Food – Bitch Flicks

‘The Hunger Games’: Proving Dystopia Is the Best Young Adult Genre

Dystopia, in its futuristic escapism and its contemporary relevance, is an ideal genre for the young adult demographic. By pushing the boundaries of disturbing content and reflecting on youthful idealism, dystopian narratives trust the YA consumer to be both literary in their consumption of the book or film, but also socially and morally insightful in their view of the imagined world they hold.

This guest post by Rowan Ellis appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Dystopian narratives can generally be described as “An imaginary place where people lead dehumanised and often fearful lives,” which is accurate, but does not fully express key characteristics of the genre.^[1] The Hunger Games, for example, is temporally situated in a future version of America, and this relationship between time periods affects the causes of the dystopian societies and the extent to which our own world is responsible for their making. In this way, and especially looking at The Hunger Games as a Young Adult series, we can examine how dystopian landscapes are an overwhelmingly apt vehicle for social awareness in the younger generation by interacting with their world and self-identity.

The Young Adult label is a recent one, with a distinctive lack of research on the genre; even its definition is contentious as a mixture of both a self-styled labelling by authors themselves, and a marketing tool for publishing companies. Intended readership is perhaps the most useful way of understanding the Young Adult literature, with the genre then defined as those books, films, or TV written and produced specifically for young adults.

The contemporary relevance of YA protagonists ensure that the exploration of self-identity for characters within these films is inevitably reflected back onto the YA audience, helping to shape their own views of themselves and the world around them. By exclusively using protagonists who are young adults themselves, films like The Hunger Games are able to emphasise the need for social change, and the possibility of it, by giving power to its viewers; as the protagonists create a better world, so too can the audience. At a talk at Cadogan Hall, John Green asked for questions from the audience of young readers. On receiving insightful and pertinent questions, and reading aloud one on the pain of writing about unfulfilled lives, and another comparing the use of water in his book to that of James Joyce in Ulysses, he remarked “I wish all the journalists who tell me my books are too complex for teenagers could hear this.” Dystopia, in its futuristic escapism and its contemporary relevance, is an ideal genre for the young adult demographic. By pushing the boundaries of disturbing content and reflecting on youthful idealism, dystopian narratives trust the YA consumer to be both literary in their consumption of the book or film, but also socially and morally insightful in their view of the imagined world they hold. By extrapolating a possible future from wider themes of importance in the contemporary age, the need to change current society is heightened.

Literary critic Robyn McCallum prefaces her work on adolescent identity by proposing the relative truism that “concepts of personal identity and selfhood are formed in dialogue with society, with language and with other people.”^{^[2]} The implication of this for The Hunger Games, however, is far more significant, as the reaction to and rebellion against Panem shapes not only the self-identity of the characters, but also the audience’s attitudes toward them. Dystopian worlds are often a product of mankind’s inability to learn from history, and The Hunger Games utilises this by mirroring its world building with Ancient and contemporary civilisations while creating the new history of Panem. Penelope Lively’s argument that “to have a sense of history is, above all, to have a sense of one’s own humanity” ties Katniss’ identity to distant history, as much as to her father’s death in the recent past.^{^[3]} The use of the name Panem for the dystopian world Collins creates, gives a multi-layered sense of antiquity and contemporary history. The Latin translation of Panem as “bread” is most notably tied to the quintessential Roman phrase “Bread and Circuses,” directly paralleling the Games and historical Gladiatorial contests, with the pre-Games feast even mirroring the cena libera in Roman culture. However, there is also a similarity with the famous Pam Am airline, evoking the past glamour of American globalisation, ironically contrasted with the static divisive state of the future America. Similarly the Capitol ties together ancient Rome and modern Washington with the utopian setting of the high society in Collins’ novel. The film’s costumes and design has a similar relationship with history; District 12 has a distinctive feel of dustbowl America, as if stepping out of the Depression-era photograph of an impoverished farming community.

Although set in our future, Katniss’ outfit undeniably echoes the past.

McCallum argues that “to displace a character out of his/her familiar surroundings can destablise his/her sense of identity,” yet Katniss does her growing within the hostile and unfamiliar landscape of the Arena, as she refuses to mirror the career tributes bloodthirsty methods, even though we as an audience know she is already skilled in hunting and killing.^{^[4]} The Arena is a form of anti-society, as The Games encourage a distrust of society via a distrust of individuals and alliances on which communities are based. By placing Katniss in such a space, it ensures a shaping of her social identity as a victor, but also her internal one, as her compassion is not completely destroyed by the mistrust and cunning she demonstrates in order to survive.

For a dystopian society to flourish there needs to be, as a characteristic of its ruling elite, the ability to block out natural empathy, or to remove the lower citizens from full human status deserving of empathy, in order for these hardships to be justified.^{^[5]} For the Games in The Hunger Games to achieve their purpose, they have to be watched both in horror by the Districts, and with delight and wonder by the Capitol. The Hunger Games uses the Games as an extreme image of where desensitising an audience potentially extrapolates to. The most immediate reflection of empathy within The Hunger Games is the relationship between Katniss, Rue, and Prim, as Katniss finds herself unable to detach her feelings for her sister with those for her fellow Tribute. This creates a sense of her as an unexpected maternal figure, sensing a gap between the younger girls as small children, and herself as an adult with responsibilities to them. Haymitch, as a representation of the experienced, and therefore jaded, adult character, is able to comprehend consequences of Katniss’ actions, whereas she reflects the stereotypical teenage attitude of living in the present, allowing her to focus on empathy over practicality and preserving her as a moral character as she teams up with the defenceless Rue.

The Other is a vital component of social (rather than ecological) dystopian fiction, as the propensity of the ruling elite to create such a nightmarish reality often relies on the subjugation of those who are deemed different. Going through the physical gendering process of puberty emphasises gender divides for YA characters and viewers. Gender in Panem is never raised as an Othering principle, indeed both male and female tributes are treated with the same objectification and callousness, and both genders display compassion and ruthlessness equally. However, the problems of patriarchy are so present in our own society that we project these values onto the characters. The Atlantic magazine, for example, described Katniss as “the most important female character in recent pop culture history” and the success of the film franchise has bolstered support of an increase in films with female protagonists as both morally and financially justified.^{^[6]} In The Hunger Games, Katniss’ unbridled contempt for her Mother’s mental state, shapes her into becoming a traditional father figure, assuming the patriarchal rather than matriarchal role in the house. Similarly, although ostensibly the tribute Johanna Mason subverts the traditional gender stereotypes when fakes a meek sensibility in her own Games before revealing her bloodthirsty nature in order to win, there is a sense within the books that the same ploy would have worked had Joanna been Joseph.

Those of a high social rank in the Capitol become characterised by an extreme aestheticism, mirroring the turn of the Century upper-class preoccupation with art and beauty explored by Oscar Wilde and other Decadent artists. Cinna’s team work relentlessly on Katniss, as the ideals of beauty are vital to gaining support in the Capitol; looks help you win. In Finnick’s storyline, this preoccupation is given an added sinister twist, as he confesses Snow allowed Capitol citizen’s to rape him, inviting a comparison with the sexual exploitation of both men and women from the working-class backgrounds in Panem, with the sex industry in our own world.

Having Katniss act as the face of a building revolution, young adult viewers can see reflected in the films images of fictional young adults with the ability to change the world. They use a combination of fear and hope to allow young adult viewers to feel empowered, both in their internal self-identity and their engagement with the contemporary issues reflected in the films. Hope is traditionally the driving force in children’s fiction–to prevent despair from becoming the ultimate end of the experience, thereby preventing the impetus for creating a better alternative, and the same can be seen in Young Adult fiction. The actor Donald Sutherland, who portrays President Snow in the film adaptations of The Hunger Games has noticed the story’s “potential to catalyse, motivate, mobilise a generation of young people who were, in my opinion, by and large dormant in the political process,” through this combination of alarm and optimism.

Dystopian films relate the horror of the fictional worlds to the future of their own; in The Hunger Games the starvation in the Districts is a clear reflection of the poverty and famine experienced world-wide, even within contemporary America, where 57 percent of American children live in a home which is designated “poor” or “low income” and 20 percent live in poverty. Moreover, the extravagance of the Capitol’s food and clothes holds a mirror to the wasteful culture in the Western World, where up to half of all food produced is never eaten. Furthermore, the life or death conditions for children chosen as Tributes can be associated with the problems surrounding the use of child soldiers in countries such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The empathetic fear of young adults towards these issues was illustrated clearly in the viral awareness campaign “Kony 2012,” where the plight of child soldiers captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of young people world-wide. Although critic Downey wrote in 2005 that “one of the great difficulties in teaching about horrific periods of history […] is addressing how to help students comprehend the incomprehensible,” she simplifies the abilities of young people by supposing that what is viewed as “incomprehensible” is relegated to the past, and that as adults, teachers are able to better understand these events.^{^[7]}

Hardships endured can both build and destroy characters, and although destruction can be viewed as a more realistic reaction to living in a dystopian society, forming positive identities around interacting with a society and set of values one finds unfair or lacking is a YA viewer’s reality. As the brilliant YA author Patrick Ness puts it, “Teenagers don’t see dystopias as dystopias; they see them as barely fictional representations of their day-to-day lives,” through their own powerlessness and fear. A fear which is inevitable in our world, and a reality to YA viewers–Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, for example, famously composed its terrifying society from real cultures and historic movements. Dystopian narratives gives a YA audience a way of processing this reality at a distance, while potentially using it for personal inspiration, to foster an empathy which allows them to create their own morality separate from and informed by imperfect societies.

^{^[1]} Merriam Webster Encyclopedia of Literature (Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster Inc, 1995)

^{^[2]} Robyn McCallum, Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity (New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1999) p.3

^{^[3]} Penelope Lively, “Child and Memory,” Horn Book, 49/4, (1973), p.400

^{^[4]} Robyn McCallum, Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity (New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1999) p.190

^{^[7]} Downey, A.L., “The Transformative Power of Drama: Bringing Literature and Social Justice to Life” English Journal, 95/1, (2005) p.33

Rowan Ellis is a British geek using her YouTube videos to critique films, TV, and books from a queer and feminist lens.

Scavenging for Food and Art: Agnès Varda’s ‘The Gleaners and I’

Written by Rachael Johnson.

Belgian-born French filmmaker Agnès Varda is nothing less than a cinematic treasure. Her career spans decades and she has gained critical acclaim for both her fiction and documentary films. Varda was, of course, a pioneering figure of the New Wave and Left Bank. In 1962, she directed the ground-breaking, feminist classic Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7). In 1985, her powerful, lyrical film about a young homeless woman, Sans Toi, Ni Loi (Vagabond), won the Golden Lion in Venice. This year Varda was awarded an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes. She was the first woman to receive the tribute. At the beginning of the Millenium, Varda also directed the documentary Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I, 2000). It is one of the most fascinating ever made.

Poster for The Gleaners and I — Poster for *The Gleaners and I*

Varda begins her documentary by providing the historical, aesthetic and linguistic context of gleaning. We are given the Larousse dictionary definition: “To glean is to gather after the harvest.” The director tells us that it was a mostly female, collective activity in the old days. Today, both men and women glean, more often than not on their own. François Millet’s painting of les glaneuses provides the stimulating starting point for Varda’s creative, humanist journey. Marrying the past and the present, the documentary features interviews with men and women of rural and urban France in the new Millenium who practice various forms of gleaning. People gather everything from vegetables, fruit, and oysters to old dolls, fridges, and TVs. We encounter an impoverished single mother picking potatoes, and homeless young people dumpster-diving outside a supermarket. We also meet a chef scavenging for fruit because he prefers to know where his food comes from, as well as artist gleaners who scavenge for junk to use in their pieces. One of the most interesting people Varda meets is a man with a master’s degree who picks discarded fruit and bread from city markets in the morning and teaches French to immigrants from Mali and Senegal at night.

