(In)digestion in Literature and Film: A Transcultural Approach 9780367443078, 9781003047889

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(In)digestion in Literature and Film

(In)digestion in Literature and Film: A Transcultural Approach is a collection of chapters spanning diverse geographic areas such as Brazil, Eastern Europe, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Despite this geographic variance, they all question disordered eating practices represented in literary and filmic works. The collection ultimately redefines disorder, removing the pathology and stigma assigned to acts of non-normative eating. In so doing, the chapters deem taboo practices of food consumption, rejection, and avoidance as expressions of resistance and defiance in the face of restrictive sociocultural, political, and economic normativities. As a result, disorder no longer equates to “out of order,” implying a sense of brokenness, but is instead envisioned as an act against the dominant order of operations. The collection therefore shifts critical focus from the eater as the embodiment of disorder to the problematic norms that defines behaviors as such. Niki Kiviat is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at Columbia University, where her research interests include food studies; Italy’s food and material culture as manifest in films of the Economic Miracle; star studies; and the legacy of neorealist film, which was the subject of her Master’s thesis, also from Columbia. Her chapter, “From Pizzaiola to Phenom: Viewing Sophia Loren Through Food,” will be published in the edited volume Eve’s Sinful Bite: Foodscapes in Italian Women’s Writing, Culture, and Society (forthcoming, Bloomsbury). Serena J. Rivera is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches the language, literatures, and cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world. Her research interests concern the intersections of food, gender, race, and sexuality throughout Luso/Hispanophone cultural production. She has published on the topics of food metaphors in Mozambican and Cape Verdean literatures as well as the teaching of Portuguese language in the US. She has also translated Alberto Pena-Rodriguez’s News on the American Dream: A History of the Portuguese Press in the United States (forthcoming, Tagus Press). She is currently working on several article manuscripts that explore the use of food in (post) colonial nationalist rhetoric in Mozambique as well as the linkages between the abject and racial identity in late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century Brazilian literature. Her monograph project comparatively examines the intersections of masculinity, food, and nation in Brazilian, Cape Verdean, and Mozambican literatures.

Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory

Narrative Reliability, Racial Conflicts and Ideology in the Modern Novel Marta Puxan-Oliva Agamben’s Political Ontology of Nudity in Literature and Art Frances Restuccia Conceptualisation and Exposition A Theory of Character Construction Lina Varotsi Knots Post-Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film Jean-Michel Rabaté Double Trouble The Doppelgänger from Romanticism to Postmodernism Eran Dorfman Literary Twinship from Shakespeare to the Age of Cloning Wieland Schwanebeck Promiscuity in Western Literature Peter Stoneley (In)digestion in Literature and Film A Transcultural Approach Edited by Niki Kiviat and Serena J. Rivera

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/literature/series/LITCRITANDCULT

(In)digestion in Literature and Film A Transcultural Approach

Edited by Niki Kiviat and Serena J. Rivera

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Niki Kiviat and Serena J. Rivera to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-44307-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-04788-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Editors List of Contributors Acknowledgments

vii ix xiii



SECTION ONE

Theoretical and Formal Contours

15

1 Suckling Pig or Potatoes?: Class Politics and Food Symbolism in Eastern European Film during Communism

17

E L E N A P O PA N

2 Haptic for Gourmets: Cinema, Gastronomy, and Strategic Exoticism in Eat Drink Man Woman and Tortilla Soup

32

A I DA RO L DÁ N - G A RC Í A

3 Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self

51

J E N N Y P L AT Z

SECTION TWO

Disordered Eating beyond the West

69

4 White Pigs and Black Pigs, Wild Boar and Monkey Meat: Cannibalism and War Victimhood in Japanese Cinema

71

K E N TA M C G R AT H

vi Contents 5 “Such a thin slice of watermelon!” Eating and Hunger in Macabéa’s Malnourished World

88

BENJA M I N LEGG

6 Multiplicities of Identities and Meanings behind Devouring Characters in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away

105

K AT S U YA I Z U M I

7 The Dangerous Vegan: Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and the Anti-Feminist Rhetoric of Disordered Eating

121

L AU R A W R I G H T

SECTION THREE

Disordered Eating in the West

135

8 Dietary Perversions and Subversion of Nature in Huysmans’s Against Nature

137

RO M A I N P E T E R

9 Eating the Dead: Transgressive Hungers and the Grotesque Body in Ulysses

152

W I L S O N TAY L O R







Index

217

Editors

Niki Kiviat is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at Columbia University, where her research interests include food studies; Italy’s food and material culture as manifest in films of the Economic Miracle; star studies; and the legacy of neorealist film, which was the subject of her Master’s thesis, also from Columbia. Her chapter, “From Pizzaiola to Phenom: Viewing Sophia Loren Through Food,” will be published in the edited volume Eve’s Sinful Bite: Foodscapes in Italian Women’s Writing, Culture, and Society (forthcoming, Bloomsbury). Serena J. Rivera  is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches the language, literatures, and cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world. Her research interests concern the intersections of food, gender, race, and sexuality throughout Luso/ Hispanophone cultural production. She has published on the topics of food metaphors in Mozambican and Cape Verdean literatures as well as the teaching of Portuguese language in the United States. She has also translated Alberto Pena-Rodriguez’s News on the American Dream: A History of the Portuguese Press in the United States (forthcoming, Tagus Press). She is currently working on several article manuscripts that explore the use of food in (post)colonial nationalist rhetoric in Mozambique as well as the linkages between the abject and racial identity in late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century Brazilian literature. Her monograph project comparatively examines the intersections of masculinity, food, and nation in Brazilian, Cape Verdean, and Mozambican literatures.

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Contributors

Francesca Calamita is Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, where she teaches Italian Studies and collaborates with the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality. Francesca is also the Program Director of the University of Virginia in Italy: Siena and Florence. She holds a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington and was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing of the University of London. She is interested in the representation of women’s relationships with body and food in fiction, pop culture, advertisements, video performances, and films from a transnational perspective, and has extensively published in these areas. Francesca is the author of a monograph on anorexia and bulimia in modern and contemporary Italian women’s writing (Linguaggi dell’esperienza femminile, Il Poligrafo, 2015) and the co-editor of the volume Food Obsession, Starvation and Identity (“Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing,” 2017). She is currently working on a textbook to teach and learn Italian with inclusion and diversity (under contract with Kendall Hunt), and an edited collection on gender and food (under contract with Bloomsbury). Katsuya Izumi  received his PhD in English from the State University of New York at Albany in 2011. He started working as a Lecturer and the Head of Japanese section in Language and Culture Studies at Trinity College in July 2019. From 2016 to 2018, he taught Japanese and Japanese literature and film at Colgate University as a Visiting Assistant Professor. He has published peer-reviewed chapters on Japanese-American literature and nineteenth-century American literature. He will earn his MA in Japanese from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in May 2020. Emily Gruber Keck  teaches in the English department at Radford University. Her book project, Hungry Bodies, explores the role of food and deprivation in dramatic articulations of class on the early modern English stage. As a member of Boston University’s theatrical company Willing Suspension Productions, she directed, designed, and performed in dramas written by the playwrights who now stand in Shakespeare’s cultural shadow, including Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair.

x Contributors Eilis Kierans  is currently a PhD student in Italian Studies at Rutgers University, where her research focuses on women’s writing, fascism, food studies, and film. She has published papers that explore gender dynamics in literature and film, and has presented her work at numerous conferences around the world. She enjoys translating poetry and guiding students on learning adventures in South America and Italy. She is presently writing her delicious dissertation, titled “Hungry Housewives, Holy Anorexics, and Hearty Vegans in Female Fiction.” Benjamin Legg  is Senior Lecturer of Portuguese at Vanderbilt University, where he coordinates teaching of the Portuguese language. His research interests focus on questions of national and regional identity in a broad range of cultural products from around the Lusophone world. He has published on topics ranging from Brazilian actress Sônia Braga to the relationships between Angola and Cabo Verde. His chapter is part of a broader project on the juxtaposition of abundance and scarcity in representations of food in Lusophone cultures. Kenta McGrath  is a Japanese-Australian writer, filmmaker, and academic whose research focuses on documentary, cinematic realism, and Japanese cinema. He is an Adjunct Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Curtin University and previously worked as Lecturer for the Japanese Film Festival and Japanese Animation Film Festival in Perth, Western Australia. Romain Peter  is a philosophy teacher in France. He is pursuing independent research on the intersection between philosophy and French literature, with a particular focus on J.-K. Huysmans and decadentism. He is also a member of the J.-K. Huysmans Society from ParisSorbonne University. Jenny Platz  earned her MA in Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University, and in 2017, she received her PhD in English at the University of Rhode Island. She has published in Enthymema, postScriptum, Slayage, and others in areas such as genre studies, gender theory, and film history. Elena Popan was born in Romania. She earned her MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently pursuing a PhD in Fine Arts with a focus on Critical Studies at Texas Tech University. Her research interests include art censorship, subversive art, and cinema of resistance. Aida Roldán-García is a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She combines her academic interests and writing with her teaching career. Aida has taught at institutions such as the University of Massachusetts, University of Missouri, and University of Oviedo. She currently teaches Spanish and Catalan at Pompeu Fabra University and the University of New Haven.

Contributors  xi Wilson Taylor  currently teaches English at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island. He received his MA from the Middlebury College Bread Loaf School of English in 2019, and his work examines transgressive gestures and transformative imaginaries enacted through modern and contemporary literature. Laura Wright is the founder of the field of Vegan Studies. She is Professor of English at Western Carolina University, where she specializes in postcolonial literatures and theory, ecocriticism, and animal studies. Her monographs include Writing “Out of All the Camps”: J.M. Coetzee’s Narratives of Displacement (Routledge, 2006 and 2009), Wilderness into Civilized Shapes: Reading the Postcolonial Environment (U of Georgia P, 2010), and The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror (University of Georgia Press, 2015). Her edited collection Doing Vegan Studies: Textual Animals and Discursive Ethics was published in 2019 by the University of Nevada Press.

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Acknowledgments

Our deepest gratitude to our contributors, without which the foodcentered vision of the editors would never have come to fruition. Their contributions prompted us to think deeply on the topics of food consumption; (in)digestion; excretion; and what such literary and filmic metaphors are trying to tell us about societal structures and, ultimately, ourselves. We would also like to thank colleagues Rhian Atkin and Eleanor K. Jones for their valuable advice and feedback throughout the process. The many outstanding scholars who have presented on our panels and roundtables at the Northeast Modern Language Association conventions throughout the years are also owed a debt of gratitude, both those included in the following chapters and those with whom we have lost touch. The ideas exchanged and the discussions conjured from our mutual passions for all things food are what ultimately inspired this compilation. Lastly, a special thanks to all of our colleagues and supporters who cheered us on throughout the entire editorial process. We hereby dedicate this volume to our parents, in this world and beyond.

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On (In)digestibility and the Politics of Identity An Introduction Serena J. Rivera and Niki Kiviat

Food has played an important role in our lives, not just as scholars but also as individuals living, studying, and working in some of the world’s most interesting food landscapes. For several years, we brought our love for all things food into our academic lives through the organization of panels and roundtables dedicated to the cross-cultural studies of literary and filmic food and eating metaphors, an activity we look forward to yearly. We would hear the various ways in which scholars, not just in the Northeast of the United States but also around the world, approached and problematized the presence of food in cultural production and what, ultimately, these metaphors attempted to convey with regard to ever-evolving social milieu. In March 2017, at the annual Northeast Modern Language Association conference in Baltimore, Maryland, we chaired a panel on the dynamics of food and power as manifest in literature and film across cultures titled, “The Power of Sustenance and the Sustenance of Power.” The presentations on this panel considered postFranco Spain, the impacts of the Marshall Plan on Italy’s social landscape, and, in a friendly yet deeply telling return to our childhood, the work of Roald Dahl. After touching upon the headmistress’s disturbing punishment in Matilda (1988), forcing Bruce to eat an entire chocolate cake on stage, the group then recalled The BFG (1982) and the whimsical world of frobscottle and whizzpoppers. In The BFG, thirsty Sophie is introduced to frobscottle, a fantastic green drink within which the bubbles, resisting the laws of physics, float downward. However, the digestive gases released from the consumers of the drink force the body, generally rooted to the ground by gravity, zooming through the air. In this defiance of the natural order of physics, flatulence – onomatopoetically named “whizzpoppers” – sheds its connotation as taboo, as it has been marked in Western societies for generations, and is, instead, envisioned as a moment of euphoric release. Revisiting this childhood tale, and reflecting on its imaginative scenes through theoretical lenses, illuminated the potentiality of what is often brushed off as theatrically whimsy, childhood fantasy, and, plainly, silly. In that moment, some of our childhood favorites took on new meanings – several years into our panel-organizing tradition – that the idea sparked

2  Serena J. Rivera and Niki Kiviat in our minds to collect some of these diverse food- and eating-centered analyses of literary and filmic works into an edited volume. What if, we thought, instead of giggling nervously at this literary depiction of farts, we, so to speak, unclouded the latent meanings behind this natural bodily relief? Why is it that Dahl – and calling upon Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970) as well – riddled his tales with fizzy drinks that resulted in belches and farts, voracious eating, and gluttonous children literally transforming into the off-limits items they were told most specifically not to consume? When we look at the seemingly mundane social taboos concerning eating, (in)digestion, and expulsion, what might literary (and filmic) representations of these semiotically charged processes ultimately tell us about ourselves and about the social paradigms in which we inhabit and through which we navigate daily? In a review of Taro Gomi’s international bestseller, Everyone Poops (1977), Publishers Weekly begins, “Okay, so everyone does it – does everyone have to talk about it? True, kids at a certain stage of development may find the subject riveting – but their parents may well not want them to read about it.” What ultimately connects the chapters that follow is the underlying idea that these are the topics we, in fact, should talk about. That which provokes discomfort, and from which people normally shy away, are replete with meanings worth revealing. This book therefore seeks to negotiate the scandal of natural processes, examining the reasons why a focus on literary and filmic tropes of excretion, for example, is particularly telling. In so doing, the contributions underscore a set of macrocosmic, global repercussions extending far beyond the individual body. As Kyla Tompkins writes in Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century (2012), analyses centered on the “political and cultural meaning of eating culture… open up a multitude of questions central to critical reflection about the production of asymmetrical social relations, both historical and contemporary” (185). Through tropes of disordered eating, the compiled chapters demonstrate the ways in which authors, filmmakers, and even bloggers critically reflect on “production[s] of asymmetrical social relations” in their respective contexts. Food and the socially “odd” ways in which it is consumed and expelled are not interpreted solely as part of the biological survival and processes of individuals, but rather as part and parcel of their identity stylization as they navigate racial, (post)colonial, gendered, war-ridden, and generally oppressive environments-in-flux. The chapters highlight how acts of disordered eating imbue individuals with, in Tompkins’s words, “the burdens of difference and materiality,” positing them as “closely aligned with what we might think of as the bottom of the food chain,” (8) as a result of their atypical food-centered actions. Since eating, according to Tompkins, is an act that is “symbolic of access to the sphere of public politics and citizenship and thus metonymic of the struggle for political agency,”

Introduction  3 (9) the acts of disordered eating explored throughout this volume unveil the struggle to access the privileged spaces of their respective societies in question, and also to speak within them. With this in mind, this volume addresses the particularly multifaceted ways in which authors and filmmakers across cultures employ tropes of food and eating as a means of deconstructing borders and opening pathways for the discussion of social (in)digestion. According to James Fernandez in Persuasions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture (1986), the metaphors/tropes of a culture, such as those associated with eating, are capable of influencing behavior. A taboo concerning specific foodstuffs, for example, would play a role in the construction of one’s individual identity and societal positionality. Cultural tropes aid the individual in escaping the “privacy of [their] experience,” transitioning from inchoateness (the realm of the individual) to predication (the realm of the collective) – ultimately assigning certain identities to one’s self and others (46). The regular partaking in a social taboo of eating, which our contributors analyze here, would align the individual’s identity with what Deleuze and Guattari have coined, specifically in capitalist-structured societies, the schizo of one’s social milieu. The schizo, for Deleuze and Guattari, “is the subject of the decoded flows on the body without organs” (34), a subject that strays from the norms set by capitalist production and, thus, “plunges further and further into the realm of deterritorialization,” seeking out the limits of the social structure and claiming a new identity in the process. In so doing, however, this deterritorialized subject undergoes a process in which they become an indigestible entity within the larger societal digestive system. Deemed indigestible, the subject is simultaneously cast into the realm of the abject, as delineated by Julia Kristeva in her famous chapter on the abject/abjection, Powers of Horror (1980), becoming a threatening symbol to the larger social order and situating its indigestibility/abject-ness. The governing order of the subject attempts to double down on this “infection” – as we see in Laura Wright and Romain Peter’s contributions – and repress it. This is because, in the words of Kristeva, the abject “stand[s] for the danger to identity that comes from without: the ego threatened by the non-ego, society threatened by its outside, life by death” (71). The schizo, the abject, the indigestible entity, is the ultimate menace to the structures maintaining specific power paradigms in place. More specifically, Kristeva writes: The vision of the abject is, by definition, the sign of an impossible object, a boundary, and a limit. A fantasy, if you wish, but one that brings to the well- known Freudian primal fantasies, his Urfantasien, a drive overload of hatred or death, which prevents images from crystalizing as images of desire and/or nightmare and causes them to break out into sensation (suffering) and denial (horror), into a blasting of sight and sound (fire, uproar). (154–155)

4  Serena J. Rivera and Niki Kiviat As a result of the emphasis on the synesthetic relationship between the indigestible subject and food/eating, the chapters of this volume exude visceral responses of rebellion to the power structures of their respective contexts. Therefore, to allow this subject to roam free, even in its deterritorialized space, threatens to undo, in a horror-provoking fashion, the social fabrics that produce from a privileged space the territorializing desires of its self-serving structures of power. Instead of discarding these indigestible/abject identities, like capitalist societies historically are wont to do, this volume questions the paradigms that designated them as such. As the following contributions assess, the process of digestion is not merely physiological; it is also a process that resonates with sociocultural histories and individual positionalities within a society and the ways in which these societies “digest” the individual. As much as our food choices are governed by hierarchies above, the instances described in this volume reveal a sense of rebellion against these overarching structures; non-normative food choices and eating practices, the refusal to eat, and the expulsion of food together are seen as acts against the patriarchal orders, organized religion, colonial powers, the atrocities of war, and even the publishing and film industries themselves. For chapters such as Wilson Taylor’s, Francesca Calamita’s, and Benjamin Legg’s – to name just a few from the list – that work with bodies of literature, it is pertinent to underscore why literary works and their food- and eating-centered tropes are particularly apt sites for the revealing of cultural nuances and fragmentations. Marilyn Cohen in Novel Approaches to Anthropology: Contributions to Literary Anthropology (2013) emphasizes how integral literature is in the reflection of a society. For Cohen, literature “provides descriptive information about the social structure and organization of a society including the existence of social institutions and customs and information about values and norms that may be inferred for the characters and their behavior” (5). Through literature, readers can more profoundly understand the cultural traditions and customs of the society or societies that the literary work represents. We argue that it is possible to extrapolate this idea to analyses of film as well. Anne L. Bower was one of the first to touch upon this relationship in her edited volume Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film (2004), highlighting the use of food as a plot device in well-known films such as Itami Juzos’s Tampopo (1985), Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), and Alfonso Arau’s adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate (1992). Craig Batty expands upon this formative scholarship on the strategic relationships between film characters and food in his contribution to Food, Media and Contemporary Culture: The Edible Image (2015). In “You Are What You Eat: Film Narratives and the Transformational Function of Food,” Batty notes that it is through the characters’ “perspective[s], point of view[s]

Introduction  5 and narrative drive – through agency” that the viewer follows the film and makes sense of it (30, emphasis original). The particular relationship between characters, food, and eating in the film’s plot, Batty adds, “is employed as a deliberate screenwriting device to visualize and make felt the underlying story (character arc and theme) being told” (34, emphasis original). Again, we see how filmmakers take advantage of the synesthetic quality of both food and film to produce a narrative capable of physically captivating an audience through which to convey particular meanings. Returning to Cohen, fiction and the act of reading (both literature and film, we argue) are particularly potent means for learning about a culture and its people. Additionally, as Cohen notes, “since human beings are never fully defined by historically or socially constructed roles, aesthetic experiences like reading literature,” or reading films, “allow for questioning accepted norms, and imagining new identities, social relationships, and possible worlds” (6). Through a focus on disordered eating in literature and film, the following collection endeavors to problematize the “accepted norms” that deem certain manners of eating as outside the boundaries of normativity. In so doing, these alternative scopes for viewing the mundane and the grotesque convey a hope for the creation of new, more accommodating, ontological spaces.

