take bites out of a hunk of butter was a particularly disturbing, confronting experience. So much so that I told my boyfriend, who then sent this essay on ‘meatfluencers.’ It unpacks the (often fraudulent) claims of those who live off meat and meat alone. As Singh is an anthropologist, he does an excellent, all-encompassing cultural study of the phenomenon, traversing the history, scholarship, and contemporary world of the human carnivore. Unsurprisingly, the claims are bullshit, and most of the theories that underpin the movement are willful distortions of facts.
In a more direct way, this is an interesting piece on diet culture. But, what really drew me in is my love for uncovering yet another weird corner of mankind.
Just as I love weird corners of mankind, I love how the internet and social media work in mysteriously unexpected ways. Resurrecting forgotten, bizarre, or niche culture from the past is probably my favourite thing about social media (I’m obsessed with Cilla Black’s musical oeuvre! My reels are currently awash with some old lady and little green girl puppets I recently learnt were from a show called Nanalan!). This piece is on how forgotten bands and/or forgotten hits have entered the current cultural zeitgeist thanks to Gen Z reel makers, reigniting the bands’ careers and profits in many cases. Some of the purest, most inexplicable comebacks in the history of mankind.
In The Shadow of the Holocaust by Masha Gessen
It is ever so hard for people to wrap their minds around the idea that someone could have been the enemy of your enemy and yet not a benevolent force. A victim and also a perpetrator. Or vice versa.
The closing lines of this challenging essay perfectly summarise the fraught conversations many people are having regarding Israel’s current actions in Gaza, given the Jewish history as victims of genocide. This conversation naturally has a sharper meaning for the Jewish community, but it is also particularly poignant in Germany right now, as Russian Jew Gessen eloquently untangles (and in Austria, where I live and only have citizenship because I am a descendent of Jews who were stripped of their Austrian citizenship by the Nazi party). It’s a brave, nuanced, and challenging essay. It is a thoughtful, well-balanced, and incredibly critically astute piece of journalism. Right now in Germany and Austria, to criticise Israel is a particularly loaded matter, and to compare Israel’s policy or actions in any way, shape, or form to that of the Third Reich is blasphemy. To be clear, neither Gessen nor anybody with their wits about them is directly comparing the two. Instead, Gessen encourages the reader to look at the broader trends of Nationalist leaders, past and present. Right now, not doing so is creating an uncomfortable, potentially devastating disavowal in Germany and Austria. As Gessen writes: ‘insistence on the singularity of the Holocaust and the centrality of Germany’s commitment to reckoning with it are two sides of the same coin: they position the Holocaust as an event that Germans must always remember and mention but don’t have to fear repeating, because it is unlike anything else that’s ever happened or will happen.’
As a post-script, it was announced yesterday that Gessen will no longer receive the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought because of this essay, which feels ironic in a terrible way.
Bring It On with Tessa Coates – Sentimental Garbage
Sentimental Garbage has been keeping me very good company in recent weeks. Like all podcasts, it’s not just the subject that matters but the delivery that matters. Diving back into Bring It On, a stalwart of my childhood film-watching (I believe I may have even had it on video, yes, not DVD, but VIDEO!), with two such effervescent sparkly people as Caroline and Tessa (they are definitely not an O’Donoghue and Coates partnership) was a joy. I have long maintained that it is an excellent film that stands the test of time, whereas certain other childhood favourites of mine most definitely have not (I attempted to re-watch Miss Congeniality recently and couldn’t get past the first fifteen minutes for many, many reasons). As someone who still re-enacts the Sparky Polastri’s spirit fingers scene on occasion, reliving Bring It On's best moments is a joy. But the fact that Tessa is the biggest Bring It On stan—with the most fabulous story of becoming a competitive cheerleader which acts as an excellent podcast within a podcast—makes it a truly glorious, very funny, very feel-good episode.