by Alleliah Nuguid
Noodles glut the baking tray and the video’s frame: a meal meant for a large
family heaped high and red as a grade-school volcano. Beyond it are two women.
In the background: coupons secured to the fridge; obeisant row of herbs in plastic
planters. “We got ten packs here, and I am ready to die,” one says as she
fills her bowl, and the other does too. The Young-Girl is both production and a factor
of production, that is, she is the consumer, the producer, the consumer of producers,
and the producer of consumers. “I took it to the next level like nobody would,”
says another as she coats a cob of corn with butter, mayo, and fine crimson
of powdered Cheeto. To reduce them to dust, she instructs, “Smash the Cheetos
until they’re like this: pulverized.” She holds her creation to the camera’s eyes,
asks if we want the first bite. The Young-Girl doesn’t kiss you, she drools
over you through her teeth. Materialism of secretions. An ethos of excess:
not “very,” but “too.” Quantity is worthless unless it disdains its container.
Without waiting for an answer, she wears the cob ragged with haphazard bites.
Not the balance of a ballerina, but of an accountant. Let them
eat Cheetos! she does not say. Guillotine the bottom line!
The smile has never served as an argument. There is also the smile of skulls.