Defining Disordered Eating The editors and contributors of this volume alike understand the gravity of eating disorders – from which a reported thirty million people, of all ages and genders, suffer in the United States alone – and discussion of such life-altering diseases is never to be taken lightly. This volume, however, seeks to achieve two objectives. First, we aim to recognize different instances of disordered eating, not just those psychologically categorized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as “not otherwise specified,” but ones that do not require any pathologization. Second, these chapters aim to get to the root of disordered eating: What is the reader or viewer actually seeing unfold, and to what extent does the consumer have a sense of agency? In other words, we aim to tackle the why of the literary and filmic representations of disordered eating and (in)digestion. In so doing, we question the traditional tenets of disorder as a label associated with that which is outside the norm. Let us consider the example of anorexia nervosa, characterized by a distorted body image and excessive dieting that leads to severe weight loss with a pathological fear of becoming fat. According to Opal, an eating disorder treatment center based in Seattle, Washington, anorexia implies a “disturbance in the way in which one’s body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or persistent lack of recognition of the seriousness of the current low body weight.” While this definition bears a significant amount of truth,

6  Serena J. Rivera and Niki Kiviat this volume explores other modes of rationale behind this disorder, even positing that the practitioner not only recognizes the seriousness of low body weight, but also practices to instill a sense of control in a life where other aspects are constantly in jeopardy. As Jenny Platz writes in her treatment of Pro Ana and Mia blogs, “In general, the sites document the blogger’s process and desire to control her body and life through anorexia and bulimia in a world where the author must contend with strict parents, a stressful semester, unrequited love, depression, or physical trauma.” Meanwhile, Benjamin Legg, writing on A hora da estrela/ The Hour of the Star (1977) by Clarice Lispector, underlines a definition of disordered eating that this volume strongly supports: that the bigger disorder in question is not of the individual practitioner, but, instead, of greater society. Referencing the theories of Susan Bordo, Legg writes: ‘The psychopathologies that develop within a culture, far from being anomalies or aberrations, [are] characteristic expressions of that culture… the crystallization, indeed, of much that is wrong with it’ (3). In the case of Macabéa, we see in her struggles with food and eating the physical results of economic injustice, while in her doctor’s disordered response we encounter Brazilian society’s anxieties around that injustice and its status on the global periphery. The focus on disorder and its relation to food on the level of the individual serves as a means to locate symptoms within larger pathologies plaguing the sociocultural contexts of the literary and filmic works in question. In terms of Platz’s examination of Pro Ana and Mia blogs, rather than promoting disorder, she sees the blogs as spaces of self-care enacted through the Ancient Greek practice of hupomnemata, calling attention to American society’s penchant for swift demonization of that which appears disordered. With regard to Legg and his examination of Lispector’s most widely analyzed work, he traces Macabéa’s strange eating habits to histories of economic inequality in Brazil and its associated shame on the level of international appearances. Foregrounding the individual experience of disordered eating and social indigestion as metonymic of larger societal fissures across cultures shifts the critical attention from the individual as schizo to, instead, the governing milieu as the breeding ground for these disorders. This volume, therefore, brings into question the meanings of “normal,” challenging the binary definitions of eating as normal or as deviant. The chapters do not treat the following acts of disordered eating as medically fraught, but, rather, as acts by a consumer which contradict her society’s standard order of operations. Disorder is not necessarily that of malaise or of illness and, in other words, is not “out of order,” implying brokenness. Instead, our rendition of disorder represents a moment against order. The consumer is not broken; we suggest, rather, that her eating,

Introduction  7 refusal to eat, and physiological reactions to food all contend that the institutions which govern her interactions with food are out of order. Throughout each of the chapters presented in this volume, the undercurrent is, indeed, disordered eating of a resistant nature. Resistance performed through disordered eating, as delineated in the following chapters, often veers into the realm of the grotesque. The schizo, eating excessive quantities of food and socially questionable combinations and types of food, shocks the sensory register of the reader/viewer, simultaneously loosening the standard definition of what (or who) food is. As Bernard McElroy writes in Fiction of the Modern Grotesque (1989), the literary grotesque often functions as an examination of hostile physical worlds that “overwhelm the individual, denying him a place and identity,” (17) surrounding him with violence, brutalization, and dehumanization. In so doing, the writer casts “an assault upon the idea of a rational world” and “upon the reader himself, upon his sensibilities” (75). This transgression serves to shock the reader, initiating her own critical thought process. But we must acknowledge the limitations of trying to understand representations of the grotesque and its abject counterparts. Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund write in Grotesque (2013): as a term, grotesque can … never be locked into any one meaning or form, historical period or specific political function. This means that any attempt to locate the grotesque is by definition bound to fail. For if there is any one thing that defines ‘the’ grotesque it is precisely that it is hybrid, transgressive and always in motion. (15)

A Transcultural Approach The acts of eating and defecation reduce the billions of humans to their fundamental physiologies, their basic modes of survival. Once that baseline has been established, we wish to add in the nuances of how one’s positionalities – of one’s gender, class, religion, race, and national referents – determine the norms of eating, and, thus, how the consumer (or, by contrast, those who refuse to consume) eats against that grain. The importance of investigating food in literature is underscored by a recent surge in publications on the topic. Food, despite its ties to daily monotony in terms of bodily survival, has become an undeniably crucial site for exploring the semiotics of identity politics. As Lorna PiattiFarnell and Donna Lee Brien write in their introduction to the recently published volume of chapters that address the semiotics of the edible, The Routledge Companion to Literature and Food (2018): “Like all literary tropes and allegories defined by their associations to identity, food has the ability to transform itself into situations, and express numerous preoccupations within the anthropological structures that define us as

8  Serena J. Rivera and Niki Kiviat ‘human’” (1). This is because the human experience of ingesting food is an undeniably synesthetic one, prompting and provoking physiological reactions in the mind and body that, in turn, influence the body’s subject positioning within its external reality. Piatti-Farnell and Brien elaborate: “Food, cooking, and eating are linked to both cultural anxieties and desires in relation to human experience” (2). In other words, food and the manifold ways in which it is procured, cooked, consumed, and expelled directly correlate with individual “anxieties” and “desires” within specific cultural contexts. It is also telling of the individual’s place in that world. The repetition of the various experiences of food, not unlike Judith Butler’s argument in Gender Trouble (1990) regarding the repetition of gender performances, serves to stylize the body’s identity and positionality. Although repetition implies sameness, the experience of eating is highly diversified by the gendered, racial, and/or class-based implications of the body’s unique navigation of its surrounding social reality. Through a critical reading of a broad scope of literary and filmic works, (In)digestion explores the ways food and eating metaphors, entwined with themes of disorder, serve to stylize a subject’s identity while simultaneously revealing ambivalences within the (gendered, racial, and/ or class-based) power structures governing that subject. Along with Piatti-Farnell and Brien’s contribution, the study of literary food metaphors has experienced an upswing at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, with commentaries spanning a multitude of geographies. Some examples include Maria José Queiroz’s A literatura e o gozo impuro da comida (1994), which offers a general study of the relationship between the written word and food from Greek mythology to contemporary Brazilian literature. Maggie Lane explores the representations of food in the novels of Jane Austen in Jane Austen and Food (1995). Timothy Morton’s Cultures of Taste/ Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism (2004) provides a collection of chapters that analyzes tropes of diet and consumption in the literature of the Romantic period. As highlighted above, Tompkins studies the intersection of food, eating culture, and race in nineteenth-century American literature in Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century (2012). Specifically, Tompkins explore the ways in which black bodies refused to be consumed and digested through white mouths in antebellum literary works. The importance of her work is magnified by the inclusion of cultural objects along with literary texts, highlighting the interdisciplinarity of her approach. Pina Palma in Savoring Power, Consuming the Times: The Metaphors of Food in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature (2013) foregrounds food and its linkages with the literature, philosophy, art, history, and theology of the Italian Renaissance, and the ways in which food and its representations straddle the realms of the earthly and beyond (26). Mariano García and Mariana Dimópulos have also compiled chapters on literature and food in a wide

Introduction  9 array of works from Balzac to F. Scott Fitzgerald in Escritos sobre la mesa: literatura y comida (2014). Our volume joins these ranks, wholeheartedly supporting this diversity, geographic and otherwise.  In line with these collective works, we assert that food is not just necessary for corporeal survival. As we observe through literature and film, food – eating, preparation, choice – are means of expressing one’s identity and positionality within society: of where one stands with respect to governing bodies and cultural systems. As Elena Popan emphasizes to readers in the first chapter of this volume, food is a vehicle of relationality, one which establishes the backbone of norms and tastes of contemporary consumer society. Through the medium of film, viewers may grasp the primacy and the combinations of textures and colors of foods – both traditional and unusual aliments – which determine orderly and disordered eating: what makes us salivate, what “normal foods” are regularly featured on viewers’ plates, and what grotesque moments of eating revolt the audience. Citing scholars who set the theoretical framework for both her work and this volume overall, Popan states: Food is a part of our everyday reality and is the basis of any economy, which makes eating ‘an ideological as well as physical act’ (Counihan & Van Esterik 3, 6). It is for this reason that viewers respond constantly to images related to food; food has primacy in our lives, a primacy that is part of our symbol-making and symbol-decoding capacity (Bower 9). Food also has such an ‘ambiguous, unpredictable, contentious, and high-stakes status in consumer society’ (Carson, Baron & Bernard 5). At the same time, it can be seen as a metaphor for what we love or hate about our society (Belasco 15), offering a powerful lens for ideological studies of film. This volume lingers on Warren Belasco’s metaphor of love and hate and, moreover, the register of what acts of consumption are positively and negatively received, and why they are portrayed and viewed in that light. Our chosen lens is the digestive system, through which food is processed. While food and its representations within literature and film remain central to the analyses, this volume is unique in its assessment of another telling outlet: digestion. The relationship between food and the body is one of chemical and physical processes, and, as this volume underlines, of order and disorder, and of tolerance and rejection. In other words, the volume explores literary and filmic tropes of (in)digestion and their associated meanings. Through the process of digestion, food can re-emerge in various, and often socially taboo, ways. It can be released from the borders of the body in an act of abjection. The act, in so doing, brings to the foreground histories of sociocultural oppression that have established societal boundaries and normativities. The food we eat, and the food our bodies choose to digest – or, just as strikingly, not eat, and not

10  Serena J. Rivera and Niki Kiviat digest – therefore reveal individual struggles against systems of norms, and the societal changes the consumer seeks to initiate with a single bite. Comparisons that span temporalities, cultures, and nations, such as this one, aim to place into perspective the larger power structures that influence our global society. Rita Felski and Susan Friedman, in their co-edited volume Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses (2013), advocate, for example, the utility of cross-cultural and cross-temporal comparison through an exploration of the relation between comparative literature and cultural anthropology. Felski and Friedman write in the introduction to this collection that “comparison is central to the analysis of world systems, transcontinental connections, and interculturalism, not only in the current phase of globalization but throughout human history” (2). We acknowledge the significance of comparing literature from opposite sides of the Atlantic and from various temporalities, as well as works that encompass social worlds influenced by different histories. Such an undertaking unveils commonalities not readily apparent and promotes cross-cultural understanding. At the same time, this study aims to illuminate historical connectivities as well as value cultural divergences and specificities. As Shu-mei Shih elaborates in “Comparison as Relation,” all literatures should be seen as “participants in a [global] network of power-inflected relations” (84); literatures across the globe reflect larger relations of power that influence not only small collectives but also larger, global communities. Making space for these seemingly disparate literary and filmic analyses – in terms of geographies and temporalities – thus places them in a larger context of global history and contemporaneity. Since this volume assesses disordered eating as it is manifest in literature and film, the first section of the volume lays some of the theoretical groundwork with which to read the subsequent chapters. These three chapters, by Elena Popan, Aida Roldán-García, and Jenny Platz, are at once case studies of disordered eating which span multiple cultures – or, in the case of Platz, considers a virtual geography, given her presentation of eating disorders on the Internet – and which speak to the formal qualities of (in)digestion in aesthetics. As discussed above, Platz’s chapter underlines the sense of control expressed through blogs written and maintained by practitioners of anorexia and bulimia. Popan’s chapter begins the volume, underscoring the fundamental importance of food in cinematic works, as well as the stakes of film censorship, as she refers to illustrations of gastronomic hypocrisy among the Soviet elite. Top cadres indulge in luxurious, tropical foods, from caviar to oranges: foods which the collectivized, hungry masses of Communism could only dream of tasting. Taste and texture are two senses at the center of Roldán-García’s work, as she discusses the use of haptics in Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) and its Mexican-American remake by María Ripoll, Tortilla Soup (2001). Through these formal

Introduction  11 qualities, Roldán-García draws the connection between taste and patriarchal authority, noting the direct correlation between a father’s loss of taste and his waning influence over his daughters. Since viewers use their own personal experiences to determine which discourses and meanings they assume as their own, they question discourses associated with their analogous filmic Other, because they do not correspond to those experiences. In the case of Eat Drink, those spectators who recognize themselves in the characters might end up questioning traditional Orientalist depictions of Asians as exotic and mysterious people, because they do not correspond to their own individual experiences or the represented reality of the movie. That is, spectators realize that the characters are far from being enigmatic creatures acting in strange ways – and yet they all have common problems and concerns regarding love and family. In the volume’s second section, “Disordered Eating beyond the West,” Kenta McGrath transports readers to the Pacific campaigns of World War II, as Japanese troops consume the bodies of Allied soldiers, prisoners of war, civilians, and even each other, thereby demonstrating the prevalence of survival over human morality and ethics during wartime. Still focusing on Japan, but this time in the twenty-first century, Katsuya Izumi assesses Hayao Miyazaki’s character of No Face, who embarks on an eating rampage, unaware of what he is eating and digesting: a sign that the Japan he once knew has lost its way. Benjamin Legg discusses tropes of malnourishment in his analysis of Clarice Lispector’s novel, A hora da estrela (1977), and its 1985 film adaptation, underscoring in particular the protagonist’s troubled relationship with sweets, evoking the devastation wrought on northeastern Brazil by centuries of sugar monoculture. Laura Wright’s chapter rounds out the section, examining Korean novelist Han Kang’s 2007 novel The Vegetarian. Kang’s work interrogates the ways that protagonist Yeong-hye’s dietary choices, particularly with regard to her refusal to consume meat and other animal-based products, marks her body and psyche as unfeminine, pathological, and disordered; in turn, Wright acknowledges that Yeong-hye’s dietary choices are based on ethical convictions that politically and socially subvert acceptable social norms and gender-based expectations in ways that leave her trapped between empowered vegan identity and pathologized anorexia, in a space of uncertainty with regard to her ability to self-determine. The volume then progresses to moments of disordered eating in the literary and filmic canons of the West in the section “Disordered Eating in the West.” For the West, food is often seen as a source of pleasure rather than anxiety. As Peter Jackson writes in Anxious Appetites: Food and Consumer Culture, “Conflicting emotions arise because food has such powerful material and symbolic properties. It is vital to our health and well-being, and closely bound up with our embodied identities (when ingested food literally becomes part of our selves). It has strong metaphorical force as well as being a necessity for sustaining life and well-being” (4).

12  Serena J. Rivera and Niki Kiviat The section begins with Romain Peter’s assessment of J.K. Huysmans’s Against Nature (1884), in which Des Esseintes, the protagonist, conducts a series of gastronomic experiments to discern connections between food and the mystic. Wilson Taylor considers James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), following the unorthodox consumption practices of Leopold Bloom, “the wandering Jew” through early twentieth- century Dublin. Meanwhile, referencing the work of Dacia Maraini, Eilis Kierans underscores the societal turbulence of postwar Italy, and in particular women’s struggles for emancipatory rights, blurring confectionary sweets with the pains of pregnancy. Italy’s Catholic heteropatriarchy is likewise a figment of Francesca Calamita’s chapter, as she considers Igiaba Scego’s short story “Salsicce (Sausages),” featuring a young female Muslim protagonist who negotiates her identity through food – namely, pork, a staple of Italian cuisine, but an unlawful, haram food according to the Qur’an. Finally, Emily Gruber Keck rounds out the section, discussing the fecopoetics and socioeconomic dynamics present in the popular American movies American Pie (1999) and Bridesmaids (2011); Paul Finch loses his aura of elegance and classy tastes when, tricked with laxatives, he must seek relief in the girls’ restroom, and likewise, maid-of-honor Annie, of a decidedly lower socioeconomic class, organizes a lunch for the bridal party, but her “poor” choice in restaurants gives the women food poisoning. From the early-modern to the contemporary, from East to West, from dire hunger to the excessive and grotesque, our work ventures to the border-crossings of disordered eating, where the consumer speaks volumes with just one bite.

Works Cited Batty, Craig. “You Are What You Eat: Film Narratives and the Transformational Function of Food.” Food, Media and Contemporary Culture: The Edible Image. Ed. Peri Bradley. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Cohen, Marilyn. Ed. Novel Approaches to Anthropology: Contributions to Literary Anthropology. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. Anti-Œdipus: Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972). Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. “DSM-5: Feeding and Eating Disorders,” Opal: Food+Body Wisdom; accessed via Web 1 January 2020: www.opalfoodandbody.com/wp-content/ uploads/2016/01/summary-of-dsm-5.pdf. “Eating Disorder Statistics,” National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders; accessed via Web 3 January 2020: https://anad.org/ education-and-awareness/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/. Edwards, Justin D., and Rune Graulund. Grotesque. London: Routledge, 2013. “Everyone Poops,” Publishers Weekly Review, www.publishersweekly.com/ 978-0-916291-45-7.

Introduction  13 “Feeding and Eating Disorders,” American Psychological Association; accessed via Web 3 January 2020: https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/ Psychiatrists/Practice/DSM/APA_DSM-5-Eating-Disorders.pdf. Felski, Rita, and Susan Friedman. Eds. Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Fernandez, James. Persuasions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1986. Jackson, Peter. Anxious Appetites: Food and Consumer Culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. McElroy, Bernard. Fiction of the Modern Grotesque. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989. Palma, Pina. Savoring Power, Consuming the Times: The Metaphors of Food in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Shih, Shu-mei. “Comparison as Relation.” Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses. Eds. Rita Felski and Susan Friedman. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Tompkins, Kyla. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York: New York University Press, 2012.

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group

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Section One

Theoretical and Formal Contours

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group

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1

Suckling Pig or Potatoes? Class Politics and Food Symbolism in Eastern European Film during Communism Elena Popan

For ordinary people living in Communist countries from the Eastern Bloc, everyday life was a struggle for survival. This consisted in large part of searching for and waiting in lines to buy basic material goods, particularly food. Although the reality was bleak, the Soviet propaganda machine was constantly advertising the glorious accomplishments of the countries’ paths to development, creating a false image of prosperity and abundance.1 This treacherous situation was only partially known in the West. The CIA, for example, released periodical reports, suggesting that “although not particularly significant from a nutritional point of view” (1961, 9), the food shortages were creating problems and dissatisfaction among the population. The food rationing cards, severe shortages of milk and meat, the prohibition of food imports, and the lack of any diversity on the food market were a few examples that fueled this dissatisfaction. Rain or shine, people wasted hours every day waiting in line to buy bread or a gallon of milk. The black market was also strong, with people willing to pay more for just a taste of some good food. In time, people became masters of improvisation, substituting ingredients and creating dishes out of what they had on hand, like marzipan from beans and carrots, or pork cutlets made from mortadella (Kasprzyk- Chevriaux, culture.pl.com). I spent my childhood in a small city in Communist Romania, and my memories in regard to food shortages are still vivid. I remember, for example, the excitement surrounding a box of chocolates or a few oranges: an event so rare that it was seen as a celebration. I also remember that since my family lived in a small city in the mountains, which was not ravaged by the collectivization of agricultural land, we were considered among “the lucky ones,” because we had relatives in the rural area who could provide for us some extra vegetables and fruits, and, once in a while, even a portion of meat obtained through illicit animal farming activity. At the time, there were rumors that our Yugoslav neighbors or the Polish were doing better than us in this regard, but later, after the fall of Communism and when information started to freely circulate, we found out that all former Communist countries had their share of deprivation.2 Polish journalist Magdalena Kasprzyk-Chevriaux

18  Elena Popan offers, for example, this concise description, which resonates with any common individual who lived in the former Eastern Bloc: There were periods when only vinegar was available in the groceries. At moments like this, the situation could be rescued by a relative living in the countryside, or by buying things on the black market, or even by owning a small plot of land. Despite the partial collectivization of farming in Poland, some small family farms survived. At the most important parties, rural cold cuts were served. Their taste is still recalled with fondness by many. Rescue also came from employee or cooperative allotments, where fruit bushes and trees, as well as vegetables, were grown. Home processing also flourished. There were tons of gooseberry, cherry, currant, raspberry, strawberry, plum, and apple compotes made, as well as jams, marmalades, preserves, tomato purées, and pickled cucumbers, pumpkins or plums. (culture.pl.com) If physical food was scarce, the same can be said about the food for thought, since, for most of the Communist period, the complex system of censorship intended to block any information coming from the West as well as truncate or ideologically charge all artistic and intellectual products destined to reach the population.3 Despite these obstacles of expression, the cinema of Eastern Europe often mirrored what was happening in everyday life. Films, in concealing sentiments against the regime, often used allegorical yet sharply critical language as an instigation to resistance. Therefore, in relation to the topic of food and cinema, two questions arise and call for further investigation. First, how can film help us better understand the problem of food shortages in the former Communist states of the Soviet bloc? And second, how can film serve as a testimony of socialist reality, and as a reaction against it, through the use of food imagery? Anchored in Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus,” this study proposes an analysis of culinary taste in relation to political classes and ideology, as reflected in two films from the former Eastern Bloc: The Witness/A tanú (Hungary, 1969, directed by Péter Bacsó) and Daisies/Sedmikrásky (Czechoslovakia, 1966, directed by Věra Chytilová). The horrors of constant political surveillance and the humiliations of a life lived in fear; the hidden appetite of the ruling class for luxury and excess; the physical and psychological hunger of the common man; but, most of all, the absurdity of a system built on lies are all encompassed in the culinary experiences of the characters that populate these films. By taking a closer look at these aspects, this chapter will explain how the films employ food symbolism to address the sociopolitical reality of the Communist regimes in place and, at the same time, mercilessly expose their hypocrisy. Thus, the recurrent use of food imagery suggests a subversive attitude toward an authoritarian system, but

Suckling Pig or Potatoes?  19 it simultaneously constitutes an important and, so far, underexplored testimony of life under Communism.

Food Film, Ideology, and Class Politics The story of food-centered film is old and new at the same time – new, because only recently have researchers focused their attention on it, and old, because from the beginnings of cinema, directors realized the potential that food has in conveying certain messages. In 1984 Teresa de Lauretis wrote, “Cinema is directly implicated in the production and reproduction of meanings, values, and ideology in both sociality and subjectivity,” and therefore, “should be better understood as a signifying practice, a work of semiosis: a work that produces effect of meaning and perception, self-images and subject positions for all those involved, makers and viewers” (38). This leads us toward an obvious observation: The recurrent use of food in films is part of this complex process, and therefore it should receive attention similar to the study of language, setting, clothes, music, cinematography, etc., in a cinematic context. As Warren Belasco suggested, “For an individual or a society, probably nothing is more frightening or far-reaching than the prospect of running out of food” (vii). Food is a part of our everyday reality and is the basis of any economy, which makes eating “an ideological as well as physical act” (Counihan & Van Esterik 3, 6). It is for this reason that viewers respond constantly to images related to food; food has primacy in our lives, a primacy that is part of our symbol-making and symbol-decoding capacity (Bower 9). Food also has such an “ambiguous, unpredictable, contentious, and high-stakes status in consumer society” (Carson, Baron & Bernard 5). At the same time, it can be seen as a metaphor for what we love or hate about our society (Belasco 15), offering a powerful lens for ideological studies of film. The distinction between real needs, which are essential to human survival, and artificial or false needs, which are imposed upon the individual by society, has received attention from various sociological and cultural approaches to modern consumption.4 These approaches spurred the theory of class fashion, which argues that fashion comes as a result of the development of artificial needs and suggests that goods, including food, are primarily appropriated as status symbols within different social classes. It also presumes that this appropriation could not function if the restrictions limiting the appropriation of status symbols are too strict, since they could not possibly modify the social hierarchy (Gronow 33). The best-developed version of this theory is offered by Bourdieu in his 1984 seminal work, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Bourdieu claims that the dynamics of cultural change and fashion can be best explained by the constant flow of status symbols and tastes along the social hierarchy. Taste is inseparable from cultural

20  Elena Popan affinities and political opinions. In addition, some social categories (e.g. occupation) mask other categories (e.g. age, sex, ethnic origin, or education), becoming the primary indicator of class membership. The habitus, defined by Bourdieu as a “structured and structuring structure” (167), is mimetic and the result of objective social conditions that intersect with the propensities or tastes that are definitory for a lifestyle (Bogart 132). It is thus structured by an individual’s objective past position in the social structure, while also structured by the individual’s desired future life path. In the case of Eastern European countries during Communism, then, the habitus may be seen as shaping a society where the simplicity of taste is officially encouraged and celebrated among the workers, while a propensity for luxury is unofficially connected with the accomplishment of acquiring a ruling position within the Communist Party. In everyday life, people constantly choose between what they find aesthetically pleasing and displeasing. In his study, Bourdieu considers the multitude of social factors that play a part in a French person’s choice of clothing, furniture, leisure activities, dinner menus, etc. The different aesthetic choices people make are all distinctions, meaning that choices are made in opposition to those made by other classes. He finds that taste is not pure, but often influenced by the taste of the social class to which the individual aspires, social snobbery being extremely common in a bourgeois society (Suck 1112), but not exclusive to it, as this paper argues. Similar to Bourdieu, Belasco argues that food expresses notions of race, class, nation, and individuality, cuisine being a form by which a society demonstrates “its special identity” (44). In this context, the dishes, the use of spices and condiments, the preparation techniques, or the dining protocol that characterize a cuisine are meant to represent choices and to help individuals define themselves (44). But what happens when not all members of a society, but instead only a handful of people who hold the power, are entitled to such a selection? In the context of former Eastern European Communist countries, the members of the ruling elite are the only ones making choices indicative of their status, and these choices paradoxically reflect their interest in the tastes and choices of the West, suggesting that the Communist elite officially condemns luxury, but indulges in it privately. As for the rest of society, the official strict restrictions applied to the appropriation of taste efface any class distinction. Defining identity, then, becomes a complex process: People are defined by those who try to control them but also by their attitude toward control; by their choices that might reflect opposition or obedience; and by the desire to belong – or not – to a ruling elite, whose very existence contradicts the state’s official ideology. In the former Soviet Union and its satellite countries, the symbolism of food was employed in film for both propagandistic and subversive purposes. Many socialist realist films were made to convince people that all the actions taken by the Communist parties (e.g. enforced collective

Suckling Pig or Potatoes?  21 agricultural practices or the drastic rationalization of certain foods such as sugar, oil, and meat) were meant to bring prosperity, 5 and that life under their regimes was fully satisfactory and wisely balanced as opposed to capitalism’s dangerous and excessive consumerism.6 However, many film directors from the region refused to promote this propagandistic message and often chose to subvert it, as the following examples will demonstrate.

