by B. R. GOWANI
http://youtu.be/mrCLRsrFO44
Toilet restaurants
It was Oscar Wilde who once wrote:
In 2004, Wang Tzi-Wei, inspired by a Japanese cartoon titled Dr. Slump, started a theme restaurant named Modern Toilet in Taiwan. His customers were served drinks in plastic miniature urinals and meals in toilet bowl shaped dishes. Since then, he has opened more branches in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Last weekend, Chinese restaurateur Yoyo Li inspired by these restaurants, opened “Magic Restroom Café” in Los Angeles. Some dishes customers can order are “smells-like-poop” (braised pork over rice), “bloody number two” (vanilla-strawberry sundae), “golden poop rice,” and “black poop” (chocolate sundae). The food is served in bowls which resembles squat toilets and standard US toilets.
It is difficult to be surprised or even shocked at much these days. Our world has never been “normal”; absurdities have always been part of its daily life. Having said that, the scale of the preposterously absurd has now increased multifold. Also, whereas in the past most of the absurdities were committed by people in power, increased commercial competition coupled with the introduction of social media have provided ordinary people from all walks of life the opportunity to shock their fellow humans.
The Phantom of Liberty
The Phantom of Liberty was an extraordinary film by Luis Buñuel released in 1974 that deals with this subject. In one particular scene, a couple is seen visiting friends’ home; after preliminary greetings, they are taken to hostess-assigned seats across from each other at what seemed like a dining table. However, it being a Buñuel film, nothing normal was to be expected. “Food” was a dirty word and not to be spoken aloud nor was it is to be eaten in front of all. It was a private matter only allowed in small individual cubicles. On the other hand, defecation was a socially accepted public act to be done while in the company of others. Therefore, the assigned seats were not chairs but a line of toilets around the “dining table”. The discussion held here was serious: environmental pollution and billions of kilos of human waste added everyday. One character describes the effects on the Spanish capital Madrid that he recently visited: “Madrid was filled with a foul smell of – excuse me – of food.” (A must see movie, one of the best movies of all times.)
http://youtu.be/caUaRVTBfRU
Next logical step
The amount of trash the world produces each year keeps on rising; and the increase is going to accelerate much in coming years as the economy and lifestyles in China, Brazil, India and in other countries are changing fast. Today United States is the top trash producer. In 2009 in the US, people used 12,000 plastic bags every second, 3 million sheets of paper every minute, and threw away “enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet every three months”.
The seriousness of the garbage problem in the US is making some small cities to take actions asking people to separate their food scraps for composting. Some small cities in Orange county, California, have started a pilot project to recycle food waste from businesses, while others want to create energy from human excrement.
The growing trash problem including that of human feces, Buñuel’s idea of food and toilet, and the Toilet restaurants are breaking taboos and making people comfortable with sitting on toilets while eating regular food with excrement-related names served in toilet dishes which takes us to the next step: creating food out of feces. In 2010, there were reports that a Japanese person had created meat out of human feces, which later turned to be a hoax. However, it cannot be ruled out that somewhere someone is trying such a thing. If it happens then in the future, we will be sitting on toilets in toilet restaurants eating recreated food from human feces.
Who knows, maybe the advancement in such technology will let people go to Toilet restaurants to relive themselves and then eat breakfast. While they’re having breakfast, their defecated material will be ready as a recreated food to go. This may be just one of the several options available to people in future.
Of course, cheating may exist. Also, the big corporations will take over the Toilet restaurants and cafes.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com