LOVE AT FIRST LICK [For a Pop Culture of Ice Cream]: Introduction

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        A creamy and sweet reward with many names, ice cream is timeless as well as an ageless language able to transcend generation gaps. It is one food which can be flavored with memory and emotional dimensions. While it is typically sought for comfort, it is now becoming fortified with an abundance of meanings.
 

        When we think of today’s ice cream, it is first and foremost store-bought. In the local setting, the task of creating a batch at home requires an amount of effort and resources, that only the culinary zealous would undertake such a project. It is usually a processed good which is available in almost every store, in large to budget-friendly and single serve sizes.
 

        Smith [2009: 161] pondered on the ambivalence at the heart of eating: does it signal barbarism or civilization? If in accord to Lupton [1998(2012)], eating ice cream could be considerably neutral. She says, in verbatim: The mouth is… a potent symbol of both consumption and its control, combining in site the sensuality/nature (the tongue and the tastebuds) with rationality/culture (the organ of speech) [Lupton 1998(2012): 17]. On another end, as ice cream is included in the bulk of today’s processed edibles, it is a product of technology ---- which is a determinant of civilization as it is one of the key components that structure the postmodern world [Lane 2006: 27]. Ice Cream can be described in accordance to Fischler's 'omnivore's paradox' definable as …the continuing tension between the human biological need for variety, diversity, and innovation... [1980: 946; Lupton 1998(2012): 15].

         While Smith ruminates with a Levi-Straussean inclination emphasizing the role of preparation in labeling eating as a civilized act, this inked discussion will highlight how the practice of embedding meanings into food is a civilizing attribute to the action of eating. It follows suit on studies concerning the relationship between eating and subjectivity, having personally being influenced by thinkers such as Lupton [1998(2012)], Fischler [1988], Curtin [1992], Faulk [1994], and Williams [1961(1993)] just to name a few. Ice cream is enjoyed instinctively, as we do not necessarily need language and discourse to experience food [Lupton 1998(2012): 10]; it is merely the act of eating. But the moment it becomes introduced through advertising… these are integral to the meanings we construct around food and how we interpret and convey to others our sensual experiences in… touching and eating food which in turn shapes our sensual responses [ibid]. This turns the experience of eating into dining.

        Although the subject is not entirely new, this rumination on ice cream is addressed predominantly from a semiotic tradition [Downing 2004(2009): 09] which emphasizes …discourse consisting of social, cultural, or political meanings embedded in “sign-text”; and this is particularly applicable but not necessarily exclusive to the segment Creamy Captivation. Schematics in the framework of cultural ecology has been applied to determine the role of ice cream in the process of cultural socialization in the segment entitled Is it more tasty in the Philippines? Complementing theories and premises are directly lifted from texts so as to prevent committing brutal hermeneutic injustice.



LOVE AT FIRST LICK PART I: CREAMY CAPTIVATION