English Version | Kill me softly eating rough

If eating is not one of the greatest pleasures we can have in life, how can one explain that in countries where the death penalty exists, the condemned is entitled to a last meal that, if he wishes, can be a repast worthy of an epicurean?

"Eat chocolates, little one;Eat chocolates!There is no more metaphysics in the world than chocolates.Look that all religions teach no more than confectionery.Eat, dirty little one, eat!"

This short excerpt belongs to the long and complex poem Tabacaria, written by Álvaro de Campos in 1928 and first published in the magazine Presença in 1933. Fernando Pessoa's scholars, who are people who must have a master's degree in deciphering hieroglyphics, say that that text is a treatise on the time in which the poet lived when modernity was ravaging and the changes were so many that a mixture of emptiness, loneliness, and incomprehension of what he was witnessing fell upon the author. Poor thing. Imagine, then, that Pessoa had lived in a time when we enter that same tobacco shop, which nowadays can even be on the second floor of a shopping mall (because they don't even call it a mall anymore), for the surprising act of, amazingly enough, buying tobacco, but we find the usual line of septuagenarian women who spend more than half their pensions on scratch cards. This queue is twice as long on the day of the Euromillions draw or the Placard bets' delivery before the beginning of the soccer game. How many babycinos would drink in the Martinho da Arcada, just to forget? How many verses would he write like any other heteronym? Living between 1888 and 1935 is to witness a historical period during which European cities were modernizing at an unprecedented pace (Lisbon even stopped smelling of sperm whale oil from the Azores whalers to get electrified street lighting) that leads to writing a poem with such a frenetic and anguished pace, what would become of man if he witnessed a ChatGPT managing to write poems "in the style of Pessoa"? Nevertheless, we have that in the relative chaos of Tabaria there appears, in passing, that passage in which Álvaro de Campos suggests to a girl to surrender to the absolute pleasure that is eating chocolate. And he declares that to do so is pure metaphysics. Let's face it, there is anything but naivety when a "dirty little girl" is "ordered" to eat a piece of candy so that he can enjoy such a vision. Nandinho, the Marot, is there a vote taking pleasure from seeing someone else take pleasure? Shouldn't that always be the case? It's a rhetorical question. 

Because it should. "Eating the eating", as any grandmother Clotilde from any region of this Portugal would say, is the epitome of pleasure. She delights, like any Fernando Pessoa or Álvaro de Campos, seeing her grandson delighting in a plate of Nestum Mel, which will not apply to that day when little Salvador, already in his teens, will discover the delights of bed with a helpful classmate. Because that is, in comparison to the garden of delights where we stroll through the palate, a lesser pleasure. To eat is to celebrate life. "Eating is an act of revolt against the monotony of existence," as Andrea, the elementary school teacher, would say, despite being half-naked and available for the enjoyment of her plentiful meats, in La Grande Bouffe (1973). We'll get to that in a moment.

Solemnizing life through the pleasures it makes possible will not be what is in the short, medium, and long-term goals of a death row inmate. And since we know little about the regimes (we call them "regimes" when we don't sympathize with them) that still have the death penalty, such as Iran or the People's Republic of China, we are left with the American cinematographic glimpse (with whom we sympathize a lot and therefore don't call it a "regime") about this true human drama that is being on death row. From The Green Mile (1999), translated into Portuguese as À Espera de um Milagre (Waiting for a Miracle), to the incredible Dead Man Walking (1995), with the incomparable Sean Penn, the incredible Susan Sarandon, and the unforgettable soundtrack by Eddie Vedder with Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, we learn that, for example, those condemned to death are entitled to one last, ulterior pleasure. The extreme unction? Leaving the prison to take a long walk in a green meadow, even if handcuffed? A swim in the sea, which could be done without handcuffs? Sex with several partners at the same time? Sex with only one partner? Not at all. In the United States of America, a country where the death penalty has a long tradition (and the execution of innocent people as well) before the sentence is carried out, be it by lethal injection, electric chair, or hanging, the condemned is entitled to a last meal, which is always of his choice. With a few caveats. Of course, a Maine lobster will not be served in a prison on the West Coast. Or a specialty from Malibu, California, to an inmate from New York (not least because New York State has no capital punishment). In any case, the dying person is allowed to indulge in a delicacy of his or her choice. That can be ordered from an upscale restaurant, even though most American prisoners consider fried chicken or a cheeseburger the summit of the palate. What's in this? The acceptance that eating is, in fact, the greatest pleasure we can have in life. You have to enjoy it. To grab it with all possible greed. With healthy teeth and nails, capable of chewing the toughest steak. It's enough for us to chew our days at great expense.

