Copacetically, just after I’ve just been talking in my last post about salt-and-pepper radishes humanized with human eyes, another blog that is also focused on salt and pepper shakers offers a recent newspaper article about “veggie people”–anthropomorphic depictions of humanized vegetables from a century ago, found on cards and other places, including,eventually, salt and pepperContinue reading “More on Veggie People”
Category Archives: Salt-and-Pepper Sets
Big Radish Is Watching You
If, as I discussed my last post, there’s something odd and unsettling about shalt-and-pepper shakers that look like raw potatoes and that are designed to be put on tables that include cooked food like fries, then what are we to make of a pair like this: Now admittedly, these radishes (I think they are radishes–eitherContinue reading “Big Radish Is Watching You”
Le cru et le cuit
In my last post I talked about how categories get confused when you put salt-and-pepper shakers representing food items on a table in the midst of real food items: categories like real and fake, hard and soft, edible and inedible, etc. Yet another such category, one that the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss thought was culture-defining, isContinue reading “Le cru et le cuit”
Food, Fictional and Non-Fictional
Thinking as I wrote my last post about how disturbing it was to look at versions of the exact same characters in different poses in two different salt and pepper shaker sets, about how the impression that they could move and take different positions seemed to suggest a life they were leading outside and beyondContinue reading “Food, Fictional and Non-Fictional”
Once More for Old Times’ Sake, Once More
When I wrote about shaking in my last post, I realize, I was taking something important for granted: you are allowed to give the shakers a symbolic shaking that implies violence to the person or thing a shaker represents because the shaker is, in fact, merely a representation–not actually the thing it represents, but aContinue reading “Once More for Old Times’ Sake, Once More”
Shaking
In my explorations of the scriptive actions of salt and pepper shakers over the past while, I’ve considered everything but the most obvious action they imply–the one implied by their name: shaking. Salt and pepper shakers are made to be shaken. Furthermore, as I think about it, I see that the act of shaking isContinue reading “Shaking”
Shit, Kitsch, and Other Things that Stink
In my last post, I suggested that one of the actions scripted by novelty salt and pepper shakers is conversing about them as artistic objects: the invitation to “observe them more closely–perhaps in something like the way we look at paintings or other art objects, with an eye to understanding both what they represent andContinue reading “Shit, Kitsch, and Other Things that Stink”
Scriptive Things, Fifth Verse: A Little Bit Louder, A Little Bit Diverse
The question remains the same. Generally speaking, what actions or responses do novelty salt and pepper shakers invite when they appear as part of a table setting for a meal? Most obviously of course, they invite those at the table to shake them, i.e., to put salt and/or pepper on their food–and whatever kind ofContinue reading “Scriptive Things, Fifth Verse: A Little Bit Louder, A Little Bit Diverse”
Scriptive Novelty: A Pair of Bears
And now, on to what scriptive attitudes and actions might be implied by having a set of novelty salt and pepper shakers on the table. Just so that there’ll be something specific to refer to, I offer what I take to be a pretty basic and therefore really rather uninteresting example of the kind ofContinue reading “Scriptive Novelty: A Pair of Bears”
Binaries as Scriptive Things
Before I head onwards towards a consideration of the novelty aspects of shaker sets as scriptive things, I think there’s one other aspect of salt-and-pepper sets generally that needs to be considered: their implications as a coupled pair. The question here is not just, why salt and pepper, but also, why salt and pepper together?Continue reading “Binaries as Scriptive Things”
Perry Nodelman 