"It should punch you round the face, with a little kiss after", oh you reckon, Jamie Oliver?

[Katiekitty]

"It should punch you round the face, with a little kiss after"

Jamie Oliver's BBQ sauce recipe.

Fuck off Jamie.

[JuliaScurr]

Really? you don't get the connection between metaphor>culture>actual reality? Have you ever seen any adverts?

[squeakytoy]

"he is not a chef and frankly would be useless in a professional kitchen."

he grew up working in a professional kitchen and then trained in various other professional kitchens, of course he is a bloody chef!

[valiumredhead]

Yep - he IS a chef regardless of wether you like him or not. Iirc he trained in The River Cafe.

[PortoDude]

The turns of phrase are so insidious within our culture that no-one even THINKS about what they are, or what they mean.

And then there is the double standard on here with violent phrases "I am going to kill DH when he gets home" "cut his balls off" etc etc - you see it all the time on here. Of course no-one actually MEANS it. But if the male posters here made a remark that they were going to perform some act of violence on their wife when she got in, I bet a different view would be taken.

[squeakytoy]

I dont get any connection to violence, domestic or any other kind, with what he said.

Spicy food is often described as "packing a punch", "having a kick to it"...

[drjohnsonscat]

So kickassangel, your name?

[GetAllTheThings]

'this dish is addictive'

Offensive to addicts.

'this dish will blow your socks off'

Offensive to victims of bomb blasts

'this dish will hit you for six'

Offensive to anyone who's experienced violence.

'this dish will leave you speachless'

Offensive to stroke victims.

'this dish will reduce you to tears'

Offensive to anyone who's experienced emotional distress.

Perhaps we should just use 'nice' to describe food and be done with it .

[PortoDude]

Oh don't be so ridiculous GetAll - hit you for six refers to cricket, not violence, to blow your socks off refers to being throughly beaten by a competitor in a sporting activity, not violence. The other examples are just silly.

"It should punch you round the face, with a little kiss after" though, refers to DV and we should be thinking a lot as to why we allow this misognynist language to be still used.

[ScarletLady02]

I did wince a bit when he said it to be honest, and I'm really not someone to be offended for the sake of it.

BUT...what I find more offensive is his general language...if he goes on about "wazzing" up the elements of his "story" one more time....>_

[GetAllTheThings]

Well I think you're being ridiculous PortoDude.

It's the opinion of a tin foil hatted conspiracy theorist that under every turn of phrase lays a mysoginistic permanent frost.

[MmeLindor]

lavenderhoney
of course he is a chef, and I would beg to differ on him being known outside of UK. I lived in Germany and Switzerland, and his shows were on TV there. Friends from Germany, France and US all commented on my JO books when they visited, and said that they liked his shows.

[PortoDude]

GetAll - I did not say that every phrase hid a misogynist undertone - none of the ones you quoted did, for example. My point is that the misogynist stuff is so ingrained in our culture that others think it is meaningless and its silly to even point it out.

[drjohnsonscat]

Portodude, you have missed the point of "blow your socks off". It's an explosives analogy - nothing to do with sport.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

It clearly normalises a narrative of DV. His intentions are irrelevant, it was a very stupid thing to say.

[MackerelOfFact]

Surely it's just a turn of phrase, an analogy? If he'd said "it should set your mouth on fire," is that a reference to DV? If he'd called it "blinding" or "gob-smacking" or "breathtaking" are those all references to violence and/or murder?

I've never experienced DV and don't have that frame of reference, but sometimes an expression is simply that. Not all analogies are nice. That doesn't mean they are to be taken literally.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

No, because DV isn't generally considered to be setting people's mouths on fire. Yes, it is an analogy: that's the bloody problem!

[cory]

I think you can have it one of two ways:

either it is only about food and hence inoffensive

or it is imagery, in which case it works by calling up an image of something

because that's what imagery does

but using the argument that "it's imagery" to argue that it does not call up an image seems to me like a contradiction in terms

make your mind up, folks

[OwlLady]

on his last series there was a lot of misogynistic language used and the trailer thing was called 'cock in cider'

I have a tendancy to think it's more channel 4 than jamie though.....

[PetiteRaleuse]

It's part of his blokey image. I don't see the need to make a bloke more blokey by using language like that but anyway..

[drjohnsonscat]

well that was my point to Portodude - the imagery getallthethings listed is imagery. Blow your socks off is an explosive image. (Although I agree hit for six is cricket so not a physical violence image).

Likewise, gobsmacked, kickass. These are all images and some of them have lost the power of the orignal image through usage and some of them have not.

[LRDtheFeministDude]

Ah, so because other images of violence exist (though none, so far as I see, of the crucial bit where the violence is juxtaposed with a kiss?), it's ok for JO to use this one?

Right then.

[drjohnsonscat]

well, in cory's words, imagery of violence is either ok or it's not. It doesn't actually matter whether it's DV or random violence against a stranger in the street or whatever. So yes, if you are ok to use "I'm feeling quite stabby today" (an MN favourite) you are on a sticky wicket with objecting to this one.

Some violence imagery has lost its power through overuse and people no longer "see" the underlying image (which is why people say "I was literally blown away") but some of it still seems very vivid (like JO's example). Regardless, the underlying mechanism is the same.

This struck us (again!) because it was particularly vivid and also because some people made a connection with DV. I didn't necessarily go to DV but that's probably because I've never experienced it. I see that if you have, or if you are very aware of it in the world, you would think of it following JO's comments more than I would.

[LRDtheFeministDude]

But some of those examples don't work.

'Strike' means to hit something against something else, but it's not necessarily violent - you strike matches; clockes strike the hour, etc. etc. OTOH the term JO used, 'punch you round the face' is violent. Graphically violent, in fact.