The Infamous Electric Carving Knife - A Moment of Levity

[Marge_Innavera]

I don't agree with that analogy or the adjective. It's not like some kind of social faux pas or obnoxious habit reflecting lack of refinement. On the contrary, it seems overly civilized -- a fussy, complicated instrument designed to save a miniscule amount of muscular effort when doing what a plain classic tool (i.e., a knife) could do just as well. In BBM parlance, it's a regular knife's citified cousin. It's like washing clothes in a sink on one of them fancy washboards Alma uses, vs. washing them in the river. . .

That and its symbolism as a vibrator, underscoring Monroe's status as Alma's second-best replacement for Ennis.

Here we go again.     Anybody spot any symbolism in the wallpaper?  How about the china pattern?

Civilization just went to you-know-what when people started to use metal tools.  Its decline started with the discovery of fire.  And by Gawd, a trevois should have been good enough for anybody, what did we need those fussy wheels for?

[serious crayons]

Here we go again.     Anybody spot any symbolism in the wallpaper?  How about the china pattern?

No, but do feel free to describe whatever you've observed, this being the Open Forum and the place where BetterMostians have been discussing symbolism in the movie and story for going on seven years. Here you'll find brilliant discussions of such metaphors as the bucket and coffee pot, the rotary fans, the bread bags, the elk and the bear, the little carved horse and the horse-and-rider toy, the various forms of water, and of course the two shirts in the closet. And in the knives. As I recall, Ennis has a bunch of knives in his tiny under-furnished trailer.

Civilization just went to you-know-what when people started to use metal tools.  Its decline started with the discovery of fire.

Actually, I seem to recall reading just the opposite -- something about a connection between cooked foods and the growth of human brains. Not having to use our teeth to tear raw flesh from a carcass, they could become smaller, leaving more room in the skull for the brain. And sitting around the fire gave us nightly opportunities to develop our social nature.

Oh, here's a story about researchers linking the development of fire and growth of intelligence not to eating softer meat, but to eating softer root vegetables:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990810064914.htm

You seem to be quite passionate in your defense of electric carving knives. Perhaps they, too, have helped human intelligence make a great leap forward. Let's see ... once patriarchs no longer had to prove their masculinity through the manual carving of tough holiday meat courses, they were free to take on other domestic chores, leaving women more time to participate in business and politics, leading to election defeats for some office-holding Neanderthals ... Or something like that.

 

[Marge_Innavera]

No, but do feel free to describe whatever you've observed, this being the Open Forum and the place where BetterMostians have been discussing symbolism in the movie and story for going on seven years. Here you'll find brilliant discussions of such metaphors as the bucket and coffee pot, the rotary fans, the bread bags, the elk and the bear, the little carved horse and the horse-and-rider toy, the various forms of water, and of course the two shirts in the closet. And in the knives. As I recall, Ennis has a bunch of knives in his tiny under-furnished trailer.

No argument there; I've done my share of that, though I'm planning to view the movie again this week and will look for the knives in the last scene.

Actually, I seem to recall reading just the opposite -- something about a connection between cooked foods and the growth of human brains. Not having to use our teeth to tear raw flesh from a carcass, they could become smaller, leaving more room in the skull for the brain. And sitting around the fire gave us nightly opportunities to develop our social nature.

Oh, here's a story about researchers linking the development of fire and growth of intelligence not to eating softer meat, but to eating softer root vegetables:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990810064914.htm

You seem to be quite passionate in your defense of electric carving knives. Perhaps they, too, have helped human intelligence make a great leap forward. Let's see ... once patriarchs no longer had to prove their masculinity through the manual carving of tough holiday meat courses, they were free to take on other domestic chores, leaving women more time to participate in business and politics, leading to election defeats for some office-holding Neanderthals ... Or something like that.  

LOL, I have no particular affinity for electric carving knives; it's just consistently surprised me that people seem to think they're so terrible.  And I've wondered if it's a close relative to an odd pattern I noticed when I worked at a living history museum.

People who saw us doing things like washing clothes by hand (poor Alma!  she must have loved living over a laundromat after that), or cooking a meal on a fireplace hearth, or churning butter tended to react in two different ways.  People who said they'd come from rural and/or poverty backgrounds would remark that they remembered doing work like that but they didn't seem to be particularly nostalgic about it.  However, middle- or upper-class people, and most people from cities, tended to over-romanticize all that.  I did enjoy hearth cooking and the exercise I got, but I wasn't really living a pre-industrial lifestyle; I did it from 8:30 to 5:00 five days a week and went home to all my modern conveniences.  But it gave me enough of a taste of that life to know that it wasn't "quaint" or fun; nor were the people necessarily more "real", all of which are illusions that people who never had to do that kind of work indulged in.  It can be fun churning butter at a special event, which I often did as a hands-on activity; quite another if you had to live that kind of energy-intensive life all the time.  It was no coincidence that most of the old photographs we saw of people in the 19th century, other than upper-class people, showed how much more quickly people aged in those days.  My remark about humanity declining after the discovery of fire was just a comment on that kind of reverse sentimentality about technology.

