Another peppy message plopped in many inboxes of this university the other day: UBC had received Platinum certification for its “ongoing leadership” in good things like well-being. This raised eyebrows for those who observe chronic stress, burnout and anomie on campus. My own reaction was different this time, for I had recently watched, again and anew, Gabriel Axel’s exquisite film Babette’s Feast. Inspired by it, I suggest pleasures of the table as a more effective path toward human well-being on campus.
This is an op-ed and was written by guest contributor Merje Kuus, a professor of geography who researches bureaucratic power, sociability and wine culture.
Op-eds are subjective essays that take a stance on issues important to the UBC community. Opinion essays are not impartial, but they are still required to uphold the same ethical standards and undergo the same fact-checking process as the rest of The Ubyssey’s report.
The views expressed in an op-ed are the contributor’s and don’t represent the views of The Ubyssey.
The story in the film is simple. A Frenchwoman named Babette Hersant lives as a servant amidst a dwindling sect of stern and ascetic Lutherans in a provincial corner of 19th-century Denmark. When she wins a lottery, Babette offers her employers, the elderly unmarried sisters Martina and Philippa, to cook a “real French dinner” for them and their nine guests. The sisters agree, though they do worry about the temptations of sensuous pleasure. When the feast is ready, the villagers file in: a self-righteous and crabby bunch embroiled in grudges and stiff with prejudice. The one person not overtly strained is the chap whose sole response to anything and everything is a generic — for timid — "Hallelujah!”
But as the faithful experience the voluptuously sensuous meal, something unexpected happens. Their pretenses lift and they start to enjoy themselves. And those around them. Even the mousy lady, so eager because so timid, recognizes that she rather likes the wine in her glass! She takes another sip, her eyes enlivened by a childlike spark of discovery. The villagers soften and warm toward their fellow human beings. Slights are forgiven, affections are remembered and a sense of connection fills the room. When the feast is over and they tumble out, the good folks all join hands and dance.
Such a transformation seems unimaginable in our optimized times. Pleasure does not make people busier, or what some call productive, and sociability does not foster isolation, that primal tool of bureaucratic power. Better stick to those plastic-wrapped sandwiches that are called working lunch in these parts — called lunch so that an unloved meeting can be put in that slot.
I wonder. Especially in light of the observations logged by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1825. Pleasures of the table, he writes, are “one of the most important influences in our social life.” They gradually spread “that spirit of conviviality which brings together from day to day differing kinds of people, melts them into a whole, animates their conversation, and softens the sharp corners of the conventional inequalities of position and breeding.” Such pleasures, Brillat-Savarin adds, can be enjoyed any time four conditions are met: “food at least passable, good wine, agreeable companions and enough time.” People who share a leisurely meal can talk about what they eat, have eaten and want to eat, and that “ever new” conversation can lead to all manner of other joys. Whereas those who don’t, such as stale couples, tend to “meditate on the delights of widowhood.”
On campus, the equivalent meditation is on the delights of remote days, sometimes retirement — though not necessarily one’s own. Folks want no conversation: they want to turn on (and then off) the camera. When prodded, they imply that passable food is subjective, intersectional and so on; wine is alcohol, and elitist to boot; agreeable colleagues are few; time there is none. But I have noticed that a shared meal makes even academics less parochial and less timid, intellectually as well as socially.
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The arguments for the plastic-wrapped thingies are usually about economy: plastic, salt and sugar are cheap, though for whom the priests of parsimony do not say. The following experiment could test the budgetary argument. One group of randomly selected denizens of the campus are regularly sat down for an hour-long warm lunch that involves no agenda, no disposables and no screens, but does involve sociable conversation. The control group, meanwhile, continues their march — timid though not always eager — toward bothood. After a year or so, we weigh the costs, including the grants, programs, initiatives, awards, positions, buy-outs and leaves that have been doled out to motivate the marchers and manage their screen addiction.
The block on this campus is not about food or money. It is about pleasure. Brillat-Savarin speaks not of eating but of pleasures of the table. In a society like ours, one that philosopher Edward Slingerland calls “simultaneously technocratic, ascetic and moralistic,” sensuous pleasure is viewed with suspicion and interest in it is seen as a sign of superficiality. In Babette’s Feast, it is pleasure that melts the villagers’ armour. Pleasures of the table connect, and this is why we all need them. In the words of M.F.K. Fisher, “There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.”
This is an opinion essay. It reflects the contributor’s views and may not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.
