PIE: A PASTRY — OR POLITICAL PROTEST?

There is no time like the present to see the importance of political protest. Our field of interest — food — seemingly has little to do with politics, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Food not only is intrinsically political, it can also be made explicitly so by using it as a means of protest. A little rebellion in the form of throwing food at politicians is equally powerful as it is (ideally) harmless, and the ways in which it can be done are almost as innumerable as there are different foods. Still, a couple of ingredients and dishes have become particularly popular over the years — and, as usual, different countries and cultures have different preferences. Roman emperor Vespasian was apparently hit with turnips in the year 63 A.D., which proves that the urge to throw food is as old as ancient Rome, but also sounds excessively painful. It likely took some trial and error to find out what works and what doesn’t. The type of food that lends itself particularly well for this type of attack has some form of hard outer layer, so it can contain itself mid-air, but should also shatter easily upon impact, revealing a wet, preferably sticky inside. 

Mother Nature’s answer to this casting call is of course the hen’s egg, which has the added advantage that, given time and a nice warm environment, it can develop a smell so horrid that it lingers in the nose for days. A disadvantage of eggs is that they don’t always break, and even if they do, they are still so hard that physical damage can’t be ruled out: there have even been stories of people who have been blinded by the impact. With that in mind, a more suitable option is a ripe, juicy tomato — which is popular, of course, but has somehow made it bigger in the realm of the performing arts than the political arena. Another option, which quite literally breaks the mould, is straight up flour. Because it is so difficult to aim, flour has to be contained, which has throughout time been done in paper bags, balloons and even condoms. Flour on its own is messy, but it reveals its real staying power in combination with eggs or other liquids. In Brazil, eggs and flour are used to ‘bake a cake’ on someone’s head when it’s their birthday, which lends a festive flair to this usually rather violent act of protest. Another classic among those who want to hit the sweet spot is, indeed, a baked pie. Pies are civilisation’s answer to nature’s egg, borrowing the basic principle of hard-on-the-outside-wet-on-the-inside, while resolving the issue of the rather too violent egg shell. In addition, pies can be made as large as one likes for more effect — while sizing up with eggs in the form of, say, ostrich eggs, would likely lead to murder charges. Cream pies have the greatest dramatic effect, and have been a favourite since the days “pieing” originated in slapstick comedy. It first made an appearance on stage and later in early silent films, and thus has been around for a long time. 

MBCdrama / Via youtube.com

A different kind of attack is yet to make the jump from on-screen fame to real-life politics, but it certainly has potential. Originating in South Korea in the 2010s, an epic K-drama scene in which one character slapped another with a whole head of napa cabbage-turned-spicy -kimchi soon became a viral mood. Following its success, more and different kinds of slaps were introduced: the gimbab slap, the seaweed slap, the spaghetti-with-tomato-sauce slap, a grilled pork belly slap. What sets these foods apart from older, more established entries into the genre, is that while their wetness is not contained, they get their effect from being long and strand-like, imitating a flat, wet hand hitting the cheek. 

As is to be expected, the progression of time changes the way in which some desires are acted out, while the desire itself by and large remains the same. Younger generations might also just have different food on hand than their ancestors did. Because nothing quite says ‘teenager’ like the ennui of dull-eyed milkshake sucking on some parking lot —  smoking cheap cigarettes — the milkshake bomb has become the latest trend in political food protest, mostly acted out by young people. It’s good. Where other attacks add stickiness and smelliness to the basic principle of wetness, the milkshake’s defining characteristic lies in it being cold. While that might sound refreshing in the middle of August, being hit with a milkshake on a grey January morning certainly is no trip to the circus. 

It’s a big world and there are as many different foods as there are things to be angry about.

All it takes is a little creativity and the future is yours. But, as always, those who create the future have to know about the past, so a little history lesson is in order. 

PIE 

On October 14, 1977, has-been singer Anita Bryant was interviewed on television about her “save our children” anti-gay rights campaign, when activist Thom L. Higgins threw a cream pie in her face — making her one of the first people to be pied as a political act. What followed was a bizarre rollercoaster of emotions. She regained herself surprisingly quickly by remarking that “at least it was a fruit pie”, riffing on the homophobic slur of “fruit” or “fruit cake” for gay men. She then began to pray to God to forgive Higgins for his “deviant lifestyle”, before finally bursting into tears. While the attack by no means stopped Bryant on her crusade, it did turn her into the butt of the joke for many years to come. In a beautiful act of cosmic justice, Anita’s own granddaughter announced her engagement to another woman last year — saying she had not yet decided whether or not to invite her grandmother. 

EGG

Throwing food had been somewhat forgotten as an act of political protest when one Australian teenager changed all that on March 16, 2019. Just a day before, the world had been shocked by the horrific Christchurch mosque shootings, during which 51 Muslim worshippers were killed and another 40 seriously injured. Far-right politician Fraser Anning reacted to the shooting by adding to the Muslim hate. After hearing about this, “egg boy” William Connolly decided to take action at a televised interview Anning gave the following day. He slapped an egg onto Anning’s bald head from behind, after which the politician turned around and slapped the teenager in the face. Connolly was arrested and later released to await the investigation. Meanwhile, money was pouring in to help Connolly pay his legal costs, which he donated to the victims of the shooting. As Connolly rose to fame, Anning’s career sank: he lost his senator seat soon after the incident. 

MILKSHAKE 

Innovation is often born out of necessity. After the Australian “egg boy” attack, anyone arriving at a political gathering with an egg in their pocket would have had some explaining to do. That’s how, during the British 2019 elections, milkshakes became a symbol of resistance against the far right. On May 1, the first milkshake was thrown at right wing activist Tommy Robinson; by May 20, Brexit politician Nigel Farage got a Five Guys milkshake thrown at him — which seems like a waste of a Very Good Milkshake. Only days later, he was trapped in his campaign bus, as a crowd of milkshake drinkers was waiting outside. An Edinburgh McDonald’s branch — which makes milkshakes more worthy of lowlife politicians —  was asked by local police to stop selling milkshakes for the day when Farage visited the city. Farage’s fellow UKIP member Carl Benjamin was milkshaked four times that May — a month during which milkshakes truly had their moment. 

Text and art direction: Yannic Moeken
Photography and art direction: Junshen Wu 
Creative Production and art direction: Sandra von Mayer-Myrtenhain

Sources:

Chitra Ramaswamy: Beyond a yolk. A brief history of egging as a political protest
Sarah Novak: Why Do People Throw Tomatoes?
Eimi Yamamitsu: These Extreme Slap Scenes From South Korean Soaps Just Changed The Entire Soap Opera Game
Cameron Wilson: A Boy Egged A Racist Politician After Christchurch. A Year On, Their Lives Have Completely Changed.