gourmet ero guro by kazuo ishiguro
September 23, 2019 5:27 AM Subscribe
The Gourmet is a 1987 television drama and a neglected early work by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro - rarely repeated and never released on video, it is now available* on YouTube. Directed by Michael Whyte from Ishiguro's screenplay, The Gourmet is an absurdist gothic satire about a world of competitive international gourmets, who search for new tastes to excite their jaded palettes. But when human flesh (dried or fresh) becomes hum-drum, how is our hero to banish his boredom?
* Maddeningly, the upload is missing the first couple of minutes - I suggest reading the screenplay up to "12. DR GROSVENOR’S HOUSE, DAY." and then switching to the video.
Ishiguro wrote the screenplay after working with homeless people in West London, at a time when Margaret Thatcher's social policies were exacerbating poverty and homelessness in England. The short film was first screened on Channel 4 on 4 January 1987; two months earlier, the overnight deregulation of the capital's financial markets had kicked off an economic boom that supercharged London's evolution into the city we know and love today.
"Despite its grotesque elements, The Gourmet isn’t an overt work of horror [...] I was less interested in the genre elements than the interplay between Kingston’s abstracted fervour and the human beings he ignores while pursuing his quarry. [...] The latter encompasses the fellow gourmets who regard him as a world authority, his wife (who he doesn’t kiss when he leaves the house), his chauffeur (whose name he never remembers), and the derelicts who are also led to the church by hunger, queuing for a bowl of soup and a bunk in the crypt. Seen today, the gulf of inequality, and the self-indulgence of Kingston’s pursuit for the rarest of foods while people around him are starving, may be taken as a critique of Thatcherism as well as a foretaste of the future."
"[T]he play, which is more on-the-nose than his oblique novels, exposes the sordid underbelly of capitalism, as well as the limits of Christian charity, [and critiques] the hedonistic culture of consumerism that treats food as a recreational drug. [...] The play captures our current era [...] one in which the global food industry has been turned into a circus, endlessly whipped on by fads, new superfoods, dietary scares, Instagram-friendly dishes, and hysterical television shows that focus less on the cooking and eating than on the circus of cooking and eating."
* Maddeningly, the upload is missing the first couple of minutes - I suggest reading the screenplay up to "12. DR GROSVENOR’S HOUSE, DAY." and then switching to the video.
Ishiguro wrote the screenplay after working with homeless people in West London, at a time when Margaret Thatcher's social policies were exacerbating poverty and homelessness in England. The short film was first screened on Channel 4 on 4 January 1987; two months earlier, the overnight deregulation of the capital's financial markets had kicked off an economic boom that supercharged London's evolution into the city we know and love today.
"Despite its grotesque elements, The Gourmet isn’t an overt work of horror [...] I was less interested in the genre elements than the interplay between Kingston’s abstracted fervour and the human beings he ignores while pursuing his quarry. [...] The latter encompasses the fellow gourmets who regard him as a world authority, his wife (who he doesn’t kiss when he leaves the house), his chauffeur (whose name he never remembers), and the derelicts who are also led to the church by hunger, queuing for a bowl of soup and a bunk in the crypt. Seen today, the gulf of inequality, and the self-indulgence of Kingston’s pursuit for the rarest of foods while people around him are starving, may be taken as a critique of Thatcherism as well as a foretaste of the future."
"[T]he play, which is more on-the-nose than his oblique novels, exposes the sordid underbelly of capitalism, as well as the limits of Christian charity, [and critiques] the hedonistic culture of consumerism that treats food as a recreational drug. [...] The play captures our current era [...] one in which the global food industry has been turned into a circus, endlessly whipped on by fads, new superfoods, dietary scares, Instagram-friendly dishes, and hysterical television shows that focus less on the cooking and eating than on the circus of cooking and eating."
I watched it when it was broadcast, and it's stuck in the mind ever since (Charles Gray--magnificent). Had no idea it was by Ishiguro.
posted by Hogshead at 6:58 AM on September 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Hogshead at 6:58 AM on September 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
Fascinating, thanks for sharing the video and the script to fill in the gap at the beginning!
posted by filthy light thief at 9:02 AM on September 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:02 AM on September 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
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