I have written before about the scam that is dark chocolate - how everyone really wants milk (and/or white) chocolate; but gets coerced, shamed, or indoctrinated into that inversion of enjoyment which is dark chocolate.
Dark chocolate is the decadence of the over-indulged and satiated; and in this respect it is analogous to modernist classical music.
Everybody who genuinely likes classical music, most enjoys and appreciates pre-20th century music of one sort or another - the music that came before Schoenberg and Stravinsky - whether from the renaissance, baroque, classical or romantic era. The music of (for example) Tallis, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Wagner.
However, when people attend or watch on TV a classical music concert, or listen to a classical radio station, they are nearly-always compelled to hear a significant percentage of "modern" classical music - relentlessly dissonant, atonal, or in some fashion raucous, or simply incoherent and mediocre.
This is because the classical music producers, conductors, performers, and composers have - by the time they reach adulthood - gorged on pre-modern music for hours-per-day from early childhood until they are heartily sick of it; and they want nothing other than to hear good music subverted, twisted, mocked, parodied, or spoiled - hence the liking for "modernism" in music.
Modernist music is the decadence of the satiated professional, being force-fed to the amateur and music-lover, in a spirit of revenge or sheer spitefulness.
And the same applies to the chocolate chefs, designers, manufacturers, and connoisseurs; they have stuffed themselves with sweet milk or white chocolates until their palates crave bitterness, sourness or and salt.
Instead of the smooth creamy texture of good milk/ white chocolate; they instead desire dry, powdery, brittle, even salty (!) experiences.
But rather than do the rational thing and eat something else other than chocolate, something that gratifies their anti-chocolate desires; they instead ruin the chocolate.
Instead of leaving ordinary people to enjoy their sweet and smooth chocolate - they spitefully demand to insert dark chocolate where is is not wanted:
In selection boxes, where they mix nasty dark with delicious mild/ whites. Or (when prevented) by encrusting or lacing or dusting the creamy-sweet milk or white chocolate, with the bitter-dryness of The Black Stuff.
And it is the moderate, common-sense, chocolate-loving amateur who must suffer the consequences of the professionals' dark depravity.
4 comments:
Ha, as it happens I was eating a piece of dark chocolate at the very moment I clicked to check your blog!
Dark chocolate tastes like chocolate. Milk chocolate is chocolate-flavored candy. Saying dark chocolate appreciators are ruining chocolate is like saying someone who prefers black coffee to one of those milkshake-like concoctions from Starbucks should just drink something else if he doesn't like the natural sweet richness of coffee.
I don't mean to give you PTSD, but I really, genuinely enjoy dark chocolate. The comments section of your last article on the subject showed an overwhelming support of dark chocolate among men who have transgressed our current social values in so many ways, so I doubt a desire to impress anyone is a factor. Why is it so hard for you to accept some people really do like dark chocolate?
@Wm - To quote WS Gilbert: "I have no desire to press hardly on you, but such a revolutionary sentiment is enough to make an honest sailor shudder. "
@Evan: This blog is a Safe Space: Here is a place where anyone (of any sex, race, creed, or colour) can admit "I do not Really enjoy chocolate, and would rather eat something else"; and this acknowledgement will not be held against him.
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