Organic Artisanal Natural Fakery
On the myths of natural goodness we delude ourselves with
Jai Shri Ram,
What is Natural? The dictionary would have us believe that it is “existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind”. So, is rice natural? Or wheat? Or bananas? Jackfruit? Without humans, none of these things would have existed, and yet the organic, sustainable, artisanal grocer near my house sells “All-natural, organic bananas”. Alright, leave the definition aside. Is everything natural... good by definition? Is “natural immunity”--as a result of your body responding to the actual disease--better, or is a vaccine better? For anyone who has had Covid-19, I think they’d take the consistent and reliable vaccine-powered immunity anytime over the long-term loss of smell and gastroenteritis that many Covid recoverers suffer from because their bodies took a bit of time to deal with what is essentially a novel virus.
There is also a bias towards “natural births”, and this bias really sucks. There is this insidious belief that babies must be born “naturally”, meaning that the woman undergoes excruciating labour pain with a not insignificant chance of complications and death, instead of opting for an extraordinarily safe C-section procedure. Even within the ambit of “natural” births, there is a preference against using painkillers such as an epidural. This is funny because the men (and this is usually men) who swear by “natural, no-painkiller births” will not walk into a dentist’s office and ask for a “natural tooth-extraction without the use of painkillers”, and labour pains, even with painkillers, are more painful than getting your tooth removed without painkillers. While there is now some evidence that vaginal births impart better gut flora to the newborn, one would imagine it is better to go with a C-section if there are any chances of complications and maybe give the young one more yoghurt later in life.
On the Fundamental Fakery of Nature Documentaries
“Natural” is simply the stories and mythology that we tell ourselves about the origins of things. Sometimes useful, regularly dangerous. After all, Cancer is natural. Flesh-eating parasites are exceedingly natural. Bananas? Not so much. The Vanilla in your ice cream? Very likely synthetic Vanillin, and not the product of child labour from the notoriously hard-to-cultivate orchid from Madagascar. On that note, I want to tell you a story about the Penguins of Madagascar. Well, not the actual birds because there are no penguins on that island, but the Dreamworks film of that name. That film had a rather interesting opening scene.
The scene is set in, well, obviously Antarctica, and a long single file of penguins are clumsily trundling along, as penguins do. Three smallish penguins - rebels in the pack - notice an egg rolling down a slope and about to fall off a cliff edge. The natural leader of the three wants to go and save it. The other penguins are like - “No, we don’t do that. We are penguins, we are cute and cuddly. Why do you think documentary crews are always filming us?”
At that point, the camera zooms out and you see a guy with a boom mic and a cameraman.
The egg proceeds to fall off the edge of the cliff onto an old shipwreck below, where some leopard seals are eyeing a quick snack. The three penguins have reached the cliff edge and are considering what to do. One says - “Leopard seals - nature’s snakes.”. The other one asks - “Aren’t snakes natures snakes?”. He replies - “How do I know, I live in a frozen tundra.”
The camera zooms out and we see Werner Herzog with a microphone. In case you don’t know who Herzog is, he has the world’s most German of German accents. Aside from the thick accent, he is also one of Germany’s greatest filmmakers. He says sombrely into his mic - “Tiny penguins, frozen with fear. If they fall from zis cliff, they will surely die. Gunther, give them a shove”
Well, the penguins of course go on to survive the shove from Gunther and rescue the egg because the rest of the film is predicated on their survival, but the opening scene was meant to be a subtle commentary on “nature” documentaries. Many of them are staged, and a lot of the actual storytelling is just creative editing. Remember the legendary marine iguana-hunter snake chase from BBC’s Planet Earth? It was different iguanas over several days and a final edit that made it seem like a jaw-droppingly tense escape of a single iguana from those snakes.
The most notorious of these staging scams was the famous 1958 Walt Disney produced “White Wilderness”. It was one of the first globally popular nature documentaries and it bought the Arctic wastes to life on the large screen. What it also did is stage a scene where the filmmakers deliberately pushed lemmings of a cliff edge just to concoct a powerful story that many of us continue to believe to date - the idea that lemmings commit mass suicide when their population increases.