Péter Bacsó’s The Witness (1969) as a Matter of Class Taste Initially a script editor and screenwriter during the 1950s, Péter Bacsó started to direct films a decade later and made his most famous work, A tanú (The Witness), in 1969. The film immediately caught censors’ attention due to its satirical references to Stalinist Communist authorities and was thus banned before its first screening. The film could not be shown in Hungary until 1979, when it was eventually released as a result of its positive reception outside the country (Maslin, Nytimes.com). The film tells the story of József Pelikán, a humble Hungarian dike-keeper who repeatedly proves himself unfit for the Communist society in which he lives, despite his efforts to assimilate. At the beginning of the film, Pelikán is denounced and arrested for killing the family’s pig, named Desiree: a nod to what a cherished food pork was at a time when meat was almost absent from grocery stores. In Communist Hungary, among other countries, someone’s own farm animals were considered common property, and thus, it was forbidden to sacrifice them for consumption. However, this interdiction was largely ignored and people secretly slaughtered the animals. To his great surprise, Pelikán is mysteriously released from prison shortly thereafter, only to be contacted by an officer of the secret police (Virág) and offered a managerial position for a public pool where an important general comes to swim. Pelikán does not realize the general expects to swim alone due to his privileged position within the Communist Party, so he admits the public and loses his job as a result. Later, with the help of the same secret police officer, he becomes the keeper of an amusement park and decides to turn the place into a monument dedicated to the Communist Party, including the favored slogans of Marxist-Leninism (e.g. “A specter is haunting Europe!” or “You have nothing to lose but your chains!”). However, the effect is not the one Pelikán anticipated, but rather comic and unfortunate since he uses scary skeletons in order to illustrate the slogans. He is fired again, but Virág procures another job for him at a research institute where he would be in charge of producing oranges, Hungary’s own exotic fruits. Despite all his efforts, Pelikán will fail again, presenting at the end a sour lemon instead of a sweet, delicious orange. Communism tends to underscore the glory of the nation, not petty failures, so Pelikán’s

22  Elena Popan actions are quite anomalous. At this point, someone might ask why the secret police officer is so actively involved in Pelikán’s life and why he is constantly trying to help him. His help refers to a common surveillance practice under Communism in the Eastern Bloc, that of blackmailing or bribing people in order to manipulate them as pleased. In this case, all was arranged to force Pelikán to testify in a mock trial against an old friend who fell out of favor with the Communist regime. Before the trial, Pelikán is presented with a fabricated testimony he must memorize, but when the moment arrives and he has to testify in front of Comrade Virág and top Communist leaders, he decides to maintain his integrity and tell the truth. In essence, the entire film depicts Virág’s attempts to turn the vulnerable dike-keeper into “a better subordinate,” eventually a secret police’s pawn, and an important role in his plan is taken by food bribery. Early on in The Witness, it becomes very clear that a fashionable taste and a certain freedom of choice are reserved only for the members of the ruling class. Pelikán is often tempted by the delicacies of this kind of life, but his naïve and sincere nature prevents him from paying the price and becoming a pawn in the ruling machinery. After Pelikán decides to “coat those ratio cards in breadcrumbs” (hinting at the insufficient, rationalized food) and to kill the pig, the police arrive in response to a neighbor’s denouncement. “Do you have a pig?” asks the patrol, and one of Pelikán’s kids answers, “We don’t even have swill to feed it,” which is a lie, but also a subtle rebuke. Then it turns out that the pork, found in Pelikán’s cellar, is “material proof,” which “has to be seized as criminal evidence.” However, later, when Pelikán is released from prison and invited to Virág’s house, an entire piglet carrying a lemon in his mouth is brought in front of him, accompanied by fine drinks and delicious sides. “Is this all mine?” he asks, and Virág responds, “Go ahead, calmly.” Pelikán is scared and declares himself ready to confess to the killing of the pig that got him in trouble, but Virág calms him by saying that all of this can be forgotten in return for some favors when the right time arrives. Meanwhile, Pelikán is able to enjoy the advantages of “a good life,” symbolized by the piglet in this scene. The way foods are brought to the table by Virág’s servant, and then advertised by Virág, is representative of an elitist class with feigned exquisite taste, the very affinities that the Communist regime is forcefully condemning. The servant is wearing a coarse Soviet uniform under a white ruffled apron, and tries to display elegant manners, which include the lighting of the candles in a candelabrum, a moment that makes Virág nostalgically recall the Christmases of his childhood.7 When he offers Pelikán a drink, Virág leads him toward a decrepit kitchen cupboard that plays the role of a bar cabinet, while elegantly gesticulating and using inviting words. All of these contrasts produce a comic effect while commenting on a class complex in

Suckling Pig or Potatoes?  23 relation to taste and manners, one that the Communist elite feigns to want to overcome, based on the ideology of universal equity. Virág suggest that the new man – the socialist man – is vital for the development of the country. Through food bribery, Virág tries to corrupt Pelikán and transform him into this new socialist man, one who is hungry and obedient, devoid of any right to choose and express his will: nothing more than a machine used for maintaining the system in its place. Péter Bacsó’s use of food imagery for critical purposes continues. When Virág plans to have supper at Pelikán’s, the family gets panicked: “Dad, we don’t have any food at home,” says one of the children, and Pelikán adds, “I’d gladly invite you to supper, but we have nothing but potatoes.” Virág comes anyway, is served plain, boiled potatoes, and reflects: “How ingenious our people are,” which is both ironic and insulting as he acknowledges people’s efforts to creatively cook and consume the same foods on a regular basis.8 Virág is aware that common people have all become experts in finding solutions for the food shortages, and his wonder might be seen as sincere. However, since it is coming from the privileged position of someone who does not have to deal with the shortages, it might as well be considered insulting. In addition, there is nothing creative in the way that Pelikán serves him the potatoes; the remark becomes thus ironic and creates a tragicomic effect. Finally, the sole lemon that Pelikán manages to present to the authorities, instead of an orange harvest, eloquently speaks to another recurrent phenomenon in Communist societies: the pervasiveness of lies for propagandistic purposes. In the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, oranges were considered luxury fruits, since they were not produced locally and very few food imports were available. The idea of a Hungarian orange grove is first and foremost a propagandistic one, conveying that Communists do not need any foreign goods and the regime is perfectly capable of responding to its citizens’ needs. Furthermore, whatever the West does, the Communist regime can do better. But what happens when the result is a far cry from national pride? The propagandistic tricks come into play. Initially, the entire grove produces one small orange. It is not much, but it is an encouraging and honorable start, considers Virág, who takes the initiative of celebrating the event in the presence of the general, the symbol of supreme authority throughout the film. However, an unexpected problem menaces the environment and casts a shadow on the celebration: One of Pelikán’s children finds the orange so irresistibly appetizing and eats it. Pelikán panics, but Virág remains unperturbed, since he is well-trained in manipulating his appearances and pleasing his superior. He takes out a lemon from his coat and gives it to Pelikán, causing the following dialogue to begin: PELIKAN: But it’s a lemon! VIRAG: No, it’s an orange.

It’s not open for debate.

24  Elena Popan Reminiscent of the Soviet slogan “2 + 2 = 5,” made famous by George Orwell in his novel 1984 (1949),9 the dialogue confronts self-evident truth and self-evident falsehood in a manner which is representative of the relations of power in Communist societies; if the common man wants to survive in the system, he has no other choice but to play the games of the authorities, no matter how absurd. The charade goes on, and when the general is invited to taste the Hungarian orange, he is obviously disgusted and asks for an explanation. The response is a perfect example of false patriotism, one that is rather imposed than genuinely manifested: “It’s the new Hungarian orange,” says Pelikán. “It’s a tad more yellow, a bit sour… but it’s ours.” A system based on false pretenses and demagogic statements is thus exposed, as well as everyone’s contributions, small or large, in the perpetuation of it. Having been tempted by, quite literally, the fruits of backbreaking Communist labor, Pelikán feeds into the hypocrisies of the Soviet elite.

Vera Chytilová – Daisies: A Problem of Capitalist Waste or Communist Privilege? Jean-Luc Godard once said, “The problem is not to make political films but to make films politically” (qtd. in McCabe 19), meaning that films can be political in one of two ways. They can reflect politics and carry a subversive or even revolutionary message, but they are made conventionally, being the result of mainstream culture. However, as Godard suggested, films can also be made politically, meaning they can be political at the levels of form and style. If The Witness is more representative of this first type of engagement, Vera Chytilová’s Daisies makes a very bold statement in terms of form and style; the political connotations are impossible to ignore but difficult to decipher. Daisies has been subject to various interpretations. It is at once a film about laughter in relation to manners, a feminist parable that deals with the issue of the body in Communism, and a film in which food imagery is used to reinforce the characters’ attitudes toward the world that they occupy. The film is considered a masterpiece of the Czech New Wave, the development of which was clearly linked to the unprecedented liberalization of the Prague Spring (Cook 625), which sought to introduce “socialism with a human face” in Communist Czechoslovakia. The formal complexity of Chytilová’s film was a reason in itself for a multitude of interpretations, especially when read in relation to the subversive messages directed toward the Communist regime. But Chytilová had stated that Daisies was a film that perfectly complied with the official state ideology, complicating matters even more. As Anca Parvulescu notes: Much has been said about the difficulties of reading a film that has been condemned by Czechoslovak apparatchiks as antirevolutionary,

Suckling Pig or Potatoes?  25 defended by Chytilová as profoundly socialist in its – supposed10 – condemnation of its two protagonists, and read by Western critics as a feminist allegory. (153) Along what axes, then, should the film be analyzed? The opposed political readings might represent an illusory issue, and analyzing the film’s abundant food imagery in connection with class politics could help to solve the ideological dilemma. Daisies is a visually compelling and dynamic film that makes use of colorful surrealist aesthetics and is composed of a series of loosely connected episodes. Mostly structured around the act of eating, these episodes take place in different settings (Garden of Eden, several restaurants, the countryside, the girls’ apartment, a banquet room), and they seem disconnected at first sight, but, upon closer analysis, follow a hidden logic. Daisies is the story of two girls, a blonde and a brunette, identified in the script as Marie 1 and Marie 2. The numerics of the Maries, in combination with their portrayal by non-actors, removes any quality of extraordinariness and likens them to the spectating masses, blurring the barrier between viewers and screen. However, the plot negates the possibility of conformity. The plot is very simple: These girls decide to go “bad” and act “spoiled” because “everything’s bad in this world.” In other words, they refuse to maintain a disciplined pace in the highly regulated Communist society and decide to be different, a fact that will bring them to a tragic end. The two Maries demonstrate their non- conformity primarily through rebellious interactions with food. The different episodes show them either in the intimacy of their apartment, or in public places, specifically escorted by older men or going by themselves to expensive restaurants accessible only to political elites, where they create uncomfortable situations, but have a lot of fun, in a sort of improvised play where table manners are constantly under attack. Since girls are at the center of the film, these eating episodes might be interpreted through the additional dimension of a feminist perspective,11 offering clues across the ideological dilemma. In one of the initial scenes of the film, the girls adopt marionette-like movements indicative of their status, highlighting their severely limited liberties in Communist society. Rebelling against these restrictions, they decide to go “bad.” Afterward, the viewer witnesses a scene that takes place in a garden, referencing the Garden of Eden. Here the girls perform a “bunny dance” around a fruited apple tree. The dance may be seen as reminiscent of childhood (or in reference to the stereotypical perception of women as being childish, cute, and inoffensive), but also introduces the theme of innocence versus temptation and sin. The blonde Marie picks a red apple, then the scene freezes while the brunette Marie asks, “What have we got there?” The next scene shows them back in their apartment, with the brunette Marie extracting a peach pit from the

26  Elena Popan other’s mouth. Initially, the act seems to have obvious Biblical connotations: If the forbidden fruit (the apple) was consumed, the disobedience must be punished. But the ambiguity of the fruit, peach or apple, raises serious questions; the extent of the sin and its consequent punishment is unclear. Given the likeness of a peach to female genitalia, is the temptation represented here by the peach of a different, more sensual kind? Is it to suggest the rejection of knowledge and the implied sharp distinction between good and evil, as symbolized by the red (notably, the color traditionally associated with Communism) apples? Or, reminiscent of the softness of a peach, is it to suggest that the girls’ revolt is not against the way the world was made, but rather against a rigid worldly power, and therefore their sin of consumption should be forgiven? The apples are a recurrent motif throughout the film; characters heartily consume them, but red, appetizing apples only appear in the garden scene – the rest of the apples are green and identical, reinforcing the idea of a diminished sin in a repetitive and alienating environment. Also, the apples are not the only objects with religious connotations, since the young women are analogous to the two Maries of Christianity, the saint and the prostitute (blonde Mary/Virgin Mary; brunette Marie/Maria Magdalene) (Parvulescu 147). Considering how atheism is so highly valued in Communism, this association already turns the two Maries into outlaws. However, in what can be seen as a twisted comment on the Czech political situation at the time, the contrast between virtue and sin (virginity and prostitution) blurs as the two women tend to often exchange those roles. Indeed, in a Communist society where people are often coerced into committing moral compromises, it is difficult to draw a line between cowards, villains, and heroes. In one restaurant scene, an older man – presumably in a position of power, since he is able to dine at a luxury restaurant – attempts to seduce the brunette Marie with an exquisite meal. In a similar way to that observed in The Witness, food is offered as bribery in exchange for a certain favor, in this case one of a sexual nature. Soon the blonde Marie “accidentally” joins them, making a scene by ordering and ungracefully devouring a long series of dishes, in no particular order. She asks about escargot and rabbit, showing disappointment that these foods are not on the menu, then refuses venison, ordering instead a chicken that she hopes “is big enough.” Before the chicken arrives, she drinks wine and indulges in cake heavily topped with whipped cream, cookies, soup, and croissants. “I love eating,” she says, while slurping and smacking her lips, heavily contrasting the brunette who, ostensibly, obeys the etiquette, but subtly participates in the blonde’s spectacle, aimed at mocking the man. When the chicken arrives, she eats it inelegantly, without using the cutlery and devouring every bit, interrupting herself only to smoke a cigarette and bother the waiter who tries to clean the table. “One moment, I am still eating,” she says, pretending that she is still busy with eating

Suckling Pig or Potatoes?  27 the leftovers. The scene can be interpreted as a comment on irreverent manners in an over-mannered society. Here, the restaurant manners are again reminiscent of the bourgeois class repudiated by the Communists, but as is the case with The Witness, the manners also represent the privileges of the Communist elite and their appetite for luxury. In addition, the girls’ behavior hints at the refusal of the moral compromise that somebody has to accept in order to access the good life, in this case accepting sexual advances in exchange for food. The girls’ decision to mock these fraudulent manners is the pivotal point of another scene, set in another luxurious restaurant, where the girls manage to slip in and create a chaotic scene by stealing other people’s drinks and picking food off their plates. In another sequence, we see the two girls deciding to do “something great”: setting crepe paper on fire in their apartment and roasting sausages, while the bed is covered with green fruits, mostly apples and pears, suggesting a festive table reserved for common people. The girls take pleasure in slicing and eating pickled cucumbers, eggs, and sausages while talking with one of their admirers on the phone. It is another act of rebellion, but one that involves revenge and clearly communicates their frustration as women. The intention of castration suggested by the consumption of the phallic foods (notably cucumbers and sausages in the apartment scene, but also raw corn and carrots in the countryside scene) comes as an acknowledgment of and resistance against their lack of power both as women and as common members of the Communist society. Despite the festive mood, the foods that the girls consume here – green apples, pickles, pretzels, etc. – are constant fixtures in their apartment. When they are done eating, they start manipulating images of food in magazines; in order to get a taste of upper-class life, one Marie eats a piece of paper advertising steak. Throughout the film, the girls are constantly seen snacking (bread, fruits, pickles, etc.), as to suggest their great appetite, but what they really desire and what stimulates their imagination are the delicious, impressive-looking dishes that they cannot obtain unless they date older, powerful men. As also seen in The Witness, taste is again a matter of class and moral compromise in the Communist world, and although the girls do want these luxuries, they refuse to compromise and become mannered, obedient, or serious. They refuse to be “happy” in the Communist elite’s perverted sense, and choose to endlessly fight discontentment through an irreverent attitude. The critical stance becomes even more obvious in the scene of the banquet that takes place in an official building. The two girls reach the banquet after ignoring all the trespassing warnings and by taking a dumbwaiter. Once there, they are entranced by the appetizing foods such as caviar, stuffed tomatoes, varied salads topped with mayonnaise and olives, mushrooms, barbecued piglets, sumptuous cakes with exquisite sculpted toppers, wines and liquors, etc., which they first taste

28  Elena Popan with reservation. Gradually, they change their disposition and decide to have “a real feast,” engaging in a culinary orgy. They eat from every plate, drink from every cup. The scene begins in black and white, but with the sound of shattered glass – the first of the evening – the film suddenly turns to color, and the fun goes wild. They have a cake fight, then they step on the plates and use the table as a runway for a fashion show, enhanced by the room’s curtains. The orgy ends with officials, for whom this banquet was organized, discovering them swinging on the chandelier. Punishment for their actions then ensues.  In the first version of the film’s ending, the Maries are drowning in water, offered the chance to be saved but abandoned when they declare, “We are calling for help, because we are spoiled.” “Spoiled” was a label often attached to “bourgeois elements” that the Communist authorities were trying hard to reeducate and discipline. In an interesting twist, it also describes the food that has gone bad and cannot be eaten anymore. Banquets like the one that the two Maries ruined are obviously the privilege of an elite. And as Jonathan L. Owen noticed, in Daisies, “the gross materialism and the cultivation of the elite exclusively through taste (observed in the film’s expensive restaurants) are no mere overhang from a bourgeois past but constitute an institutionalized standard of this new class” (111). Daisies was banned by Czechoslovak authorities specifically because of its imagery of food waste (e.g. the cake fight, the devouring of the foods, their lavish aspect, and their extreme abundance), but one might think that the underlying problem was that such a banquet could only be intended for Party officials (Parvulescu 150). An additional problem was the menacing potential of the two girls, symbolizing the power of those who considered the Party to be corrupt and treacherous. An alternate ending of the film, however, exhibits the girls on their way to redemption, trying to fix the feast that they destroyed. But it is impossible to recuperate the feast; it remains ruined once and for all, and also seals the fate of the two young women who get crushed by the chandelier, a symbol of the bourgeoisie par excellence, appropriated here by the Communist elite. When Chytilová stated in her defense in front of the censors’ committee, which banned the film, that she made a profoundly socialist film that avoids contravening the official ideology, she was most likely sincere. It was not socialism that was criticized in Daisies, but the ruling elite of a regime who betrayed its people and its principles. The film can therefore be seen as subversive and at the same time socialist in its intention. In a 1992 study, Raymond Taras discusses the varied role that critical Marxism had in Eastern Europe in launching dissident movements that opposed the realist socialist model of Soviet inspiration (4). The same idea was discussed and accepted in various degrees in film scholarship by authors like Robin Bates (37) or Peter Hames (in Kristensen & Mazierska eds. 167). In addition, it must be

Suckling Pig or Potatoes?  29 acknowledged that Daisies was made on the eve of the Prague Spring. In 1966, there were already significant signs of revolt against the corrupt and inefficient Communist regime; therefore, a film ironically dedicated to “those who get upset only over a stomped-upon bed of lettuce,” as the end of Daisies states, could only intensify the simmering discontentment of the people.

Conclusion Both The Witness and Daisies feature everyday protagonists caught in the network of a totalitarian system that abuses its people by trying to control their actions and by manipulating them in order to perpetuate the reality in place. Also, in both films, the truth of life under Communism is depicted through the characters’ interactions with food. These interactions are used to expose the ruling elites of the Communist regimes whose very existence contradicts the state’s official ideology, since these elites practice the appropriation of bourgeois/capitalist status symbols. By their food choices that might reflect opposition or obedience, the characters communicate their desire to belong – or not – to this ruling elite, creating a powerful connection (and potentially dangerous one from the Communist authorities’ point of view) with the audiences. The films discussed in this chapter are not, by any means, isolated cases that make use of food imagery for subversive purposes. A few other prominent examples include A Report on the Party and the Guests/O slavnosti a hostech (Czechoslovakia, 1966, Jan Nemec), which features another famous scene of a lavish banquet for party officials; Teddy Bear/ Miś (Poland, 1980, Stanisław Bareja), which includes a scene set in a state-owned restaurant, where the cutlery is chained to the tables and cannot be unchained for eating; or Party for Ten People Plus Three/ Przyjecie na dziesiec osób plus trzy (Poland, 1973, Jerzy Gruza), which depicts a corrupt system where workers are not getting their salaries, but lavish dinners are organized for the managers. As Romanian director Nae Caranfil emphasized in a discussion involving directors, scriptwriters, and film critics from the former Eastern Bloc, during Communism, “Subversion functioned as a safety valve for a population that needed to believe it could still hold on to some measure of freedom” (in Filimon 30). Specifically, because it was scarce, food played a central role in the social life of individuals from Eastern Europe. The use of food imagery enabled directors, who chose to confront censorship, to transmit a subversive message that was relatable, exposing the ruling elite’s taste for luxury: a propensity that was incompatible with Communist ideology. By doing so, they not only restored some of the people’s lost dignity and kept their hopes for a better future alive, but also created a powerful document of life under Communism. 