The Gleaners and I is not directly political but rather a thought-provoking, humanist study of people on the margins as well as those with reject capitalist norms of production and consumption. Issues of waste and sustainable development have become more and more critical, of course, since the film was made. Interestingly, in an effort to combat waste and food poverty, France introduced new laws this year banning supermarkets from dumping and destroying unsold food. They are now encouraged to give edible food to charities.

Millet's Les Glaneuses — Millet’s Les Glaneuses

The tools Varda employs are modest and made for the road. The handheld digital video camera she uses allows for both freedom and intimacy. She puts herself in front of the camera, filming, for example, her aged hands and thinning hair in candid close-up. Can you imagine a Hollywood director doing so? Varda rejects vanity and embraces vulnerability. Her presence is, also often playful. At the beginning of the film, she recreates the actions of the wheat-carrying glaneuse in Jules Breton’s painting of a solitary female gleaner, all the while fixing her eyes on the camera. Varda has the inquiring mind of all great artists. Her humanity and inventiveness are consistently on display in The Gleaners and I. The director seems entirely invested in the subject as well as entirely empathetic towards the people she meets. Varda indeed identifies herself as a glaneuse. She gleans both memories and images in her life and art. In truth, the documentary is not only a study of gleaning but also a beguiling self-portait of an artist as well as an imaginative self-reflexive study of the art and craft of filmmaking.

Villagers being interviewed about the tradition

At once poetic and politically aware, The Gleaners and I offers a captivating portrait of the practice of scavenging. Both very French and very human, it’s a life-affirming film about how people survive and create. There are no subjects more important. The documentary is one of Varda’s essential works, as well as one of the most interesting and finest of all time.

Foreign Film Week: Gender, Family and Globalization in ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’

Chef Chu and his “middle daughter” Jia-Chien in Eat Drink Man Woman

Guest post written by Emily Contois. A version of this post previously appeared at her blog.

In Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), director and co-writer Ang Lee expertly tells the story of changing family dynamics in Taipei, Taiwan during a time of rapid modernization, employing a universal medium — food. Through Chef Chu who has lost his sense of taste and his three adult daughters, this film addresses many themes, chief among them gender roles, family, and globalization, which each progress forward in divergent, but equally valid and flexible ways.

Starting from its dichotomous title, gender and authority come to the fore in this film, issues that also greatly shape the roles of women in the public world of food where men in general are more likely to hold positions of power. Such is the case for Chef Chu. While he no longer works full time at The Grand Hotel, he acts with assured confidence when he is called in one evening to help the all male staff to rectify a dish that is being served at an important dinner.

Chef Chu presenting the “saved” shark fin soup, transformed into a lucky dragon

The traditional, powerful, masculine role of “The Chef” is complicated in the film, however, as Chef Chu’s authority is not well recognized by his daughters. Furthermore, as he parents alone, Chef Chu serves as both mother and father and performs many conventionally feminine duties, such as feeding his daughters, folding their laundry—even waking them up in the morning. Throughout the film, Chef Chu prepares elaborate family dinners, which his daughters attend, but half-heartedly and with a degree of frustration, irritability, and irreverence.

Chef Chu serving dinner to his three daughters early on in the film

Further complicating Chef Chu’s authority, his “middle daughter” (Jia-Chien) aspires to be a master chef like her father. Chef Chu dissuaded her from following a culinary career, however, encouraging her to attend university instead. Jia-Chien had assumed her father did this based upon conventional views that women do not make good chefs, but that proves to not be the case. A close family friend reveals that what Chef Chu wants for his daughter is an easier and better life away from the kitchen. Interestingly, it is Jia-Chien’s return to the home kitchen and cooking for her father that brings back Chef Chu’s lost sense of taste. This act can be read as either thwarting or promoting feminist views, as her cooking can be interpreted as the provision of conventionally feminine nourishment or as a demonstration of female culinary power.

Jia-Chien cooks for her father, causing the return of his lost sense of taste

Beyond transforming gender roles, Eat Drink Man Woman also discusses family, again focusing on transition. Though he is unable for much of the film to communicate with his own daughters—through food or otherwise—Chef Chu is able to connect with his (somewhat secret) fiancé’s daughter. For her, he prepares lunches so elaborate that they elevate her status at school, nourishing her both emotionally and physically. In this way, these special noontime meals are similar to obento in that they aid a child as she makes a transition that could be difficult, not from the home to school, but from a single-parent family to a new one that includes Chef Chu. Six family meals around the table punctuate the film, as the changing participants and their relationships to one another demonstrate the transition within this family, as well as in Taiwan as a whole.

As the Chu family evolves, the contrasts from scene to scene also depict the theme of generational gaps, conflict, negotiation, and change. Busy streets scenes filled with the mechanical hum of cars and motorcycles represent the growing and changing nature of Taiwan; these visuals are juxtaposed with the pastoral, traditional, and idyllic entrance to the Chu home, where Chef Chu prepares meals in the traditional style—scenes aptly termed “culinary pastoral.”

While Eat Drink Man Woman discusses transitions in gender roles and family structure through food, the film’s overarching theme is not food itself, but rather the forces of modernization and globalization that bring on these changes. For example, Chef Chu’s elaborate traditional family meals, the luxurious cuisine of The Grand Hotel, and the fast food restaurant where his youngest daughter works all coexist, representing the contemporary state of globalized Taiwan. The film also portrays a variety of new, “non-traditional” relationships and family structures. For example, Chef Chu’s youngest daughter gets pregnant while still a student and subsequently marries her boyfriend, leaving her father’s home sooner than expected. Chef Chu also negotiates a new familial structure when he marries a younger woman and moves out of the family home, charting a new future.

The transformed Chu family eating a meal near the end of the film

Perhaps Jia-Chien best embodies these forces of change, however, as she has achieved the career her father hoped for her — she works in a highly globalized field, holding a managerial position with an international airline. At the same time, she aspires to cook professionally. In this way, Jia-Chien most fully expresses the complexity and ongoing negotiation of these global transformations. Through her — not coincidentally the “middle” daughter — Lee’s film portrays a character caught between the fluid states of tradition and modernization, family obligation and independence, who eventually finds balance and solace in food. In this way, food—so oft considered a conventionally domestic, maternal, feminine concern — emerges as a powerful and dynamic symbol of change in all its complexity, and ushers in evolving gender roles, family structures, and global life.

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Emily Contois works in the field of worksite wellness and is a graduate student in the MLA in Gastronomy Program at Boston University that was founded by Julia Child and Jacques Pépin. She is currently researching the marketing of diet programs to men, and blogs on food studies, nutrition, and public health at emilycontois.com.

Gender and Food Week: The Roundup

Pop-Tarts and Pizza: Food, Gender, and Class in Gilmore Girls by Brianna Low

While it could be argued that it is somewhat progressive of the Gilmore Girls series to portray two women who have no hang-ups about publicly consuming large amounts of food, it is important to remember that despite their voracious appetites, Rory and Lorelai are still conventionally attractive, thin, white women. Living in the quirky, depoliticized utopia of Stars Hollow, there is no real examination of the way in which the Gilmore’s racial and class privilege exempt them from the social condemnation that is frequently directed at poor single mothers and women of color whose food choices or weight are often criticized without any real consideration to the inequalities in accessibility to healthy, affordable food.

Life is Sweet by Alisande Fitzsimons

A young woman with an eating disorder lashing out at everyone around her but never hurting them more than she does herself? Check. A mother desperately trying to stay strong and support her mentally ill child, in spite of the frustration that child’s self-destructive tendencies cause? Check. A closeted lesbian dreaming of escape but ultimately remaining stable and strong for everyone around her? Check.

A Woman’s Place in the Kitchen: The Cinematic Tradition of Cooking to Catch a Man by Jessica Freeman-Slade

Young women have heard throughout time that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” and film and television have done an excellent job of backing up this assumption. Not all women who can cook were taught to do so at the behest of future matchmakers, but the prevailing attitude, taught to us in women’s magazines and through the constant refrain of mainstream narratives, is that if you catch a man, you’d better make a decent meal. The loathsome popularity of dishes such as “engagement chicken” carry with them the promise that women need only master the kitchen to hook a man. DIY domesticity, maybe, or just cooking to couple up, but either way, it’s an uncomfortably old-fashioned message.

The Hunger Games Review in Conversation: Female Protagonists, Body Image, Disability, Whitewashing, Hunger & Food by Megan Kearns and Amber Leab

I didn’t really have a problem with Lawrence being older than Katniss. Although I totally agree about the concern for girls “conflating girlhood with womanhood.” But I suppose it didn’t bother me so much because Katniss is never sexualized. She cares about archery, not what she’s wearing. While Katniss receives a pageant-style makeover, so do the male tributes. While it hints at it, I just wish the movie had conveyed the book’s satire of toxic beauty standards.

Simply Irresistible by Janyce Denise Glasper

Though Simply Irresistible leaves on a clichéd note and more silly goofiness — like are we supposed to believe that a girl could have her makeup and hair done after hours? — it still serves up a dish of possibilities. Certainly not the best of the romantic genre nor the worst, this film’s minute charm and cheesiness is the stuff greasy pizza is made of.

James and the Giant Peach by Libby White

The Aunts are horrific caretakers; starving, beating, and emotionally abusing James relentlessly. Mind you, this is a movie for children. And like in most children’s movies, the Aunts’ outward appearance reflects their inner evil. Both women are made to look terrifyingly cruel and yet simultaneously clown-like, dressed in orange-red wigs and slathered on make-up. During their first 20 minutes on screen, the two women participate in dozens of morally reprehensible practices, everything from shameless vanity to verbally attacking a woman and her children.

Extreme Weight Loss for Roles Is Not “Required” and Not Praiseworthy by Robin Hitchcock

But it is bad for women, and bad for our culture. More diet talk, more body talk, perpetuation of the myth that weight loss is a noble pursuit and merely a matter of dedication. Voluntary adoption of disordered eating is not praiseworthy. These types of body transformations are not artistically necessary, and certainly not “required.” So let’s hope actors stop endangering their health for roles. We can suspend our disbelief over a few dozen pounds.

Cake Boss: A Sweet Confection with Dark Filling by Lauren Kouffman

Interestingly, though Carlo’s Bake Shop seems to employ a fleet of women as “cake decorators” (the distinction is clearly drawn here, in contrast to the male bakers), more screen time is paid to the colorful personalities of the few men that work there: Mauro the number two, Hothead Joe, Danny “The Mule”, and Cousin Frankie. Their characters have been fleshed out enough to act as Buddy’s consigliere, while the women are granted occasional group reaction shots. Moreover, all of the male bakers wear chef’s coats and white pants — even the delivery boy is dressed in all white — and none of the women are required to be in uniform. In Carlo’s Bake Shop, baking is a serious business, and the visual and social cues here reveal that women are neither taken seriously, nor considered a real asset to the business.

World Champion Eaters: The Paradox of the Gilmore Diet in Gilmore Girls by Amanda Rodriguez

On the surface, eating junk food and tons of it may seem subversive in its rejection of traditional values surrounding womanhood, motherhood, and class, but it is, in truth, an enactment of the male fantasy of the beautiful, slender woman who loves to eat and doesn’t worry about her weight. Within this context, their eating habits seem more in-line with an idealized concept of womanhood rather than a dismissal of it.

Arresting Ana: A Short Film About Pro-Anorexia Websites by Amber Leab

Fighting eating disorders is important work, and the fact that the subject is being discussed at all in France’s legislature is a good thing. However, criminalizing illness isn’t. Better reforms seem to be the ones directed at body image: banning excessive photoshop use in magazines and advertisements, requiring models to be at a healthy weight, and speaking out against body policing and shaming–whether it happens in media or in our private conversations.

