Story Line:
The film Spanglish was released in 2004 and produced by director James L. Brooks. The movie, as stated in the title, is scripted in both English and Spanish and portrays the struggle of assimilation and loss of culture for immigrant families in the United States. The movie is about a Mexican immigrant single mother named Flor Moreno (played by actress Paz Vega) and her daughter Cristina (played by Shelbie Cruz) coming to the U.S. in search of a better life. After working many painstakingly long hours and multiple jobs, Flor gets a break when she sees an ad for a well paying job housekeeping for the upper class family of Deborah and John Clasky, a famous chef (played by Tea Leoni and Adam Sandler), and their own two children. After realizing the difficulty of keeping up with a busy work schedule and a home life with her daughter, Deborah invites the Moreno family to live in their home while working for them. Consequently, because of the vast differences in culture, the two families clash because of differentiated morals and they begin to fight over the proper way to raise one another’s children. This story is told from the eyes of Flor’s daughter Cristina as she is writing her personal essay to the university of her dreams, Princeton.
Food In The Film:
In the film we see food being utilized in various aspects to show off the identities of each individual character. The first glimpse of this we see is in the beginning of the film when Flor is first exposed to the home of the Clasky’s and she sees the daughter of the Clasky’s cooking some type of pastry or sandwich on a small electric grill and she is asked to try the food. She is pleasantly surprised by how delicious the food is and when the Clasky’s daughter asks her mother to try the food too she claims how delicious it is and proceeds to shame her own daughter for making such an indulgent food saying that she can lay off of those. This incident displays a household example of the obesity discourse and how obesity or even classifying as slightly overweight subjects someone, in this case the Clasky daughter, to types of offensive language and shaming, even from within their own family boundaries. This discourse emerges again later on in the film when the Clasky mother buys her daughter new clothing that is sizes smaller than her true size to implore her to lose weight in order to fit into them. (26:00) Another interesting topic
brought up is the idea of cultural capital which describes the accumulation of culinary knowledge, skills, and behaviors that identify one’s culinary competence and social class. This idea is shown when Flor is told to make coffee and she complies without problem until she sees the monstrosity of a coffee maker that the family owns which shows how she is unfamiliar with the technology that the Clasky’s can afford. (16:00) We are also exposed to the societal and individual pressures imposed on those working in the culinary industry due to the influence of nutritional and taste critique. We see various scenes where John is in his restaurant’s kitchen and he is flustered because there is a food critic coming in for the New York Times to review his food. He becomes so physically flustered that he accidentally runs into a busboy and in turn the busboy is scrutinized because he is at the bottom of the capital ladder of the restaurant. (19:40) When asked about why he was so nervous, John relays his traumatic experience of reaching four stars at another restaurant the eventually collapsed and ran out of business because it became too difficult to keep up with the expectation. This shows the immense pressure put onto those working in highly rated culinary workplaces and how that pressure and angst trickles down to even those working the lower jobs as busboy. (20:30/35:40)
Lastly we see how food can be used as mean of communication when words cannot be put in place. In class we spoke about how food can communicate many things on its own to the people who see and receive it and we see this when John takes Flor out to his restaurants kitchen and cooks her a meal out of gratitude and love for her because of all her help during his hardships within his own relationship and family. Flor describes the food she eats as a taste that she will never forget and in the scene you can see a ease and comfort in the atmosphere which relays that message of love and appreciation. We know from the entire movie that Flor and John can rarely ever speak because of the language barrier, but the food is one of the only things that was common language between the both of them.
My Opinion:
I thoroughly enjoyed the film for it’s tap into reality when it came to the troubles of immigrant families being forced to assimilate to American cultures in order to get by. I think that the use of food and food related items was very interesting in that it really made the divide between ethnicity and social classes particularly more evident. I believe that the movie was very effective in creating that frustrating aspect of cultural boundaries through the constant need for translation to tie the two families together despite the topic of conversation and that alone made the food and culinary behaviors stand out on their own as a way that both families were able to share some commonalities. The film did not focus entirely on the food culture around the restaurant which would have been nice to see for the purpose of the assignment, but overall I really liked watching the movie a couple of times to get my pieces of supporting evidence out of it. I appreciated how amicable the film was.
Citations:
- Jr, A. F. C. A. R. W. H. (2010, July 17). Cooking with the Movies: Spanglish. Retrieved April 29, 2019, from Cooking with the Movies website: http://cookingwiththemovies.blogspot.com/2010/07/spanglish.html
- Spanglish (film). (2019). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spanglish_(film)&oldid=882553366
- Anthony F. Chiffolo and Rayner W. Hesse Jr. (2010, July 17) [Unititled Image Of Clasky Daughter], [Untitled image of Flor and John in Kitchen] Retrieved on April 29, 2019 from http://cookingwiththemovies.blogspot.com/2010/07/spanglish.html
- Warren (2004, June 8). [untitles image of coffee maker]Retrieved on April 29, 2019 from http://coffeegeek.com/forums/espresso/machines/105189
- Css Stars (2018, July). [Untitled image of star rating]Retrieved on April 29, 2019 from http://cssstars.com/star-rating-with-css/