Tuesday, September 15, 2009

FASHIONS IN DROWNING


Apparently drowning is subject to fashion just like everything else. According to a book I picked up recently, drowning was usually described as horrific and painful by survivors before the Romantic era, and as painless, even pleasant, by later generations.



During the hippie era it wasn't uncommon for survivors to claim immense tranquility as their lungs filled with water, and deep resentment against the rescuers who fished them out. You'd read comments like, "The only pain I felt was when air was rudely forced back into my lungs."



Since we have contradictory accounts, I feel free to come to my own conclusion, which is that it's horrifying. Drowning is oxygen deprivation, something hanged men re-act to by kicking wildly...surely a sign that they're not enjoying themselves.



Physical reaction to lots of things follow fashion. In the 50s few people were actually made sick by smoke in restaurants. A lot of sensitive types who fainted when smokers lit up 40 feet away in the 80s used to pay big bucks to get into smoke-filled clubs in the 50s. Remember the Beat cafe in "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom?" Clubs like that were considered cool. Beatniks smoked like bandits.

I don't think the tolerance of the human lung changed, just people's perception of what their lungs can tolerate.

BTW, I'm not pushing smoking here. I don't smoke and never have.



A hundred years ago women were diagnosed as having hysteria much more frequently than now. Sure, social prejudice accounted for some of that, but it's also likely that women of that time really were more emotional in public about some things. They collapsed from bad news, wailed uncontrollably at the death of loved ones, got physically sick when certain things were discussed, and fainted more frequently. I don't think human physiology has changed since then, just people's perception of how their bodies are supposed to react to things.



You see this in the way some people react to fast food these days. When MacDonald's first put up franchises, long lines and positive comments were universal. Almost everybody in those days thought of MacDonald's as something you did for fun, like going to the Dairy Queen for ice cream. That changed during the hippie era when MacDonald's and Coke were recast as symbols of "The Man."

Once MacDonalds was perceived differently, people's stomachs magically changed too. The same burger they relished a short time before was now thought to be utterly impossible to digest. In the "Supersize" film above you can actually see the filmmaker throwing up from eating a big Mac and a large fries. Was he faking? Probably not.

It's funny because he looks so much like the kind of wholesome, Jimmy Olsen kind of guy who would have taken root at MacDonald's only one generation before.

Am I saying that fast food is equal in taste or digestibility to food that costs 4X more in a classier place? No, of course not. I'm just noting that human physiology has a way of serving up whatever kind of physical reaction our mind expects of it.


This is a bit off topic, but all that talk about drowning makes me want to share this video I stumbled on. It shows what the filmmaker saw in Drake's Passage, beneath South America. This isn't even a particularly rough sea, yet the threat of drowning is ever present. I recommend just the first minute and a half of the film.



17 comments:

  1. Holy crap Eddie! Profoundity in droves this morning!

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  2. Anonymous10:12 AM

    This is one of my favorite posts yet! Thanks for the brain food!

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  3. Hi Uncle Eddie!
    Been and avid reader of your blog since it started, and a big fan of your YouTube Videos.

    Interesting topic,
    I don't normally comment, but I have one question.

    Are you saying that the psycology of the human brain changes on how people react on certain things, such as the fainting, getting sick, or eating a Big Mac at McDonalds? Is this a generation thing? Or just people letting opinions on "How you should react" that alters there behavior in today's and that era's society?

    Oh yeah and drowning is probably the worst way to go.

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  4. Human experience is often a kind of hypnosis. Much of what each of us believes is a series of suggestions we have incorporated into our subconscious. It has nothing to do with what we understand and everything to do with what we assume. You see this every day in media as people believe whatever is implied this week even if it contradicts what was implied last week.

    I say "implied" because one of the ways the subconscious draws conclusions --and how we can be manipulated --is through implication. The subconscious doesn't care what is true, it only cares how things appear, and it makes snap judgments in an effort to protect us.

    Now that media has become largely a corporate tool, The real "news" is often between the lines.

