Cooking and cooked food are almost as ubiquitous in our films, as they are aspects of our daily
lives.
But whether you see cooked food as nothing more than fuel to keep your body from dying,
or as a piece of art that almost doesn’t deserve to be eaten, for a good filmmaker
or writer, the cook and his food are always more than just another prop in a scene or
a cheap way to cover up a lifeless story with some pleasant eye-candy.
The role of the chef as the passionate mediator of raw nature to high culture has served as
an apt allegory for the process and frustrations of the Hollywood filmmaker.
Like the filmmaker, the chef is often depicted as a visionary artist of sorts who’s creativity
has been shackled by his superiors… or who believes his work is underappreciated… or
overly critiqued by those who don’t have anything to add themselves…
But beyond sly allegories, the ubiquity of cooks and hot dishes in cinema can also reveal
something meaningful about our humanity.
In his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human primatologist Richard Wrangham made
the controversial but thought provoking claim that it is the act of cooking, that is the
primary distinguishing feature of humanity and that has played an enormous part in our
evolution as a species.
‘We are tied to our adapted diet of cooked food, and the results pervade our lives, from
our bodies to our minds.
We humans are the cooking apes, the creatures of the flame’ And so ‘We should indeed
pin our humanity on cooks’.
In Ratatouille we can see this notion of cooking as a civilizing process play out in the transformation
of Remy the country rat into a 5-star chef in the culinary capital of the world…
Contrary to his fellow rats, Remy chooses to walk on two feet, cares about hygiene and
self-control, and learns how to read, all because of his passion for cooking.
But if cooked food can be seen as being universally connected to civility, films can also use
this to show us its opposite…
In Oldboy, the main character of the story eats a live uncooked octopus both in a desire
to touch something living but also to reveal his dehumanized state after 15 years of isolated
imprisonment.
But consuming raw food can also serve more practical purposes.
The raw can come to be synonymous with gaining natural strength and adapting oneself to an
uncivilized environment.
Similarly the rules and expectations of a warm meal can be broken to acquaint the civilized
with the realities of an uncivilized world…
But this desire for the natural and raw can also showcase one’s incapability of building
and maintaining civilized human relationships…
Food can be used to indicate a perceived level of savagery on a societal level, be it in
our own community, or in those of others, depicting morally despicable or highly unconventional
foods as markers of uncivility, setting more cultured protagonists apart from the exotic
and wild world which they inhabit…
And that, when taken to its extreme can degenerate into perhaps the ultimate symbol for savagery…
This in turn can be used as a weapon of sorts to completely break a character by destroying
his humanity… or it can serve as a powerful and highly disturbing form of antagonism and
inhumanity…
Stephen Mennel argues that another essential element of civilized food consumption is a
regulated appetite…
The civilized don’t merely eat out of immediate hunger, but collectively decide when to do
so together.
And so a dinner can be the scene of civilized harmony, but it can also be used to invert
this harmony, revealing tensions between polar opposite characters, and even devolving into
gluttony and depravity, often mockingly depicting inner problems of characters and societies
alike…
But if overabundance and wastefulness of food are connected to uncivility, so is scarcity…
Just like in real life, a lack of food can be utilized to bring about the deepest forms
of humanity in people and at times the very darkest aspects of a character’s personality...
Cooked food can be a battleground of perceived moral superiority and higher social status...
Those who own the food, have the most of it, or have the final say in how it should be
prepared hold a sense of power over others.
And so the cuisines of entire countries can come to be the objects of a bitter and at
times hilarious rivalry…
Similarly an overabundant feast can show the greed and hypocrisy of a tyrannical government,
and the meticulously crafted dessert can be used to reveal the ruthless and unpredictable
nature a character who likes to hide behind the gentle mask of a civilized friend…
Food is a status symbol we can use to impress others with and use to veil our real personality…
It’s a symbol through which we can gage the matter of control a character has over
his life…
And a means through which to maintain an artificial sense of civility juxtaposed against the a
contrasting reality of a character or of the outside world.
But just as cooked food can hide faults in a person or society, it can also serve as
a symbol of freedom and hope…
Cooking and cooked food as civilizers can be used to bring people together (Princess),
whether people with wildly varying personalities, cultures or even those in an active state
of war, a belly well filled functions as one of the prime factors in creating a civilized
environment.
It is perhaps no wonder that it’s at the dinner table of a restaurant as the place
from where intimate relationships can grow and bloom...
Meticulously cooked food, like an exceptional book, a painting or a great piece of cinema
can have a transformative effect on characters and people alike, bringing back memories and
taking our breaths away in a moment of peaceful bliss…
In cinema as well as in the real world, cooking and cooked food reveal their connectedness
with our humanity by making those who engage in it more human, bringing us closer to ourselves,
rekindling old passions and relationships.
This uniquely human trait has gone hand in hand with the evolution of our species from
a wild group of apes into cultured civilizations who owe a great deal to the very first chefs
of our race…
For filmmakers, the interest and usage of cooking and food in film is, and perhaps ought
to be, not just limited to an allegory about the frustrations of art, but it’s about
cooked food as one of the main civilizing drives of our species.
Because the food we eat in real life and especially the food characters cook and consume in movies,
is in a lot of ways universally connected to the overarching topics of all story, who
we are or were as people and what it means
to be human…