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Popcorn Revolutionary

Copyright 2003, W. David Tarver
First Published:  Two River Times, October 10, 2003

I've been reading a book called Jihad vs. McWorld, written by Rutgers professor Dr. Benjamin Barber. Dr. Barber's book talks about how the forces of our modern information and entertainment culture are at odds with our ancient desire to belong to some tribe. Pretty heavy stuff. To let Dr. Barber tell it, we in this world are becoming tools of an entertainment and marketing monolith that threatens to crush our very notions of citizenship and democracy. I don't know a whole lot about all that. I do know something about popcorn.

I love popcorn, and I've been eating it for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I would pop it on the stove in a pan of hot Crisco oil. After popping the kernels, I would melt butter in the pan and pour it over the popcorn. Then, I would put the popcorn in a brown paper bag, sprinkle on the salt, and close it up. The grease and butter would make spots on the bag. When I opened the bag, the warmth and the wonderful smells would hit me in the face, enhancing the taste as I ate the popped kernels. My mother loved my popcorn too, and we made a ritual of eating it together for many years.

As I got older, popcorn making got more sophisticated. I became familiar with something called an air popper. In fact, I was quite a fan of this device, because I could put the popcorn kernels into it and then add just the amount of butter and salt that I wanted when it finished popping. There was no grease, no muss and no fuss! The popper even had a little tray to melt the butter. This was a great, modern solution, and it made great-tasting popcorn.

Then something insidious started. Popcorn got cool. I started to see something called "Gourmet" popcorn in the stores. It cost about 5 times as much as the peasant popcorn I was accustomed to. It popped too fast, and it popped too big. It didn't pop well in my air popper, and it was so light and airy that it reminded me of the styrofoam "peanuts" that people use for packing material. I didn't care for "Gourmet" popcorn.

Then things really got bad. Microwave popcorn happened onto the scene. Oh sure, it was convenient to make, in the same way that a TV dinner was convenient, but I didn't know where the actual popcorn (inside the little micro-wavable bag) came from, and I couldn't control how much butter was on it. In fact, I doubt that the microwave popcorn bag contained butter at all, but rather some evil butter substitute. And the cost of this microwave popcorn was astronomical compared with the bags of kernels I was accustomed to buying. An amount of popcorn that would have cost me maybe 5 cents as kernels now cost about a dollar in the form of microwave popcorn. I was one of the last people on earth to own a microwave oven (August 2000), and my loathing of microwave popcorn is one of the reasons why.

Now my kids come over and they throw a bag of microwave popcorn into the oven without even thinking about it. When I point to my air popper and my actual popcorn kernels, they laugh at me as if I'm some ancient holding a rough-hewn stone wheel. The battle of the popcorn is over. Modernity and marketing and the media culture have won. The popcorn Druids can return to their caves with their pungent snacks and stained brown bags.

So now I understand where Dr. Barber is coming from. The "infotainment telesector" has taken my beloved natural popcorn and turned it into a manufactured, marketed "food product". I don't even see the kernels anymore, and I can't control the taste. It costs me twenty times as much as my old-fashioned popcorn. Hell, its even difficult to find old-fashioned peasant popcorn in the store anymore. The feelings of warmth and accomplishment and familial closeness that I once enjoyed making my own popcorn are now gone. My mom doesn't compliment me on the tastiness of my microwave popcorn.

I feel like railing against the Popcorn Telesector. I feel like starting a "Back to Natural Popcorn" movement with like-minded popcorn lovers. I feel like contacting an organic popcorn farm and ordering a fresh supply of real popcorn.

Maybe tomorrow. Tonight I'm going to have a bag of Pop Secret and go to bed.

David Tarver

Red Bank, New Jersey