"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.

I'm just going to put this here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1625519-To-want-to-punch-people-who-say-cheer-up-love-it-might-never-happen

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1623962-TO-wish-LEG-BREAKAGE-upon-the-ARSEHOLE-who-SPAT-on-my-windshield

My point being, I agree DV is bad. (This is an understatement.)

But I would point out the lack of response to these recent posts suggesting violence... to be fair, the leg breakage one did have one comment of "YABU to wish leg breakage on ANYONE.", but after an admittedly rapid look through these threads, that is the only instance I spotted.

I know LRD. I was exaggering for effect to make the point that some of this is threaded through language so deeply we no longer really think about it. But the other examples are violent images - stabby for example. And Thanquol's examples.

I know you know. I am possibly over-estimating the extent to which things need spelling out. But then, reading this thread I do think maybe it does need spelling out for the 'erm its just imagery innit, words 'n' shit' brigade.

But I would agree that the others were acceptable either. And at the end of the day they might express those views (whilst not really meaning them) but they are not being paid a fortune to express them on National TV.

And fwiw worth, Nigella spouts a load of crap too and does not come across as a card carrying menber of the sisterhood.

Nothing wrong at all.

Jamie is obviously referring to a particularly friendly boxing opponent.

I think if its obviously about a sauce then its no bid deal really.

when people talk about drinks 'putting hairs on your chest' is that mocking hairy people, women with PCOS?

or when talking about a drink that 'has a kick to it' does that fuel as much outrage?

No, it doesn't, obviously.

It is depressing how wilfully stupid people can be.

No LRD, everybody gets your point. But some are making the separate point that there are many instances of language like this which we don't automatically take literally. Some we do and some we don't, probably depending on lots of things including how overused the imagery is, how annoying or otherwise we find the speaker and our sensitivity to the issues in question. I didn't take this literally because it sounded to me like the pleasure and pain principle in a nutshell. I didn't think "oh he's talking about a man hitting a woman and then kissing her". Because I'm not even aware that that's how domestic violence happens (the other way round I might have assumed was more likely). It could just as easily be a punch from someone and then a kiss from someone else to make it better. If you want to examine the imagery in great detail then let's do that but I suspect the punch was chilli and the kiss was the sugar/honey in the bbq sauce - so not even the same entity. There are lots of layers to this but please don't assume some of us are in the "erm it's just imagery innit" brigade which presumably is shorthand for stupid.

I don't follow what you mean by 'literally' here. To take this 'literally' would mean that you're imagining a bottle of sauce punching and kissing someone - surely, we all realize he can't possibly mean it 'literally', he must obviously mean it as some kind of figurative language?!

No-one has suggested taking what he says literally - they're saying it's imagery that evokes DV.

I did think some people were suggesting that language that is 'imagery' is therefore not worth discussing or somehow not actually meaningful. I didn't think you were suggesting that.

Drjohnson, so you show your ignorance about DV then...Please STOP trying to down play the imagery.

It's not a kiss from someone other than the person doing the punching, by the actual syntax of the original quotation. IT should punch you. With a kiss after'. You'd have to do a painfully over ingenious reading of that sentence to argue that the kisser is not the puncher.

And of course, in cases of DV, the blokes LUFFS her. Wants to kiss her after he hits her, wants sex even. If she wasn't so x,y.z he wouldn't have to have hit her first of course....

I think we are in variations of the same place LRD. By literally I meant that sometimes we go into the imagery and see it (as the OP did in this example - not seeing a bottle of sauce having an impact which would be the most basic level, or seeing a bottle of sauce punching someone (!) but going to the deepest level fo the image and seeing a person punching someone) and sometimes we don't (as when we say I'm gob-smacked or I feel stabby or I'm going to kill the next person who asks me when I'm due).

The words sometimes pass us by and sometimes don't. I think it depends on lots of things including how hackneyed the phrase is. In this case, to me, he was taking a relatively common phrase in cooking - that something is so strong it will hit you right between the eyes. These phrases are common in cooking because food is so physical - it's why food is more likely to be called punchy than impactful. They mean the same but one resonates better with the physicality of food. It's also why you get Nigella pawing at her food as if it's her lover. She's not actually recommending anyone have sex with a scallop.