I do think there's a case to be made for some of what I've heard referred to as a "hand-made life."  If you make a cake from scratch, there's a certain amount of creative energy and constructive attention paid to it; not so much if you use a cake mix, although you still have a cake.  IMO our society would be more healthy -- physically and otherwise -- if we made more of an effort to revive some of that.  But still there would be a qualitative difference: people would have to make a conscious choice, whereas in pre-industrial times it was just how life was, and nothing much you could do about it.

That said, I suspect that my family liked electric carving knives at holidays because nobody was very good at carving up a turkey or duck by hand.  

[serious crayons]

(poor Alma!  she must have loved living over a laundromat after that)

Good point.

People who said they'd come from rural and/or poverty backgrounds would remark that they remembered doing work like that but they didn't seem to be particularly nostalgic about it.  However, middle- or upper-class people, and most people from cities, tended to over-romanticize all that.  I did enjoy hearth cooking and the exercise I got, but I wasn't really living a pre-industrial lifestyle; I did it from 8:30 to 5:00 five days a week and went home to all my modern conveniences.  But it gave me enough of a taste of that life to know that it wasn't "quaint" or fun; nor were the people necessarily more "real", all of which are illusions that people who never had to do that kind of work indulged in.

Totally agree. People tend to romanticize the past as well as the lifestyles of "simpler," less high-tech societies as being more authentic. For example -- and I apologize, as I know this isn't really your area of interest, but it's such a great example -- they'll talk about how wonderful "natural" childbirth is, free of all those artificial modern interventions. And while yes, you can make an argument that we've gone too far with modern interventions if people are scheduling their C-sections to accommodate their vacations or something, but let's not romanticize an era when babies were delivered with a minimum of medical frou-frou, and an alarming number of mothers and babies did not survive the event.

I think baking a cake from scratch is a fine way to spend your time if you really like doing it, if you like to bake the way other people like to read or watch TV or garden or do pottery or craft handmade furniture. My aunt is this way: she truly loves to bake and cook, even though she doesn't always eat the stuff herself. But I think expecting everybody (i.e., women) to do more scratch cooking all the time, regardless of personal interest, because it's "healthier" or otherwise morally superior can manifest as a perhaps unwitting yet insidious pressure to get women to focus on domestic chores at the expense of other achievements. There's only so much time, and our great-grandmothers not only didn't have convenience products, they also didn't have the internet or cable TV or movies or much reading material or 40-hour-a-week office jobs.

In practice, luckily, most people can make the choices that most suit them -- they love to bake cakes from scratch, but they wouldn't dream of pinning their laundry to a clothes line, let alone making their own soap from lye. Or they make the soap but buy the cake from the bakery.

If I'm going to bake a pie, it's going to be from scratch: I make the crust from flour and stuff, use fresh fruit or, my specialty, sweet potatoes, for the filling. But I only do it once or twice a year, not for every big Sunday after-church dinner.

[x-man]

I just discovered this thread, serious crayons, and thoroughly enjoyed all of it.  Marge Innavera's comments were especially funny.  You mention, but do not elaborate upon, the carved horses.  I thought I was the only one to notice.  Do others react the same way I did?:  As soon as I saw the horse on Jack's desk I thought of the one Ennis was carving in the tent.  Did Ennis give the horse and rider to Jack some time in the first summer?  Or did Jack carve the horse and rider, perhaps as a child, and the idea is a comparison between the skillfully carved horse on the desk and the rough horse in Ennis' hand?  Say more, people.  I wonder about the horses every time I watch the movie.  I just know Ang Lee did not have those horses there for no reason.

[Penthesilea]

There's an entire thread dedicated to the carved horses.
The horse Ennis gave to Jack is NOT the same he finds and picks up in Jack's room two decades later. The first doesn't have a rider and is much more rough, as you rightfully noticed. The one in Jack's room has a rider on it.
But I'm completely with you that the second horse is very evocative of the first one and that Ang Lee did it on purpose.

We've talked a lot of times about it, and possibly there's another thread especially about the carved wooden horsies, but here's the one I found for now:

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,2511.0.html

Have a look at it, and don't skip the last page, you may be surprised.