The Most Controversial Moment From Snoop & Martha's Very Tasty Halloween
"Snoop & Martha's Very Tasty Halloween" is one of the biggest food competitions you'll ever see. Three teams of bakers were challenged to create edible and haunting room-sized experiences for a party thrown by Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart, and BuzzFeed Tasty chef Alvin Zhou.
Each team had to come up with a scary theme, and the trio calling themselves The Kooky Kaijus went with Japanese-inspired treats, including one dark element that might get some backlash. The most controversial moment from "Snoop & Martha's Very Tasty Halloween" was The Kooky Kaijus' inspiration: a forest called the Sea of Trees at the base of Mount Fuji, known in Japan as the Aokigahara Jukai or more colloquially in the U.S. as the "suicide forest" (via The Washington Post). For years, the forest has drawn people who want to kill themselves, and signs throughout the place try to encourage people to embrace their lives.
Western depictions of this forest often fail to be sensitive to Japanese culture, that nation's high suicide rate, and the grave nature of suicide in general. The 2016 American horror film "The Forest," set in the Sea of Trees, marketed itself as based at least partially on reality (via The Atlantic). Critics bashed the movie for trivializing the real causes of suicide and depicting Japanese lives as less valuable than those of white people.
A team on "Snoop & Martha's Very Tasty Halloween" used this setting as a theme
On "Snoop & Martha's Very Tasty Halloween," one of the members of The Kooky Kaijus team said they were inspired by a visit to the Sea of Trees in Japan. (Kaiju is a Japanese word used to describe Godzilla and other giant movie creatures.) "It was goosebumps walking through the whole forest," the team member said, adding that, according to legend, "Many people enter. Nobody comes back." Martha Stewart mentioned that she had visited the forest, too.
Guests entering The Kooky Kaijus' mockup of the Aokigahara Jukai could sample chocolate shoyu cake, a lychee matcha dessert, and a cocktail with saki syrup-infused vanilla cake. Viewers at home couldn't taste any of these goodies, so all they could consider was the Halloween special's reference to a Japanese forest known for its suicides. "Snoop & Martha's Very Tasty Halloween" doesn't mention suicide directly, so maybe the show will dodge some of the backlash felt by other American media accounts of the "suicide forest."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).