78 Chris Hudson
when the food on offer includes “international and local favourites”. One does not
have to be familiar with the story of Proust and the madeleine to understand the
power of the taste, smell, and look of food to stir the memory and to raise vivid
recollections of significant or pleasurable life events such as holidays, leisure, and
family outings. The conflation of food, fun, and other forms of pleasures such
as chilling and shopping in a model of hybrid consumption that memorializes
holidays is evidenced by the seemingly endless images of meals posted by
individuals on Facebook in the vein of “this is the lobster I had on my holidays in
Bali” or “this is the croissant I ate in Paris”. Food memorializes experience.
In Singapore, as elsewhere, these memories may be retrievable because the
experience of stimulation of the senses is intensified by ensembles of affective
activities and sites. The zoo, for example, offers not only constellations of
sensations with its eating-with-wildlife possibilities but also makes available a
range of spectacles to intensify the experience, and create lasting memories. The
Splash Safari Show, for example, promises “a high-energy splash parade filled
with many special moments that will tickle your funny bone and tug at your
heartstrings at the same time” (Wildlife Reserves Singapore 2014d). The many
wildlife experiences offered by the zoo create memorable moments characterized
by hybrid consumption practices that produce hybrid affects. Participants are
exhorted to anticipate various forms of affective response, embodied experiences,
and sensory excitement. The zoo, the Jurong Bird Park, and other sites of urban
wilds also offer a chance to contribute to maintaining bio-diversity and saving
the earth. These are all themed experiencescapes that rely on a combination of
culinary stimulation and context-specific affective responses for their power to
encourage consumption.
The fusing of the everyday, visceral, pre-articulate action of eating with
aesthetics and the generation of hybrid consumption is, of course, hardly an
innovation. Nevertheless, the place of food in Singapore’s national culture, its
enduring reputation amongst tourists, and the state’s commitment to an economy
of consumption combined with a natural environment that no visitor or citizen
could fail to admire, however much it is exploited for profit, have generated the
means to elicit emotional responses. The eating-with-wildlife model—which
is, given the Breakfast with the Orangutan tours in Borneo and elsewhere, not
unique to Singapore—demonstrates the ease with which eco-experiences seem
to be available for varieties of hybrid consumption. These elements of global
consumer society come together as part of a strategy to remake the nation as a
cohesive, integrated eco-landscape—a move in the development of the paradigm
of the Disney theme park—in which various forms of consumption combine in
an ensemble of sensations to delight and excite. All the events, affective spaces,
emotional and physical gratification, and embodied experiences described above
point to a complex and pervasive sensory regime, a synaesthetic extravaganza in
which people can satisfy their desires to shop, eat, and chill.