Smacking (Why I hate it)

In the Oresteia when Clytemnestra binds her husband in his bathrobe and murders him, we hear Agamemnon say with great feeling (and pain): I am stabbed. I am stabbed again.” This signifies to the highly intelligent audience that Agamemnon has been murdered. Presumably, the audience knows, and can imagine for themselves what this looks like. It might have ruined their enjoyment of the play had they seen the actual pool of blood accumulate around his lifeless body, his bathrobe stained in his life’s juices, his faithless wife holding the knife that took his life. Such a spectacle is said to be “obscene”, or literally off-stage. It is off-stage because it is unseemly.
In the same way, when someone is chewing his food we know that the digestive juices are flowing. We realize that food is actually getting mixed with spit as it swishes around his mouth. However, we are not supposed to hear it. The smack as the wet food sloshes around the mouth is not a pleasant sound. Nor is it at all, appetizing to see the extremely unaesthetic state of his partially undigested food. Food in the mouth is always disgusting. It does not matter if it is the most exquisite entrée on the menu of West of Paris. And look, how beautiful it looks on the plate when it is served. In the mouth it will look like the same kind of mush that saltine crackers becomes, and I can guarantee it will make a similar noise.