The Princess and the Frog by Janyce Denise Glasper

Charlotte and her daddy make Tiana’s family work like slaves even though they are paying for them. Much too docile and meek, Tiana and her mother take this dominating behavior and its sickening, even for an animated cartoon.

The Fork Fatale: Food as Transformation in the Contemporary Chick Flick by Jessica Habalou

What is unique about Liz and her relationship with food is that for her, it is not a mere comfort, means of escape, or potential nemesis. Food and the pleasures of eating bring Liz closer to herself, and to other people. Given the frequency with which she dines with companions in Italy, it is difficult to believe that Liz would feel utterly despondent and isolated. The only moment in which she seems to regress to her emotionally fragile, post-breakup self is when she is alone in her apartment, once again pursuing her Italian dictionary, and repeating to herself: “io sono sola,” or, “I am alone” (in this moment, the camerawork shows the dictionary’s words from Liz’s vantage point, blurred as if seen through tears).

Eclairried Away: Is It Love or Sugar Shock in Simply Irresistible? by Carleen Tibbetts

Amanda’s cooking has gone from abysmal to five-star. She’s thinking positively about her chosen profession. The restaurant is thriving. The place is hopping. She’s a success. She’s a genius. She’s a successful businesswoman. She done her momma proud. She’s a sister doing it for herself. BUT WAIT, SHE’S SINGLE AND THUS INCOMPLETE!

Trophy Kitchens in Two Nancy Meyers’ Films, Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated by Emily Contois

Food and cooking serve as symbols and narrative devices in these two films, representing and communicating the multidimensional nature of middle-aged women in not only the traditionally feminine roles of mother and housewife, but also the pro-feminist roles of career woman and lover. These different roles need not be in conflict within Meyer’s leading women, however. The “older bird” genre tells stories of sexual reawakening, a process that thus shifts the balance and requires ongoing negotiation of the self within the characters’ heretofore established identities.

Scarlett Johansson Tired of Sexist Diet Questions by Megan Kearns

Johansson has spoken in favor of feminism (yet doesn’t necessarily call herself a feminist) and female friendship, supports Planned Parenthood and condemns Hollywood’s ageism against women calling it “a very vain, vain industry.” So it’s no surprise she calls out this bullshit. I only wish more actors and members of the media would follow her lead.

Bridesmaids: Brunch, Brazilian Food, Baking, and Best Friends by Laura A. Shamas

In the hierarchy of a wedding, a bride and groom are the most important roles. Bridesmaids, taken as an archetypal female construction, may be seen to represent “sisterhood,” a unified group of female attendants to the bride. If so, the dysfunction of this specific collective, as revealed in Act Two, serves as wry, hilarious commentary on aspects of the dark feminine and our wedding rituals from the female gaze.

Gender and Food Week: ‘Bridesmaids’: Brunch, Brazilian Food, Baking, and Best Friends

Bridesmaids

Guest post written by Laura A. Shamas.

The rituals of contemporary female friendship are punctuated with food and drink as signifiers in the 2011 comedy hit Bridesmaids, directed by Paul Feig. Many of the key emotional moments of the film involve food and drink. Intimate aspects of female friendship are revealed while eating; a female collective bonds over feasting (and its repercussions); and a developing romance is linked to carrots and cake.

In the opening scene of Bridesmaids, set in Milwaukee, and written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) is sexually involved with Ted (Jon Hamm). Their encounters are casual, or so they say to each other. When Ted asks her to leave his home in the morning, the disappointment shows on Annie’s face. But later, over brunch with her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), we learn how detrimental “the Ted thing” is for Annie. Annie tries to frame the torrid night with Ted as an “adult sleepover” but Lillian tells her she can do better: “You hate yourself after you see him.” The female friendship ritual of a weekend brunch with a girlfriend is highlighted here. Lillian’s loyalty to Annie is established through her candor, her desire to protect Annie, and her inspiring admonition to Annie to find a better partner. The scene ends with the goofy pair playing with their food, placing it in their teeth — a reflection of the playful nature of their bond and its longevity: they’ve been friends since childhood. They are comfortable and authentic with each other.

In the next scene, as they walk away from the restaurant, Annie’s deeper tie with food is revealed. Lillian and Annie stroll past a deserted bakery named “Cake Baby,” a business Annie opened during the recession. Annie registers sadness as she sees the empty building again. To comfort her friend Lillian comments: “They were good cakes, Annie.”

Annie is no longer a baker. She currently works in a jewelry store as a sales clerk, where she tells frequently customers that love doesn’t last — a philosophy that goes against the “eternal bliss” code needed to sell wedding rings to couples. And her home life is equally unsettled because her male roommate’s sister has moved in to the small apartment; the roommate’s sister is featured in a food-related scene when she pours an open package of green peas on her back in order to calm a new tattoo.

Annie’s one bright spot in life is getting together with Lillian. She brings a bottle of wine over to Lillian’s apartment for an evening in with drinks and magazines. There’s a wire basket filled with apples on the coffee table, and Lillian, holding out her hand in a formal way, says: “I want to eat an apple.” It is then that Annie notices Lillian’s glittering ring. Lillian is newly engaged to Doug. Apples, as symbols, are present in many ancient stories, such as “The Golden Apples” from the Garden of Hesperides or the tale of Adam and Eve. Apples classically represent knowledge; according to legend, this comes from the five-point star present in the apple’s core (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 36). By becoming engaged, Lillian indicates she is ready to move on to another phase, to gain more knowledge, to individuate. This is underscored by the visual and textual reference to apples in this scene. Lillian asks Annie to be her Maid of Honor at the impending nuptials.

When Annie goes to pick up her mom (Jill Clayburgh) to attend Lillian and Doug’s engagement party, her mother gently states that Annie is in a downward spiral: “Hitting bottom is a good thing…because there’s nowhere to go but up.” In Maureen Murdock’s book The Heroine’s Journey, Murdock differentiates the steps of a female hero’s journey from those of a male hero. One of Murdock’s vital points involves a “Descent to the Goddess” to heal aspects of a mother-daughter split. According to Murdock, a woman begins an initiation process on the descent arc of a heroine’s journey: “It may involve a seemingly endless period of wandering, grief, rage, dethroning kings, of looking for the lost pieces of herself, and meeting the dark feminine. It may take weeks, months or years” (8). These steps may be seen in Annie’s journey in “Bridesmaids.” Her fruitless dalliance with Ted, her aimless job and transient home life, her connection to a lost childhood through Lillian (and the mourning of childhood’s end) are all present in the early part of the film. Annie’s meeting of the “dark feminine” in Bridesmaidsis yet to come.

At the subsequent fancy engagement party, another ritual of female friendship is revealed. In a sequence with Annie and the beautiful Helen (Rose Byrne), Lillian’s newer “best friend,” Annie and Helen compete with each other to deliver the best bridal toast, with alternate, escalating praise of Lillian in front of the gathered crowd. There, Annie drinks champagne, and reveals that Annie and Lillian have a ritual of “drunken Saturday nights at Rockin’ Sushi.” Saturday nights are times of revelry and letting loose; Annie and Lillian have a standing BFF hangout restaurant ritual on that night. We later learn that Helen longs for this: an ongoing invitation to female revelry and even the spontaneity involved in such female revelry. It’s something the seemingly perfect Helen doesn’t have.

At the engagement party, the rest of the female collective in the film is 3 introduced: the “Bridesmaids.” Newlywed innocent Becca (Ellie Kemper), jaded mother-of-three Rita (Wendi McClendon-Covey), and the intrepid Megan, sister to the groom (Melissa McCarthy) are there. They, along with Helen and Annie, complete Lillian’s assembled group of female wedding supporters. It is through the activities of this group that the “dark feminine” is explored more fully in the film.

In the hierarchy of a wedding, a bride and groom are the most important roles. Bridesmaids, taken as an archetypal female construction, may be seen to represent “sisterhood,” a unified group of female attendants to the bride. If so, the dysfunction of this specific collective, as revealed in Act Two, serves as wry, hilarious commentary on aspects of the dark feminine and our wedding rituals from the female gaze.

Near the end of Act One, Annie is pulled over at night for a violation by a state policeman named Nathan Rhodes, his last name perhaps a commentary of Annie’s own life at a crossroads. Annie’s tail lights need to be repaired, a recurring metaphor reflecting Annie’s inner life. Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) recognizes Annie from her bakery days. He tells her how much he admired her delicious pastries, especially her cream puffs. In this scene we learn that the bakery is connected to emotional pain for Annie — and not just for the financial devastation she suffered when it failed. Her boyfriend, who worked there, left her when it closed. Rhodes reminds her: “I appreciated your cakes.”

After this encounter, a brief baking sequence follows for Annie. In the kitchen alone, she bakes a beautiful cupcake for herself, decorated with a gorgeous flower on top. Annie’s baking skills and her artistry are displayed. Pensively, she eats the single perfect cupcake, alone.

A baker is someone who could be seen to work “alchemically”; the transformation of raw materials into something edible and wonderful involves the use of an oven, which, as an image, could resonate as “womb.” Annie begins, in the scene above, to try to reconnect with her baking skills, and the warmth of the womb.

In Act Two, Annie meets the dark feminine as reflected by the bridesmaids — and her own psyche. It is in perhaps the most famous sequence in the film, involving feasting at an authentic Brazilian restaurant and subsequent scenes at an exclusive couture bridal shop named “Belle en Blanc,” that the dark feminine is revealed in a graphic, scatological way.

The competition between Annie and Helen is highlighted throughout this sequence. Whether it’s over the theme of the bridal shower, or where the bachelorette party should be held, Annie and Helen are at odds. Annie’s taste is seen as déclassé compared to Helen’s standards. After the meal at the Brazilian restaurant, presented as a communal feasting experience, Helen and Annie spar over the selection of the bridesmaids’ dresses. It is then that the group becomes sick with food poisoning, leading to the massive need for a bathroom, including a toilet, a sink, and in Lillian’s case, the city street. When Annie tries to pretend she does not feel sick, Helen tests her resolve by handing her a Jordan Almond to eat.

The juxtaposition of the name of the shop, “Belle en Blanc,” compared to what happens to the collective, suggests an ironic commentary on aspects of the dark feminine. And it is related to food. The food poisoning underscores the feminine spiritual poisoning felt between Annie and Helen, and even Lillian, as revealed by competition and wedding stress. At one point, a character says that one of the dresses at “Belle en Blanc” is so pretty that it makes her stomach hurt.

On Annie’s way home from another Ted encounter, she stops at a small liquor market, and reaches to buy a drink called “Calm.” There, she sees Rhodes again, and he offers her carrots. She ends up eating carrots with him, sitting on a car hood outside. He tells her she should be setting up a new bakery. Annie replies that she doesn’t bake anymore. A carrot is dropped on the ground, and Rhodes says that there is always one lucky, ugly carrot in the bag. He offers it to her. She won’t take it. But their fun continues into the dawn, as he shows her how to use his official radar gun to catch speeders.

When the Bridesmaids return home prematurely — after a disastrous attempt to fly to Vegas for a bachelorette party — Annie encounters Rhodes. They go to a bar. Upon hearing her tale of woe, Rhodes dubs her the “Maid of Dishonor” and urges Annie to start baking again. Annie says it doesn’t make her happy anymore. She spends the night with Rhodes, and they become sexually involved. In the morning, he surprises her by assembling baking supplies to encourage her to bake again: “Your workshop awaits.” Angered, Annie refuses: “I don’t need you to fix me.” She leaves, declaring their encounter a mistake.