When, in 1973, La Grande Bouffe was presented at the Cannes Festival, the scandal was so great that Catherine Deneuve allegedly spent a week without speaking to Marcello Mastroianni, with whom she was starring in one of the most talked about novels in the Europe of the arts. It is not easy to imagine, nowadays, how unusual and daring a film would have to be to shock a milieu that was, since the 1960s, deeply revolutionary, avant-garde, and reformist. France and Italy produced the most transforming cinematographic works ever, where explicit nudity was a mere comma, and artistic creation, without any restraints, screamed freedom. But let's face it, four friends who decide to kill themselves from eating so much is a plot that raises some questions. The charming Alitalia pilot Marcello Mastroianni (an actor who, at the time, was already famous for Fellini's films), the metrosexual television producer Michel Piccoli, the chef of a celebrated Parisian restaurant Ugo Tognazzi, and a judge Philippe Noiret (the Pablo Neruda who was visited by his letter carrier) are the four characters (who share their first names with the actors) who retire to a villa on the outskirts of Paris, owned by Phillipe's father and inhabited by his elderly chauffeur, who is promptly asked to leave. He is replaced by a load of wild boar, two "superb soft-eyed deer," three laurel trees (yes, the trees), ten dozen quails, three dozen Ardennes woodcocks, a dozen hens, some cod, half veal, five sheep, an indeterminate number of pigs, and a truckload of vegetables to add to the six ducks, five geese, and four turkeys that roam freely around the property, including inside the house. The goal? An epic bacchanal, with the usual purpose (to have pleasure), but where the food plays the main role since that of the three prostitutes hired is merely secondary to their intended purpose - to die from eating so much. The action is all made of exorbitance and senselessness, like their intended end. And so the path will be. The prostitutes who end up leaving after the excesses (food, not sex) of the first night are joined, by mere chance, by the local school teacher (Andréa Ferréol). She stays and ends up being one of the most determining pieces of this plot. She is even responsible for revealing each one's idiosyncrasies, even testing their friendship. Director and screenwriter Marco Ferreri has achieved here one of the most incredible satires ever conceived. It is the declining urban bourgeoisie represented by four men whose lives we all envy and who, in the end, have little to fight for, to the point of wanting to put an end to it. In what way? The kind that will reveal the paradox of modernity: in a world where hunger rages, some decide to die from too much food. And it is precisely these, those who were born in a cradle of gold, who, at the first touch of Bacchus, quickly lose their manners, become grotesque, recite Shakespeare and Ecclesiastes between flatulence, vomit life out of sheer ingratitude, and are emmerdés. This literally will mean that the toilet exploded on Marcello's back, leaving him covered in feces, screaming "Je suis emmerdé." But this means that no one will do anything for him because it's not worth it. Not least because, after this occurrence, Ugo rightly concludes that "this smell of shit will never leave us." The decadence is swift, inexorable, and representative of what Ferreri intended to demonstrate: the once charming Marcello becomes a vulgar rapist frustrated with his sexual impotence. Michel, the representation of elegance and refinement, is reduced to an insistent and prolonged flab. Ugo is nothing more than a nullity on every level. And Philippe, a respected magistrate, finds himself (for lack of self-respect) obliged to share the woman of his life, whom he was going to marry, with the rest of his friends. All this is interspersed with a procession of delicacies and recipes from the French haute cuisine, as if dying while enjoying the delights of the table were not preceded by some, or a lot, of suffering. "Eating is the most democratic act. Everyone has the right to a good meal", "Eating until you die is the only way to defeat life", "Gluttony is a form of rebellion against the mediocrity of human existence", or "Life is ephemeral, food is eternal" are some of the quotes that, taken at random, would make beautiful motivational phrases to put, in Comic Sans, over an AI-treated photo to publish on social networks. Is always better than "Panrico and a Steak from yesterday? I'll pick them all up and make a Frenchie." However, the complexity of La Grande Bouffe's meaning is what doomed it to be an inescapable landmark in the history of the seventh art. According to Marco Ferreri, who was often irascible in interviews at the time, because he even had to face bans to show the film, including in Great Britain the work was a critique of the consumer society and the culture of excess, challenging social norms by breaking taboos. The relationship we have with food, to which so many conventions imposed by society attend (it is perfectly natural to have burps, gas, nausea), shown here controversially and provocatively, defied the expectations of the public and of the film industry itself. It is creative freedom in its fullest splendor, which ended up taking root in a cult object, to which we all must resort when the discussion is about the simple pleasures of life, which we were not meant to deny, or else our entire society will be obliged to be questioned as to their meaning. What is superfluous? What is a determinant? Since death is the only certainty, why not overthrow all social conventions and die tastefully? And with a full belly. Maybe too full.

Originally translated from The Pleasure Issue, published May 2023.Full stories and credits on the print issue.