On the Lake Palace that was not really sinking
When Werner Herzog says “sinking”, it’s possible that he might actually be saying “thinking” because that’s how ze Germans pronounce the word. But when he made the documentary film “Jag Mandir: Das excentrische Privattheater des Maharadscha von Udaipur”, it was more imagining than thinking, actually. The film is purportedly about the production and staging of an elaborate theatrical performance by about 2000 artists from all over India in the City Palace of Udaipur under the patronage of Maharaja Arvind Singh Mewar. The film also goes on to claim that a local astrologer told the Maharaja that the palace was sinking into the lake and thus this revitalization of the arts was necessary to avert this catastrophe. It turns out that Herzog just made that story up to make what was essentially behind-the-scenes footage of various Indian art forms a bit more dramatic and interesting.
On Carrot-powered Psyops
During the Blitzkrieg of 1940 when the German Luftwaffe was, to put it mildly, bombing the fuck out of the UK, the daily routine in most cities was to listen for the air raid siren, switch off all lights, take shelter and pray for your life. The bombings used to happen only at night because, during the daytime, anti-aircraft guns had a pretty good track record with downing WW2 era low-altitude bombers. A secret military project called the Airborne Interception Radar then managed to deliver a huge competitive advantage to the RAF planes that used to try and take the German bombers down in pitch darkness. The radar let them see where the German planes were with extraordinary precision, and this made the Germans suspicious because their bombing efficiencies were tanking.
To prevent the Germans from discovering that they had this new radar technology, the Ministry of War indulged in some creative psyops. They put out a news story in all the major newspapers that they were feeding their ace pilots lots of carrots (and as Sidin will note, they did not serve the pilots Paneer Butter Masala, which is also rather orange-hued in that part of the world). (Sidin: Noted. Why don't you write a book about orange foods you rascal?) This was also around the time when Vitamin A’s role in improving eyesight had been discovered, so the public quite literally ate it up. Apparently, even the Germans started feeding their pilots carrots after this story broke. They printed posters that claimed that carrots helped British pilots to literally see in the dark, and this bit of WW2 psychological warfare is the origin of the carrot night-vision myth.
And since we are talking of Nazis, Sidin found this poignant entry on the Commonwealth War Graves website. Signalman Venugopal, age 22, died at the Battle of Alamein, the crucial turning point of WW2 in North Africa that resulted in the defeat of Erwin Rommel, and was the son of Etti and Muniammal, of Kilvottivakam Chery, Thimarajapet, Chingleput, India. One wonders if people today in Thimarajapet remember Venugopal, who died fighting the Nazis in Egypt.
On why most carrots are orange
There is a persistent myth that most carrots today are orange because Dutch horticulturalists developed the orange carrot as a tribute to William of Orange, a revolutionary who led a revolt against Spanish rule and created the modern-day Dutch state. It turns out that it’s not true. Carrots come in a wide range of hues from white to yellow to purple to orange, and the orange coloured carrot was apparently introduced to Spain by Islamic traders from the Ottoman Empire well before William of Orange (a place in France that has nothing to do with the colour or the fruit, incidentally) established the modern Dutch state. The etymology of the word orange itself is quite fascinating. It’s a case of a misplaced article. What was originally the Tamil/Malayalam Naaram/Naaranga became the Sanskrit Naarang and the Persian/Arabic Naaranj which then traveled to Europe. So, with the article, “A Naaranj” somehow became “An aaranj”, and thus orange 🍊
Parting Thoughts
This week’s Salem junction is in support of Railway Children of India, who are on the front line of the Covid19 crisis in India, helping over 18,000 street children with life-saving supplies. One of the railway stations they work with is - Salem Junction. Kindly do the needful and donate generously.
In the words of Roger Ebert, “Werner Herzog has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular”. Two recommendations from Herzog connoisseur @abvan - Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, Wrath of God
Book Recommendation - Natural: How Faith In Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws and Flawed Science by Alan Levinovitz
Caramelized Carrot Soup - Take lots of carrots, chop them into largish chunks, coat generously with butter and pressure cook them without water for 8 minutes. Immersion blend, add salt and enjoy the world’s greatest tasting single ingredient soup. Pressure cooking carrots without added water (the carrots themselves are 88% water) causes the Maillard browning reaction that brings out some spectacular new flavours from the carrot. All you need is salt, that’s it. The butter is there only to prevent the carrots from making direct contact with hot metal.
Onwards and upwards and let’s chat again next week!
The orange 🍊etymology was 🤯