30  Elena Popan

Notes

Suckling Pig or Potatoes?  31

Works Cited Bates, Robin. “The Ideological Foundations of the Czech New Wave.” Journal of the University Film Association 29.3 (1977): 37–42. Belasco, Warren J. Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry. Cornell UP, 2014. Bogart, Leo. Reviewed Work: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.  by Pierre Bourdieu. The Public Opinion Quarterly 51.1 (1987): 131–134. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2749065. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge, 2013. Bower, Anne, ed. Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film. Psychology Press, 2004. Carson, Diane, Cynthia Baron, and Mark Bernard. Appetites and Anxieties: Food, Film, and the Politics of Representation. Wayne State UP, 2013. Central Intelligence Agency (US). Food Shortages in The Communist Bloc (S-671). 1961. www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000307839.pdf Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. WW Norton & Company, 2016. Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterik, eds. Food and Culture: A Reader. Routledge, 2012. Daisies. Directed by Vera Chytilová, performances by Ivana Karbanová, Jitka Cerhová. Czechoslovakia, Filmové studio Barrandov, 1966. De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Vol. 316. Indiana UP, 1984. Gronow, Jukka. The Sociology of Taste. Routledge, 2002. Kasprzyk-Chevriaux, Magdalena. 10 Surprising Eating Habits from the Communist-Regime Era. 2014. www.culture.pl/en Kristensen, Lars and Ewa Mazierska, eds. Marx at the Movies: Revisiting History, Theory and Practice. Springer, 2014. Maslin, Janet. “Film: ‘Witness’ Hungarian Satire,” The New York Times, Sept. 26, 1981. www.nytimes.com. McCabe, Colin. Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics. Macmillan Press, 1980. Orwell, George. “Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1949.” The Complete Novels 7, 1990. Owen, Jonathan L. Avant-garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties. Berghahn Books, 2011. Parvulescu, Anca. “‘So We Will Go Bad’: Cheekiness, Laughter, Film.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 21.2 (62) (2006): 144–167. Suck, Titus. “Bourgeois Class Position and the Esthetic Representation of Class Interest: The Social Determination of Taste.” MLN 102.5 (1987): 1090–1121. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2905313. Taras, Raymond C. The Road to Disillusion: From Critical Marxism to Post-communism in Eastern Europe: From Critical Marxism to Postcommunism in Eastern Europe. Routledge, 2015. The Witness / A tanú. Directed by Péter Bacsó, performances by Ferenc Kállai, Lajos Öze, Béla Both. Hungary, MAFILM 1. Játékfilmstúdió, 1969.

2

Haptic for Gourmets Cinema, Gastronomy, and Strategic Exoticism in Eat Drink Man Woman and Tortilla Soup Aida Roldán-García

In 2001, Hollywood released Tortilla Soup, a remake of the enormously popular Taiwanese gastronomic film Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). Directed by Spanish filmmaker María Ripoll, this adaptation takes the plot of Ang Lee’s ethnic1/intercultural2 movie and relocates it within a new cultural, spatial, and temporal context. In this new version, the Taipei-based family of the 1990s is now a Latino family living in Los Angeles during the first years of the twenty-first century. In terms of reception, Tortilla Soup was well received among mainstream audiences, but critics’ reviews were not as favorable. The lightness of its plot, the loss of cinematic quality with regard to the original movie, and its lack of political undertones were the most frequent arguments against this remake. Despite those criticisms, in terms of content, both the original and the remake offer interesting elements worth analyzing from an ethnographic perspective; for example, both movies use the gap between older and younger generations to explore how globalization is changing the structure of social constructs, such as the family, as well as challenging discourses on gender, ethnicity, and nationality. The following chapter does not rely so much on content analysis, but on examining how formal aspects affect content in these movies: how the use of visual haptics intervenes, promoting less passive (filmic) encounters between spectators and text; how haptics suggest to Western audiences a less Eurocentric way of approaching the cultural and racial Other3 by upholding intercultural encounters based on identification and recognition mechanisms; and how haptics challenge problematic discourses and stereotypes about Asians and Latinos – in this case, those related to exoticism. This chapter has been divided in four sections. The first is an overall analysis of the two movie plots and the role that food plays in both stories. The second examines how, by combining haptic visuality with gastronomy, Eat Drink Man Woman and Tortilla Soup endorse bodily senses (touch, taste, and smell) as the basis for new epistemological paradigms, as alternative ways of accessing cultural knowledge. The third

Haptic for Gourmets  33 section addresses how haptic food imagery is used to strategically contain and displace exoticism from bodies and identities of the films’ ethnic characters. The fourth part is devoted to conclusions.

Families and Food Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) tells the story of Chu, a famous chef and a widower who lives in Taipei with his three daughters. The main plot revolves around the inter-generational conflict between him, who represents the old and the traditional, and his daughters, who represent more progressive ideas.4 For the patriarch, family tensions are caused by his lack of capacity to understand his daughters, who have challenged Chinese traditional roles, values, and customs by incorporating new cultural trends and discourses to their identities: “I don’t understand any of them, and I don’t want to know. Let them grow up and leave” (Chu). The elder, Chu Jia-Jen, has rejected Chinese traditional ways of spirituality, such as traditional folk religion and Chinese Buddhism, in order to become a Christian. Her fervor even makes her force her husband to convert to Christianity. The youngest, Chu Jia-Ning, represents cultural globalization and the rejection of the old: She works at a US franchise; consumes Western mainstream culture (notice the Batman T-shirt); and uses technology to mock Chu, a character who embodies tradition (she draws Shan Shan, a caricature, in order to make fun of him). She gets pregnant before marriage and moves out with her boyfriend. It is with Chu Jia-Chien, though, the middle child, with whom Chu has the most complicated relationship. Chien represents the archetype of the modern cosmopolitan woman: feminine, successful, devoted to her job, financially independent, and well-traveled. She also embodies a Western capitalist lifestyle and values: individualism, work before family and personal life, busy pace of life, etc. The second source of family conflict is Chu’s loss of private and masculine identity. Chinese/Taiwanese culture stands on a patriarchal model of society in which the figure of the father is key to preserving and perpetuating the hegemonic order within the domestic realm. Within this discursive framework, success as a father means to conform to the values and duties embodied in the collective ideal of this archetype: to protect and sustain the family, to preserve tradition, and to enforce patriarchal law. His authority over the rest of the family members is justified by the importance of his social mission. As head of the family, Chu’s identity in the private sphere has been built around his role as patriarch and father. When his daughters start acting as adult independent women, he starts feeling depressed and experiencing contradictory emotions toward them. However, the different attitudes Chu adopts toward the three women and their life announcements is worth noting. Though surprised, he seems to be on good terms with Jen and Ning because, even with

34  Aida Roldán-García their unexpected turns – the first secretly marries and the last Ning gets pregnant – they end up conforming to traditional conventions: that is, leaving home to start their own families. As a father, Chu is sad for their leaving, but happy as this is socially expected. On the contrary, Chu and Chien bear anger toward each other. This is because she not only breaks with Chinese traditional discourses on family, gender, and lifestyle but also dares to question Chu’s criteria and authority. Apparently, Chien wanted to follow her dad’s steps as a chef, but he did not allow this, despite her talent. All the harshness and bitterness between the two seem to come from Chu’s unconscious fears of his daughter. On the one hand, he fears she might be a threat to his public identity by becoming a better chef than himself. That is why he banishes her from the kitchen, her playground for many years. On the other hand, Chien threatens her dad’s identity as patriarch and head of the household by questioning his arguments and actions. For instance, she disapproves of his attitude toward her mother and reproaches him for not supporting her to be a chef. Family tensions only improve at the end of the movie when Chu, against all odds, marries Jing Rong, a young divorced woman with a kid (Shan-Shan) who is also a family friend. It is at this moment when Chu diverts his attention from his daughters to focus on and fulfill his new identity as father (caretaker) and head of this new household (patriarchal authority). Though Lee’s movie is rather intimate and focused on family affairs, at a general level domesticity and the generation gap are also used to explore more general matters and, more concretely, how certain historical conditions affect Taiwanese society. In this case, Chu’s family is an allegory demonstrative of how Taiwanese urban society is going through a process of cultural transition due to globalization and the strong presence and influence of Western cultures. In this respect, tensions between Chu and his daughters illustrate the threat of acculturation and the loss of Taiwanese traditional idiosyncrasy and collective identity. One of the clearest examples of these new and foreign cultural trends and influences takes place when Chien goes with her co-worker, Li Kai, to a toy store to find a present for his son. He is seeking something Chinese, but he complains because most of the things at the store are Western toys: Barbie, Transformers, Bingo, Harvey the Dinosaur, Disney characters, etc. Another example is that Jia-Ning, Chu’s youngest daughter, works at a Wendy’s fast food restaurant. These influences of the West permeating Chinese culture reflect on a more macrocosmic level the waning of control and the tensions that Chu faces with his own daughters. Despite the cultural, spatial, and temporal adaptation made to the original screenplay, the remake of Eat Drink Man Woman remains quite faithful to Lee’s movie. We even find several sequences, scenes, and dialogues that are identical to the original screenplay. In Tortilla Soup, the main narrative also revolves around a famous chef and a widower

Haptic for Gourmets  35 (Martín), his three daughters (Leticia, the eldest; Carmen, the middle; and Maribel, the youngest), and the conflicts between them. Familial tensions arise as well because of a generational and cultural gap between characters. In this case, though, cultural differences are not so much related to globalization, but to the intercultural context in which the Naranjo family lives. Specifically, tensions are caused by the contrast between Latino traditional legacy, epitomized in the movie by MexicanAmerican culture and Spanish and Anglo-American culture, represented by American values, lifestyle, and the English language. This cultural dichotomy is embodied in the family by Martín and Leticia, who represent traditional Latino discourses and conventions, and by Carmen and Maribel, who combine their Latino identity with an idiosyncrasy and lifestyle rather typical of Anglo-American society. Differing gender and patriarchal norms disrupt the harmony of the Naranjo family. Whereas Carmen and Maribel represent the archetype of Western cosmopolitan women – individualists, independent, successful, entrepreneurs, etc. – Martín and Leticia portray patriarchal discourses on gender and traditional models of femininity and masculinity. It is noteworthy how Martín tolerates, and even accepts, most of his daughters’ behaviors and decisions except for those that challenge the patriarchal authority he represents. For example, he is angry at Carmen not because she moves out, but because she decided to purchase an apartment without his consent. Another instance is when Maribel decides to take a year off before starting college; he flies into a rage and tells her that she will do as he says for as long as she lives under his roof. Like Chu, Martín tries to impose his authority on his daughters by appealing to their own good. When they start leaving the family home and he is not able to control them anymore, he turns to his lover, Yolanda, and his daughter, April, to fulfill his role as a father and patriarch. On the other side, Leticia, who is also a fervent Catholic, constructs her identity based on Latino traditional models of femininity, a problematic endeavor as it ultimately limits her individual freedoms: She confines herself to the private sphere, assumes the role of caretaker for her father, behaves and acts passively before her father, and asks for his blessing before making any personal decisions. The second source of conflict is related to ethnicity. As a representative and protector of Latino legacy, Martín spends the whole film defending traditional food and scolding his daughters for using Spanglish. The patriarch tries to impose his monolithic view of ethnicity upon his daughters. By forcing them to choose between Spanish and English, and between traditional and innovative cuisine, he is making them choose one cultural framework over the other. However, they never commit to one single background. On the contrary, they show their father how they are hybrid individuals in terms of ethnicity, who move between the old and the new, their cultural legacy, and more progressive ideals.

36  Aida Roldán-García The dispute ends only when he accepts them as they are. Worth mentioning is how Martín’s taste, the loss of which represents his bad relationship with his daughters, only returns when he stops trying to impose both his authority and his view of cultural identity on his daughters. If Eat Drink Man Woman employs family tensions as a means of reflecting on the threat of globalization to Chinese cultural heritage, Naranjo’s conflicts are used to challenge monolithic notions of ethnicity, explore the porosity of cultural and national identities in transcultural contexts, and address questions of what it means to be both Latino and American. Regarding the differences between the remake and its original, we observe a change in genre: from a melodramatic intimate film with a touch of comedy (Eat Drink Man Woman) to a lively and romantic comedy (Tortilla Soup). There are also small changes in parts of the story lines. For instance, in the remake, the youngest daughter does not get pregnant, and she elopes with her boyfriend because she argues with her father about his future. Also, the middle daughter never moves abroad; she just travels, and at the end of the movie she opens a Latino restaurant. The rest of the script variations are not so relevant to the main story and are centered on appealing and adjusting the story to the new target audience – that is, adapting the story to Latino and Anglo-American viewers by incorporating elements, references, and codes from both their cultural frameworks. Gastronomy plays a central role in these two narratives, as seen through the abundance of shots, scenes, and sequences revolving around food. As Chiffolo and Hesse state, cookery has become a frequently used element in cinema to convey cultural and national difference. It is certainly the case of these two films, which utilize gastronomy as an identity marker of both Chinese and Latino cultures. According to Tarja Laine, though, food has more symbolic meaning in the films.5 First, it portrays traditional family values. To the fathers, meals with their daughters are extremely important because it is one of the few traditions that regularly keeps them in touch. In both of these films, it is at the table that families meet, speak, and argue, so food also becomes a vehicle for inter-generational dialogue. Second, food becomes a way of expressing emotions, defining family relationships, and attaching meaning to interpersonal relationships. Both patriarchs, Chu and Martín, for example, lose their sense of taste when they are frustrated with their daughters. However, both chefs keep cooking to express their love and affection for them, for their lovers, and for their lover’s children – Liang Jin-Rong and Shan-Shan in the case of Chu, and Yolanda and April in the case of Martín. It is through the act of cooking and eating that Liang Jin-Rong, Shan-Shan, Yolanda, and April become new family members: Chu and Martín seduce their partners by cooking for their offspring; new partners are introduced and officially accepted at the table, etc. Third, gastronomy represents the dichotomy of tradition and modernity. In terms

Haptic for Gourmets  37 of ingredients, preparation, and consumption, the dishes cooked by the patriarchs symbolize tradition, whereas food cooked by Jia-Ning at Wendy’s, as well as Carmen’s cooking style, epitomizes modernity and other phenomena, such as acculturation (Redfield et al. 149).6 The long lines at Wendy’s illustrate how Taiwanese society is acquiring new cultural tastes and habits as a result of Americanization and globalization.7 Carmen’s dishes are a combination of her Latino heritage and new dominant food culture trends, which is why she names her restaurant “Nuevo Latino.” As her food, she embodies a new Latino hybrid identity which combines her father’s cultural background with global and international influences: RAYMOND: Is that one of your dad’s specialties? CARMEN: It’s my version. It’s tamarind-glazed lamb

on cumin cabbage with a tangerine salsa. The lamb is French-South American, the cabbage is pure Mexican and the salsa’s Caribbean. […] Dad calls my dishes ‘mutts.’

Fourth, contrary to what has been considered traditionally a feminine activity, cooking is codified in these movies as a symbol of male power. The fact that patriarchs are the only ones entitled to cook in the house and succeed as chefs makes gastronomy a masculine privilege and a symbol of patriarchal family law. Both fathers exile their daughters from their cooking domains – the kitchen’s restaurant and the one at home – once they start showing talent and skills in cooking. Their official argument is that they want what is best for their offspring: CHIEN: A woman can’t be a real chef? WEN: […] Yes, you could have become

one of the greats. But your father was right to encourage you in your studies. […] You owe it all to your father for throwing you out of our smelly old kitchen and keeping you on the right path. CHIEN: No one asked me what I wanted. (Eat Drink Man Woman) *** Seems like yesterday, she was a little girl following me all over the kitchen. CARMEN (REFERRING TO MARTÍN): Yeah, until he kicked me out. MARTÍN: I just wanted you to do something significant with your life. (Tortilla Soup) BEN:

However, the real reason has to do with masculine pride and the fact that they wish to avoid being outdone by these younger women. This is why, besides preventing them from occupying their kitchens, the fathers constantly despise the dishes and cooking innovations of their daughters.

38  Aida Roldán-García CHIEN: I love cooking elaborate dishes. I wish I could do it at home. RAYMOND: You can’t cook tofu? CHIEN: No, I can’t cook at home. […] Dad’s kitchen. If I cooked there I’d

be stealing his thunder. (Eat Drink Man Woman) Similar to the pervasion of globalized, Anglo-American influences in traditional societies, when women pervade industrial kitchens – traditionally heralded as sites of masculine power – the patriarchs of these films are once again placed under significant duress. These phenomena suspend the fathers’ sensory functions: their sense of taste which once bolstered their culinary prowess and, by extension, their power over the women in their lives.

Visual Haptics, Gastronomy, and the Senses A haptic image is one that seeks to erase the distance between spectator and film by capturing objects from extremely close perspectives, so the viewer can appreciate physical textures of the portrayed objects: … a haptic work may create an image of such detail, sometimes through miniaturism, that it evades a distanced view, instead pulling the viewer in close. Such images offer such a proliferation of figures that the viewer perceives the texture as much as the objects imaged. While optical perception privileges the representational power of the image, haptic perception privileges the material presence of the image. Drawing from other forms of sense experience, primarily touch and kinesthetic, haptic visuality involves the body more than in the case of optical visuality. (Marks 163) By placing image and texture at the same level, haptics take the audience’s experience beyond the mere visual by resorting to physical reactions. For instance, imagine an extreme close-up of a fork scratching a blackboard. Imagine the prongs of the fork lifting both chalk and slate. Even if the scene is muted, the combination of textures in the image provokes sensations within us that make the scene unpleasant. This implies that one’s decoding and interpretation of the film stops relying exclusively on optical perception, to contemplate other forms of knowledge based on the rest of the senses. In Eat Drink Man Woman and its remake, haptic aesthetics are used to represent food and gastronomy. Regarding representation, to create haptic images of food, Lee employs various close-up shots, from medium to extreme, to capture the heterogeneity of textures of aliments and utensils. By focusing on and detailing certain key elements, food images spark different sensory reactions among the audience: salivation, hunger, tactile pleasure, or repulsion by the different surfaces and textures (i.e. dusty softness of spices),

Haptic for Gourmets  39 finger tingling, physical disgust and discomfort, etc. The effect of haptic images is sometimes increased by an emphasis on the sounds made by the portrayed objects. For instance, with boiling pans and pots, the audio is focused exclusively on the gurgling; with frying oil, on the spitting; with fish, on the slimy sound of guts coming out, etc. The most representative example of haptic imagery takes place during the first sequence of the movie, where Chu cuts, peels, scales, and cooks in a montage of different scenes that work to trigger the viewer’s senses. According to Daniel Kahneman and Edward Diener, the way people respond physically and psychologically to food-related stimuli varies across cultures. Reactions, which can be classified into pleasant and unpleasant, depend on three main factors. The first is related to sensory-affective reasons and it is informed by an individual’s previous experiences. That is, reactions to certain foods and textures depend on the viewer’s previous tactile and gustatory experiences (sensory memory). The second refers to anticipated consequences of ingestion. For example, if an image suggests satiation, the viewer can start salivating and feeling hungry. On the contrary, images that suggest illness, due to characteristics such as spiciness, oiliness, and odor, are more likely to result in unpleasant feelings and reactions: upset stomach, revulsion, etc. Finally, the third factor is connected to ideational reasons: how viewers’ reactions to the elements portrayed are conditioned by their knowledge of those elements, and how they are codified in the spectators’ cultural framework and imaginary (Kahneman and Diener 116). In Tortilla Soup, Ripoll adopts Lee’s visual strategy when portraying food, seeking to appeal to the audience through pleasant sensory reactions. Light, textures, color, and close and detailed shots are incorporated to create evocative and vivid images that trigger memories of delightful smells, tastes, and touches in viewers. Haptic images are also used to engage the audience in interpretative and deductive games, where spectators have to guess what they are seeing. For example, in the first sequence of the movie, the viewer can only see a pair of hands cutting and tying together strips of leaves. Due to the proximity of the camera, viewers tend to remain clueless as to what they are watching: What are the string and leaves for? How are those objects related to cooking? The answer does not come until the next scene, where, from a farther perspective, the viewer sees it is a type of natural brush used to season grilled fish. From an ethnographic critical perspective, the usage of haptic imagery to portray food, as well as the films’ alternation between optical and haptic visualities, offers significant epistemological and discursive potential. Specifically, the bidimensional presentation of food allows the legitimation of alternative epistemological paradigms and the opening of spaces for intercultural dialogue through the multisensory experience of bodies. The epistemological potential of these formal aspects is related to the physical reactions that haptic images provoke in the spectator: “A visual

40  Aida Roldán-García medium that appeals to the sense of touch must be beheld by a whole body” (Marks 338). By emphasizing touch, taste, and smell, haptic imagery encourages audiences to trust, develop, and listen to senses other than sight and hearing. This helps to legitimate and consolidate nonaudiovisual ways of grasping reality. At the same time, it breaks with Western hegemonic epistemologies which oppose mind over body and privilege sight and hearing. Mind and rationality are associated with sight and hearing, while touch, taste, and smell are attuned to the body, irrationality (emotions, feelings, and sensations), and the feminine.8 In addition, the combination of optics and haptics allows viewers to approach the same image/representation from two different perspectives: a visual one, connected to more rational and empirical-based knowledge, and a bodily one, based on perception and sensory memory. Since each perspective triggers different types of knowledge and mental connections, both perspectives – the visual and the bodily – tend to engage in a dialogue. That is, whereas the visual usually retrieves images, meanings, and stereotypes, touch, taste, and smell tend to evoke connections associated with sensorial stimuli such as memories, sensations, and emotions. When there is an agreement between both dimensions, the spectator feels they have a better panoramic of what they are seeing, because the sensorial supports and validates the rational and vice versa. If there is no agreement, the spectator might get confused and will try to discover the reason behind this discrepancy. For example, to watch something apparently right, positive, or pleasurable from a rational and logical standpoint, but which feels wrong at a sensory level, can generate a curious restlessness within the viewer. Regarding the discursive potential for haptics, this type of imagery allows for the conception and formulation of alternative ways of interacting and apprehending the cultural Other when deployed in ethnic/intercultural gastronomic movies such as Eat Drink and Tortilla Soup. By putting touch, taste, and smell on the same level as vision and hearing, the exchange between film and audience stops being a passive relationship between viewer and representation, becoming, rather, a more equal interaction between two bodies: If one understands film viewing as an exchange between two bodies – that of the viewer and that of the film – then the characterization of the film viewer as passive, vicarious, or projective must be replaced with a model of a viewer who participates in the production of the cinematic experience. (Marks 338) The spectator participates through the exposure of their sensory system and their interaction with and reaction to the film’s stimuli. Cultural otherness permeates through the senses, by way of the intersubjective relationship set up between images and audience: “As Merleau-Ponty

