In The Mood for Cartoon Food

Seeing that Popeye ‘steak’ and the bowls of potatoes and desserts being poured down his throat reminded me of just how much ‘food porn’ there was in the old theatrical cartoons and hence in my childhood viewing. These cartoons weren’t particularly made for kids; they had a lot of mid-level appeal in their time. And one thing people wanted to dream and drool about throughout the Great Depression and World War II food rationing was abundant and beautiful food, a hunger that carried over into the more prosperous Fifties with the emphasis transferring onto a prime floppy slab of beef or a well-spread table.

Such food was never easily available to all economic levels. You might be eating beans and dreaming about steak. Fruit was a treat, ‘nature’s candy’, and a pineapple more exotic than you’d think these days, with some pleasures like watermelon a seasonal delight. And butcher cuts were not glued together from meat scraps and fruits not so embalmed with chemicals to keep them fresh and naturally low in flavor. A generous picnic basket could be a treasure chest of delights and a well-roasted juicy turkey leg a convenient hand-meat.

An animated piece of food could be as appealing as a pretty girl to any man with a healthy appetite and would at least make one subconsciously attracted to the animation studio’s product. At my own economically straitened level during childhood the appeal of ‘food porn’ carried over from war-rationing into our inflation-feuled scramble for sustenance, where food was always adequate but seldom fancy or bountiful. Even subsistence food like spaghetti, if drawn and painted adequately, would arouse my appetite.

Would, and will. With my tastebuds dulled (by age? Covid? Ozempic?) I still find myself yearning with remembered appetite for the flesh-pots of animated food. It reminds me of the Greek Underworld punishment of Phlegyas (not as popular or well-known as Sisyphus and his stone). Phlegyas is shown to be in Tartarus entombed in a rock by one of the Furies and starved in front of an eternal feast.