Seven Deadly Sins of Eat, Pray, Love

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 by Mich Masoch

Posted in Lip SerVICES |

Get ready, fellow degenerates, I’m about to do something I never thought possible.

 

I must talk of my distaste of a story celebrating hedonism. Yeah, I know. But, in my defense, hedonism is merely the attractive hook, designed to get me, you, and everyone else to accept an otherwise heinous thing.

 

Every so often, a bit of detritus from the mainstream sad excuse for art and culture sneaks into my fortress of mediocrity avoidance. A nasty little nugget of lowest common denominator gathers too much praise and adulation to ignore. Otherwise sensible people gush about the grotesque, cleverly hidden beneath a shiny, glossy shell of self-help PR and puffery.

 

Generally, messages selling the route to self-fulfillment should always be scrutinized. Often, they are about nothing more than fulfillment of the author and publisher’s bank accounts, which, so long as they’re not detrimental to the adherents, can be set aside in the Buyer Beware category and looked at as a bit sad but benign.

 

But what if the core message is a malignant one, lurking beneath the smiley platitudes? What if it’s a message which encourages selfish and inconsiderate behavior, self-indugence as piety, consumption as cure, vacuous shortcuts to depth, superficial navel-gazing over honest, often painful introspection? Then, would you not think the message being espoused is a potentially dangerous thing?

 

I have recently been confronted by such a thing … and I’ll admit, it annoys me too much to just ignore it.

 

That thing is “Eat, Pray, Love”.

 

You see, there are other vices lurking beneath the shiny, hedonistic surface, nasty vices which must be dragged out into the light of day and exposed. Once we poke even ever-so-gently beneath the outer candy coating, the story behind “Eat, Pray, Love” grows darker and more sinister.

 

Where shall I begin? There is so much to work with here!

 

In the effort to keep it all nice and organized, I’ll use one of my very favorite gauges, the Seven Deadly Sins, to sum up the gag-inducing nastiness that is “Eat, Pray, Love”.

Anger:

One can argue that Liz Gilbert’s so-called voyage of self-discovery is one of light and all things good and yummy. I must disagree. If she was so overcome with happy-joy-joy fulfillment objectives, why the need to dredge out her marital dirty laundry for entertainment value (also known as fun and profit)? She could have spared her unceremoniously abandoned ex the embarrassment of having their relationship woes spelled out in no uncertain terms. Apparently, Ms. Liz had a not-so-warm-and-fuzzy axe to grind, perhaps? A little not-to-be-spoken-of at Oprah dish-sessions and bright shiny pep talk book and movie promotions bit of ragey-ragey, perhaps? The end result speaks for itself. Hell, I had plenty of legitimate beefs about life with my ex (also affectionately known as Satan), but you won’t see me dishing about him in print. Bitterness is not a path to enlightenment I’ve ever heard of … but maybe that’s just me.

Envy:

It is not uncommon for well-off, uninspired vanilla folks from the McMansion set to feel their spiritual and cultural lives are somehow less-than compared to the humble people darker than melba toast on the other side of the globe. (People, I might mention, who often are economically victimized by the very same sorts of people in trade and corporate greedhead culture … though that’s another vice for another day.) Ms. Liz envied the humble brown people their simplicity, their heart-felt spirituality, their self-awareness (much like shoppers of Anthropologie – catalog front shown- envy them their “native” look). So much so, she felt compelled to co-opt them for herself, taking their real beliefs for her self-help juggernaut to be that shining image for other uninspired vanilla folk to envy.

There is also a very unattractive envy of the storied mid-life crisis at play here. I see, among most apologists for “Eat, Pray, Love”, a palpable sentiment of, “If men can have a mid-life crisis, so can we!” So dedicated to this notion are they, the thought never seeps in that, should a man have lived this story, they’d be throwing rocks instead of kisses at the author.

Gluttony:

Well, duh. That’s like shooting fish in a barrel. I’ll save the words for more interesting targets.

Greed:

Now we’re talking! I mentioned the Ms. Liz juggernaut just above. The fans of Liz might be outraged a bit at this, but I think they’d be starting on a path toward what can lead to inconvenient truths. It is not discussed in the movie, but guess how Liz Gilbert funded the trip which “inspired” the book? Right you are, my clever sinners, according to several articles readily available online, Liz Gilbert paid for the trip with the advance for the book! This is, of course, a rather pretty pass in the mythology of her journey of self-discovery. If we know she had already gotten the advance, we know she couldn’t very well have returned from her tri-nation romp without some gems of self-awareness to share, don’t we? It makes the whole exercise ring a bit hollow, doesn’t it, a self-awareness conveniently appearing on cue and in time for a deadline? Also makes the author feel a bit greedy to me, cashing in, as well as priming the cash pump in advance, on the “recovery” from a relationship she abandoned.

Lust:

Also, much too easy. Beside, lust is generally a fine and noble thing I endorse whole-heartedly!

Pride:

Not only is there a bit of an annoying, “Look at me! I’m such a good person!” in “Eat, Pray, Love” and its self-congratulation of Liz Gilbert’s success in becoming a happy person by the *ahem* oh-so-road-less-traveled route of going to beautiful and exotic places to relax, eat lots of food, and fuck. Wow! What an arduous time that must have been and how wonderful for her to have managed to find her happy place through massive amounts of self-indulgence! There is also the self-absorbed navel-gazing which inevitably goes hand-in-hand with this breed of memoir. Sure, at some points Liz Gilbert is actually aware of other people outside her bubble of self-satisfaction, sometimes even doing nice things for them. But, ultimately, it is all about Liz.

Sloth:

This is the one which irks me most of all, the thing which really made me want to dedicate a column to why we should not be celebrating this brand of hedonism and recognizing it for the bad-penny vice it is. There is none of the real hard work in coming to the journey, much less the happy ending. Let’s call it what it is: Laziness across the board. Liz Gilbert wanted a lush, lazy vacay in exotic places. She wanted self-awareness without all the icky gut-wrenching work. She wanted spirituality without actually having to commit mind and spirit, instead just racing off to the lazy-(wo)man’s shortcut to it … find nice brown people to meditate with. Hell, even her voyage plan is intellectually lazy and suffers a lack of effort toward creative vision.

 

I know many people will tag me as bitter because I have expended time and effort to be critical of Liz Gilbert’s supposed masterpiece. But, you know what? It’s worth it to me if just one person is able to avoid this ugly paean of self-congratulation and discover a better, more helpful book or moving, intelligent film instead.

False virtue is a vice I just can’t get behind.