Haptic for Gourmets  41 wrote, ‘To perceive is to render oneself present to something through the body’ [(42)]. I am not subjected to the presence of an other (such as a film/film screen); rather, the body of the other confers intersubjective being on me” (Marks 338). Marks emphasizes another relevant aspect: Because culture settles in bodies through sensory experiences (The Skin 145), the way individuals feel (cultural sensory systems) is not innate and predetermined, but rather shaped by cultural experiences. Thus, sensory systems change across cultures and are susceptible to shifts according to the subjects’ own experiences and time.9 To this respect, Laine states the following: As senses are a source of social understanding (our taste and responses to food, for instance, are shaped by our cultural memories and interpersonal relationships), [and] intercultural cinema by definition operates simultaneously at the juncture of several systems of cultural knowledge […] intercultural films such as Eat Drink Man Woman may be able to make cultural sensory experience available the spectator. (110) With these words the author not only endorses Marks’s correlation between senses and culture,10 but also points to how, by means of haptics, ethnic and intercultural films provide information about the Other through the sensorial experiences they provoke. Whereas Laine is right to deem senses as a source of social understanding, her argument is rather reductionist as a result of her exclusively relating filmic sensory experience to a more profound understanding of the self, and not to a deeper comprehension of the Other. According to Laine, individuals are cognitively limited by two elements that prevent them from attaining true and authentic cultural knowledge from gustatory filmic practices. The first element is the self, which informs our understanding of the world according to personal experiences and sensory systems. The second refers to problematic attitudes that determine our intercultural encounters, such as prejudices and stereotypes. As a result of these limitations, the ethnic knowledge that spectators gain from these dialogic encounters is rather limited and biased. Hence, Laine believes the value of these encounters does not lie so much in knowledge acquisition, but in the disruptive power this knowledge might have in disputing spectators’ cultural standards, practices, and values (113). Although contact with the Other is an important source for selfdefinition and an essential tool to articulate individual and collective identities, to regard these types of cinematic exchange as mere acts of self-knowledge is a mistake. It is not so important that we cannot access what Laine identifies as true or authentic cultural knowledge through gastronomic representations and stimuli. After all, no single element or practice can fully grant knowledge to a cultural aspect. This is not only

42  Aida Roldán-García because of the previously mentioned limitations of the self, but also because cultures entail complex structures of meanings which change and evolve constantly. The outcome of the dialogic interplay between self and Other in these type of movies therefore goes beyond Laine’s selfunderstanding and involves other significant functions. Senses actively contribute cultural knowledge to increase and enhance viewers’ degree of identification with the Other. By recognizing themselves and becoming more familiar with otherness, spectators can shift their ways of interacting with it, particularly through the phenomenon of misrecognition.11 Recognition occurs when a spectator identifies with a specific aspect in a movie. In the case of intercultural and ethnic movies, chances are higher that this process is established with a cultural other. Misrecognition takes place right after recognition, when the spectator proceeds to notice the differences existing between herself and the projected image. These differences can derive from many filmic representations of alterity – bodies, acts, practices, cultural aspects, etc. In these cases, misrecognition tends to be accepted and assumed as factual. However, misrecognition can also come from problematic discourses on cultural difference, especially when there is a high degree of identification between the viewer and the Other. In such instances, the viewer, who regards the projected image as a cultural translation of him/herself, starts questioning and rejecting, by analogy, problematic discourses traditionally associated with the Other’s identity. For instance, for an individual whose idea of Chinese identity has been articulated through Western colonial and Orientalist notions of Asians, the reality represented and constructed in Eat Drink is likely to differ from her projection of Chinese identity and culture. Since viewers use their own personal experience to determine which discourses and meanings they assume as their own, they question discourses associated with their analogous filmic Other, because they do not correspond to their experience. In the case of Eat Drink, those spectators who recognize themselves in the characters might end up questioning traditional Orientalist depictions of Asians as exotic and mysterious people, because they do not correspond to their own individual experiences nor the represented reality of the movie.12 That is, spectators realize that the characters are far from being enigmatic creatures acting in strange ways. On the contrary, they act like people from Western societies; they live in modern cities, they are businesspeople, cosmopolites, the young are liberals, the elder conservatives, and they all have common problems and concerns regarding love and family. From a counter-hegemonic standpoint, this is significant because personal experience and identification may lead spectators to challenge problematic notions interfering and conditioning intercultural encounters and complicating cultural understanding. ***

Haptic for Gourmets  43 The use of haptic imagery to represent food also helps to promote intercultural encounters and dialogue outside the cinematic experience. For those who enjoy the cinematic experience offered by haptics in gastronomic ethnic and intercultural movies, cuisine becomes an attractive cultural ambassador and mediator to access and interact with otherness in real life. At a time when mass media and mass cultural industry have turned ethnic diversity into a trend, it is almost impossible to refrain Western audiences from consuming ethnicity as a commodity. In this culture of consumption, even the promotion of intercultural dialogue and awareness appears to happen through consumerism. In this regard, the use of subversive visual strategies – such as haptics in mainstream cinema – is significant from an ethnographic perspective, because it encourages individuals to take their fascination and curiosity for ethnic otherness beyond the film experience: in this case, consuming films and food. Going to an ethnic restaurant or supermarket, cooking a recipe, or attending a cookery workshop are activities through which the subject might choose to interact in real life with this cultural Other. Though these types of encounters tend to be problematic because they are frequently formed from a desire for ethnic consumption and fetishism, I suggest two reasons as to why they should not be overlooked. These are, first, instances of quotidian intercultural interaction among common people, especially in multicultural societies. In addition, these microinteractions prompt individuals to come into contact with new sociocultural realities (Laine 2005), and, thus, to learn more egalitarian ways of relating to cultural others and conceiving ethnicity from less Westernized and dominant perspectives. Many critical reviews of Eat Drink and Tortilla Soup in American media emphasize how, after watching the movies, the audience felt a general craving for Chinese and Latino food: Like Lee’s original film, and in the vein of Like Water for Chocolate, […] the movie dazzles the taste buds. […] Some of the story lines add up to empty calories but the tantalizing Latin-flavored dishes never disappoint. Don’t see this movie on an empty stomach – unless you already have reservations at a favorite Mexican restaurant afterward. (Puig 1) It is very likely that the same pleasurable bodily experiences that triggered those cravings also encouraged spectators to learn more about Chinese and Latino culture, even if it was through food. As noted before, intercultural approximations through food can be shallow and problematic, feeding the Western fetish for the Other. However, through haptics, in exposing such interactions on a most granular level, we may better analyze the roots of interest in the represented communities.

44  Aida Roldán-García

Haptic Food Imagery and Strategic Exoticism The exoticization of the cultural and racial Other within Western imaginaries, mainstream cultural industries, and media is a relevant topic addressed and contested within Ethnic Studies. Whereas multiculturalism is celebrated in many Western countries as a social asset, it becomes clear that many hegemonic discourses on otherness continue to be very much influenced and shaped by Anglo- and Eurocentric views. Far from disappearing, discourses on exoticism and Orientalism seem to be proliferating – especially in mainstream cultural productions, where the commodification of ethnic and racial identities is frequently used to attract white audiences and incorporate minorities into the market.  The historical and political nearness to colonialism along with the prevailing Western fascination for anything coded as foreign and exotic makes the detachment from certain projections of the Other a very difficult task. Given this fact, Eleanor Ty suggests a strategy that might help dispute problematic meanings associated with ethnic and racialized subjects and their bodies. Since these associations are so strong, Ty proposes an intermediate stage from which to continue contesting those meanings, away from subjects’ bodies and identities. Her proposal consists of displacing problematic discourses from individuals and relocating them strategically within external elements as part of a transitional phase toward their complete elimination. Concretely, Ty proposes to transfer all content considered exotic within Western imaginaries – cultural markers and practices, archetypes, stereotypes considered exotic – to the past, as part of the tradition of a culture, even if that entails an act of self-exoticization: … in my discussion, I have outlined some of the ways in which the exoticism of the old serves to delimit ethnic identity in the new world. This construction of difference is not an unproblematic one. It is an effort of resistance in that it challenges views of racialized identity depicted by others, but it may also involve using the self as a kind of spectacle. (70)13 In Eat Drink Man Woman and Tortilla Soup, Ty’s strategic exoticism of the old is represented by/in Chinese and Mexican traditional cuisine. The fathers, bearers of tradition, are the ones in charge of transmitting and honoring their cultures through food. Their dishes represent not only the past, but also the exotic. In Eat Drink, Mr. Chu cooks frogs, and in Tortilla Soup, characters eat cacti. For Western audiences, both are unusual ingredients, unconventional and exotic, especially when compared to the globalized fast food assembled by Jia-Chien in Eat Drink, and Yolanda’s American preparations in Tortilla Soup. Food is exoticized not only through ingredients but also through the use of haptic aesthetics, which

Haptic for Gourmets  45 contribute to this process by presenting food as seductive, voluptuous, mysterious, and even magical. By focusing in detail on aspects and features of aliments (colors, textures, shapes), haptics manage to present food as something out of the ordinary and even fascinating.14 From a critical perspective, the exoticism of traditional Chinese and Latino cuisine serves two purposes. On the one hand, it satisfies the fascination and visual pleasure for otherness – for primarily Western audiences, but also Chinese and Latino individuals who are not familiar with their national traditional cuisine. On the other hand, it serves the same purpose as Ty’s exoticism of the old; it allows negative stereotypes and meanings associated with ethnic communities to be relocated into a single cultural element. That is, food exoticization permits the removal of the exotic from the racialized bodies and identities of the characters to be later contained in an external element. Even the fathers, the ones who prepare the exotic dishes, are not portrayed as “exotic.” They are not depicted or dressed eccentrically; they go jogging in sweatpants and do not perform any habit or ritual that may be considered bizarre. From an Ethnic Studies point of view, this strategic exoticization of food is a highly valuable asset because, even if temporary, it disconnects the discourses of the exotic from the characters and their communities – whether Chinese or Latino. Taking into account that cinema is a cultural technology that not only mirrors reality, but also articulates it, this process of transferring can help modify the Western imaginary by relegating the exotic to the old, driving new ways of understanding and representing ethnic minorities. As Ty suggests, despite the discursive potential of this strategy, it is still dangerous and problematic to use colonialist principles when representing cultural difference, because we run the risk of perpetuating negative and controversial visions of the Other within mainstream imaginaries (60). On certain occasions, the display of food has been branded as an act of cultural exhibition that promotes cultural appropriation. Through concepts such as food adventurism15 and food pornography,16 ethnic movies whose display of food and cookery has contributed to the decontextualization of this cultural practice, instead of representing and promoting an ethnic identity, have been strongly criticized: “[…] what food pornographers do is to wrench cultural practices out of their context and display them for gain of the curious gaze of ‘outsiders’” (Wong 55). The exotic and seductive portrait of food has also been criticized for encouraging individuals to use ethnic cuisine as a glamorous commodity for Western consumption. But the fact that food porn utilizes visual strategies of haptics – close shots, focus on textures, light games, etc. – does not mean that all haptic images of aliments should be considered food porn. In the case of Eat Drink and Tortilla Soup, to consider food imagery as an example of gastronomic pornography would connote a simplistic view. In both

46  Aida Roldán-García films, food and cookery do not appear as random indicators of cultural difference and exoticism, but as well-integrated and contextualized components of the plot. Additionally, these elements serve concrete and important purposes in terms of content and form. Third, due to the interactive character that film acquires with haptic aesthetics and the epistemological shift involved in this type of visuality, food display moves away from food porn by turning into what Marks identifies as “visual erotics”: From an impulse, which informs much intercultural cinema, to protect the objects (people, cultures) represented from the prying eyes of others, some works also begin to experiment with a visual erotics – a visual erotics that offers its object to the viewer but only on the condition that its unknowability remains intact, and that the viewer, in coming close, gives up her or his own mastery. (Marks 347) When applied to gastronomic ethnic and intercultural movies such as Eat Drink and Tortilla Soup, this type of aesthetics resists or redirects hegemonic Orientalist and Eurocentrist gazes. Through haptic visuality, staring at food is not based on a will to dominate the image, but on the bodily reaction, the response within the self, that leads the spectator to initiate a dynamic and intersubjective relationship with the film. The representation of gastronomy in these two films should thus be considered erotic and not pornographic because, as Marks argues, the viewer delights with the exoticism of the Other, but does not seek to control it: Eroticism is an encounter with an other that delights in the fact of its alterity, rather than attempting to know it. Visual erotics allows the thing seen to maintain its unknowability, delighting in playing at the boundary of that knowability. But it is not voyeurism, for in visual erotics the looker is also implicated. By engaging with an object in a haptic way, I come to the surface of my self […] losing myself in the intensified relation with an other that cannot be known. (Marks 345) Far from being harmful to the “objects,” this type of interaction between viewer and film (peoples, cultures) aims to promote more respectful relations between the self and filmic representations of the Other. Regarding the discursive potential of haptic visuality, both this alternative way of looking at the Other and the strategic exoticization of food contribute to the reexamination and overcoming of stereotypical and negative representations of ethnic minorities in cinema. For instance, Eat Drink proposes the end of feminization of Asian men in cinema and

Haptic for Gourmets  47 media, and the Orientalized vision of the Asian feminine body as a “[…] site of exoticism, sexual access, and danger” (Ty 59). In Tortilla Soup, aside from contesting clichés about Latino communities, the displacement of the exotic legitimizes other roles and positionings of Latinos in American society and gives prominence to relevant matters such as transculturation and the evolution of Hispanic national identities into a pan-Latino one.

Conclusions In order to conduct a complex and thorough ethnographic analysis of ethnic/intercultural movies, it is necessary to rely not exclusively on content, but on form as well. This is especially so for movies such as Eat Drink Man Woman and Tortilla Soup, where earlier analyses tend to overlook their intriguing formal aspects to instead focus entirely on content criticism. In Eat Drink and Tortilla Soup, the deployment of haptic visuality in cinema offers counter-hegemonic epistemological and discursive potential in relation to cultural difference representation. The use of haptic aesthetics to depict gastronomy encourages spectators to resort to their senses and interplay differently with the images on screen. Through this process, the epistemological potential of senses other than sight is legitimized, and, furthermore, spectators come to question the Western hegemony of the visual. Regarding discursive potential, there are two functions of haptics that I have emphasized. The first is the intersubjective relation established between viewer and film, and the enhanced sensorial experience haptics provoke in order to stimulate identification processes between spectator and images/representations. The second is the ability of haptic imagery to strategically contain and displace exoticism to other concrete elements and practices. These functions contribute, on one hand, to the contestation of prejudiced and problematic depictions, notions, and attitudes toward cultural difference and ethnically marked subjects and identities in cinema. On the other hand, they prompt spectators to adopt different ways of conceiving, perceiving, and interacting with cultural otherness both within and outside the film. On a larger scale, visual haptics is not a subversive technique exclusive to experimental and avant-garde cinema. This formal strategy can be deployed successfully in mainstream films because its combination with optical visuality prevents it from interfering with mainstream film and visual pleasure conventions. For ethnic filmmakers,17 who have no choice but to yield to the demands and restraints imposed by the filmic industry and the market, the use of haptics in mainstream films can play a significant discursive role in opening spaces for negotiating meaning and challenging dominant representations.

48  Aida Roldán-García

Notes

Haptic for Gourmets  49







50  Aida Roldán-García Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Routledge, 2006. Kahneman, Daniel and Edward Diener. Well-being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. Russell Sage Foundation, 2008. Print. Laine, Tarja. “Family Matters in EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN: Food Envy, Family Longing, or Intercultural Knowledge through the Senses?” Shooting the Family: Transnational Media and Intercultural Values. Ed. Patricia Pisters and Wim Staat. Amsterdam UP, 2005. Marks, Laura U. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Duke UP, 2000. ———. “Video Haptics and Erotics.” Screen 39.4 (1998): 331–348. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences.” The Primacy of Perception, and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Ed. James M. Edie. Northwestern UP, 1964, pp. 12–42. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminism and Film Theory. Ed. Constance Penley. Routledge, 1988, pp. 57–68. Pratt, Mary L. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. Puig, Claudia. “‘Tortilla Soup’ a Savory Blend of Romance, Family.” USA Today (AI), 19.241 (Aug. 2001): 7E. Spivak, Gayatri C. “Questioned on Translation: Adrift.” Public Culture 13.1 (2001): 13–22. Ty, Eleanor. “Exoticism Repositioned: Old and New World Pleasures in Wang’s Joy Luck Club and Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman.” Literary Studies 11 (1996): 59–74. Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton UP, 1993.

3

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self Jenny Platz

Pro Ana and Mia blogs are websites that promote disordered eating. Ana stands for anorexia, and Mia is short for bulimia. The sites usually have titles that reference disordered eating, including “thinspiration” sections that feature inspirational images of slender women, and diet tips; they are sites that personify the eating habits into helpful and friendly entities, hence the names Ana and Mia. In general, the sites document the blogger’s process and desire to control her body and life through anorexia and bulimia in a world where the author is constantly losing authority over her life and body due to strict parents, a stressful semester, unrequited love, depression, or physical trauma. jennythree’s blog, In the Burning Phase of My Life, does not have all the typical sections of Ana and Mia blogs, but in her posts, she does use eating disorders and blogging to gain authority over her body and to examine herself which, as stated above, is a staple of Ana and Mia sites. She expresses the following in a post dated March 25, 2010: I am a work in progress…and I’m not sure where the progression is leading to. The despair I feel when I look in the mirror is extreme. I feel out of control, too much of me all over the place. I am no longer the sad, tiny graceful girl that was small enough to fly away on dandelion fluff. She is the one that I tend to cast as Most Desirable, even though she held my hand during the darkest and most hopeless times in my entire life. Thinnest me = invincible. A twisted idea, one I need to let go of, but it has a tempting siren song all its own. By writing all this down, I hope to see all of the holes in my theory of what makes me who I am, and try to strive towards a model that will work and sustain me for the rest of my life. (jennythree)1 The passage indicates common narratives that can be found on the blogs. The author is consciously using blogging to gain self-knowledge and better the self by writing down her feelings to narrate her relationship with disordered eating and to explain her desire for agency, as well as her despair. Although the post informs the reader that jennythree is equating self-starvation with a siren and a way of life that needs to be altered

52  Jenny Platz in favor of a more sustainable coping mechanism, for the moment, the eating practices and writing help her to feel in power and secure about herself. Disordered eating held her “hand during the darkest and most hopeless times in [her] entire life” (jennythree) and by writing about her style of eating, she can continue to gain comfort and hopefully attend to the self. Through writing and management of food, she is able to face the reality of her problems and try to overcome them. Because my argument explores command over one’s body and emotions through disordered eating and blogging, I will define control and my use of the term. My meaning of control refers to the blogger’s attempt to physically regulate her body when circumstances beyond her powers such as traumatic events, parental power, and romantic relationships claim ownership or affect the blogger’s body. Authority over the body is a type of power the blogger uses to alter the power relation between herself and her abuser, herself and her parent, or herself and her romantic partner. By governing her body and documenting the use of disordered eating to alter one’s body, the blogger hopes to have dictatorship over her body when previously she did not feel like she had bodily power. The blogger may not be able to change her abusive past, confront her demanding parent, or change the feelings of a disinterested ex-boyfriend, but she can alter her own body and receive gratification over regulation of that body, even if the connection between her body and those problems does not seem apparent to the reader. As explained by Foucault, power relations are quite fluid (“The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom” 283), and thus, the adjustment of one’s body through disordered eating and blogging is a demonstration of the shifting relations of power between the bloggers and others, organizations, and social norms who earlier subjugated the bloggers. Although the blogger may not have had direction over the body when she was abused, or she feels out of control during moments of depression, through writing and severe dieting, the authors are able to once again be in command, even if that strength is just temporary. Moreover, the blogger does not just have rule over her body, but has authority over the narrative of her body created through the blogs. It is important to clarify that I do not mean control as a form of subjection or system of power, but as a form of agency. Mastery over diet is a result of caring for the self. It is self-mastery and agency that develops from self-mediation. The function of writing in a journal-like medium, which facilitates the writer to collect her thoughts and daily activities to then use to work through difficult problems, mirrors the Ancient Greek practice of self-writing through the hupomnemata. The hupomnemata is similar to journals and was used to reflect on one’s day, record interesting literature or images, and to try to overcome hardships by meditating on the self through writing. Margaret McLaren summarizes the function of the hupomnemata as:

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self  53 guides for one’s ethical behavior. The notebooks consisted of significant quotes, records of events, and self-reflections. The hupomnemata served as an aid for memory, as an aid to self-examination, self-reflection, and self-regulation…. The notebooks were meant to be reread and consulted; they provided a framework for meditation, reflection, and conversation. (McLaren 149) In “Self Writing,” Michel Foucault further explains the hupomnemata as a method for the writer to meditate on struggles such as grief and trauma, and as a device to overcome weaknesses such as participating in gossip and expressing anger (209–210). Through writing about the self and the day’s events, one is able to facilitate self-reflection and, as a result, self-transformation. The blogs, a modern-day hupomnemata, also provide an outlet for the blogger to try to overcome difficult situations, such as depression and loneliness, and to better understand why anorexia offers comforting capabilities. Through writing and atypical eating, the bloggers gain control of their bodies after control was once lost due to physical or mental traumas, thereby helping the writers to move on. Through the blogs, disordered eating and writing about disordered eating become a way of life for the authors, or at least a digital narrative of a way of life. The blogger’s online life consists of documenting the practice of anorexia and bulimia, and exploring the meaning of that way of life. Although the bloggers are consciously using the blogs as sites to gain self-knowledge, to write openly and honestly, to better the self, and to equate the eating disturbances with a way of life, I am not arguing that the bloggers are consciously practicing self-care or recreating the exact conditions and style of the hupomnemata. Blogs and the eating habits are instead modern alterations of the self-reflexive processes of the hupomnemata. Although disordered eating is not an ideal remedy for trauma, anorexia and writing about the practice of anorexia is the chosen method of these bloggers. Although I have been using female pronouns to address the bloggers, the pronouns do not suggest that only people who identify as female create and visit the blogs. This is incorrect and through my research I have found male-identified commenters and blog creators, but those commenters and creators are rare. I will use female pronouns because the majority of the blogs are presented as being created by people who identify as women – the bloggers refer to themselves as girls, have feminine gendered names, and when posting pictures the poster appears to identify with the female subjects of the photographs. Of course the use of female names of images does not mean one identifies as female, the bloggers are presenting themselves as female online, and therefore I will use female pronouns unless the blogs and commenters indicate otherwise.  In what follows I outline the history and structure of the Pro Ana and Mia blogs, the plethora of scholarly writing that exists regarding

54  Jenny Platz the blogs, and how the bloggers use disordered eating and blogging to meditate on the self and better the self.