After losing her job and apartment, Annie moves back in with her mother. She refuses Rhodes’ calls. Annie tells her mom that she hadn’t hit bottom before. Now, perhaps she finally has. This realization is underscored when she drives by her old bakery and sees the business name “Cake Baby” newly defaced with a sexual slur.

At the elaborate French-toned bridal shower, arranged perfectly by Helen but stolen from Annie’s idea, is a chocolate fountain and a giant heart-shaped cookie. As a shower gift to Lillian, Annie assembled an amazing box of childhood memories. Helen tops Annie by giving Lillian a trip to Paris to meet with the couture wedding dress designer. At the party, Annie breaks down, and in a culminating Act Two event, attacks the giant heart cookie and the chocolate fountain. In a rant, Annie calls out Lillian for participating in such a pretentious social gathering. Lillian responds: she disinvites Annie from the wedding. By attacking the giant cookie heart, Annie embodies her own need to address matters of the heart, and even her “baking.” The dark chocolate fountain is perhaps an ironic visual callback to the dark feminine as seen earlier in the “Belle en Blanc” sequence. Annie’s rage could also be seen as a part of dark feminine power — her own.

After Annie’s car is damaged in a hit and run, she’s depressed. With nowhere to go, she stays inside her mother’s home all the time — the ultimate “Return to the Womb.” Megan comes to visit, with the nine pups she stole from the bridal shower. Trying to encourage her, Megan tells Annie: “You’re your problem and you’re also your solution.”

Annie starts baking. She cracks eggs, whisks, blends sugars. Her car is finally repaired, and it’s all gratis, thanks to a deal Rhodes made with the mechanic who owed him a favor. To show her appreciation, Annie leaves a beautiful cake with a carrot on top at Rhodes’ doorstep, a reference to the lucky carrot he told her about. This is a signifier that Annie is ascending, healing, back on her path. Her descent spiral is over. She can “bake” again. A carrot, in folklore, is related to fertility and seeding; it also is reputed to have medicinal qualities connected to “sight.” The carrot on the cake represents the renewal of Annie’s vision, her “warming,” and her outreach to Rhodes. But Rhodes leaves the box outside on his front step. Annie sees raccoons eating from the box, at one point.

Further Act Three action involves trying to track down the missing Lillian, who has disappeared. Helen locates Annie at her mom’s house, and the two frenemies try to find Lillian. It is in through this activity we learn of Helen’s longing for true female friendship — that she’s never had a long term female friendship like Lillian’s and Annie’s relationship.

Eventually, Lillian is found at her apartment. She walked out on her own rehearsal dinner. She tells Annie: “I outcrazied you.” On the brink of her own life — changing step, Lillian worries about what will happen to Annie in the future.

Annie reassures Lillian: “I’m gonna be fine, I am fine” — an indication that Annie knows she’s better. Then she helps Lillian get ready for the ceremony. The wedding is back on track.

Act Three culminates in entire wedding rocking out to Wilson Phillips’ performance of “Hold On,” an extravagance arranged by Helen. But after it all, Annie invites Helen to a Saturday evening out sometime at Rockin’ Sushi with Lillian and Annie — the ultimate girlfriend ritual. This makes Helen happy, and signals also that Annie has “warmed up” to Helen. Annie wants to include Helen in the drunken Rockin’ Sushi ritual of female friendship, including revelry and spontaneity.

After Rhodes and Annie get together at the movie’s end — when he picks her up after the wedding and reveals “I ate your cake”– a final coda to the film involves Megan and Air Marshall Jon who use food, “a bear sandwich,” in bawdy foreplay. The rituals of contemporary female friendships are underscored by the use and presence of food and drink as signifiers at important emotional moments throughout Bridesmaids. Annie Walker’s journey in the movie, in a downward spiral or “descent motif” is healed through her encounters with aspects of the dark feminine as revealed in the shadow side of “sisterhood” and in her own psyche. Annie’s healing process, after failing at business and at love, is also reflected in her great talent to bake again in Act Three. But this time, she’s not baking for business or commerce — she’s baking to express herself, to be warm, to acknowledge finding the Lucky Carrot.

Works Cited

Chevalier, Jean and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols.

John Buchanan-Brown, trans. London: Penguin, 1996. Murdock, Maureen.

The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness. Boston: Shambala, 1990.

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Laura Shamas is a writer, film consultant, and mythologist. Her newest book is Pop Mythology: Collected Essays.

Gender and Food Week: Scarlett Johansson Tired of Sexist Diet Questions

Robert Downey, Jr. and Scarlett Johansson at The Avengers press conference in London

This post written by Megan Kearns originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 31, 2012. Cross-posted at Women and Hollywood.

Wow, who knew I could love Scarlett Johansson so much?? I posted this on Bitch Flicks‘ Facebook page but thought it was too great not to post here too.

At The Avengers press conference in London, a reporter proceeded to ask Robert Downey Jr. an in-depth, thought-provoking question about his character (Tony Stark/Iron Man) and then asked Johansson about her diet. I shit you not.

Reporter: “I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?

“And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?”

Scarlett: “How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?“

Amen, sister! If you watch the video, you’ll see just how perturbed Johansson is to be asked. As she should be. Why the hell did the reporter save the diet question for one of the two women on the panel??

Johansson has spoken in favor of feminism (yet doesn’t necessarily call herself a feminist) and female friendship, supports Planned Parenthood and condemns Hollywood’s ageism against women calling it “a very vain, vain industry.” So it’s no surprise she calls out this bullshit. I only wish more actors and members of the media would follow her lead.

The reporter’s question particularly rubs me the wrong way because lots of women have such a contentious relationship with food. Eating should be a fun, sensual, pleasurable experience. But too many women fear food, afraid of what it will do to their bodies. The media monitors and polices women’s consumption. Between diet books, exercise DVDs, weight loss shakes, low-fat foods – the dieting industry is a money-making juggernaut. And it’s geared towards women.

In response to the asinine question, Sarah at Pop Cultured astutely asserts:

“The respect given to you if you’re a man in the entertainment business, and the respect given to you if you’re a woman in the entertainment business: all perfectly summed up in one idiotically thought out line of questioning.”

It’s ridiculous — not to mention offensive and sexist — Hollywood, the entertainment industry, and the media lavish praise on men for their minds and their talents while objectifying women and reducing female actors to their appearances. As we recently witnessed with Ashley Judd fighting back against toxic bodysnarking and the heinous criticism of Jennifer Lawrence’s body, the media constantly scrutinizes, visually dismembers, critiques and polices women’s bodies. The media wreaks havoc on women’s body images, telling us we’re too fat or too skinny. Never just right.

This constant bombardment of objectification of women leads to normalizing sexism and violence against women. It reinforces the notion that women are nothing more than sex objects for the male gaze.

So reporters, think twice before you ask a woman yet another stupid diet question. Ugh.

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Megan Kearns is a Bitch Flicks Editor and Staff Writer. She’s a feminist vegan blogger and freelance writer living in Boston. Megan blogs about gender, media, food and politics at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site she founded. She writes about gender, media and reproductive justice as a Regular Blogger at Fem2pt0. Megan’s work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Everyday Feminism, Feminist Magazine on KPFK radio, Feministing’s Community Blog, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, A Safe World for Women and Women and Hollywood. You can follow her on Twitter at @OpinionessWorld.

Gender and Food Week: The Fork Fatale: Food as Transformation in the Contemporary Chick Flick

Julia Roberts as Liz Gilbert in Eat Pray Love

Guest post written by Jessica Habalou, excerpts from her unpublished Master’s thesis. Reprinted with permission.

“Every word in Italian is like a truffle:” Eat Pray Love and Food for Pleasure

Based on the extremely popular memoir of the same name, Eat Pray Love is the story of Liz Gilbert, who embarks on a year-long stint abroad to help her recover from a bitter divorce and torrid love affair. Her marital malaise is a prime example of the Friedan’s “problem with no name;” she knows that having a big house and being a good wife and one day mother is not enough to satisfy her, and in fact render her desperately unhappy. So she leaves her husband and tried to discover what will bring her satisfaction. Initially, and under the influence of her new lover, Liz turns to religion to help ground herself. She devotes newfound time and energy to meditation, ruminating on God and studying the teachings of an Indian guru. But her holy immersion is misguided, for as Liz’s friend notes: “[Do] you remember a couple years ago when you threw yourself into the renovation of your kitchen? You were completely consumed with being the perfect wife and cook? Well, I think chanting and meditation are the same thing in a different costume.” Tapping into her innate wander-lust, Liz decides to travel to Italy, India and Bali. She announces in her friend’s office the full extent of her unhappiness: “I used to have this appetite for food, for my life, and it’s just gone. I wanna go someplace where I can marvel at something. Language, gelato, spaghetti, something. I have not given myself two weeks of a breather to just deal with, you know, myself.”

Eat Pray Love

In Italy, Liz treats herself with complete abandon to the gastronomic pleasure therein, and in so doing, makes strides in her attempt at personal growth. Food and eating come to replace some of her vices and offer her the comfort of friendship and self-preservation. The visualization of food and the act of eating in the film go to great lengths that they are her supplement to sex. Through close shots of her eyes rolling back in delight as she takes her first bite of a Napoleon, extreme close-ups of her lips wrapped around a forkful of pasta, or detailed shots of her cutlery probing into a plate of fried prawns to release a mini-explosion of juices, there is little subtlety applied to the sensual and erotic role of food. In one scene, Liz is at an outdoor cafe, and the camera cuts between a young couple kissing and fondling each other and Liz at her table, watching them, then her plate of spaghetti appear. The camera continues to shift between the couple and Liz advancing on her plate, grinning with each bite. When the plate is cleaned and the couple is gone, Liz smiles deeply as if she has a secret – the act is finished. Visually, food is heavily sensualized, in a way rivals and often surpasses the sensual display of food on the Food Network. While this is likely do in part to the film appealing to the Food Network demographic, and therefore complying with a certain expected visual aesthetic, the eroticization of food in Liz’s Italy also helps to emphasize that she is single, celibate, and finally experiencing pleasure outside of romance.

The sensual connection to Italian food and Italian language is another important component of Liz’s experience in Italy. Before her departure, she declares to her friend after studying an Italian dictionary that “every word in Italian is like a truffle.” She finds and becomes friendly with an Italian language tutor, with whom she is often seen at a cafe, eating and drinking. In one scene, the two are at an outdoor cafe (a common motif), eating and sipping red wine. At this point, her tutor introduces her to an idiom meaning “to cross over:” “attraversiamo.” Student and teacher repeat the word several times, and each time to camera zooms tight on the lips of the speaker, similarly to how Liz is shown eating on camera. The word itself, then, and the language, are like food in the sense that they fulfill her physical, emotional and sensual desires.

Eat Pray Love

What is unique about Liz and her relationship with food is that for her, it is not a mere comfort, means of escape, or potential nemesis. Food and the pleasures of eating bring Liz closer to herself, and to other people. Given the frequency with which she dines with companions in Italy, it is difficult to believe that Liz would feel utterly despondent and isolated. The only moment in which she seems to regress to her emotionally fragile, post-breakup self is when she is alone in her apartment, once again pursuing her Italian dictionary, and repeating to herself: “io sono sola,” or, “I am alone” (in this moment, the camerawork shows the dictionary’s words from Liz’s vantage point, blurred as if seen through tears). But all told, she enables her own self-worth through food, and that of her friend’s as well. All the talk about eating and indulging is not without commentary about the effects it has on the figures of the women doing most of the indulging, Liz and her friend, Sofi. In a scene depicting a day trip to Naples, Liz and Sofi are seated across from each other at a crowded, chaotic pizza shop. Per usual, Liz takes a bite and rolls her eyes in pleasure, saying “I am having a relationship with my pizza.” Seeing Sofi with her hands in her lap, she says “You look like you’re breaking up with your pizza. What’s the matter?” “I’ve gained, like, ten pounds,” she says, her eyes shifting guiltily. Rather than trying to amend the situation by offering to start dieting or visiting the gym with her tomorrow, Liz says: “I’m sick and tired of saying no and waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before . . .so I know how much self-loathing to take into the shower. I’m going for it . . . I’m just through with the guilt.” Sofi smiles and eats. Afterward, the scene cuts back and forth between split shots of the women at a crowded bar watching the soccer and in a dressing room attempting to button multiple pairs of jeans. The scene culminates in a Lucille Ball-style moment of comedic excess, with an aerial shot of Liz on the floor of the dressing room, Sofi hovering over her and successfully snapping the button into place, and the image of men at a bar cheering at the soccer game while Liz and Sofi applaud their own “victory.”

