BAD news in burgerland. People are talking about the “casual dining crunch” – and, no, that’s not a patty topping. It’s the bloated casual restaurant sector hitting the wall of rising labour costs and inflation. Yes, an appetite was there for such restaurants – but it wasn’t that big. So, in recent weeks, we’ve had reports that Jamie’s Italian, staggering under huge debts, is closing restaurants, and Byron, the posh burger chain, is restructuring.
I find it hard to get worked up about the closure of a few chain restaurants. But is this crunch part of a much bigger cultural crash – the one where people are simply not going out much? We’re getting our meals dropped off at our door courtesy of Deliveroo or Just Eat. We’re bingeing on Netflix at home rather than going to the movies. Nightclubs are closing because people don’t go clubbing any more. We all, on average, report fewer close friends.
This is usually the cue for some moaning about Millennials. But this is about all of us. Part of it is money and economics. But all of us are changing our habits – and spending more and more time attached to screens.
These statistics suggest that the world is closing down, its colour being drained. People are staying in, spending less time with those who might not share their views. We blame the mobile phones we keep always at our fingertips, but there’s a bigger story here – and it's been a long time coming, which is why both Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers, like me, are anxious about it.
Back in 1995, Robert Putnam wrote about what he saw as the loss of social capital – the connections between people – in the United States. He called it Bowling Alone, because he found it symbolic that though many Americans were bowling, the number doing so in organised leagues had vastly decreased. Observing that adults had far less social capital than previous generations, Putnam linked this to several factors, including the “privatisation” of recreation time through television.
People trusted government and each other less, he said. Membership of civic organisations was decreasing. All those trends have continued. Last year, he noted that the “bowling alone generation” was becoming the “ageing alone generation”.
How does that augur for today's young? The digital age has accelerated a process that began long before, partly driven by the politics of individualism. What’s happening now is that instead of bowling alone, we are bowling online. Tribes form there, hashtag campaigns go viral, but the Putnam trend continues. On one level we are more connected, yet on another, that physical, animal level, we are less.
More casual dining isn’t going to help stop this trend. Indeed it’s also not surprising if our consumerist nightlife options don’t grip us.
The experience they deliver can be soulless and offers no more vibrancy than a night home with Netflix. Many, including the Millennials, know that. They also know what they need to seek out: live music, local community projects, ways of coming physically together, often enabled by social media.
Leisure time matters. We may not need fancy burgers. But we do need something to bring us together, shoulder to shoulder, and in convivial spirit.
CHANGING THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER IS A SAD IDEA
ACTOR Penelope Cruz recently revealed that when she’s reading fairy stories to her children, she changes the endings. “In my version of Cinderella,” she explained, “when the prince says, ‘Do you wanna marry?’ she says, ‘No, thanks, I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be an astronaut or a chef.”
Why is she reading Cinderella to her children if she doesn’t want the trad ending? There are plenty of alternative options. Want a princess whose real desire is to be a doctor? Look to Julian Donaldson’s Zog. A bit of gender stereotype reworking? Prince Cinders by Babette Cole. Better still, pick up a folk tale collection by Scottish author Lari Don, who has drawn together tales from around the world, often with strong heroines.
We should be cautious of over-editing the original folk tales. They are often vibrant, psychologically complex and part of our rich cultural heritage. Shouldn’t we be reading our (perhaps older) kids original, unexpurgated versions, then using them as a starting point to discuss issues? To rewrite and sanitise them is to invite your kids into a kind of presentism, in which there is no such thing as history, but only our current values. We need to know our pasts. Let’s not behave as if the only “once upon a time” is now.
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