Padd Solutions

Converted by Falcon Hive


The whole controversy over Dîner en Blanc in Singapore is really a storm in a teacup; it's a trivial matter that isn't worth all the fuss that has been made about it.

But the reactions towards it are, nevertheless enlightening—they tell us quite a lot about how people think and what our society is like.

What happened is as follows: Dîner en Blanc, a pop-up, invite-only picnic is being organised in Singapore as its first Asian location. Thousands are keen to go the exclusive event, which has large groups of people dressed in white meet for an evening of 'fine dining', learning of the location of the event only from the organizers just before it occurs.

In every Dîner en Blanc event, there are strict rules that, according to the organisers, “[recall] the elegance and glamour of court society”: Guests must attend with a member of the opposite sex, men and women sit across each other in a planned arrangement, and guests must bring their own food, white tables, chairs, fine china crockery and dress only in whitein short, it's a stuffy event that makes itself out to be too good for everyone.

Along came food blogger Daniel Ang, who recommended 12 white-coloured local dishes to bring to the dinner. The blogger, an invited guest, was told by the organizers to take down his post and was then uninvited because the food he recommended was deemed unsuitable. Angered, he shot back, stating, "You can disrespect me as a blogger, and disrespect my blog posts, but you do not disrespect my culture,” adding that “Singapore local delicacies are the classiest foods ever in our hearts.”

To begin with, the indignation of the food blogger has an element of irony in it. Sure, it's annoying to be excluded, and in his position I might react the same way. But it isn't as shocking as it might seem. After all, this is an event that celebrates 'fine dining' à la "court society"—we can expect food elitism to come with the territory.

Moreover, a raison d'être of food blogs is to promote certain discerning eating habits. These may not necessarily be more exclusive than the concept of good taste itself, but by touting certain gastronomic preferences and tastes as 'good', these blogs are likely to be guilty of some measure of food elitism as well.

Further still, while 'fine dining' may arguably be all a matter of presentation and, therefore, quite an arbitrary concept, this is probably not unfamiliar territory to food bloggers. Indeed, in giving his recommendations on what local food to bring, Mr. Ang said:
Tau hway is a simple, inexpensive and elegant dessert. Jazz it up to be served on a fine China bowl, and it will look good.
Such a statement displays perfect awareness of the conventions of 'fine dining'. Perhaps the organisers' outright ban of local offerings caught him by surprise, but it's far from inconceivable—he knew what kind of business he was getting into.

Hence, the disagreement between the blogger and the organisers doesn't stem from radically differing views on food and gastronomy, but from differing views on what kinds of food fall within the category of 'fine dining'.

So it would be a mistake to see the blogger as an agent of a conflict between a gastronomic/cultural elite and the masses—he is more or less aligned with the elite; it's just that he has been excluded by a particular group of elites and is crying foul over it. His liking for food that is also consumed by the masses does not make him the face of the latter any more than Paul Ryan liking Rage Against the Machine makes him the face of the Occupy movement.

In this vein, much of the public anger over the incident is at best misplaced and at worst disingenuous. The fact that such an absurdly elitist event exists—and that many want to go to it—should have raised disdainful eyebrows from the start. Yet Singaporeans choose to be angry, and to be angry over the fact that certain local food items have been rejected by the organisers. If those items hadn't been rejected, many of them might even have felt pride that what they eat is considered 'classy' enough. So those people aren't angry about elitism; they are angry, like the blogger, over the fact that their tastes have expressly been excluded from the endorsement of an elite.

Worse, some have turned this into a matter of national pride, as though the rejection is a grave insult to the nation. The foreigners have done it again, it would seem—they have once again shown that they have no respect for local culture and customs.

If our national pride depended on the status of some food items, then it's a worthless thing indeed. But, more interestingly, this corroborates my previous observation that many people aren't actually feeling angry about what they say or think they are: In actuality, they are angry that their tastes are not considered good enough by an elite; they are angry that foreigners have come to take their jobs away and have altered the cultural landscape. Little or no part of their self-righteous outrage is really about the preposterousness of an extreme kind of food elitism that may signify an increasingly unequal society. It's really just dog whistle politics belying xenophobia and a deep-seated inferiority complex that—I would say—is the product of a highly-controlled society.

So let's be more honest about the underlying agenda here: What are we really mad about?

And the moral of the story is not that we should banish all forms of elitism; that would be impossible, especially in a 'meritocratic' society like ours. Rather, we should acknowledge that all of us practice some form of elitism, that we often like to present our tastes as good and better than others'. This will help to put things in perspective so we can reject the most egregious examples of elitism without knee-jerk reactions that only demonstrate how stupidly oblivious we are to our own positions. And that entails steering well clear of things like Dîner en Blanc, and not complaining loudly only after having been excluded.