Eat Pray Love

Liz’s chapter in Rome concludes with a Thanksgiving celebration with her Italian community of friends. The scene is shot in the cozy quarters of her Italian tutor’s mother’s house, somewhere recessed from the hubbub of the city. It is evening, and the group is preparing vegetables, talking and laughing, when they discover that the turkey is not thawed to roast. In the same “devil-may-care” attitude of which Liz has become so fond, they eat the rest of the meal and save the turkey for later. Around the table, Liz instructs her friends on the American Thanksgiving custom of announcing one’s gratitude. “This,” says Liz, gesturing to the table, “all makes me feel so grateful.” The next shot depicts the friends strewn across the living room, sleeping with heads on laps, across couches and chairs and the floor. Early morning light creeps in the windows, revealing bottles of wine and half-finished plates about. The scene is tranquil. An alarm rings, and Liz wakes to remove the turkey from the oven. The group gathers again around the table for the breakfast bird, and Liz arrives as if out of the Rockwell painting, holding an archetypically dressed bird on a platter. Through her divorce (and severance from marital and familial obligations), she has found all the normative, American comforts of home and family.

“What is it you really like to do?” Julie & Julia and Domestic Ambition

Amy Adams as Julie Powell in Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron, is based on two textual, real-life accounts: Julie Powell’s weblog project where she spent a year cooking ever recipe in Julia Child’s seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julie Child’s My Life in France, co-authored and published posthumously by her nephew Alex Prudhomme. The film garnered popular and critical acclaim, particularly for Meryl Streep’s performance as Julia Child, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Since Julia Child’s life was so publicly oriented around food, one might expect the “Julia” portion of the film to be as well. On the contrary, food is a secondary function to Julia’s relationship to her husband and professional ambition, particularly when compared to the Julie narrative. No doubt that Julia’s love for food is a driving force in the film – when musing with her husband Paul in a Paris restaurant over how to fulfill her personal void, Paul asks “what is it you really like to do?” “Eat,” she replies, with gusto. Julia’s seemingly charmed life – replete with a loving husband, a girlish exuberance, and a steadfast resolve in the face of setbacks – is surrounded by food. The viewer sees that Julia’s time in Paris is played against the background of crowded outdoor markets brimming with bright, fresh produce and pigs’ heads. She stops at street vendors for chestnuts, hosts dinner parties with friends, and doggedly chops, flips, dices, and whisks her way through her education at the esteemed and deeply traditional Le Cordon Bleu. She is seen offering Paul a plate at lunchtime before he whisks her off to the bedroom. But more important than the food in these sequences is her relationships with the characters – she charms the vendors, listens to her instructor, plays a proper hostess while images of plates and the sounds of clicking silverware occupy the backdrop, and a good wife who both offers food to her husband and forgoes it in the interest of satisfying their sexual desires. In this sense Julia is a free spirit, a professional, a lady, and a lover. She is motivated by food, but not controlled by it.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie & Julia

While food supplements Julia’s already rich life experience, it seems to define Julie’s. Food serves to enrich a visual backdrop in Julia’s world, it is a primary focus in Julie’s. Julia’s time in the kitchen cooking her way through Mastering the Art is visually expressed through multiple tight, close-up shots of the ingredients she is prepping, the food in various stages of cooking, and the finished product. These are much like the shots viewers are accustomed to seeing on the Food Network, with food shown in stages of preparation: butter sizzles in the pan, mushrooms turn in the butter, cream and port gush into the works, chicken browns in the fat, all to the soundtrack of sizzling and cracking. In fact, Susan Spungen, former art director or Martha Stewart Living magazine directed the food styling in both Julie and Julia and Eat Pray Love (Kingston 2010). In these tight, close shots, food is the focus, and occasionally the hand that cooks it. The viewer becomes completely engaged in the cooking, much like Julie is completely immersed in her project.

Julie’s obsession renders her more flawed than Julia’s character, even to the point of being unlikable. As Benson-Allott suggests, “[b]ecause Child is an idealization…Powell seems deeply flawed in contrast.” She concedes that “Adams makes a bold choice to allow her character at times to become quite annoying” (85). She bumbles her way through her marriage as she becomes selfishly consumed by the popularity of her blog. The couple fights over her selfishness, prompting him to storm off in a rage. In a separate incident, her husband diagnoses their marital problems as being symptomatic of “too much food, not enough sex,” as if to suggest that she is neglecting her conjugal and marital obligations in the interest of pursuing her own gain.

Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Eric Powell (Chris Messina) in Julie & Julia

Julie’s obsessive relationship with food manifests itself not only through her marriage, but physically as well. In one scene, Julie goes on a spending spree at the gourmet goods store Dean and Deluca. She wedges herself and her parcels through a turnstile, then lugs her bags and parcels with her down the subway stairs, bangs into exasperated commuters and runs to catch a train while her voiceover explains “[I was] sweating like a pig, which is not surprising because I’ve been way too busy cooking fattening foods to bother exercising.” This claustrophobic environment reveals some of the ill effects of her personal and gustatory indulgences. The frustrated looks on commuters’ faces while she tries to navigate her way through rush hour while bearing the load of consumerism both on and in her body is like society’s judgmental gaze at a women’s overindulgence. Like the characters of Sex and the City and post-9/11 New York-based chick flicks that Negra analyzes, Julie is navigating through the anxious, often dissatisfying climate of “cultural dilemmas and stigmas.”

Julie & Julia

Julie’s high points are reflected in the success and visual quality of the food she produces – and vice versa. When she initially hatches her blogging idea, she is making bruschetta. Hunks of bread sizzle and brown, and she chops impossibly red tomatoes and verdant basil leaves. The combined dish is a food stylist’s masterpiece, as if to verify that Julie not only has the chops to take on her idea, but that only good, delicious things will come as a result. Things are looking up when she learns that Knopf’s powerhouse Judith Jones will be dinning at her house; in preparation, Julie prepares boeuf bourguignon, a dish whose rustic charm is deliberately revealed in a close shot, exposing the parsley-flecked stew’s deep, earthy tones, enrobed by a Le Creuset pot. The shot radiates authenticity and perfection. Of course, as evidenced above, Julie’s ambition is not without its flaws. Her short-tempered in the kitchen coincide with some of the ugliest food in the film: aspics. As the brown, gelatinous mess slips off the plate and into sink, she rails against the inadequacies of the kitchen space in her apartment. And after a raw chicken stuffed with liver and cream cheese hits the floor with a sickening splatter, she splays out on her back on the tile, kicking her feet and weeping like a petulant child. Despite her blog despite her self-conscious weight gain, her strained marriage, her overwrought schedule, her tenuous start, she continues to blog. Interestingly, she maintains a generally ambivalent attitude toward eating itself. Her husband, her friends, and her guests are the ones who seem to enjoy the fruits of her labor. For Julie, the satisfaction is in the effort, and the perceived control. “I love the after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing I mean nothing you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.” The pleasure for Julie is not in consuming, but in producing. The act of production is what fulfills her, and for it she sacrifices conventional domestic obligations.

Works Cited

Benson-Allott, Caetlin. “Mastering the Art of Feminist Mentorship.” Gastronomica: A Journal of Food and Culture. Spring 2010: pp. 83-85. Print.

Negra, Diane. “Quality Postfeminism? Sex and the Single Girl on HBO.” Genders Journal. Issue 39, 2004. Web. Google Scholar.

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Jessica Habalou works with food and wine at Boston University, and is a degree candidate for BU’s Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy. Her research interests include food, feminism, and popular culture, which involves lots of eating, drinking, and watching movies.

World Champion Eaters: The Paradox of the Gilmore Diet in ‘Gilmore Girls’

Guest post written by Amanda Rodriguez.

The long-running TV series The Gilmore Girls followed the lives of a single mother who got pregnant at 16 and her daughter as they live and grow in a small town. The mother and daughter duo (Lorelai& Rory) are unconventional, confident, independent, smart, capable, and fun-loving. In Lorelai’s words, “That’s because I’m not orthodox. I’m liberal with a touch of reform and a smidgen of zippity-pow.” The way in which Lorelai and Rory relate to food, however, is a complex issue that can function as a microcosmic reading of the entire show.

First of all, it’s important to establish Rory and Lorelai’s eating habits.

The Gilmore Girls like junk food.

The pair is infamous for not knowing how to cook and always ordering take-out or going out to eat. They eat burgers, pizza, or Chinese food for dinner nearly every night. For breakfast, it’s donuts, pancakes, bacon, pop tarts, or four bowls of cereal. They avoid vegetables at all costs. When they have movie nights (which is often), they stock up on a bevy of sugary snacks, including (but not limited to) Red Vines, marshmallows, cheesy puffs, potato chips, tater tots, and mallowmars. Not only that, but they drink copious quantities of coffee. Refusing to eat any sort of healthy food while indulging consistently in junk food is only half of it…

The Gilmore Girls can seriously eat.

This mother/daughter team has the capacity to consume mass quantities of food, out-eating their much larger male counterparts. They’re always up for round three or even four when the boys have thrown in the towel. In addition, they despise exercise and ridicule other women who either enjoy or feel compelled to workout.

Other characters constantly crack jokes that revolve around their disbelief surrounding the quality and quantity of the food the Gilmore Girls consume. The Gilmore Girls themselves refer to their eating habits with startling frequency. In fact, their diet is referred to in one way or another in nearly every single episode. Why is this theme so central?

Ostensibly, the way the Gilmore Girls eat is intended to be commensurate with the way in which they live their lives. Lorelai is not a traditional mother. She doesn’t grocery shop for healthy foods; nor does she prepare meals.

Lorelai’s refusal to conform to what society expects a mother to cook is symbolic of her rebellion against society’s expectations of what a mother should be. Instead, Lorelai is a hot, fast-talking, coffee guzzling, career-oriented woman whose relationship with her daughter is more like that of a friend than a parent. She encourages her daughter to think for herself and to make her own decisions. Both Lorelai and her daughter are extremely successful and well-respected with an intense emotional bond, proving that their unconventionality is not only endearing, but it works.

The pair’s notorious consumption habits act as a rejection of the notion that women must be so body obsessed that they strictly monitor their food intake, which can devolve into an unhealthy eating disorder and/or suck the enjoyment out of food and of life. These two women flaunt a freedom, self-acceptance, and pleasure-seeking attitude that are all expressed through their love of food.

Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls

Rory and Lorelia embrace the lowest common denominator types of food, preferring high quantity and low quality. Though Lorelai was raised in a wealthy household, she has rejected the upper class lifestyle. When eating their weekly Friday night dinners with Lorelai’s parents (Emily & Richard Gilmore), Lorelai and Rory often have trouble eating or enjoying the gourmet delicacies that they’ve been served. This is an expression of the way in which they’ve embraced their working class status.

