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As jobs went, managing a porn theater in 1974 was decent work because I could get a lot of reading done on company time. After the evening's feature attractions disrobed and began to writhe upon the screen, my main duty was the occasional patron who visited the concession stand.
Some popcorn, please,
one would ask, and I'd
reach into the corn popper for a box -- carefully, because
it was easy to singe an arm on the hot kettle. Oh, could
you give me the extra-butter popcorn?
We didn't have extra-butter popcorn. We didn't have
butter at all. To cook popcorn in that old machine, you put
in a cup of raw popcorn and a half-cup of some mysterious
fluid that came in unlabeled plastic jugs. Although this
liquid was road-stripe yellow and smelled something like
butter, it was probably a by-product shipped out of one of
those places that makes re-refined from previously used
motor oil.
So at first, I'd explain to customers that we didn't offer extra-butter popcorn. Some understood, but others got angry and insisted that I must have some extra-butter popcorn, but reserved it for special people.
Always eager to please, I found a solution. Whenever I
popped a load and put it in bags, the top popcorn in some
bags displayed a deeper buttery hue than that in others.
Those bags I set to one side. If you wanted extra-butter
popcorn,
you got one of those bags and you paid 50
cents, rather than the usual 35.
No patron ever complained that his extra-butter
popcorn
tasted just as bad as our regular-butter
popcorn.
After paying a premium price, people can
persuade themselves that there's extra butter even where
there's no butter whatsoever, and I graciously offer that
solution to the theaters of America, now under attack from
the Purity League for selling cholesterol-laden
popcorn.
If you were really concerned about health, you'd go for a walk, rather than slouching in a theater seat for two hours. Even in Boulder, I've never seen a concession stand that featured wholesome tofu, sprouts and carrot juice instead of empty-calorie Milk Duds, Snickers and watery colas to go with the artery-clogging popcorn.
As for mental health, liberals worry that exposure to violence on the screen might be even worse than sexist Mother Goose rhymes or uncensored Mark Twain novels. And conservatives fear that bawdy movies will produce such moral decay that America might elect somebody like a divorced Hollywood actor to the presidency.
Nonetheless, people still go to movies, just as people still go to ball games even when the hot dogs may contain red meat and salt.
That is, Health may be a virtue, but it's not the only virtue.
However, when you look at recent public policy discussions, you'd never guess that anything could possibly outrank Health.
The new food labeling requirements which take effect today supposedly make it easier to calculate how much damage you're doing to your arteries. But in fact, the standards remove a source of humor from households, thereby increasing domestic tension and contributing to the breakdown of the family.
We used to have fun guessing whether the package that
served eight
would in fact serve two people of
normal appetite, and it was always an entertaining contest
to find the meat in some beef soups
and chili con
carne.
Such simple pleasures have been sacrificed on the altar of Health, and to what end? So that after decades of calculating RDA ratios instead of enjoying meals, our lives will extend into some agony-laden tube-feeding bed-ridden years when, if we were able to pick up a phone and punch the buttons, we'd be calling Dr. Jack Kevorkian?
Health is important in education, too. Kids spend lots
of time learning to just say no,
memorizing the
latest sequence of food groups and improving their mental
health with enhanced self-esteem. Too bad they won't be
able to read or understand those nutritional labels so that
they can live long and support doctors and hospitals,
perhaps for decades.
The current war against indoor smoking is waged in the name of Health, to the exclusion of other virtues, such as civility, conversation and companionship.
Which is a better evening? To sit in a smoke-free environment with a gaggle of narcissistic health fanatics, all talking about their personal trainers, target heart rates and cross-training shoes? Or with a bunch of chain-smokers who have an active interest in matters outside their own bloodstreams, and carry on lively discussions of politics, literature and local gossip?
To ask such a question is to answer it, and yet society seems to be moving to a single standard: Health.
There's a name for that obsession. It's called
hypochondria,
and it's a disease when it's practiced
personally. When it is practiced socially -- that is, not
I won't buy fat-laden popcorn
but Fatty popcorn
must be outlawed
-- there's probably a name for it,
too. Tyranny
comes to mind.
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