I have seriously fallen behind on linking to my Spot-on columns.
I love food, but I love food culture even more. I love exploring past food fads, cultural variances in certain dishes, new exotic trends. So, last week I wrote a piece entitled Eat to Live? Live To Eat? which tied together the new Pixar film Ratatouille, the reality show The Next Food Network Star and a tale of a mugger swayed by wine and cheese.
This week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney unveiled a new spot called “Ocean,” which compares culture to “the ocean in which our children now swim.” Mitt wants to get rid of the violence, sex and drugs in the media and “clean up the water in which our kids and our grandkids are swimming.” Almost two weeks ago, around Independence Day, I used the exact same metaphor in From Sea to Shining Sea, but to a different end. I celebrated America’s cultural diversity that we swim in, an element which I think makes us a stronger nation.
There were a couple timely obvious ones, such as Paris Hilton’s Purpose-Driven Life (on the occasion of her release from prison), With a Song in Our Hearts and Stars in Our Eyes (when Hillary Clinton let people pick her campaign theme song) and A Dark View of Family Life (as The Sopranos came to an end).
Lately, I’ve been studying up on Web 2.0 and I came to the conclusion that the TV program Lost represented a perfect example of a show tapping into the power of such techniques. I wrote From Couch Potato to Long Distance Runner as a way of figuring out how TV can become a more active pursuit.
And that brings you back up to speed.
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The Pop View Says:
More on the value of Ratatouille as a food movie.