Unfortunately, this is where the positive interpretations of the Gilmore diet end. On the surface, eating junk food and tons of it may seem subversive in its rejection of traditional values surrounding womanhood, motherhood, and class, but it is, in truth, an enactment of the male fantasy of the beautiful, slender woman who loves to eat and doesn’t worry about her weight. Within this context, their eating habits seem more in-line with an idealized concept of womanhood rather than a dismissal of it.

Gilmore Girls

The most disturbing and possibly damaging facet of the Gilmore diet is that it is patently unrealistic. Yes, there are thin women out there who have naturally high metabolisms or don’t exercise or prefer junk food. The combination of all three, however, is rarer. Regardless, there is a distinction between weight and health. For example, someone can be“underweight” or at “optimum weight” and be unhealthy, while another person can be “overweight” and still be healthy. It’s hard to imagine a nutrient deficient lifestyle like the one the Gilmore Girls practice resulting in copious energy, brain power, and a healthful appearance.

If so much focus wasn’t placed on Rory and Lorelai’s diet, we could chalk all this up to the combination of “good genes” (as often claimed on the show), a cute personality quirk, and Hollywood magic. The emphasis on the Gilmore diet, however, ends up creating yet another unrealistic expectation of how women should be and look. Many women lament online that they wish they could eat like the Gilmore Girls and not gain weight. Blogger with the handle“Leah (The Kind of Weight Watcher”) even created something she calls “The Gilmore Girls Diet” where she lays out her plan to eat like the Gilmore Girls in an attempt to lose weight. Even Lauren Graham (the actress who portrays Lorelai) struggles with food, her weight, and self-confidence. Not only that, but she loves being athletic and relies on exercise to keep her body healthy and within the Hollywood ideal. This underscores the fact that the Gilmore diet isn’t even realistic for the Gilmore Girls themselves.

For countless women around the world suffering from eating disorders and unhealthy relationships with food, the Gilmore diet is another detrimental example of the paradox insisting women should be naturally thin and beautiful while not paying attention to what they eat or how they take care of their bodies. This paradox contributes to many women’s struggles with body image and self-worth. It also promotes a negative relationship with food, where some women no longer view food as simply life-sustaining sustenance, but as a huge force in life. Some may see food as an enemy to be managed or starved, or, conversely, some women may develop an emotional dependence on food so that they must indulge in order to derive comfort. All the positive facets of the Gilmore diet are washed away in the face of its reinforcement of unhealthy body and food issues.

Now consider how unconventional the Gilmore Girls really are. They’re well-dressed, slender, and typically attractive. They live in a quaint, small town that they adore. Rory receives an Ivy League Yale education. Lorelai has no mechanical or home repair skills so must always ask Luke (the local diner owner) to be her handyman. Even their eschewing of the upper class lifestyle has its limits; they often enjoy the benefits of having wealthy family (expensive gifts, education, trips, etc), and the two generally fit in quite well at Emily and Richard’s upper crusty social functions. They obsess over boys and men, and both of them seek traditional heterosexual romances that will lead to traditional marriage and a traditional family.

In the end, the Gilmore diet says the same thing the show itself is saying: Yes, the Gilmore Girls are quirky, independent, and smart. Yes, the Gilmore Girls refuse to bend to society’s ideas of how a woman should be and what should be expected of her. At heart, though, the Gilmore Girls want that traditional life, and by the end of the series, they have that traditional life. Though the Gilmore Girls claim to be nonconformist, though they take an unconventional path to get there, they end up in the same place with the same kind of traditional life as other, less rebellious TV heroines. Their diet, like their lifestyle, may seem subversive at first glance, but instead reveals itself to be another expression of their internal acceptance of ideal, traditional womanhood.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Gender and Food Week: ‘Cake Boss’: A Sweet Confection with Dark Filling

Guest post written by Lauren Kouffman, originally published at her blog Ex Ovum Omnia. Cross-posted with permission.

Fan favorite and global hit, Cake Boss, first aired on the TLC Channel on April 19, 2009, and has returned for five consecutive seasons, building to some of the highest ratings the network had ever seen. Syndicated episodes of the first four seasons are currently available on Netflix, and TLC’s homepage is saturated with clips highlighting new season drama. Clearly the network has found a hit in this off-beat show, following the daily life of a classically-trained Italian baker and his cohorts, in Hoboken, New Jersey.

But just beneath a sweet premise of an Italian-American hero living out his American dream, is the nagging question of gender politics, and just how much “old-school” female subjugation is still the modus operandi, especially when mixing food and entertainment.

Catering mainly to an upwardly mobile female audience, familiar with a society-approved cultural narrative (i.e.: engagement, wedding, baby, family), TLC’s lineup of keystone programs including What Not To Wear, Say Yes To The Dress, A Baby Story, and 19 Kids and Counting, has helped create a name for itself, not only as The Learning Channel, but also — in my house, anyway — The Lady Channel. Based solely on TLC’s network profile then, we must assume that the intended audience demographic for any one of their programs is largely female, with ample leisure time for daytime or afternoon programming, and an interest in culturally dictated stereotypical “female” pursuits.

Cake Boss

On the other hand, along with newer programs such as Breaking Amish, Strange Sex, and Flip That House in rotation, which shift the focus away from the domestic and instead focus on either culturally deviant lifestyles or hands-on, “do-it-yourself-ism”, certain elements of Cake Boss’ structure seem to be reaching out towards a unique segment of otherwise non-initiated TLC viewers: namely, straight men.

While Bartolo “Buddy” Valasco, Jr., and his posse of bakers based out of Carlo’s Bake Shop in Hoboken, have built a local reputation for churning out their old school Italian style of intricate cakes and pastries (a decidedly un-macho affair in itself), most episodes also include more modern and outrageous cakes in the style of Duff Goldman, network television’s other famous “bad boy” baker, presented in a more masculine, post-modern style. A far cry from hand-made roses and intricate lace details, these cakes are about as literal as you can get; In season one alone, we’ve seen a zombie cake with corn syrup “blood” oozing down the side, a firehouse cake with actual smoke puffing out of the “windows,” and a life-size blackjack table with spinning wheel, painstakingly painted to approximate mahogany wood and presented with some theatrical fanfare to a bunch of “wise guys,” as Godfather-esque music wound through the scene.

In presenting his narrative, Buddy (along with his Cake Boss production team) takes great pains to keep the concepts of masculine and the feminine separate; the irony being that within the traditionally female realm of the kitchen, and especially in dealing with sweet and pretty baked goods, a man rules the roost… and it only fortifies his masculine identity meanwhile.

Playing up his Italian heritage for maximum effect, we see Buddy expertly calming his four high-strung sisters and mother, dealing with difficult customers (often female), alternately reaming out and playing practical jokes on his male employees, and of course, exercising technical precision in creating stunning works of edible art.

Interestingly, though Carlo’s Bake Shop seems to employ a fleet of women as “cake decorators” (the distinction is clearly drawn here, in contrast to the male bakers), more screen time is paid to the colorful personalities of the few men that work there: Mauro the number two, Hothead Joe, Danny “The Mule”, and Cousin Frankie. Their characters have been fleshed out enough to act as Buddy’s consigliere, while the women are granted occasional group reaction shots. Moreover, all of the male bakers wear chef’s coats and white pants -even the delivery boy is dressed in all white — and none of the women are required to be in uniform. In Carlo’s Bake Shop, baking is a serious business, and the visual and social cues here reveal that women are neither taken seriously, nor considered a real asset to the business.

Cake Boss

While Cake Boss itself falls more into the docu-drama category than most other food television programming, it is interesting to consider the implications of how food, and eating, are depicted throughout. Cakes and pastries are more than just everyday sweet treats, but are planned and purchased to mark special occasions, and meant to be shared among family and friends. Family is clearly at the heart of Buddy’s food and life philosophy, and he considers his customers and program viewers by extension, to be a part of that. Program viewers too, being treated to an intimate behind-the-scenes look into Carlo’s Bake Shop, are meant to feel like Buddy considers them a part of la familglia.

Assuming most of us are lacking an authentic Italian grandmother at home to bake all of the traditional pastries from scratch, Carlo’s Bake Shop fills a nostalgic place in our hearts, where food, family, and deep emotions entwine. Media capitalizing on the relationship between food and feelings is nothing new; in fact, specifically because many of the thematic motifs presented in Cake Boss are less-than-politically-correct (i.e., the unspoken subjugation of women), watching them play out before us on television can be a healthy, even cathartic, way to indulge and explore our feelings on these subjects. As loyal viewers tune in for a half hour-long segment of bakery antics, they are treated to a free therapy session as well.

More than just the boss, Buddy seems like Cake Dad… and of course father — especially The God Father- always knows best. Nearly every episode ends with the Valasco family smiling and laughing around a dinner table, with Buddy at the helm: a very Freudian image, indeed.

While all the filming quirks and mafia references imply TLC Channel’s attempt to expand their viewership, it seems impossible to deny that the show’s success has already been secured, with a global viewership in over 160 countries, and most recently, product tie-ins with Cake Boss-inspired ready-to-sell cakes based on Buddy’s designs. A spin-off series called Next Great Baker has also seen some network success and continues to pick up traction, promising a $100,000 prize and a coveted internship at Carlo’s Bake Shop for the winner. Ironically though, the two first Next Great Baker winners have been women; although a cynic might question if any type-casting came into play in determining the winner (setting the stage for maximum drama), it will certainly be interesting to tune in for Cake Boss’ next season, as we witness a network-backed female baker navigate the male-dominated waters of Carlo’s Bake Shop.

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Lauren Kouffman is a first year MLA Gastronomy student at Boston University. Particularly interested in the intersection of media, technology and food, much of Lauren’s writing explores how food communities are built and maintained using new media tools. Lauren spends her free time collecting more cookbooks than she has space for, and searching for the perfect Old Fashioned.

Gender & Food Week: ‘Simply Irresistible’

Guest post written by Janyce Denise Glasper.

Simply Irresistible was one forgotten film of the late 90’s. It’s bewitching story failed to spark box office or critical praise thanks to a weak script dropping many unexplained plot points — who the heck was Gene O’ Reily, why did Amanda buy expensive crabs from him, and what was up with the freaking animated crab?

And those were just the introduction problems. However, let’s forget about all that for a moment and talk about food romance.

At the film’s beginning, handed down the reins and lacking the expertise that her deceased mother had to make the restaurant Southern Cross thrive, Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a terrible chef (or in her words “shitty”) and because of that, the financially troubled restaurant will be closing.

Enter Harry Bendel’s savvy businessman Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery). Earlier introduced to Amanda by the strange Gene O’Reily who also moonlights as a taxi cab driver, Tom and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, Chris (Amanda Peet) are unceremoniously dropped off at the Southern Cross.

Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible

When he comes into the restaurant with the crisply dressed, superior quality female, suddenly jealous Amanda’s cooking skills come out to play. With the snap of a whip, she has the ability of a kitchen ninja making a fantastic crab napoleon and chicken paillard for the couple on her first try.

To the sounds of jazz and upbeat pop, soon after Tom’s visit and success at crafting a pleasant meal, Amanda looks very happy, bursting out deliciously appealing cuisine that have nothing to do with southern comfort. That “old black magic” is supposedly the reason for Amanda’s glory as the newly hopping restaurant has boasting customers shuffling in and out, possibly by word of mouth, claiming that she makes exceptional food.

Amanda thinks otherwise.

Tom, the commitment phobic rich man, is much too practical and considers dating a business deal, often relating the two together in a creepily obsessive manner. He takes an immediate shining to Amanda, complimenting that crab napoleon, but the magic starts to wear off fast.

