The way we eat reveals much about our culture, says Margaret Visser, who has explored every aspect of this topic in two award-winning books on dining, “Much Depends on Dinner” (Simon & Schuster, $13) and “The Rituals of Dinner” (Viking Penguin, $14).
Born in South Africa, Visser attended the Sorbonne, received her doctorate in classics from the University of Toronto, taught the subject at York University in Toronto for almost two decades and now devotes her time to writing, researching and broadcasting.
While her books examine commonplace tidbits about our rituals and manners (ranging from cannibalism to how we entertain today) or the foods we eat and how we get them to the mouth (the fork took eight centuries to evolve, and the plate originated as a piece of stale bread), her analysis is anything but conventional.
Visser regards everything on which she focuses as absolutely exotic, points out John Fraser, the former editor of Saturday Night, the Canadian weekly that publishes her column.
From her columns, collected in a third volume, “The Way We Are” (Faber and Faber, $23.95), to be released in the United States in January, Visser gleefully examines topics as wide-ranging as wigs, wedding cakes, high heels, Santa Claus, denim and dining tables, placing them in a new light.
For instance, Santa is likened to “a red, mobile, vocal, male fertility symbol,” while the popularity of wigs is revealed as “an ingenious conspiracy of the elderly, the moneyed and the ungifted.”
Lisa Skolnik recently spoke to Visser about how Americans entertain and the return to our brand of formality.
LISA SKOLNIK: There are no real statistics available on how, or how much, we entertain, but we seem to be making our parties more formal today than in the recent past. Why do you think this is happening right now?
MARGARET VISSER: You can’t think about the informal unless you include the formal, because the two are linked-“informal” includes the word “formal.” And when people get tired of being too informal after a period of time, they swing back to the other side of the pole.
Formality in the West is rather interesting, because it has meant great specialization, lots and lots of things. In Japan, the higher you get (in terms of status and power), the simpler you are. But in our culture, we express formality by the amount of “stuff,” and this suits people who sell things. We lean toward that tendency to acquire more “stuff.”
LS: But do you really need to have “stuff” to entertain in a more ceremonious way? This seems to be a new sort of formality, which transcends materialism.
MV: Yes, it’s true we’re not formal in the same sense we once were; it is a new kind of formality and it’s coming from Americans because they are very manners conscious.
LS: But Americans have always been considered bold and rude by the rest of the world. Do you mean this is changing now?
MV: Americans are not rude at all, and in fact are much more polite than the Europeans. For instance, the British or French are stuck in formal behaviors, and this is actually rude in modern society because formality provides distance.
We don’t need that today; technology provides distance, so we have an anonymous society. What we need is community and togetherness, the chance to meet and get to know each other. And Americans are quite good at formulating new manners for modern society.
LS: What do you mean by “new” manners?
MV: Americans have developed casual behaviors that are extremely appropriate for right now, and are a very sophisticated reaction to the reality of their lives. Such as calling people by their first names, or inviting people into their homes-which Europeans don’t do unless they know you intimately. It cuts through layers, and helps them get to know one another more efficiently.
LS: So are our parties a modern necessity, since they’re a way to get to know one another?
MV: Yes, and I’m always campaigning to have dinner parties because we don’t do it enough. It’s a great way of getting to know someone, for if you spend a whole evening with someone, talking and eating, you really know something about them at the end of the meal.
LS: Could this be why the dinner party seems to be back in vogue right now?
MV: Yes. For instance, at my church we initiated the “agape,” which is the Greek word for Christian love. Everybody puts his or her name in a hat and is allotted by blind chance to one another’s each other’s houses for dinner parties. It’s a tremendously popular program, because we desperately need to know one another right now, since our lives are so isolated.
LS: So does the dinner party have a certain cachet?
MV: It has immense cachet because if you have a dinner party, you’re giving a great deal today. Being invited to one is a tremendous compliment-actually the greatest compliment of all in this day and age, especially if the hosts are cooking the meal themselves. It’s a great sign of esteem because they are giving you their time.
LS: It’s almost as if the dinner party is a kind of cure for some of our contemporary ills. How often do you think we should be taking this “medication”?
MV: I have a dinner party at least once a month because then I have to clean the house, so it’s very practical. But seriously, it’s like food for our souls and relationships, and it gives everybody more skill in living together.
LS: So perhaps we’ll be solving some of our problems with parties. Do you think this trend will be long-lived?
MV: I can’t really say, but we are definitely searching for something and experiencing a return to our celebrations and feasts. A feast used to mean just a holiday, and then it came to mean “food” because it accompanied the celebration. But over the years, we got rid of so many traditional festivals, or played them down so much that very little was left to honor and observe.
Now we want them back and are going to great lengths to reclaim them. People are ready for a big deal, such as the Halloween parade in New York City, which has undergone a renaissance because it’s fabulous and fun.
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Margaret Visser is currently working on a 20-part PBS series on food and festivals entitled “Gatherings & Celebrations, Rituals & Recipes,” hosted by Burt Wolf, to debut fall 1996.
