Close Reading II--October 9th: "Grilled Chicken, That Temperamental Star"

                David Segal’s mouth-watering article “Grilled Chicken, That Temperamental Star”, published in the New York Times, gives the reader a backstage pass to some of the most famous celebrities in our country.  But the reader isn’t learning about Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt.  Segal introduces the reader into the little-known but widely viewed world of tabletop directing, the complicated art of making food in commercials look more scrumptious than it actually is.  While Segal could have easily written in a flowing, descriptive, mouth-watering style, with vivid detail, rich imagery, and careful syntax designed so the reader focuses on the words flowing chocolate, the author instead choses a more scientific tone for his article.  This more calculating (and traditionally journalistic) style stresses and underlines the author’s main point:  it is only the precision and technology used that make the food look good enough to eat.

                “The sauce will not behave” is the first sentence of the article, and is a perfect example of one of Segal’s goals in the essay: that in making the food like the ambrosia of the gods, the tabletop artists must reduce that actual food to an element that needs to be controlled.  The sentence is short, with a tone of slight annoyance and frustration conveyed through this type of syntax.  The point of view of the sentence puts the reader into the position of the one who is attempting to control the sauce—as the reader, you are presented with the problem.  The language of the sentence personifies the sauce as well, as a troublesome agent, but the sentence remains devoid of rich detail which would make the sauce into something tasty and tempting.  The lack of detail and rich language, the point of view, the short syntax, and the frustrated tone all serve Segal’s purpose of underlining the precision required in molding the resistant food into something appealing.

                In writing an article about food, there is no way that Segal could avoid tasty descriptions entirely, and still have the reader remember and believe that the food is food at all, and not the Terminator’s fingertips and Iron Man’s toenails.  Segal reminds the reader that the food ends up looking scrumptious early in the article, with a satisfying description of some items the tabletop artists work on.  They “make glossy vignettes that star butter-soaked scallops and glistening burgers”, Segal writes, and “their cameras swirl around fried chicken, tunnel through devil’s food cake and gape as soft-serve cones levitate and spin.”  However, he constantly reminds us that this is a difficult and scientific art, and that the food is actively resisting looking good.  Segal fills his description with adjectives and adverbs that accentuate the idea that this is a film industry as significant as Hollywood, such as scallops becoming “stars”.  Instead of personifying the food this time, he makes the cameras alive, but instead of being resistant, the cameras are the magical and appealing element.  Instead of the food, the technology is the thing that “swirls”, “tunnels”, “gapes”, and ultimately conquers and dominates the resistance food.  Segal describes how the directors transform “mundane and fattening staples of the American diet into luscious objects of irresistible beauty”.  The sentence’s syntax underlines the transition for unappetizing to appealing, something which Segal argues can only be attained through technology and precision, the only two actually appealing things in the process.

                Segal also occasionally injects humor, mocking both the amount of care involved, and his own fascination with the technological element of the advertisements.  He does this by quoting conversations between directors and workers, usually when the director is unsatisfied with the most minute detail, such as the timing of two drips of sauce—

“Anthony, the second drip is about 10 minutes after the shot is over,” says Mr. Somoroff [the director] after five or six takes, sounding faintly annoyed.

“I’m right on it,” Mr. DeRobertis says.

“You’re on it, but it’s not dripping when it has to drip.”  

Segal responds with both awe and amusement at the amount of work which goes into the tiniest detail, and then also corrects himself: some of the technology is quite advanced and admirable, yet some items used are merely devices for “un-wrinkling trousers” to make steam waft from a casserole.  Segal also uses frequent quotes and interviews with workers to further inform the reader about the complicated process of making food look good.  For instance, he quotes one director explaining why so many advertisements are almost erotic in their depiction, of, say, swirling chocolate: “You’re using the same part of your brain — porn, food,” Mr. Schrom says during a break. “It’s going in the same section; it’s that visual cortex that connects to your most basic senses.”

                At this point in the essay the reader once again questions why Segal isn’t then doing the same thing with his article.  One would assume that the language and imagery would be the article equivalent of the advertisements, perhaps even with a steady, flowing feel, long sentences, and convoluted syntax with gloriously described dishes and rich detail.  Why isn’t the article as erotic as the ads it discusses?  Segal doesn’t write this way in the article because Segal doesn’t care about the food.  The message the article is trying to convey to its audience is not that food at Arby’s is delicious—it’s that the tabletop directors spend hours and years taking something boring and resistance to looking good, and making it appealing.  The focus of the article is on the technology used and the artistry involved in making us want to eat an otherwise unappetizing chicken nugget.  Segal’s interviews with the workers reveal that the food can’t even look too good: otherwise, it would be unbelievably good.  And yet, most of the techniques used to make the food look good involving “faking it”—plaster, hypodermic needles, glue. 

Segal shows the reader, through his scientific syntax, language, and imagery that stress the falsehood of the real food and the technological aspect of the process, that in reality, tabletop directors do not take good food and make it look better.  They must construct fake food to even approach deliciousness—they must make food fly, jump, slice itself in half to appeal to us, and the only way they can do that is through hours of struggling and technological precision.  The stress on this aspect of the art calls into question for the reader the reality of everything we see, especially on TV and in commercials.  The images projected to us as viewers and readers in society are not only false, Segal argues, they are completely removed from the actual product or situation.  Segal shows us that we live in a world where the real, old fashioned thing isn’t good enough for us anymore, and that today, we must use technology to improve the disappointing world around us.  The last sentence of the article is a celebration of the workers—they have just gotten some cheese to stretch exactly so.  The last word of the sentence is “triumphantly”, a structure which emphasizes this word since reader’s focus on the last word of a sentence or phrase.  This emphasizes the triumph which must and will occur, of technology over organic materials which inhibit our needs or wants.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/business/in-food-commercials-flying-doughnuts-and-big-budgets.html?_r=1&hp