The History of Pro Ana and Mia Pro Ana and Mia blogs are abundant but are often shut down by online providers such as Yahoo after being flagged as threats to young women for triggering disordered eating, which I will elaborate on in the paragraphs below. Due to this censorship, it is difficult to determine the dates of the first Pro Ana and Mia websites, but Elisa Burke traces the blogs’ beginnings to 1998 (70). The blogs are in a journal-like style and are almost all identical to each other in regard to their layout, content, and tone. The blogs sometimes have a main page that acts as a trigger warning, informing the viewer that the blog is a Pro Ana and Mia site. The main section of the blogs consists of entries that are usually in reverse-chronological order, meaning that the viewer has to search through the most recent posts to get to the first blog entry, although sometimes the viewer can search the blog entries by month or year. The chronology of the blogs makes it so readers need to consistently check the sites in order to stay up to date on the writers’ journeys with anorexia and bulimia; otherwise, the readers would need to scroll down until they found the last section they read. For the writers, the chronology functions as a journal-like writing form that allows the writer to just post their thoughts without having to manage the order of the posts. Entries are usually focused on food, such as what the blogger has eaten or considered eating, but the entries may also concern other aspects of the bloggers’ lives. In general, the sites chronicle how the bloggers are managing anorexia and bulimia, how they are moving on from disordered eating, and how the restrictive eating relates to some other problem in their lives. Most of the blogs focus on dieting practices such as anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is the desire to lose weight, and the practice of losing that weight through a refusal to eat or the use of a severely low-calorie diet. Bulimia, in contrast, consists of the practitioner regularly eating food and even binging, while also purging that food. People who practice anorexia may also engage in bulimia, and vice versa. There are other types of disordered eating, but I am only focused on anorexia and bulimia due to my chosen blogs’ focus on those two eating habits. When using the term “disordered eating,” I am referring to the practice of both anorexia and bulimia. I will use these terms when referring to an individual eating style. The sites also contain sections that outline the religion or lifestyle traits of Ana and Mia; letters to Ana and Mia (when bloggers write to Ana or Mia for advice); types of diets, tips about handling hunger pains and constant thoughts about eating; guides for keeping disordered eating a secret from others; the ability to comment on posts; links to

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self  55 other Pro Ana and Mia sites; and a thinspiration section. Michele Polak defines thinspiration pages as visual text that is: represented through posted pictures of models and other celebrity icons walking down the runway or posing on the red carpet. There is a canon of respected women among pro-ana followers; model Kate Moss is popular, with the recent eating disorder admission [recent at the time of this article] by Mary-Kate Olsen moving her to the top of the list, as the body that represents a personal goal for many that identify within the pro-ana movement. There are two divisions of thinspiration photos: those that display posed photos of well-known celebrity icons, and ‘bone pictures,’ photos that depict female bodies in various forms of emaciation. (86–87) As Polak explains, the photographs serve to inspire the blogger and her visitors to attempt to use disordered eating to recreate the photographed body. The thinspiration section may also contain images of the blog creator, but as Polak explains, usually the pictures are of celebrities or unnamed slender girls that can be found on the Internet. Often the same pictures are found on several sites. Over time, blogs of this nature became more popular. In the mid2000s researchers estimated that over five hundred Pro Ana and Mia websites existed (Schott and Lagan 1159). The blogs received the most critical attention after a 2001 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show where the talk show host discussed Pro Ana and Mia blogs and showed the audience thinspiration pages. The episode was designed to expose the sites to parents in hopes that they could protect their kids from the alarming blogs (Polak 89–90). Thereafter, the media waged war on the blogs, declaring them a menace to society. In the early- to mid-2000s, media outlets, such as ABC NEWS (Depowski and Hart), NBC News (The Associated Press), and NewsWeek (Springen), claimed that the sites glamorized disordered eating and inadvertently encouraged young girls to kill themselves through starvation. As media coverage of the websites increased, so did demands to censor the blogs. The earliest mass censorship of the blogs occurred in 2001, when, after a series of complaints, Yahoo started to delete any blogs focused on disordered eating. As social media grew, blogsites such as tumblr banned Pro Ana and Mia posts. Likewise, networks such as Pinterest and Facebook also banned and censored Pro Ana and Mia content. In response to the anxiety over Pro Ana and Mia materials, France even began eliminating advertisements and fashion spreads with emaciated models (Schott and Lagan 1160). Much of the scholarly writing on Pro Ana and Mia websites focuses on either the harm in censoring the websites or the need to censor them. Unlike the majority of news sites and the general media that argue that

56  Jenny Platz the blogs are alluringly deadly communities, the majority of gender studies in contrast argues that the panic over the blogs is another way to silence young girls, objectify them into victims, and subject them to medical discourses in a patriarchal world.2 Psychological and sociological writing on the blogs are more mixed and are often fusions of the two understandings on Pro Ana and Mia.3 The writing on the world of Pro Ana and Mia needs to become more comprehensive and explore the specific narratives constructed on individual blogs instead of writing about the blogs in mass. This exploration of the personal narratives of the blogs, rather than the general ideology of the blogs, differentiates my writing from earlier work on the Pro Ana and Mia community. This differentiation is not to suggest the work on Pro Ana and Mia blogs is not productive, innovative, or compelling, the writing on the blogs is crucial to my work and the authors’ respective field, but to suggest that the Pro Ana and Mia blogs must be further explored.

Hupomnemata, Blogging, and Self-Reflection through Pro Ana and Mia Before explaining how disordered eating and Pro Ana and Mia blogs resemble the Ancient Greek practice of care of the self through writing, I will first overview Foucault’s research on attending to the self. In Ancient Greece the notebook like hupomnemata facilitated the practice of self-care: of understanding the self in order to better the self. In “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” Foucault explains the concept of care of the self “as knowledge [connaissance] of the self… but also knowledge of a number of rules of acceptable conduct or of principles that are both truths and regulations” (116). Care of the self is self-understanding by contemplating and critiquing how modes of behavior and one’s subjectivity are shaped by relationships of power. Through self-knowledge, self-mastery emerges and people are able to expel influences that have a destructive effect on their lives and subjectivities (116). Thus, the self will transform by way of self-understanding and by way of mastering or controlling the self. The medium of blogging can be seen as a contemporary form of hupomnemata. The hupomnemata was used in Antiquity not as a diarylike act of confession but as a means of conversing with oneself, recounting the day’s activities, summarizing various literatures, recording random thoughts of the day, and as a way to self-reflect, meditate, and better the self by overcoming weaknesses and problems (McLaren 149). Foucault explicates the use of the hupomnemata in “Self Writing”: Hupomnemata, in the technical sense, could be account books, public registers, or individual notebooks serving as memory aids. Their use as books of life, as guides for conduct, seems to have become

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self  57 a common thing for a whole cultivated public. One wrote down quotes in them, extracts from books, examples, and actions that one had witnessed or read about, reflections of reasonings that one had heard or that had come to mind. They constituted a material record of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering them up as a kind of accumulated treasure for subsequent reading and meditation. They also formed a raw material for the drafting of more systematic treatises, in which one presented arguments and means for struggling against some weakness (such as anger, envy, gossip, flattery) or for overcoming some difficult circumstance (a grief, an exile, ruin, disgrace). (209–210) Through these notes, the writer could recuperate and relive their experiences; rationalize these moments; and, hence, begin to care for the self. Although one can self-reflect without the act of writing, the hupomnemata differs because it provides a place to reread one’s daily activities and have a permanent recollection of one’s thoughts. Even if one forgets exactly how she felt during a difficult moment, or how one felt while reading an inspirational poem, the memories can be revisited through the record of the journal. The notebooks aided the writing in mastering the self by providing the self-reflective space to attend to problems such as anger, grief, jealousy, depression, and other emotional or social problems. The use of blogs in the Pro Ana and Mia community resembles the use of the hupomnemata in Ancient Greece and the emergence of selfmastery, or control, through writing. In what follows I will outline research on command over the body and disordered eating before relating control and care of self through writing to Pro Ana and Mia blogs. The desire to feel in power over the body is a common narrative on the Pro Ana and Mia blogs and much psychological and sociological literature has been written about the connections between bodily management and disordered eating. Psychologists Franzisca V. Froreich, Lenny R. Vartanian, Jessica R. Grisham, and Stephen W. Touyz conducted a 2016 study to examine this topic. In their paper, “Dimensions of control and their relation to disordered eating behaviors and obsessivecompulsive symptoms,” the authors conclude “that there may be similar underlying fear of losing self-control among individuals who engage in disordered eating” (1). Other authors in psychology and sociology have found similar findings. Castro and Osorio explain that bulimia is a way for people to take command of their life (181) and Catrina Brown argues that “controlling the body has become a precarious substitute for real control in women’s lives” (1). Similarly, Hilde Bruch, psychologist and author of Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Person Within (1973), one of the first books on disordered eating, relates the dietary restrictions to people’s desire to claim ownership over their bodies in a world where they did not feel in control (102).

58  Jenny Platz In A Hunger So Wide and So Deep (1994), Becky W. Thompson claims that atypical eating habits are common in people who were sexually abused, and that dieting is a means to regain bodily authority that was lost during abuse (46–48). In the beginning of the book, she asserts how disordered eating can emerge “as survival strategies – as sensible acts of self-preservation – in response to myriad injustices including racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, the stress of acculturation, and emotional, physical, and sexual abuse” (1–2). Due to elements beyond someone’s powers such as abuse, stress, racism, or intense emotions, disordered eating often develops because food intake is something the person can regulate. Gender studies authors such as Susan Bordo and Maree Burns also write about the eating practices and self-governing. Bordo suggests that bodily reign through dieting is intoxicating (134) and in Burns’s article “Bodies as (im)material? Bulimia and Body Image Discourse,” she comments that bulimia is often associated with the desire for selfmastery (128–129). The use of disordered eating as a survival strategy is apparent in Pro Ana and Mia blogs. The need for bodily rulership is evident in the blog Ana, Mia, & Moi, created by PoisonedShadow. In the last post on her blog called “Weight,” PoisonedShadow addresses psychological literature and other scholars who write about the role of control in eating: A lot of people say that we control our eating because we have lost control over some other aspect of our lives. However, why food and weight? Why would we not choose to control our academic career or simply creating a precise wake up routine for the morning?… Yes we may be slightly more perfectionist than most but at the end of the day it is a lifestyle choice. Because it is how we want to live our lives as we are not happy with how we are at this moment. So why the hell shouldn’t we be able to change ourselves in any way we please? If we should have any right, it should be the right to our own bodies. There is not a lot left in life that is truly ours, apart from our own mind, our body and our choices. (“Weight”) PoisonedShadow’s unhappiness is clear in the passage. She is dissatisfied with her life – after reading the full blog it is clear that she is suffering from depression, issues of abandonment, and the effects of her bipolar disorder, and has turned to disordered eating in order to cope. Although there are other methods of control, such as good grades and a curated morning schedule, she has turned to atypical eating in order to achieve that level of agency. As stated in the previous paragraphs, people turn to the style of eating when they lack power in their lives in some way. PoisonedShadow lacks management of her emotions, and governing what she will put in her body is a way to acquire that agency. Through disordered eating, she is able to master her physical appetite and to master the

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self  59 other appetites that threaten to overwhelm her, such as her self-hatred and depression. In the following section, I will more closely study the blog Ana, Mia, & Moi and the author’s use of writing and alternative eating to care for the self.

Ana, Mia, & Moi, and Care of Self Similar to the ancient use of the hupomnemata, in Pro Ana and Mia blogs, the authors reflect on the events of the day and list the inspirational art, music, or television the blogger recently encountered. The recordings of their day and inspiration work as a means to help one prevail over a weakness or difficult circumstance. PoisonedShadow’s WordPress blog Ana, Mia, & Moi is an example of the hupomnemata style. Her blog is concerned with creating “raw material for the drafting of more systematic treatises, in which [the bloggers] present arguments and means for struggling against some weakness” and for “overcoming some difficult circumstance (a grief, an exile, ruin, disgrace)” (Foucault, “Self Writing,” 210). Although the blogger may not be familiar with the hupomnemata, her intentions resemble the ancient practice. This is seen when reading PoisonedShadow’s post, dated June 10, 2010. After commenting on her weight, her exercise regime, and the salad she ate, she writes about her current emotional state: Feeling a bit low at the moment and I can sense a relapse working its way back. I do feel rather lost and feel like I’m losing touch on reality – madness sneaking its way back in – and it really frightens me. I was going through an atlas and looked at a picture of the universe and our planet and I realized just how insignificant we all are. If I died, disappeared or lost my sanity entirely it would make no dent whatsoever to life as a whole. Nothing would change. (“Almost In Sight of 1st Goal”) Through the self-reflective details of the post, PoisonedShadow realizes her emotional instability and her sense of being lost. This lack of control is in contrast to the control of most of the post’s previous paragraph: Extra exercise is really helping me shed the pounds though as I have started kickboxing/karate and it is fantastic. I do it for two hours, once a week at a club nearby… I’m doing quite well in sticking to the 300cal limit. I had a plain salad with a little bit of salad cream today, about 150cals. Hopefully, I won’t be eating anything else tonight and luckily the cravings to binge haven’t set in yet. However, it is early days :s. (“Almost In Sight of 1st Goal”)

60  Jenny Platz In the paragraph, PoisonedShadow details how she is able to regulate her body through the rigors of kickboxing and karate, twice a week, for two hours. The details of her salad, calorie intake, and calorie limit suggest that she is successful, in this part of the paragraph at least, in determining what she ingests and what she will burn off through exercise. The absence of control in the next paragraph also appears earlier in the final sentences of the first paragraph. PoisonedShadow writes that hopefully she will not eat anything tonight, indicating that she is doubtful she will remain in command, and at the end of the paragraph she undermines herself by stating that it is still early. This doubt leads to the disappearance of self-mastery in the next paragraph. When reading the two paragraphs together, her strict governing of her body, even if it is a power that may fail at any moment, is opposite the control she has over her mental state. Since her depression makes her feel like she lacks agency over her emotions or happiness, she has a sense of insignificance with regard to the larger universe. Although control of her body may not make her feel like she plays a large role in the universe, it does offer momentary power over her self and her existence. Other posts also depict the contradiction between PoisonedShadow’s constant control of her body and her inability to dictate her emotions due to her depressive thoughts. On a post from July 4, 2010, PoisonedShadow again comments on her place in the overall universe and how her death would seem insignificant in the grand scheme of existence (“This Is the Way”). Her small position with respect to the greater universe indicates not only her existential depression, but her lack of control. Through the imagery, PoisonedShadow writes herself as a small and minuscule entity that is on the verge of disappearing, thus using diction and imagery to visualize her desire to physically erase herself. In the very next post, PoisonedShadow again comments on her lack of power, but in this post, her lack of control is connected to her binging and purging: Got to work, ate a twix and a galaxy bar, then a hot chocolate with whipped cream. So what did I do?? Purge… at work. If I had just managed some margin of self-control then this would never have happened. I hate myself. Stupid, greedy, fat bitch. Urghh. Water only tomorrow. Absolutely NO exceptions. (“Shit”) On July 9, she again writes about food, but in this post, she has regained control and is purging, rather than binging, and writes that she has “recovered from self-loathing slightly” (“Calm after Storm”). The soothing effect of her regaining bodily authority is reflected in the title of the post “Calm after Storm.” For PoisonedShadow, food is the only condition that she can control, and therefore disordered eating is the only habit that makes her feel in power and capable of stabilizing her emotions

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self  61 and helping her overcome her self-hatred. Through the eating habits and writing about those habits, she is developing a method to get over her problems by writing, and, as I will explore later, reflecting about her emotional state. Disordered eating and writing offer her the momentary bodily agency she desires. Although disordered eating is what helps PoisonedShadow feel in control and capable of managing her feelings, blogging is the outlet to reflect on these phenomena. The self-reflective power of blogging, and its ability to record her thoughts and daily activities to then use for selfexamination, is conveyed through various posts. In a July 10 post, which follows that “Calm after Storm,” PoisonedShadow rereads her previous writing and comments on her mental state: Sorry about the random post last night, I re-read it this morning and realized that it didn’t really make a lot of sense. I’m going to try to make my next post(s) more consistent and… well… sane. They tend to be pretty detached at the moment as that is the way my brain seems to process my thoughts and feelings; like an abstract painting. (“Maybe Not”) By way of the hupomnemata, PoisonedShadow is able to not only record her thoughts but also reread her posts and better understand her mental state. Upon further reflection, and in describing her behavior as “abstract,” meaning disorder, confusion, without logic, and difficult to understand, she seeks to henceforth improve her writing, making it “more consistent” and “sane.” By rereading the post, she theorizes that the “erratic” writing matches her erratic, or “insane” as she comments, mental state. Therefore, by changing and dictating her writing, she hopes to change and control her real-life chaotic thoughts and feelings that cause her distress. Because the blogs are reflective of her thoughts and feelings, clear writing will come when she no longer is having troubled thoughts. Once she understands why she is thinking and writing so erratically, she can attempt to address the cause of that thinking in real life. The self-writing and hupomnemata style of the blog not only help her to reflect on the need to have control over her body but also help her to understand her mental states during the time of her blogging and manage her self-stated madness in real life. Eventually, she can then hopefully find peace or calm after the storm. Across PoisonedShadow’s other posts, the benefits of writing are readily apparent, as it is her act of not merely self-expression, but of self-reflection. In the following post, PoisonedShadow comments on her lack of control through writing, while at the same time describing the strength she feels through cutting. While in the past she gained bodily ownership through writing, her disorderly writing does not mean that the process no longer offers her as sense of order. Instead, the disappearance

62  Jenny Platz of control through writing and the accomplishment of bodily command through cutting is part of the life-long process of caring for the self. The achievement of agency through writing and disordered eating is not immediate or permanent, but has ups and downs and must be practiced throughout life. In a post from July 12, the author writes: I know that I said my next posts would be more coherent etc however, I don’t think this one will be. I’ve had a really bad night tonight and writing appears to be my only outlet right now. I self harmed approximately one hour ago and it’s the first time that I have done this in a long time…. The thing is, watching the blood trickle down my arms gives me the most warped sense of satisfaction that nothing else does. Cutting and weighing a little less are my only vices. (“I Know What I Said”) The grim and haunting post represents PoisonedShadow’s need for self-ownership, as indicated through her practice of cutting, which functions similarly to her use of disordered eating as another means to physically manage her body when she cannot regulate her emotions. She also takes rule over that painful experience by writing and recording it. In so doing, she is dictating the narrative of her life, like she is controlling her physical pain. The connection between disordered eating and cutting is apparent when she writes that weighing less and cutting are her only vices. Her use of the word “vice” is noteworthy, because the meaning of vice implies immoral and wicked behavior, but according to the post, although cutting and eating disturbances are physically harmful, they are the only actions that allow PoisonedShadow to feel in power. The blog post is self-reflective, because it shows that PoisonedShadow informs the audience, and herself, that she is aware of the self-destructive aspects of cutting and alternative eating, and that they are the only tools she feels she has to feel better about herself or assert agency. Therapy may help at times, as stated in other posts, but she has to change to a new adult psychologist when she turns eighteen, making her feel abandoned (“Adulthood”). Cutting and disordered eating, however, are always available to her and do not leave her. She will always have her body; therefore, she will always have agency over the physicality of that body, even when she lacks emotional control. It is writing on the blog, however, and not just the act of cutting or disordered eating, that helps PoisonedShadow to express and process her emotions. Writing and rereading the blog helps her understand why she feels the need to manage her body and emotions. She is learning to self-govern and care for the self through eating practices and blogging. Regardless of whether PoisonedShadow follows her own advice and does attempt to better her life, the blog is a space of control that emulates caring for the self.

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self  63 Besides PoisonedShadow, other bloggers have written that her eating style helps them attend to the self by using writing as a means of selfreflection, and then using the control of disordered eating to have physical dominance over the body when they lack the ability to govern other elements of their lives. This is stated on the author’s, named Beauty, “My Story” page. On the page she explains that, at twelve years old, she developed anorexia as a cry for attention and a way to be heard. Although Beauty does not specify how self-starvation made her feel heard, anorexia served as a way to physically manifest her pain over her parents’ divorce. In the post, Beauty also states that despite the negative effects disordered eating had on her schoolwork, it made her feel happy. Beauty again does not specify how alternative eating made her happy, but her connection between anorexia and her need for authority after failing in school and having divorced parents indicates that her sole joy was the management of her body (“My Story”). Kat not Jas from SkinnyLove also relates governing her weight to feeling in charge of her life, and her post on August 29, 2013 implies that blogging provides her a self-reflective space that helps her understand her emotional state and how her depressive moods emerge when she does not feel in control of her weight (“(btw I think I probably was just being paranoid)”). Like PoisonedShadow, Beauty and Kat not Jas use disordered eating to have ownership of their bodies and emotions, and use blogging to understand and narrate their need for self-mastery. The Pro Ana and Mia blogs also include quotes and other recordings, similar to the medium of the hupomnemata. These recordings help the authors self-govern and reflect, and to constantly reread (Foucault, “Self Writing” 209–210). For example, Beauty has various pages that outline tips on how to lose weight. On the “diets” page, she has information about foods that make people bloat, as well as ways to handle cravings (“diets”). These posts are not about Beauty herself, but are simple lists of ways to manage weight. Because regulating her eating is how Beauty achieves self-care; she needs a space to record these methods. Other sections such as “music,” a page that has inspirational music, serve as a record of inspiration for practicing disordered eating and ruling the body and emotions (“music”). Although the bloggers are striving to recreate traditional standards of beauty, it appears that, for the bloggers, obtaining a slender body is not about being desirable to others, but is about controlling one’s narrative and body in a world where others constantly attempt to and succeed in violating their body. Finally, the blogs also defy the assumption that there is a correct way to take care of the body. The bloggers may take care of their bodies in ways that are physically harmful, but it is the bloggers’ choice to take care of their bodies through “unhealthy” practices. Ballerinas, athletes, and other individuals also heavily monitor their bodies, but their actions are usually not pathologized or considered taboo. How are art and sport

64  Jenny Platz practitioners justified in encouraging emaciation and obsessive focus on the body, whereas bloggers are censored? The bloggers’ bodies may not be associated with art, like how a ballerina’s slender body is a result of her dance training, but the bloggers’ bodies are associated with narrative creation, complicating the idea that the bloggers are wrong for using disordered eating. In the creation of the blogs and references to alternative eating in real life, the bloggers assert their agency and rebel against the idea that parents, medical professionals, search engines, and blogging platforms are who and what decide how they should treat their bodies; this is the prerogative of the blogger alone.

