April 7, 2006
The Hegemonic Twinkies of Oppression Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 11:30 AM EST By describing Twinkies, a time-honored working-class nourishment, as “junk food” and proclaiming them “a classic example of capitalism at work,” John Steele Gordon reveals yet again the right-wing proclivities that inform his commentary. Sensitive writers prefer the more empathic term “non-traditional cuisine,” and Mr. Gordon seems completely oblivious of the millions of socially aware individuals who have empowered themselves by shaking off the fetters of so-called market capitalism and constructing homemade Twinkies: http://www.cooks.com/rec/
doc/0,166,139189-241198,00.html http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/
36/Homemade_Twinkies58571.shtml often using organic Crisco, artisanal cake mix, and heirloom marshmallow creme. By parroting the Twinkie’s corporate-approved creation myth, Gordon ignores the grim irony of referring to cake pans as “underperforming assets” in the 1930s, a time of mass unemployment. In Gordon’s Eurocentric narrative, a French peasant food based on Genoese folk confectionery is adapted by heroic Anglo-American imperialists in the so-called “New World.” Yet revisionists of the burgeoning Alternative Gastronomic History school have shown that the “banana shortage” story, blatantly designed to put a positive spin on World War II-era militarism, is actually an invention meant to disguise a racially driven agenda in which reified imagery of “whiteness,” as embodied in Twinkies’ intentionally bland filling, reinforces American hemispheric dominance and suppresses Latino aspirations of equality. Moreover, in discussing fried Twinkies, Gordon uses his position of privilege as a white male to exclude from the narrative all non-Western forms of culinary innovation, such as Twinkie sushi: http://www.twinkies.com/recipe_view.asp?rID=86 Gordon’s reactionary approach to this grass-roots movement of multicultural snack subversion, like his unabashed reverence for butterscotch pudding, displays the true agenda that underlies his remarks: an undisguised hostility to any and all attempts at upsetting the carbohydrate-based power structure of corporate America.
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