Amanda (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Tom (Sean Patrick Flanery) in Simply Irresistible

For as Amanda and Tom discover each other in a magical way — imaginary dancing on a striped ballroom floor high on caramel éclairs, sharing kisses on a vanilla fogged ground, and unpeeling oranges that cause floating up to ceilings — she is stuck on him, he is bothered by it, dumps her, and she doesn’t take the “breakup” too well. In other words, she feels that he is responsible for her sudden rise to culinary fame. “I don’t know if I need you to keep that feeling,” she says wretchedly, desperate to keep him around.

The worst way to upset the female audience is to imply that a woman needed a man. Unless Judith Roberts is the new masculine name, I didn’t understand why the screenwriter had Amanda clinging to Tom in an almost sickening manner. She isn’t given an opportunity to truly relish in her food joy because she is constantly thinking about Tom. Yes, the viewers are aware that before Tom she lacked kitchen talent, but wouldn’t it have been far more amusing if Amanda’s bad cooking was just a mental barrier from her realizing her potential stemmed from trying to live up her mother’s expectations? Why else was her mother mentioned much, but not fully illustrated?

But no. Tom is the reason Amanda can cook.

That is what we and the two of them are supposed to get. If Tom left, Amanda’s passion would dwindle away and the Southern Cross would be back up on the reality market. Sadly enough, Amanda doesn’t have any female friends or a motherly figure to socialize with. Often she asks her sous chef, Nolan (Larry Gilliard Jr.) for advice, especially when it came to her relationship with Tom and that became a problem. Nolan didn’t even believe in her talents after the first meal, jokingly stating that she should stick with making sugar cookies.

Amanda (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible

Oh, it was a beautiful sentiment that whatever feelings Amanda possessed came right into her food and emerged into other people — to the “simple” chicken paillard that had Chris acting like a crazy dish breaking diva to the sexually charged caramel éclairs that had everyone at Bendel’s acting on suppressed sensual impulses. However, towards the ending when she receives the offer of a lifetime cooking up a storm for the influential and the rich, she brings more emotional turmoil to the menu that gets to be a quite bizarre.

Would anyone want someone drowning out their tears into their food? Highly doubt that. It wouldn’t be considered sanitary.

As far as performances go, Gellar had a few gem worthy moments, but lacked a certain charismatic chemistry with Flanery, but the witty Patricia Clarkson presented a real scene treat that kept this film from being complete fluffy fodder.

Lois (Patricia Clarkson) in Simply Irresistible

Her supporting character, Lois, a feisty woman pining lustily after Bendel heir Jonathan (Dylan Baker), stole the show and Tom’s box of Amanda’s famous éclairs that he himself had snatched away from an old lady. In this hilarious scene, she relishes her thievery. “Gotta learn to share Tom,” she chirps, devouring the stolen dessert and moaning her pleasure while Tom is left to lick caramel residue from the empty box.

If Clarkson had more scenes with Gellar, Lois would have certainly been a beneficial female companion to naïve Amanda. It seems like the most important element of the film is that Tom’s confidante be a woman and that Amanda’s advisor be a male.

Though Simply Irresistible leaves on a clichéd note and more silly goofiness — like are we supposed to believe that a girl could have her makeup and hair done after hours? — it still serves up a dish of possibilities. Certainly not the best of the romantic genre nor the worst, this film’s minute charm and cheesiness is the stuff greasy pizza is made of.

Well, if women consumed pizza with their chick flick watching that is.

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Janyce Denise Glasper is a writer/artist running two silly blogs of creative adventures called Sugarygingersnap and AfroVeganChick. She enjoys good female centric film, cute rubber duckies, chocolate covered everything (except bugs!), Days of Our Lives, and slaying nightly demons Buffy style in Dayton, Ohio.

Gender & Food Week: ‘The Hunger Games’ Review in Conversation: Female Protagonists, Body Image, Disability, Whitewashing, Hunger & Food

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games

This Review in Conversation on The Hunger Games with Megan Kearns and Amber Leab previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on April 19, 2012.

Megan’s Take:
In a dystopian future, the nation of Panem stands where North America once existed. The government at the Capitol, which controls the country, mandates a girl and boy between the ages of 12 and 18 are selected by lottery in each of the 12 Districts as tributes to compete in a fight to the death called the Hunger Games aired on live television. 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers when her little sister Prim’s name is called. But in the Hunger Games, only one person can survive.

I devoured The Hunger Games trilogy, reading all 3 books in a matter of 2 days. Katniss descends from a line of strong literary female protagonists (Karana in Island of the Blue Dolphins, Miyax in Julie of the Wolves, Jo March in Little Women, Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre, Meg Murray in A Wrinkle in Time, Hermione Granger in Harry Potter) for young adult readers. The story echoes themes in The Lottery, The Most Dangerous Game, Gladiator, 1984, Island of the Blue Dolphins and Battle Royale, yet forges a new path. The female-centric series’ haunting themes – poverty, war, sacrifice, love, starvation, media influence, government control, class difference, and economic inequity – riveted me. The books’ memorable characters lingered long after I closed the pages. I didn’t want to say goodbye. So my expectations for the film were high when I saw the midnight premiere.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss

While other female film franchises exist, no female-centric movies aside from Twilight, Bridesmaids and Mamma Mia have experienced this meteoric success. Some people pit Katniss and Bella against each other as if there isn’t room in this world for both. While I’m no fan of the Twilight Saga (I’ll admit it makes me want to gouge my eyes out), putting them in a dichotomy implies girls and women can only identify with either Katniss OR Bella, not both or neither. Thankfully, others question this comparison.

I thought the movie was fantastic. I often lament the lack of strong female protagonists in film. We desperately need more characters like Katniss on-screen. A skilled archer, Katniss is smart, stubborn, brave, abrasive and self-reliant. She not only fights for her own survival; she’s compelled to protect her family. Living in the most impoverished neighborhood in the poorest of the 12 Districts, Katniss is the resourceful breadwinner, illegally hunting for food to feed her family. She’s a surrogate mother to her sister Prim and even her own traumatized mother, grief-stricken over the death of her daughters’ father. Despite her tough exterior, she possesses a vulnerability. What makes Katniss unique is that she “feels empathy when nobody else does.” She’s compelled to defend others, even her competition.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss

Jennifer Lawrence’s powerful performance as the “Girl on Fire” has been lauded by critics. And rightfully so. She’s stunning, perfectly conveying strength, rage, fear, and vulnerability through her body language, a flick of her eyes, never needing to utter a single word. She trained in archery, free running, yoga, climbing and combat. Regarding Lawrence’s casting as Katniss, director Gary Ross, moved by her powerful audition, called it “the easiest casting decision” of his life. Author Collins also fully supported Lawrence as Katniss.

The casting call, however, wanted an “underfed but strong” actor, and was limited only to “Caucasian” women. What. The. Fuck. I mean really, Hollywood?? No, women of color could even audition?! Collins describes Katniss’ appearance in the book as olive skinned with black hair. Hello…that could be tons of female actors of color! Why the hell must she be white?! You’re going to exclude young women of color and, on top of that, you only want malnourished-looking women?! Yes, starvation is a vital issue in the series. But in the book, Katniss says she possesses lean muscles from hunting.

Lawrence is receiving an assload of toxic bodysnarking from the misogynisitc media. The NY Times’ Mahnola Dargis claimed “her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission,”Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy commented on her “lingering baby fat,” Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells accuses Lawrence of being “big-boned” and “seems too big for Hutcherson” as male romantic partners should at least be as tall as their female counterparts (heaven forbid a woman is bigger or taller than her love interest…gasp!). The media constantly tells women we must be skinny. This toxicity destroys women’s body image.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss

Amber’s Take:

I agree with all your comments on Katniss being a strong female protagonist, and what a relief it is for a franchise fronted by a young woman to win the box office (as of this writing) four weeks in a row. Although the Twilight comparisons irk me, too, they almost seem inevitable, as so few big Hollywood releases have featured female protagonists. As with so many Hollywood franchises, however, this one takes a small step forward: a strong young woman is in the lead, but she is whitewashed to “play it safe” with the viewing public. Although the film is set in—and was filmed in–modern-day Appalachia, I see no reason why the lead needed to be “Caucasian.”

I have to talk about the “body snarking,” because while I would never call Jennifer Lawrence “too big” to play Katniss, she is older than Katniss. The 17-year-old Lawrence who starred in Winter’s Bone would have been a more convincing 16-year-old Katniss than the actor at age 21. Women in their 20s playing teenagers certainly isn’t a new thing (how many times have you watched a movie or TV show and noticed twenty-somethings playing high school students?), but the tendency for this to happen does create unrealistic expectations for teenage girls and conflate girlhood with womanhood. I think this problem will only become more apparent in the following two films of the series, too.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss

Much has been said about Lawrence’s body, but I’m not really interested in analyzing it—the incessant discussion of female bodies is part of the problem. What I do want to discuss is the film’s handling of food and hunger (a conversation I think many people are sincerely trying to have who end up derailing into critiques of Lawrence’s body). Everyone in District 12 is hungry, including Katniss. Winning the Hunger Games isn’t just about surviving; it’s also about bringing extra food home to your district—especially important for the poorer areas. The Capitol uses hunger as a political tool—a fact that doesn’t come through clearly enough in the movie. (An anecdote: The person who saw the movie with me didn’t understand why it was called The Hunger Games.)

In the book, Katniss eats and enjoys the plentiful food provided to her in the lead up to the game. She finds a particular lamb stew rich and delicious and she enjoys eating it until she’s full. For a girl who’s been hungry much of her life, the food available on that train trip would be irresistible. Yet in the movie, Katniss seems uninterested, even immune to the lavish spread. Is there a reason Katniss can’t enjoy a hearty stew to fortify herself for the impending game? This de-emphasis of food changes the character of the story dramatically. Remember the moment when Gale presents a roll to Katniss in the woods and she exclaims “Is this real?!” and they break the roll to enjoy together? The berries Katniss and Peeta threaten to eat in their Romeo-and-Juliet-style sabotage of the game? The story of nourishment and consumption takes a major hit when the movie doesn’t permit Katniss to eat and enjoy food and, for me, this might trump whatever positive body-image message might be implied by the decision to cast Lawrence without regard to the “underfed” description in the casting call, and without regard to her adult status.

Megan’s Take:

I didn’t really have a problem with Lawrence being older than Katniss. Although I totally agree about the concern for girls “conflating girlhood with womanhood.” But I suppose it didn’t bother me so much because Katniss is never sexualized. She cares about archery, not what she’s wearing. While Katniss receives a pageant-style makeover, so do the male tributes. While it hints at it, I just wish the movie had conveyed the book’s satire of toxic beauty standards.

I could NOT agree more with you on the themes of hunger and food or rather how they’re severely diminished almost to the point of erasure in the film. As a feminist vegan, I’m passionate about food justice and our relationship with food. Food and hunger are vital themes in the trilogy. Food is used as a reward while withholding food a punishment wielded as a weapon against Panem’s citizens. While the movie hints at these themes through the Capitol’s citizens’ garish costumes versus District 12’s simple garb or the lavishness of food at the Capitol, it doesn’t fully capture the book’s themes of food justice, food shortages, hunger and class inequities.

Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket and Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen

It’s rare to see an impoverished protagonist and a film contend with economic inequities. Even within the impoverished District 12, there are class distinctions. In the book, Katniss tells Peeta he doesn’t understand her desire to not owe anyone anything because he’s not from the Seam, the poorest neighborhood in District 12. The reason Gale had his name in the Reaping 42 times was so he could obtain more rations for his family. Katniss continually describes food and she always gorges herself like she’ll never eat again…because she doesn’t know if she will.