Conclusion Pro Ana and Mia websites offer bloggers a way to record their day-today activities and their random thoughts in order to reflect in a hupomnemata-like medium to gain self-knowledge. That self-knowledge is used to better understand the self and one’s emotions, and through that self-understanding, the bloggers can attempt to overcome, at least momentarily, weakness and difficult circumstances by caring for the self. As seen by the blog posts and secondary scholarship, disordered eating and the control over one’s body is an act of care of the self, because it helps the bloggers to feel in control of their bodies and emotions after depression. The blogs tell individual narratives that explain how one uses disordered eating and blogging to cope with a trauma, to understand one’s chaotic emotions, to no longer feel lost, to understand one’s relationships with others, and to better the self through the eating habits. The individual narratives of the blogs must be explored in order to understand the bloggers’ personal journeys in caring for the self and their needs for control. It is important to note that the need for self-mastery and the bloggers’ trauma does not make them victims. Self-governing is just part of the narrative of disordered eating and how one cares for the self through blogging and management of one’s body, and control is how the bloggers have chosen to tell their journeys of attending to the self. The bloggers may have lost power of other areas of their lives, but their bodies and the rule of those bodies are exclusively theirs. As PoisonedShadow writes, “There is not a lot left in life that is truly ours, apart from our own mind, our body and our choices” (“Weight”).

Notes 1 Note the uses of ellipses are by the blogger. 2 For gender theory on Pro Ana and Mia, refer to: “Pro-anorexia/bulimia Censorship and Public Service Announcements: The Price of Controlling Women” by Nicole Danielle Schott and Debra Langan, Karen Dias’ article “The Ana Sanctuary: Women’s Pro-Anorexia Narratives in Cyberspace,”

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self  65 and Elisa Burke’s “Pro-anorexia and the Internet: A Tangled Web of Representation (Dis)Embodiment.” 3 For psychological and sociological research on Pro Ana and Mia, please refer to “Constructing Identities in Cyberspace: The Case of Eating Disorders” by David Giles, Teresa Sofia Castro’s and Antonio Osorio’s “Online Violence: Not Beautiful Enough… Not Thin Enough. Anorectic Testimonials in the Web,” and Kathleen Custers’s “The urgent matter of online pro-eating disorder content and children: clinical practice.”

Works Cited Associated Press. “Pro-anorexia movement has cult-like appeal.” NBCNEWS. com, 31 May 2005, www.nbcnews.com/id/8045047/ns/health-mental_health/ t/pro-anorexia-movement-has-cult-like-appeal/#.WUcsXRMrL8N. Accessed 9 June 2017. Beauty. “diets.” Beauty From Pain, Weebly, http://beautyfrompain.weebly.com/ diets.html. Accessed 14 Feb. 2019. ———. “music.” Beauty From Pain, Weebly, http://beautyfrompain.weebly. com/music.html. Accessed 14 Feb. 2019. ———. “My story.” Beauty From Pain, Weebly, http://beautyfrompain.weebly. com/story-of-beauty.html. Accessed 18 June 2017. ———. “Welcome to the world of beauty from pain.” Beauty From Pain, Weebly, http://beautyfrompain.weebly.com/. Accessed 18 June 2017. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, U of California P, 1993. Brown, Catrina. “The Control Paradox: Understanding and Working with Anorexia and Bulimia.” National Eating Disorder Information Centre, 1990, NEDIC, http://nedic.ca/sites/default/files/control-paradox-understanding-andworking-anorexia-and-bulimia.pdf. Accessed 18 June 2017. Bruch, Hilde. Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Person Within, Basic Books, 1973. Burke, Elisa. “Pro-anorexia and the Internet: A Tangled web of representation and (dis)embodiment.” Counseling, Psychotherapy, and Health, vol. 5, no. 1, 2009, pp. 60–81. Burns, Maree. “Bodies as (im)material? Bulimia and body image discourse.” Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Dis/orders, edited by Helen Malson, Routledge, 2009, pp. 124–134. Castro, Teresa Sofia and Osorio, Antonio. “Online violence: Not beautiful enough… not thin enough. Anorectic testimonials in the web.” PsychNology Journal, vol. 10, no. 3, 2012, pp. 169–186. Academic Search Complete, www.psychnology.org/. Accessed 10 June 2017. Depowski, Kristen and Hart, Kelly. “‘Pro-Ana’ web sites glorify eating disorders.” abcNEWS, 13 June 2006, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ story?id=2068728. Accessed 9 June 2017. Foucault, Michel. “The ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom.” Ethics Subjectivity and Truth. Translated by Robert Hurley and Others, The New Press, 1994, pp. 281–302. ———. “Hermeneutics of the subject.” Ethics Subjectivity and Truth. Translated by Robert Hurley and Others, The New Press, 1994, pp. 93–106.

66  Jenny Platz ———. “Self writing.” Ethics Subjectivity and Truth. Translated by Robert Hurley and Others, The New Press, 1994, pp. 207–222. Froriech, Franzisca V., et al. “Dimensions of control and their relation to disordered eating behaviours and obsessive-compulsive symptoms.” Journal of Eating Disorders, 2016, pp. 1–9. Academic Search Complete, http:// c r o s s m a r k . c r o s s r e f . o r g /d i a l o g / ?d o i =10 .118 6 /s 4 0337- 016 - 010 4 4&domain=pdf. jennythree. “Do you ever.” In the Burning Phase of My Life, 25 Mar. 2010, WordPress, https://burningphase.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/do-you-ever/. Accessed 20 July 2017. Kat not Jas. “(btw I think I probably was just being paranoid).” SkinnyLove, 29 Aug. 2013, Blogger, http://sk1nnylove.blogspot.com/2013/08/btw-i-think-iprobably-was-just-being.html. Accessed 18 June 2017. Loveheim, Mia. “Young women’s blogs as ethical spaces.” Information, Communication, & Society, vol. 14, no. 3, 2011, pp. 338–354. Academic Search Complete, DOI:10. 1080/1369118X.2010.542822. Accessed 10 June 2017. McLaren, Margaret A. Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity, State U of New York P, 2002. PoisonedShadow. “Adulthood.” Ana, Mia, & Moi: My Life, Body and Self Control, 4 Mar. 2011, WordPress, https://poisonedshadow.wordpress. com/2011/03/04/adulthood/. Accessed May 27 2019. ———. “Almost in sight of 1st goal.” Ana, Mia, & Moi: My Life, Body and Self Control, 10 June 2010, WordPress, https://poisonedshadow.wordpress. com/2010/06/10/almost-in-sight-of-1st-goal/. Accessed 18 June 2017. ———. “Calm after storm.” Ana, Mia, & Moi: My Life, Body and Self Control, 9 July 2010, WordPress, https://poisonedshadow.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/ calm-after-storm/. Accessed 18 June 2017. ———. “I know what i said.” Ana, Mia, & Moi: My Life, Body and Self Control, 12 July 2010, WordPress, https://poisonedshadow.wordpress. com/2010/07/12/i-know-what-i-said/. Accessed 18 June 2017. ———. “Maybe not.” Ana, Mia, & Moi: My Life, Body and Self Control, 10 June 2010, WordPress, https://poisonedshadow.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/ maybe-not/. Accessed 17 June 2017. ———. “Shit.” Ana, Mia, & Moi: My Life, Body and Self Control, 5 July 2010, WordPress, https://poisonedshadow.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/shit/. Accessed 17 June 2017. ———. “This is the Way.” Ana, Mia, & Moi: My Life, Body and Self Control, 4 July 2010, WordPress, https://poisonedshadow.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/ this-is-the-way/. Accessed 18 June 2017. ———. “Weight.” Ana, Mia, & Moi: My Life, Body and Self Control, 18 Oct. 2012, WordPress, https://poisonedshadow.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/ weight/. Accessed 18 June 2017. Polak, Michele. “‘I think we must be normal… there are too many of us for this to be abnormal!!!’: Girls creating identity and forming community in proana/mia websites.” Growing Up Online: Young People and Digital Technologies, edited by Sandra Weber and Shanly Dixon, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 81–94. Schott, Danielle and Langan, Deborah. “Pro-anorexia/bulimia censorship and public  service announcements: The price of controlling women.” Media,

Pro Ana and Mia Blogs, and Care of the Self  67 Culture & Society, vol. 37, no. 8, 2015, pp. 1158–1175. Academic Search Complete, DOI:10.1177?0163443715591672. Springen, Karen, “The dangers of pro-anorexia web sites.” NewsWeek, 6 Dec. 2006, NEWWEEKLLC, www.newsweek.com/dangers-pro-anorexia-websites-105601. Accessed 9 Jun. 2017. Thompson, Becky W. A Hunger So Wide and So Deep. U of Minnesota P, 1994.

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Section Two

Disordered Eating beyond the West

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4

White Pigs and Black Pigs, Wild Boar and Monkey Meat Cannibalism and War Victimhood in Japanese Cinema Kenta McGrath

Introduction Before its release in Japan, Angelina Jolie’s World War II drama Unbroken (2014) attracted a controversy which made international headlines. The film – based on Laura Hillenbrand’s biography of American veteran Louis Zamperini, an ex-Olympic runner and a prisoner-of-war to the Japanese – drew the ire of rightwing Japanese nationalists who accused the director of misinformation and racism, with many taking particular offense at a section of the book describing how Allied prisoners were “beaten, burned, stabbed, or clubbed to death, shot, beheaded, killed during medical experiments, or eaten alive in ritual acts of cannibalism” (Hillenbrand 319; emphasis added). An online petition to prevent the film’s exhibition attracted 10,000 signatures. It declared that “there is no custom of cannibalism throughout Japanese history” and redirected attention to American atrocities against Japanese civilians during the war: “the indiscriminate bombing of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, to begin, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and that’s not everything” (“Withdraw the production”; my translation). Toho-Towa was pressured into delaying the film’s distribution indefinitely and it was eventually shown on a single screen in Tokyo by an indie distributor, one year after its global release. The film’s objectors turned out to be misinformed themselves. Unbroken depicts war crimes perpetrated by sadistic Japanese soldiers against Allied prisoners, but cannibalism, the sorest point of contention, was nowhere to be seen.1 Nevertheless, the controversy revealed how the issue of war cannibalism can strike a nerve seven decades after Japan’s surrender, having been absorbed into broader debates surrounding the competing narratives and ideologies about Japan in the Pacific War. In recent years, scholars and commentators within and outside Japan have argued that a victim consciousness or mentality (higaisha ishiki) took hold of the nation in its postwar years, through which the Japanese came to see themselves primarily as victims, rather than aggressors, during

72  Kenta McGrath the war – an inwardness which “led most Japanese to ignore the suffering they had inflicted on others” (Dower, Embracing Defeat 29), and particularly the “victims of Japanese aggression […] in Asia” (Shimazu 101). Although the Unbroken controversy revolved around an outburst of nationalist sentiment (expressed mostly online) and thus should not be mistaken for a typical Japanese standpoint on the war, the efforts to suppress the film appeared consistent with a narrative in which Japan denies or deflects responsibility for its wartime actions and claims the status of victim. However, if we were to look at the handful of Japanese films which have actually tackled the issue of war cannibalism, it is possible to see that they engage with notions of victimhood in complex ways. Stories of war cannibalism, in these films and elsewhere, sit uneasily within the discourse of Japanese victimhood because the line between victim and perpetrator is often ambiguous or exists on multiple fronts. Depending on the context, victim status can be spread widely, and even a soldier who practiced cannibalism may be perceived to be a victim (his hand was forced by a brutal military system that abused and abandoned its own soldiers, and he must endure the psychological torment of committing cannibalism), a perpetrator (he committed a reprehensible and inexcusable act), or both simultaneously (he committed a horrific act but had little choice, and must suffer the consequences). As such, these films are well equipped to respond to historian Tanaka Yuki’s call to examine wartime Japan “as aggressors and as victims at the same time” (6). Such ambiguity and multiplicity are entirely absent from the standard opposing perspectives of Japanese war cannibalism. The Japanese perspective tends to consider Japanese soldiers as the principal victims – in the rare event that the topic is considered at all, insofar as cannibalism remains a shameful taboo which has “long been confined to rumor” (Tanaka 114) and represented only by a small number of veterans’ memoirs, novels, and films. Meanwhile, the standard perspective of ex-Allied nations is to regard cannibalism as an extension of Japanese military atrocities, whereby the principal victims are Allied soldiers and prisoners-of-war. While they focus predominantly on the experience of Japanese soldiers, Japanese films about war cannibalism diverge from this opposition and compel us to consider the very notion of war victimhood – not merely who the victims and perpetrators might be, but where the line between them begins and ends, or if such a line can be drawn at all. Their examination of war is predicated on using cannibalism to blur the distinction between victim and victimizer. Indeed, the historical circumstances surrounding cannibalism during the Pacific War suggest that the victim/victimizer binary is wholly inadequate. Japanese soldiers belonged to an army that victimized millions of others, many became victims themselves through their abuse and abandonment by that same army, and the acts of cannibalism which

Cannibalism and War Victimhood  73 often resulted could confound distinctions of victimhood in themselves. After a remarkable succession of victories following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese military campaign just as quickly became an unmitigated disaster, a series of decisive defeats which remain virtually unprecedented. By the time the Allied blockade severed all supply routes in 1943, Japanese soldiers scattered throughout the Southwest Pacific region had been all but deserted by their government. Of the 1.74 million Japanese military deaths in the Pacific War, it is estimated that two-thirds were due to illness and starvation rather than combat (Dower, War without Mercy 448). In unforgiving tropical conditions for which they were completely unequipped, troops were decimated by disease and scavenged for rats, lizards, insects, and plants to survive – all while being forced to flee, or suicidally fight, the advancing Allied forces. The resulting acts of cannibalism committed by Japanese troops – against enemy soldiers, prisoners-of-war, civilians, and each other – were among the worst of the Pacific War’s litany of horrors. In this essay, I focus on four Japanese films which foreground war cannibalism and examine the complexities of its victimhood. Ichikawa Kon’s Fires on the Plain (Nobi, 1959) and Tsukamoto Shinya’s phantasmagoric 2014 remake (both are adapted from Ōoka Shōhei’s 1952 novel) are set in the disastrous final phase of the war in the Philippines, and they frame cannibalism as a moral choice faced by a protagonist whose morality is fast slipping away. Fukasaku Kinji’s Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (Gunki hatameku moto ni, 1972; based on Yūki Shōji’s 1970 novel) and Hara Kazuo’s documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Yukiyukite shingun, 1987) are set decades after the war and look back at acts of cannibalism during the catastrophic New Guinea campaign, where death was virtually guaranteed for the Japanese soldier. While there are some other notable Japanese films relating to war cannibalism, such as Shindo Kaneto’s Ningen (1962), Kumai Kei’s Luminous Moss (Hikarigoke, 1992), and Matsui Minoru’s documentary Japanese Devils (Riben Guizi, 2001), the four films I have chosen are those which address cannibalism most directly as a central theme, and which are concerned with Japanese war experiences in foreign countries where cannibalism was most prevalent. In cinema, cannibalism has long been aligned with the horror genre where the line between victim and perpetrator tends to be clearly delineated. No such delineation can be found in these four works and none qualify as horror films, but they share in common a reliance on the fundamental capacity for cannibalism to evoke horror; if war is hell, then cannibalism is readymade to prove that war is hell. Yet, in these films, cannibalism extends well beyond a theme, image, or narrative device used to evoke horror or express anti-war sentiment. While they demonstrate a fascinating diversity of approaches and attitudes, they all engage with the horrors of cannibalism to consider what the war meant, how it

74  Kenta McGrath ought to be remembered, and why defining victimhood in such extraordinary circumstances can often be an elusive pursuit.

The Choice of Cannibalism: The Fires on the Plain Films Of the handful of Japanese films which foreground war cannibalism, Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain is the best known. In the film, Private Tamura (Funakoshi Eiji), stricken by tuberculosis and abandoned as a burden by his own regiment, wanders aimlessly through the Philippine island of Leyte, where dead and dying Japanese soldiers litter the landscape. As his mental and physical states deteriorate, Tamura encounters other troops who have become insane from hunger and disease, and have resorted to theft, murder, and cannibalism to survive. Tamura is not, however, merely a victim or witness to the horrors of war. When a young Filipino couple stumbles across him in a village, he kills the woman in a panic after she begins to scream, then attempts to kill her partner as he flees (only a jammed rifle saves him). Later, in the jungle, he runs into Nagamatsu, a young private whom he camped with earlier in the film, and Yasuda, an injured older private who exploits Nagamatsu as a servant for his own survival. The two men have been surviving by bartering tobacco leaves to other survivors for food, and subsisting off “monkey meat,” which Tamura is offered to eat but is unable to chew as it causes his teeth to fall out. Tamura soon confirms his suspicion that the meat is human flesh; under Yasuda’s unofficial command, Nagamatsu has been hunting Japanese soldiers for them to eat. The relations between the two men eventually turn sour, and Nagamatsu murders Yasuda and devours his flesh. Revolted by his cannibalism, Tamura kills Nagamatsu, in what registers equally as a punishment and a mercy killing. At the end of the film, Tamura approaches a group of Filipino farmers to surrender and is shot dead. Fires on the Plain expresses its anti-war stance through an almost exclusive emphasis on Japanese victims, of both cannibalism (Japanese soldiers are the only ones to be cannibalized) and the war more generally. This is so despite the film’s setting of the Philippines – the site of so many well-known war crimes, rather than Japan, where so many films about Japanese victimhood are set – suggesting a willingness to interrogate Japanese war aggression. However, the circumstances of the narrative impede this interrogation from taking place. Here, the disintegrated Japanese Army is constantly on the retreat; in the rare instances when combat occurs in the film, Japanese soldiers become victims of a lopsided slaughter, attacked from afar by an enemy that can barely be seen, let alone fought. Additionally, Tamura’s refusal of cannibalism at the expense of his own survival and his killing of a man who partakes in it suggest a noble victim who rejects both moral complacency and the victimization of others. His death at the end of the film, by Filipinos – who

Cannibalism and War Victimhood  75 represent a population which was relentlessly victimized by the Japanese Army – seems to underline his victimhood in the most literal sense. Predictably, and although it has a long reputation as one of the great anti-war films, Fires on the Plain has also received criticism for espousing the discourse of Japanese victimhood described above. According to Erik R. Lofgren, this espousal is most apparent in the changes made from Ōoka’s source novel. In the novel, Tamura is not killed but rather captured by Filipinos, and he relates his story via flashback from a mental hospital where he admitted himself after experiencing memory loss and a putative bout of insanity: a structure which establishes “a necessarily ambiguous space for the ethical evaluation of his past actions” (267). More significantly, Tamura knowingly eats human flesh in the novel but refuses to do so in the film, a change which for Lofgren reflects “an ideological shift toward an increasingly hegemonic national victim consciousness [and] by broader implication, suggest[s] that Japan has nothing for which to apologize” (268). For Chuck Stephens, both Fires on the Plain and Ichikawa’s earlier anti-war film, The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto, 1956), “endeavor to delineate a universalist depiction of victimization during wartime, even as they, through the suppression of certain inconvenient historical realities, focus almost exclusively on the victimization of the Japanese.” The “inconvenient historical realities” in the case of the war in the Philippines include the brutal actions of Japanese soldiers toward the native population and Allied prisoners-of-war, manifesting in “forced-labor camps, sexual slavery, the notorious Bataan Death March […] and the slaughter of some one hundred thousand civilians by fleeing Japanese forces from the city of Manila alone” (Stephens). Most of these atrocities fall outside the narrative parameters of Fires on the Plain, having occurred elsewhere in the Philippines or well before the late stage of the war depicted, and with the sole exception of the woman’s murder, Japanese atrocities remain mostly subtext. Perhaps the most significant suppression, as it relates directly to a central theme of the film, is of the documented fact that cannibalism was perpetrated by Japanese against combatants and civilians from various other nations, and often with the direct endorsement by officers. 2 While it may be unrealistic to expect a single film to incorporate the full spectrum of atrocities that Stephens describes, it holds true that these atrocities are barely addressed in the film, and that the victimization of Japanese is emphasized well over that of others. Yet at the same time, it is through the narrowness of its focus that the film’s particular ideas about cannibalism and victimhood are able to be articulated. Because Ichikawa continually emphasizes Tamura’s immediate experiences, the camera rarely strays away from him to offer a wider context for the war. This closeness, coupled with the scarcity of both fellow survivors and enemy combatants within the narrative, creates a vivid atmosphere of isolation and claustrophobia whereby Tamura’s physical

76  Kenta McGrath and mental degradations become magnified. For Tamura, the enemy becomes blurred in more ways than one as the film progresses: The enemy soldiers can barely be seen (he also does not know whether the Filipinos he encounters are neutral civilians or enemy guerrillas), while the Japanese soldiers, despite sharing the same tongue and wearing the same uniform, can no longer be trusted and may be harboring a murderous intent driven by hunger. Within these narrowed visual and narrative parameters, the threat shifts palpably from a traditional external enemy to that from within the group, or what is left of it, and paves the way for Japanese soldiers to turn on each other. Consequently, distinctions between victim and victimizer become immaterial by the end of the film. Nagamatsu and Yasuda, for example, become so grotesque and unsympathetic that trying to distinguish who the victim is would be a fruitless exercise; the depravity of each character has negated the other. As such, the film is much less concerned with depicting the scope of the war in the Philippines as it is with emphasizing how disorganized, dehumanized, and depraved the Japanese Army had become. And all of this is seen to be a direct result of the army’s brutal repression and victimization of its own soldiers, as stressed from the film’s opening scene when Tamura is physically and verbally abused by his commanding officer and urged to commit suicide. In turn, cannibalism becomes a tangible consequence of, as well a metaphor for, this repression and victimization. In their master-servant relationship, which comes to resemble that of an officer and subordinate despite their equal rank, Yasuda asserts his dominance over the younger Nagamatsu and sends him away to do all the dirty work on his behalf. Earlier, when Tamura encounters another group of two privates and a sergeant, the latter reveals that they committed cannibalism in New Guinea, and warns – perhaps jokingly – that they might eat him too. Tamura’s possession of salt prevents the threat from being realized, but the men’s attitudes toward him as a lone outsider of low rank, and the compliance of the two subordinates to the sergeant’s authority (the sergeant looks far healthier and better fed, and later confiscates their portions of salt for himself), suggest that Tamura would likely be the first to be killed and eaten should the order be given. Cannibalism is thus always shown or implied to occur within the context of military hierarchy, regardless of whether the hierarchy is official (as is the case with the three soldiers) or self-imposed (Yasuda and Nagamatsu). Cannibalism is sanctioned by superiors, and victims are chosen based on the observation – and in Nagamatsu’s murder of Yasuda, the eventual subversion – of an established rank. Tamura’s status as a lone soldier who no longer has anyone to answer to (but who himself is shown to be both victim and victimizer) allows us to observe the dynamic in which their cannibalism occurs. In this way, the film demonstrates that militarism and cannibalism are inexorably linked: The latter is an articulation of the former. Although criticisms about the film’s historical