I do get the point but I would just be wary of assuming that people who don't quite see it like that are wrong or ignorant.

I'm not assuming people who don't see it like that are wrong or ignorant.

I do think that people who don't know what imagery is, or how language works, are ignorant about language and imagery. That's not me being rude, that's me making an observation. I do believe some people think anything they can call 'imagery' is somehow not part of normal, communicative language. And of course it is. Sure, sometimes hackneyed images pass us by, as you say - but that's not because they're figurative rather than literal (imagery cannot be literal). It's because they're hackneyed.

I think, with respect, that you are missing out the crucial point that has bothered people when you concentrate on one half of this phrase, about the 'punch', since the reason I believe people are upset is because this is juxtaposed with the second half of the phrase.

I know food is often described as 'punchy'. No disagreement there.

But to use this phrase is to use another metaphor entirely, and one which isn't a phrase I've heard before in the context of food, so I don't agree it's commonplace, and wouldn't want it to become so.

Porto, I'm not playing down the imagery. I'm giving my reaction to it and my interpretation of it. I've said many times that I can see it might strike you differently if you had been punched then kissed by a person. But it might not - you might still think he was talking about sauce the same way you might not actually flinch when someone says "I feel stabby..."

well I wrote a long boring section about the kiss because I agree that that is the provocative bit, as it turns out, but it was too boring so I cut it out.

Firstly pleasure & pain combined is a very common cultural reference. On one level this is just another way to juxtapose the two. It reminded me of Grayson Perry talking about why he dresses as a woman - it's the pleasure of the softness and the prettiness combined with the pain of humiliation (that's a whole other feminist post right there). So you could read it on that level - pleasure and pain combined - no endorsement or recommendation of it but just a juxtaposition. Anyway, it's a common theme. Secondly I wonder why we do balk at the kiss bit but not at the punch bit? Are we so immune to violence that we don't really take exception to it unless it's an even more perverse form of violence and that is violence masquerading as sweetness?

Anyway, have to go to bed now but I do know what you are saying. I still think it was meant in the way I have suggested and not as any nod to DV but I can see why it took others that way.

I think it is fair to say it wasn't MEANT as anything at all. It was just a sound bite, JO and his producers spent no more time researching this than Nigella/s did when they were discussing kitten's tongues. It SOUNDS nice and fits their view of the demographic of the programme.

That does not mean we are not entitled to call him upon it of course.

Porto, I'm glad you see that calling him on it is OK but so much money is spent on these shows that if they were totally unaware of what that image represented and it's connotations then they were being horrifically lazy. Jamie Oliver is fabulously wealthy. He could donate 10 million pounds to women's aid and not even notice the difference. If his script writers put that in there without thinking they should be fired. He may not know the origins of that phrase but it is obvious from this thread that many people do. Many of the people who know what the phrase means are in his prime target demographic.

The lack of thought makes this even worse. Kind of like they think they can say any old shit to women and we'll take it cos it's that lovely chap Jamie. The attitude itself is fairly obnoxious before you get into what the imagery means.

Those of you who asked about my name. I think the earlier phrases about hackneyed sayings and their lack if impact covers it. I am a cliche of hackneyed and it doesn't really bother me.

Yesterday I was in a very intense course about media representation. The issue of times when the media shows violence in a light hearted way was brought up. The guy teaching the course (who has been doing this since the 1960s) was very clear. Making light of violence, particularly towards more vulnerable people, is just not acceptable.

kickass - I did post some more stuff up thread though - which was less conciliatory

PS was you who did the blog analysis on the stats of men suffering dv. I wanted to search for it for another thread and couldn't remember whose blog it was.....

Kickass? Bit violent isn't it? Hope you'll be changing your name.

actually I thought it was more dental decay, given its sweetness than anything else.

PortoDude Frothy Dragon's blog is good on the statistics.

Ah - thank you most kindly! That was just what I was thinking of!

That whoooshing sound?

That's the sound of the point of the thread going over tiggy's head.