Casual
_Casual Don't Rescue This Rainforest ?"ou have to see it to believe it," said my wife. -l. She had just returned from one of her trolling sessions at our nearby mall, and what I had to see to...
...But now we live in the age of perpetual uplift...
...the idea—a wise one, as it turned out— was to pacify the antsy children and distract their parents from noticing the quality of the food...
...If you've seen any children's television programming lately, you know what I mean...
...Here as elsewhere, lard seems to be the essential ingredient...
...Clerks swarm about like tsetse flies, dispensing wisdom about the rainforest and entreating you to buy, buy, buy...
...The market overtakes all, conquers all, subsumes all—so that even anti-consumerism becomes an occasion to consume...
...And Rainforest operates on the principle central to all family restaurants: awesome waste...
...The restaurant boasts that it uses "only line-caught fish big enough to have reproduced before it was harvested...
...It is printed—again, needless to say— "with environmentally friendly soybased inks" on "10 percent recovered fiber paper...
...Another featured a Punch and Judy show...
...Andrew Ferguson...
...When you are handed the menu, the uplift begins in earnest...
...The burgers weigh in at an inedible half-pound, and no one weeps for our bovine brothers and sisters who gave their lives that we might have a pointlessly large portion of their shanks, served on a toasted sesame-seed bun...
...Theme restaurants are nothing new, of course...
...A large waterfall is lit with a neon sign: "Rescue the Rainforest...
...In the age of perpetual uplift, everyone's a hectoring schoolmarm, even purple dinosaurs, and you can't escape the nagging...
...Its proprietors might say they want to raise consciousness, but they really want to raise cash...
...Around the tables the norteameri-canos waited impatiently for their food, the jowly dads bursting the seams of their relaxed-fit Levi's, the moms spilling out of their track suits, the plump kids fidgeting with smeary faces...
...The immediate theme, you needn't guess, is the rainforest and the impending destruction thereof, due to the profligate tendencies of unchecked consumption...
...I made this discovery with enormous relief: Rainforest the restaurant is just another consumer con...
...In the same way, while it fills your belly and lightens your wallet, Rainforest the restaurant aims to raise your consciousness...
...And the pizza...
...Yes, my son, whenever the Tasaday would phone Domino's...
...To assist in your experience, we have cut our pizzas as was done in the rainforest...
...Bogus foliage sprouts from the walls and dangles from the ceiling...
...As for the burgers, "no beef was used from countries that deforest rainforest land to raise cattle...
...The effect is deafening, not least because the uproar incites dozens of children to leave their tables to catch a better glimpse, hurtling themselves into the busboys and expectorating excitedly into your food...
...She had just returned from one of her trolling sessions at our nearby mall, and what I had to see to believe was a new restaurant—a "theme restaurant," called Rainforest...
...Now it's a burger joint, happy, frolicsome, air-conditioned, and bug-free: "an environmentally conscious family adventure," as the menu instructs...
...Like so much environmental paraphernalia, the menu is an exercise in self-flattery and moral preening...
...Normally, strenuous efforts at New Age uplift are enough to send me spiraling into a funk, but I was unexpectedly un-depressed by Rainforest...
...Barney the dinosaur isn't content to sing catchy ditties...
...For stripped of its eco-pre-tensions, Rainforest is still, reassuringly, a tasteless family restaurant in the American style...
...The food itself comes in heaps, served on platters the size of Brazil...
...This is not, I admit, a particularly uplifting message, but it's better than the alternative...
...Puppets, volcanoes: nothing terribly elaborate...
...From my own childhood I remember one with a cheesy plaster-of-Paris volcano in the center of the room that would periodically belch smoke and sparks...
...Fake macaws swing on their perches and squawk...
...Ani-matronic wildlife is everywhere...
...A single serving of dessert could keep the defensive line of the Detroit Lions in sugar shock for a week...
...they must simultaneously instruct the brats to brush their teeth, eat their vegetables, and look kindly on the cultures of other lands...
...Deep in the rainforest, the tribal experience was a communal offering of food...
...As you wobble out of the restaurant a rope line guides you into a retail shop offering all kinds of Rainforest-brand ticky-tacky: finger puppets, perfume, sweaters, T-shirts...
...Every story must have a moral, every amusement a higher purpose...
...The rainforest, as patrons of a certain age will recall, was once known as the jungle, a dismal swamp of darkness and danger best avoided by all but the most intrepid explorers...
...At five-minute intervals, life-size gorillas begin to beat their breasts, rubber elephants raise their trunks and waggle their ears, drowsy leopards growl...
...By the time my meal was over, in fact, I was almost exhilarated...
Vol. 2 • January 1997 • No. 17