Jennifer Lawrence and Amandla Stenberg as Rue

I too didn’t understand the de-emphasis of food and hunger. In reality, 1 in 6 children suffer from hunger. And I too loved Collins’ descriptions of food, like Katniss relishing her favorite nourishing lamb (dislike) stew with dried plums (yum!) and the sweetness of hot chocolate touching her lips for the first time. And of course there was the continual symbol of bread — the warm and fragrant bread accompanied by Prim’s cheese Katniss eats with Gale, or Peeta’s burned bread that saves her life years earlier, or District 11 sending Katniss a loaf of bread for her alliance with Rue (who was from District 11) as a symbol of solidarity and quiet revolution, which the film eliminates, showing the citizens (many of whom are people of color) rioting instead.

Society equates food with morality — healthy food is good, decadent food sinful. While eating should be a sensual experience, through diet ads the media constantly tells us that women shouldn’t enjoy food. Food is constantly a threat to women’s bodies and we must resist its seductive allure. That’s why it was so refreshing to read Katniss’ delight in savoring food.

Beyond nourishment, I saw hunger serving as a metaphor for consumption — consumption of merchandise and media with its gravitational pull of reality TV and celeb culture. To eliminate the message of food, hunger and consumption dilutes its powerful message.

Speaking of parts eliminated from the book, I was disappointed the film eliminated the leads’ disabilities. In the book, Katniss loses her hearing, becoming deaf in one ear, and Peeta has his leg amputated. The movie hints at her hearing loss with sound effects but doesn’t actually address it. People often say that losing their hearing would be the end of the world but Katniss must adapt as a hunter and survive. It’s also a powerful message that in the book the Capitol “fixes” people’s disabilities without their consent. Sadly, it says even more that the film erases disabilities altogether. The fact that a movie can’t have a disabled protagonist or a disabled love interest is pathetic.

Amber’s Take:

The film really diminished a lot of powerful themes and messages from the book, and I couldn’t agree more with you about minimizing injury, or what equates to erasure of disability. Ironic that the book has the Capitol “fixing” disability, but the film itself erases it–making the filmmakers the Capitol. We — the viewers — are already in the uncomfortable position of watching the Games much like the Capitol citizens (something else the film minimizes, I think).

In a way, it’s funny that we haven’t really talked about violence, and how — in order to get a PG-13 rating — the film sanitized violence. The books are intended for a Young Adult audience, but are filled with brutal murders. The movie is, too, and I think we could see the de-emphasis of violence as either positive or negative: Positive in that the movie doesn’t glorify violence, or depict it graphically (which movies do too much of in general), but bad in that the movie isn’t as dark or complex as it could have been. While I realize that a filmmaker must make difficult choices when adapting a book (series), every choice made about The Hunger Gamesmade it safer — and more likely to not put off, offend, or disturb mainstream viewers. In essence, making it a successful blockbuster.

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Amber Leab is a writer living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a Master’s degree in English & Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature & Creative Writing from Miami University. Outside of Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared in The Georgetown Review, on the blogs Shakesville, The Opinioness of the World, and I Will Not Diet, and at True Theatre.

Megan Kearns is a Bitch Flicks Editor and Staff Writer. She’s a feminist vegan blogger and freelance writer living in Boston. Megan blogs about gender, media, food and politics at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site she founded. She writes about gender, media and reproductive justice as a Regular Blogger at Fem2pt0. Megan’s work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Everyday Feminism, Feminist Magazine on KPFK radio, Feministing’s Community Blog, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, A Safe World for Women and Women and Hollywood. You can follow her on Twitter at @OpinionessWorld.

Gender & Food Week: A Woman’s Place in the Kitchen: The Cinematic Tradition of Cooking to Catch a Man

Meryl Streep and Steve Martin in It’s Complicated

This guest post is written by Jessica Freeman-Slade.

Early in the 1954 film Sabrina — the original, starring Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart — the titular ingenue finds herself at a cooking school in Paris. Sent over as a gift from her father’s employer, the wealthy Larabee family, Sabrina continues to nurse her crush on the younger Larabee son, David (William Holden), even from Paris, and it shows in her cooking. The head chef inspects her souffle, and declares it “Much too low.” “I don’t know what happened,” she moans pitifully to herself. “I know what happened,” her colleague, a much older French gentleman, says, “You forgot to turn on the oven.” She cries out, and he guesses that she is in love—unhappily in love. “A woman happily in love, she burns the souffle. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven.”

Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina

As centuries of unequal domestic duties have shown us, women who are happy in the kitchen must, by extension, be happy in love. Having fallen in love with the 1995 version of Sabrina long before seeing the original, I had assumed that Sabrina’s (Julia Ormond) maturity and allure upon returning from Paris were indebted to a haircut, long walks by the Seine, and a new passion for photography — not a new talent at whipping up souffles in perfect capris and ballet flats. The ascription of her romantic desirability to her talent with food is an uncomfortable, backward narrative, one that’s hard to escape from even in modern cinema.Young women have heard throughout time that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” and film and television have done an excellent job of backing up this assumption. Not all women who can cook were taught to do so at the behest of future matchmakers, but the prevailing attitude, taught to us in women’s magazines and through the constant refrain of mainstream narratives, is that if you catch a man, you’d better make a decent meal. The loathsome popularity of dishes such as “engagement chicken” carry with them the promise that women need only master the kitchen to hook a man. DIY domesticity, maybe, or just cooking to couple up, but either way, it’s an uncomfortably old-fashioned message.

Cooking has always been a creative act, no matter who’s doing the dishes — it requires careful thought, imagination, and precision. It is, in short, one of the most skilled professions that anyone can take on, and also one of the most generous professions, because it requires thinking deeply about another person’s needs and desires. However, when a woman cooks for a man, and in doing so wins his heart, the woman appears conventionally domestic and feminine — traditional in her skill sets, understanding of her appropriate role in the house and in the relationship, and so subservient to the man’s needs. When a woman cooks on film, even when she cooks something extraordinary, there’s something profoundly submissive when she does it to please a man.

Ruth Younger (Ruby Dee) and Walter (Sidney Poitier) in A Raisin in the Sun

In the very beginning of the 1961 film A Raisin in the Sun, Ruth Younger (Ruby Dee) is trying to stir her husband Walter (Sidney Poitier) to start his day — he wants to talk about his dreams, his ambition, and she keeps reminding him to eat his breakfast. He lambasts her for her intolerance, but her means of affecting change — and her means of keeping the family together — have been limited to the kitchen.

Like Water for Chocolate

But cooking for a man, as shown on film, isn’t without its rewards — for good food is one of the best (and cheapest) means of seduction. When someone takes you into their kitchen, hands you a glass of wine, and promises you a delicious meal, it’s a method of flirtation that’s hard to resist. The pairing of womanly passion and culinary skills has been present as long as women’s emotions were captured in fiction: because a woman’s place has been primarily in the kitchen, her expression of whatever feelings or agency she may have comes by way of what she cooks. Look at the way Tita expresses her passion in Like Water for Chocolate, her emotions dripping into the food and infusing each bite with lust, sorrow, and joy. Her desires, forbidden by her family, cannot help but find their way into her cooking.(When this is later adapted into the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s restaurant chef is accused of being a witch, manipulating her love object with the delicious meals she prepares. Just as women would be kept out of the boardroom for fear of their emotions, so too is she kept from running her own kitchen.)

This impulse, to cook to incite pleasure and admiration, even surfaces in more modern films when women would be seemingly more self-sufficient. As recently as 2011’s It’s Complicated, Meryl Streep’s pastry chef gets to be the object of two men’s lusts, in part, in no small part because she’s a spectacular cook. The scene of her late-night date with a new love interest (Steve Martin), where she makes him chocolate croissants from scratch, shows her at her most ebullient (and sexiest) throughout the film. And it’s only a few scenes later that her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) tells his kids that their mother is the “best cook in the world.” Her talent equals her desirability, displayed in her gift to create a warm, indulgent space for the men in her life.

These scenes aren’t so disquieting on their own—after all, who wouldn’t want to be served a meal infused with lust, or have Meryl Streep bake you croissants at 2am? But the inverted message also comes that, when a woman lacks warmth or compassion, it shows in her cooking.

In Clueless, as Cher (Alicia Silverstone) prepares for a date, her voiceover tells us that “When a boy is coming over, you should always have something baking.” The punchline is then seeing her unwrap an entire roll of frozen cookie dough and dropping it onto a baking sheet. (No surprise later that the entire roll burns to a crisp. “Aw, honey, you baked,” her date condescends. “I tried,” she whimpers.)

The heroine in Mostly Martha, the spectacular 2001 German film, is a good cook, the head chef of a great restaurant, but her cooking doesn’t translate when she has to take care of her niece, Lina. It takes a more genial Italian sous-chef (and Martha’s future love interest) to get the child to eat, and instead of a sophisticated dish, it’s a simple plate of spaghetti that does the trick.

Where Martha’s ambition is rewarded in the restaurant world, it’s punished when she has to act as a surrogate mother (and potential girlfriend). Only once she’s later softened in the film does her cooking — and her parenting — relax to the point of acceptance. But in reality, women don’t just cook for themselves — most of the time, the act of cooking is done as an expression of survival, rather than seduction. Preparing a meal is one indication that a person is fully self-sufficient. It’s a biased opinion, I know, but I raise an eyebrow at anyone, male or female, who tells me that they don’t ever cook for themselves. While making boeuf bourguignon or baking a seven-layer cake takes a greater level of culinary ambition, preparing a series of simple, satisfying dishes show the difference between someone who can take care of themselves, and someone who requires a babysitter.

Amelie (Audrey Tautou) in Amelie

The brief scene in Amelie of the heroine preparing her dinner shows us what adulthood looks like — even when adulthood also comes with skipping stones and playing pranks on the local butcher. And no model proves more inspiring than Janette deSautel, the female chef from HBO’s Treme, whose narrative about her New Orleans’s restaurant is entirely without romantic motivation. Even when her restaurant crumbles due to the post-Katrina economy, she rebuilds her reputation in the hard-scrabble New York restaurant scene. By bringing her New Orleans roots to bear in standout dishes at David Chang’s fictionalized restaurant Lucky Peach, she reestablishes herself as a chef to watch — and finds a new avenue toward her culinary career back in her hometown.

Chef Janette deSautel (Kim Dickens) in Treme

Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Eric Powell (Chris Messina) in Julie & Julia

And finally, there is Julie & Julia, the story of a modern-day woman (Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams) finding inspiration in Julie Child (Meryl Streep, yet again), and using cooking to dig herself out of her personal and professional ennui. Cooking in this story threatens to tear Julie’s marriage apart — not for her lack of skill, but her preoccupation with what the cooking might mean. Her husband (Chris Messina) doesn’t mind being fed, but he does mind her obsession with letting her cooking skill transform her life. When redemption comes, you know it’s arrived when her husband gives in, asking with a smile “What’s for dinner?” Food becomes a means of personal empowerment, rather than seduction…even if it’s ultimately the husband being fed. And, at least in Julie & Julia, it puts the husband in the role of the sous chef, the kitchen support system, even when the cook is melting down over her lack of trussing ability.

So we’re getting a lot of mixed messages here — can a woman ever cook on film without it looking old-fashioned? Will preparing a meal ever been completely self-satisfying, for the benefit of the chef rather than the diner? Or, like an apron, will the function of cooking on film be forever tied to an expression of gender norms and traditional divisions of domestic labor? I don’t know if we can ever really have much of a distance from Sabrina’s souffle, for depictions of cooking will almost always be expressions of generosity, love, and compassion, no matter who holds the whisk. But for now, I’m hoping for more characters like Janette and Julie, cooking for their own satisfaction and survival rather than someone else’s. That, at least, is a dish that can be served any time of the year.

Jessica Freeman-Slade is a cookbook editor at Random House, and has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She lives in Morningside Heights, NY.