    Om a separate note, this is not the first time you have dismissed the notion of "the Man", as if such a thing were an absurd notion on its face. Is that your honest opinion or have I misread it?

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  5. Anonymous1:04 PM

    While the hippies did turn mass perception of anyone thought to be dealing with the man, McDonalds fast food of the early 1960's was not deadly. The meat wasn't from just one supplier, as it is today, and one McDonald's hamburger was not the product of 75 different cows. Read "Fast Food Nation" for the ugly Con-Agra facts.

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  6. IDRC: Of course "The Man" was real in some cases, but not in this one. MacDonald's managed to sell their product cheap enough so the poor could afford to eat in clean, cheery restaurants...hardly what you would call villanous behavior.

    Anon: Mad Cow Disease made everybody aware of the danger of mixing meat sources, but few people knew about that back in the day. I also don't blame MacDonald's for trying to handle the problem by first trying to do more rigorous testing within the system they already had in place.

    I'm not blind to the dark side of some of the big corporations, but it offends my sense of justice when they're pillaried unnecessarily. Not that you (Anon) did that in your comment, I'm just using what you said to vent on a pre-existing pet peeve of mine.

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  7. I've never heard the case of hippies against McDonald's articulated until now. In fact, their coffee spoons were quite popular.

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  8. McDonald's tastes like crap and doesn't even resemble a real hamburger. It doesn't take a hippie to figure that out.

    I was outraged by the first McDonald's "burger" I ever ate: a tiny piece of rubber in a soggy sticky bun coated in red, yellow and green slime.

    If you ever served food like that at home, people would think you were insane.

    You have to be trained to accept it in a restaurant from your peers who have no taste buds.

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  9. ...but it offends my sense of justice when they're pilloried unnecessarily.

    Who does that? And what would you have to say to cross that threshold?

    It's not the fact of corporations that is evil, it's the excesses we permit them to go to. It was not always that way, and the way things are now was never intended by the founders, and it was the corporations who got it changed in their favor. So, while they may not be evil, many of them live right up the street.

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  10. I had a dear friend who drowned down near San Diego one Memorial Day weekend. It was quite a shock. I wasn't there and always wondered how the hell it could have happened(I think he must have had some beers with his friends who were there but he surely knew how to swim), and I hoped he didn't suffer too much though I suspect he did. I still think of him often.
    What I've read about drowning isn't pleasant. Jack London ended one of his books with the drowning of the hero-wasn't it Martin Eden?

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  11. Anonymous6:43 PM

    I think that the fast food of yesteryear was marginally healthier as well. Macdonalds fries used to be handcut at the franchise etc.

    The food was still high in fat but at least it wasn't riddled with chemicals and preservatives.

    The amount the average American Family spends on food has shifted from 20% to 10% of annual income, mostly because of how insanely cheap fast food has become. You practically need to be upper middle class if you want to eat fresh produce everyday

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  12. Alvin6:35 AM

    "The same burger they relished a short time before was now thought to be utterly impossible to digest. In the "Supersize" film above you can actually see the filmmaker throwing up from eating a big Mac and a large fries. Was he faking? Probably not."

    He ate Mc Donalds for a whole month, thats enough to make anyone sick.Also the food you find at a Mc Donalds today is like a mechanically processed collection of synthetic fat and chemicals entirely different to a delicious burger you would find at a diner in the say 1950s.

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  13. Jenny: Martin Eden? I never read it. Is it worth reading? I did read "The Sea Wolf" twice in the last two years. And who died? Someone I knew?

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  14. Anonymous9:01 AM

    There was a huge synthetic food craze in the 1950s, so if anything, we're lucky we eat so natural today. Regular coffee is more popular than instant, and orange juice is more popular than Tang.

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  15. if you mention mcdonalds, I'd say one out of...maybe...10 will tell you with pride how long its been since they had Mcdonalds. The same goes with soda pop.

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  16. man i love love love the burgers at the in & out

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