The Drama of Eating

Jennifer Spatz

Response Paper

3/17/2021

The Drama of Eating

In Jon Berger’s outline, The Eaters and the Eaten, Berger describes the idea around “the consumer society” in which the idea of consumerism and its effect on the economy and technology has been a natural, long coming phenomenon, beginning nearly a century ago. He focuses on the idea of eating, the culture of food, consumption, and how the attitude of eating varies from different people in different countries and from different classes. 

“Bourgeois” is a word used frequently within Berger’s writing. To him, it means the working class and he describes their approach to food as meaningless in a way. He says that their eating mannerisms are less traditional than those of the other classes because they often fall between the concepts of hungry and overfed. They chose their meals based on standard, rather than the significance and value of each meal. He explains that the act of eating is not a fundamental thought to the bourgeois because it holds less value, lacks dire need, and does not hold as much importance as a higher class meal with cultural significance, or necessity for survival. 

Berger speaks of the eating habits of the bourgeois, the way in which they commonly complete each meal. How they typically keep one plate throughout the meal, with each dish and portion within a certain position on the plate, rather than having separate courses in which a higher class is commonly served. He writes about the knives used are worn and used for multiple purposes rather than just for food. Lastly, he discusses how it's a continuous and repetitive cycle, having the same meals, the same familiar food on a rotation. In contrast to the bourgeois, the higher class, and the “peasants,” as Berger calls the lower class, have many different roles in the world of eating. The higher class has theatrical, abstract meals with scenes set up to evoke emotion. The peasant's food represents their work and repose, it's a means of survival and pure necessity. With these different, unconscious ideals on food, Berger’s theory stands that the idea that food eaten is centripetal and not about the food itself is.