Cannibalism and War Victimhood  77 elisions remain valid, its narrowed focus must also be considered as a sincere attempt to examine war circumstances which were specific to the Japanese – one which, in turn, may shed a greater light on the Japanese victimization of others. Although it adheres to a similar plot, Tsukamoto’s 2014 remake produces altogether different effects and meanings. In the film’s press kit, Tsukamoto suggests that his primary aim was to re-evoke the horrors of war for a contemporary Japanese audience, warning of the risk that “the idiocy of war will be forgotten, with so few left who have witnessed its horrors. The price of those 70 years of peace is a tendency to look away from death. As a result we have become collectively fearful of anything ‘dirty’” (10). Because of this “widening distance” between the war and the present, writes Mark Schilling, the film represented for its director “a last chance to make the reality of war undeniable and unforgettable.” Tsukamoto upholds this commitment by “dirtying up” the film’s source material significantly; amplifying the visceral horrors associated with cannibalism; and infusing the film with nightmarish details which do not exist in the original film or novel, or which far exceed their equivalents. Formally speaking, the handheld camera sways erratically this way and that, the lighting scheme is deliberately overstated and artificial, jump cuts abound, and the cheap video aesthetic is accentuated by overexposed images and an oversaturated color grade. The enemy has also become invisible altogether from combat scenes, which are now mostly conveyed by a series of offscreen sounds, fragmented images, and quick disorienting cuts, with a more pronounced emphasis on violence. The cumulative effect of these excesses is an intense subjectivity which is not present in the original film. Tsukamoto’s Fires on the Plain is a hallucinatory nightmare of images and sounds experienced by its protagonist (played by Tsukamoto himself), in which narrative and context become a distant concern. Tamura is consistently underlined as a witness by an abundance of closeups of his face, intercut with reverse-shots of the horrors unfolding around him. Point-of-view shots, long dissolves, abstract images of the landscape, and visual and auditory flashbacks also suggest his anguished mental state in a way that the screenplay does not. Tamura’s role in the earlier film as a protagonist through whose eyes we experience the war, and who retains a degree of sympathy by being shown grappling with the moral consequences of his actions, becomes destabilized here because he, like most of the other soldiers, seems to be constantly teetering on the edge of sanity. These excesses also contribute to the blurring between victim and victimizer, through which Tamura appears to have an out-of-body experience and commit savage crimes. In the scene of the woman’s murder, Tamura initially assures her, “I won’t kill you,” before she screams and Tsukamoto starts cutting rapidly back and forth between the two characters. Tamura shouts the words repeatedly as his panic grows, and

78  Kenta McGrath Tsukamoto introduces barking dogs on the soundtrack to amplify the mounting confusion. As the editing gathers speed and momentum, violence begins to feel inevitable, as though it will be forced by the pressure building through the film’s style rather than by narrative logic or motivation of character. This seems to be confirmed when, in the film’s most problematic moment, Tamura shoots the woman dead then looks down at his rifle in shock – as if it were not his own finger that pulled the trigger but some other mysterious force which came over him. The outcome of the scene is the same as in the original film, but here the responsibility for the murder has been ambiguously deflected. A similar displacement of responsibility can be seen in the film’s treatment of cannibalism. A major difference from Ichikawa’s film, and marking a return to Ōoka’s novel, is the fact that Tsukamoto’s protagonist eats human flesh – an act which would appear to refuse him victim status, and reinforced by the fact that he is captured by Filipinos at the end of the film rather than be killed by them. Tamura eats human flesh twice: when he wakes from exhaustion and is fed a piece of dried meat by Nagamatsu (before its origin is revealed), and when he narrowly escapes a grenade blast and consumes a small piece of flesh that lands on his shoulder (it is unclear whether the flesh is from his own body or a nearby corpse). The murder and cannibalism of Yasuda toward the end of the film remains but is rendered far more gruesome. After the protracted mutilation of Yasuda’s corpse, Nagamatsu, mouth agape and covered in blood and flesh, stares at Tamura with a ghastly expression before he too is killed. However, this and the other scenes of cannibalism barely stand out because the copious other horrors depicted in the film operate mostly on the same, heightened register. Due to the film’s constant stream of excesses, all instances of cannibalism lose their accents, becoming subsumed within a procession of horrors which are afforded similar or equal emphasis in their stylistic treatment and position within the narrative. Tsukamoto homogenizes the horrors of war, strips them of their context, and also simplifies the ethical considerations relating to cannibalism; indeed, he has stated, “What’s more important than the theme of an individual’s conflict over whether or not to eat human flesh is the depiction of the horrors of war in general” (Walkow). The film creates and maintains an extreme impression of war, and this is achieved in part by inadvertently downplaying – rather than emphasizing – its greatest horror. Cannibalism becomes depoliticized and dislodged as a central theme; it is still there, to be sure, but the film no longer needs it in order to function. Despite again focusing on the victimization of Japanese soldiers – much more intensely than in Ichikawa’s film – one cannot easily claim that the film chooses to prioritize it over the suffering of others, for distinctions of victimhood are made redundant once more. Such is the

Cannibalism and War Victimhood  79 pure concentration of its focus: The Fires on the Plain remake strives for nothing beyond a relentless sensory experience of the chaos, violence, and trauma of war. Whether this strategy is effective or meaningful is a matter for debate, and questions remain about the relative absence of Japanese atrocities. But in Tsukamoto’s vision, cannibalism becomes an equal part of a tapestry of horrors to which none are immune; every soldier, without exception, becomes capable of theft, murder, and eating the flesh that Tamura refused in Ichikawa’s film.

Cannibalism in Hindsight: Under the Flag of the Rising Sun and The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On Fukasaku’s Under the Flag of the Rising Sun is set twenty-six years after the war and begins with Togashi Sakie’s (Hidari Sachiko) annual visit to the Ministry of Welfare to apply for a war widow’s pension. Her application is rejected yet again; she is ineligible to receive benefits because her husband, Sergeant Togashi Katsuo (Tanba Tetsurō), was executed in New Guinea for desertion, although no record of a court martial exists. The real reason for her visits, however, is simply to learn the truth, and on this occasion her pleas are heard by a sympathetic bureaucrat who hands her the names of four veterans from her husband’s regiment. Sakie tracks down each of the men (she also visits a fifth veteran after a tipoff) and they recall contradicting accounts of her husband’s final days. These are depicted in wartime flashbacks of varying reliability, ranging from stories of a heroic man who died valiantly in battle, to a deserter who murdered and cannibalized other Japanese soldiers. Fukasaku employs a vast array of techniques to depict this fragmented and ambiguous narrative, through which the concept of truth becomes fluid and distinctions between victim and victimizer become unstable. These techniques – including the use of color and black-and-white cinematography, freeze frames, archival images, graphics, and captions – become increasingly sophisticated as the film progresses. For example, captions and archival images are used to provide historical context toward the start of the film, but are later used to illustrate portions of the veterans’ accounts as if corroborating them, even though most of the accounts turn out to be rife with misinformation and lies. Similarly, Fukasaku initially uses black-and-white and color cinematography in a conventional manner – to denote the past and the present, respectively – but later shifts between them when only a negligible chronological shift has occurred, or to punctuate dramatic (usually violent) moments during flashbacks. In this fashion, Fukasaku constantly overlaps or collapses distinctions between past and present, fact and hearsay, and objective and subjective representation. Although the film again focuses mainly on the plight of stranded and starving Japanese soldiers, Under the Flag of the Rising Sun transcends

80  Kenta McGrath the linear and narrow narrative parameters of the Fires on the Plain films via its fragmentary structure, through which a wider range of victims and victimization is examined. The abuse of Japanese soldiers by their superiors is predominant, but there are few outright victims in the film – none more so than Sergeant Togashi, who is conveyed equally as victim and perpetrator across the veterans’ stories. Tellingly, Fukasaku rationalized Togashi’s characterization in the context of Japanese war victimhood: Even the author of the original novel wasn’t happy that I had chosen from among his many characters a central character who was guilty of murdering his superior officer, rather than someone who was purely a victim of the state. But I did not want to add my film to the list of war films made from a victim mentality. Although the film was well reviewed by Japanese critics, I think it’s revealing that not a single one of them mentioned that the lead character murders his superior officer. (qtd. in Hoaglund) Other than through this central character, Fukasaku’s desire to avoid a victim mentality is most apparent in the foregrounding of Japanese war crimes. The “inconvenient historical realities” that Stephens accuses Ichikawa of sidestepping in Fires on the Plain manifests here in the massacre of New Guinean farmers and the botched beheading of an American prisoner, and reverberates in a postwar scene where ex-military Police Sergeant Ochi rapes his wife in a fit of rage. Cannibalism has a brief but vital role within this multifaceted narrative, crystallizing as a key theme through which victimhood is explored. In the first instance of cannibalism, Ochi tells Sakie about the execution of a sergeant who may or may not have been her husband. In the corresponding re-enactment, Togashi emerges alone from the jungle and approaches a group of starving soldiers with “wild boar meat” to trade for salt. A suspicious private follows him back into the jungle but does not return, and when Togashi reappears days later with a fresh supply of meat, he is confronted and confesses to the soldier’s murder. In the second instance of cannibalism, ex-Private Terajima admits to having survived by eating the flesh of a murdered officer, after being left behind to die in the jungle by his comrades (including Togashi). The context of cannibalism in these two accounts is markedly different, and Fukasaku pronounces the differences. Ochi’s account frames cannibalism as an extension of the Japanese Army’s degeneracy, particularly as it follows another veteran’s description of the level of hunger and desperation in New Guinea: In the earlier scene, soldiers are shown fighting and scrambling over each other as they chase a rat, and Fukasaku freezes the image sporadically to show them tearing the animal apart with their teeth. However, Terajima’s account of cannibalism is handled with restraint.

Cannibalism and War Victimhood  81 Fukasaku elides the act of cannibalism altogether and focuses instead on its moral implications, lingering on the veteran’s emotional state before and after. In Ochi’s account, cannibalism represents a murderous deed which reinforces the depravity of the starving soldiers; in Terajima’s, it is framed as a tragic outcome of his abandonment, and necessary and forgivable in the circumstances.3 It is significant that these two men are the only veterans that Sakie visits twice, upon learning that they were initially lying or omitting crucial details. It is eventually revealed that Terajima turned in Togashi and the other men to save himself from execution (albeit for a murder he did not partake in), and also harbored the shameful secret of cannibalism; Ochi, meanwhile, was directly responsible for Togashi’s illegal execution by pulling the trigger. How these men deal with their lies reflects contrasting notions of war victimhood and responsibility: Terajima takes responsibility for his actions and confesses despite being a victim himself, while Ochi, a victimizer, lays the blame on others and refuses to be held accountable. When Terajima comes clean to Sakie about his cannibalism and knowledge of her husband’s execution, he is quickly forgiven. Ochi, however, never confronts his lies; when Sakie visits him for the second time, she finds that he has taken his own life. She will never know if her husband had committed cannibalism like Ochi had claimed, but it seems highly probable that the story was concocted. Unable to forget or face up to his wartime actions, Ochi had likely turned Togashi into a murderous cannibal to justify his own role as executioner and deflect his war guilt. The closing shot of the film severely undermines its commitment to refuse a victim mentality: a pile of skulls burning on a fire set to a melodramatic musical score, over which a caption displays statistics of (only) Japanese casualties in the Pacific War. Despite this skewed ending, the film mostly cultivates a sense of uncertainty whereby questions of victimhood remain complex, fluid, and ambiguous – and through which all soldiers become victims and victimizers, alternately or simultaneously, one invariably sustaining the other. While many details ultimately remain inconclusive, the film’s fractured style and structure maintain the possibility that everything told by the veterans may have occurred, if not necessarily in the way that they are told – as well as much worse. Just as it could be reasonably assumed that certain characters committed other crimes not depicted in the film, the harrowing realities of war, epitomized by cannibalism, are made to linger in the imagination beyond what the narrative is able to include. What we see and hear in Fukasaku’s film are but fragments of a small number of stories, which have been forced out into the open. Many of the themes and insights of Under the Flag of the Rising Sun resonate in Hara’s The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, a controversial documentary which forms a fascinating companion piece to Fukasaku’s film. It takes place in the early 1980s and follows war veteran

82  Kenta McGrath and dissident Okuzaki Kenzō, a survivor of the New Guinea campaign from which only thirty of the one thousand members in his regiment returned alive. Okuzaki has devoted his postwar life to attacking war values and bringing to justice Emperor Hirohito, whom he holds personally responsible for the war and describes as “the most cowardly man in Japan” as well as “a symbol of ignorance, irresponsibility and impossibility.” After observing Okuzaki’s various acts of political protest and civil disobedience in its first half-hour, an intertitle introduces the film’s central mystery: Two privates from Okuzaki’s regiment were allegedly executed in New Guinea by members of their own unit, weeks after Japan had surrendered. With Hara and his film crew in tow, Okuzaki crisscrosses the country to question the surviving witnesses, most of whom are now elderly men living in relative anonymity. Arriving unannounced at their homes and workplaces with the camera already rolling, Okuzaki proceeds to interrogate, verbally abuse, and occasionally assault the men to obtain the truth. He sometimes brings two relatives of the deceased privates to coerce the veterans into confession, and when they later pull out of the film, he simply replaces them with substitutes (his own wife and a friend) to “play” the roles. These contentious scenes raise serious questions about the filmmaker’s own practice and ethics: his choice about when to observe and when to intervene, his influence in shaping what occurs in front of the camera, and his use of a protagonist whose sanity is frequently called into question. The veterans’ responses to Okuzaki’s interrogations vary widely, but most share in common a profound unwillingness to bring up events which they have kept hidden for decades. Many of the men are deliberately obscure about their knowledge of the execution – some try to deflect the blame onto other veterans and even back to the victims, while others offer fragments of information or partial admissions of guilt but deny full responsibility by claiming only to have followed orders. As in Fukasaku’s film, there are numerous gaps, inconsistencies, and lies in the veterans’ accounts, and many details remain vague. Yet Okuzaki and Hara steadily expose information about the level of hunger, desperation, and fraternal abuse in New Guinea, eventually leading to startling confessions about cannibalism. By the end of the film, the viewer is left with enough anecdotal evidence to surmise that the two privates were illegally executed, under trumped-up charges of desertion, likely so that they could be either cannibalized by their superiors or kept quiet about their knowledge of cannibalism. Ex-medic Hamaguchi offers no resistance from the outset and volunteers staggering details about the execution and the extent of the cannibalism that occurred in New Guinea, including victims who are not Japanese. In the film’s first candid revelation of cannibalism, he describes how Japanese soldiers ate “white pigs” and “black pigs” – euphemisms

Cannibalism and War Victimhood  83 for white Allied soldiers (likely referring to Australians and Americans) and black New Guinean natives, respectively – but not each other. Ex-Captain Koshimizu provides a somewhat different account when he suggests that victims were selected according to a racial hierarchy: Eating “white pigs” was officially forbidden, but “black pigs” were permitted.4 Later, ex-Sergeant Yamada contradicts both veterans when he insists that cannibalism was prohibited outright, even though this made little difference for he and the other starving soldiers; New Guineans were spared from becoming victims only because they were too quick to catch, so Japanese soldiers were cannibalized instead, with the “troublemakers and selfish ones” the first to be targeted. Although Okuzaki shows far more interest in the fates of Japanese soldiers, these conflicting accounts nevertheless form a vital record confirming the pervasiveness of cannibalism toward the end of the war, and the breadth of victims that it entailed. They also encompass the varying postwar perspectives of cannibalism, which range from regarding it as a desperate food source (and not necessarily involving murder), to an atrocity that was symptomatic of the Imperial Japanese Army’s violence and racism. Although the film unequivocally “rejects the notion that the Japanese were only victims” (Ruoff & Ruoff 42–43), its view of war victimhood is deeply complicated. Indeed, Okuzaki himself is largely unconcerned with identifying victims and perpetrators, as he seems to understand that Japanese soldiers needed to resort to cannibalism if they were to survive the final stages of the New Guinea campaign (he was spared this experience only because he was captured earlier). His quest is driven less by justice – for the most part, he does not seek punishment and is wholly dismissive of the law – than by a basic desire for each man to speak openly about the war and, when required, accept individual responsibility for their actions during it. Regardless of their crime or their professed level of guilt, Okuzaki essentially forgives the veterans when he sees that they are being forthright, or once they offer an apology or some admission of responsibility. Otherwise, Okuzaki’s volatile behavior and the veterans’ wavering responses may throw the viewer’s sympathies into disarray. Many of the veterans divulge harrowing deeds and demonstrate lingering wartime attitudes in their denials, obfuscations, and refusals to admit guilt or responsibility; some are revealed to be perpetrators in the most prosaic sense. Regardless, it is at times difficult not to feel for the elderly men as they are harassed, humiliated, and assaulted by Okuzaki in front of their confused families and Hara’s unflinching camera. Furthermore, several of the veterans claim victim status at some point to justify their actions (or justify not discussing them), as does Okuzaki himself. Despite seeing himself as a victim of both the wartime and postwar political establishments, and exuding a peculiar charm for much of the film, Okuzaki is also a fanatical, violent, and self-righteous victimizer, throughout

84  Kenta McGrath the film and beyond it. His onscreen violence and criminal history – including various acts of civil disobedience, but also the murder of a real estate broker for which he spent a decade behind bars – attest to this fact, as does the revelation at the end of the film that he was sentenced to twelve years in prison for attempted manslaughter after the production finished.5 Through its unnerving protagonist, and more than any of the films discussed in this essay, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On reflects the fluidity and reciprocal nature of war victimhood – and it does so always while remaining rooted in the historical present. Despite the film’s unassuming observational style, Hara is no mere observer of the events depicted, and his own participation plays a major role in confounding received notions of victimhood. Outside of the film, Hara has freely admitted to a degree of collaboration with Okuzaki and describes himself as “not the type of director to shoot something just happening […] rather I like to make something happen” (Ruoff 108).6 It was Hara, for example, who initiated Okuzaki’s investigation in the first place by alerting him to the possibility that the murder of the privates was related to cannibalism (Marks 125). Paradoxically, Hara’s presence in the film can be felt most strongly when he seems absent. When Okuzaki trespasses into a veteran’s home to attack him for evading questions, or assaults another frail veteran who has recently undergone surgery, the viewer may feel ambivalence or even contempt toward Hara as he continues to film and refuses to intervene. The disconcerting irony is that Okuzaki’s and Hara’s often dubious methods are effective. Their dogged pursuit inevitably produces new victims and victimizers, but truths emerge because they are forcibly extracted from the veterans, and because the director refuses to stop recording. Jeffrey and Kenneth Ruoff write that the revelations of cannibalism in the film eventually “fulfill a cathartic function for veterans, victims, relatives and viewers” (34). But perhaps more important than what is revealed is how it is revealed, and what is not revealed at all. For what the film shows most powerfully is the disturbing extent of war denial – the act of forgetting – and the equally disturbing extent of what it takes to remember.

Conclusion Insofar as the acts of cannibalism they show or allude to focus almost exclusively on Japanese victims, these films align with the standard Japanese perspective of war cannibalism described toward the start of this chapter. This is not to suggest, however, that they embrace the discourse of Japanese war victimhood or prioritize the lives of Japanese over those who suffered immensely at their hands. If it is a matter of obtaining equivalence between representations of Japanese as victims of war and as aggressors against peoples of other nations, these films are severely

Cannibalism and War Victimhood  85 restricted by virtue of their specific focus and settings. The situations of war they depict are highly unusual, in that almost all of the violence committed is not by members of one nation against another – as is the custom in both war and war films – but against each other. Yet even within this narrow context, these films make a concerted effort to resist, or outright reject, allusions that Japanese were simply victims. Although there is relatively little room to maneuver within their conventional linear narratives, the Fires on the Plain films offer a context for war cannibalism that goes beyond survival, presenting cannibalism and militarism as deeply intertwined. In the case of Under the Flag of the Rising Sun and The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, the act of looking back at wartime cannibalism becomes an object of inquiry in itself; the unsettling ambivalences which echo across these two films elucidate, rather than obfuscate, the extent of Japanese atrocities. While all of these films differ radically in their form, methods, and scope, they share a commitment to using cannibalism to explore a complex spectrum of war victimhood. James J. Orr suggests that the standard victim narrative in postwar Japan deflects war responsibility and places “Japanese people on the high ground of victimhood; the role of victimizer was assigned to the military, to the militarist state, or to the vaguely defined entity called simply ‘the system’” (3). These films, which focus almost exclusively on members of the military, show how such suggestions can be insensitive to the realities and nuances of the war situation. The people in these films are often victims and perpetrators alternately or, in some cases, simultaneously. They remind us that war victimhood can be assigned in many directions, and that distinctions between victims and victimizers may swap, shift, oscillate, and dissolve according to the context; indeed, these films refute the very notion of a “standard” perspective of war. In a scene in The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, Okuzaki explains the reasons behind his provocative actions in the plainest possible terms: “To reveal the misery of the war will keep the world free from war.” At their most basic level, these anti-war films follow the same hope and strive for the same goal. The taboo of cannibalism is unearthed, framed, and showcased in all its misery and ugliness. It is a corrective for any representations of war which show it as anything other than the worthless slaughter that it is.

Notes 1 A blog post by Asia Policy Point suggests that the controversy may have been sparked by a mistranslation of the phrase “ritual acts of cannibalism” in Morikawa Soichiro’s Japanese article about the book, published in WEDGE Infinity magazine. Morikawa translates “ritual” as fushu, connoting what is “customary, or common practice – which does not really match the nuance of ritual” (“Sourcing Misinformation”).

86  Kenta McGrath

Works Cited Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. ———. War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. Pantheon Books, 1986. Fukasaku, Kinji, director. Under the Flag of the Rising Sun. Toho, 1972. Hara, Kazuo. Camera Obtrusa: The Action Documentaries of Hara Kazuo. Kaya Press, 2009. Hara, Kazuo, director. The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On. Facets, 1987. Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Random House, 2010. Hoaglund, Linda. Audio commentary. Under the Flag of the Rising Sun. Dir. Fukasaku Kinji. 1972. Home Vision Entertainment, 2005. DVD. Ichikawa, Kon, director. The Burmese Harp. Nikkatsu, 1956. ———. Fires on the Plain. Daiei, 1959.  Iriye, Akira. “The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On.” The American Historical Review, vol. 94, no. 4, 1989, pp. 1036–1037. doi:10.2307/1906597. Jolie, Angelina, director. Unbroken. Universal Pictures, 2014. Kumai, Kei, director. Luminous Moss. Herald Ace, 1992. Lofgren, Erik R. “Christianity Excised: Ichikawa Kon’s Fires on the Plain.” Japanese Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, 2003, pp. 265–275. doi:10.1080/10371390 32000156342. Marks, Laura U. “Hara Kazuo: ‘I Am Very Frightened by the Things I Film’.” Spectator, vol. 16, no. 2, 1996, pp. 123–131. Matsui, Minoru, director. Japanese Devils. Japanese Devils, 2001.

Cannibalism and War Victimhood  87 Ōoka, Shōhei. Fires on the Plain. Translated by Ivan Morris, Tuttle, 1951. Orr, James. The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan. University of Hawaii Press, 2001. Ruoff, Jeffrey, and Kenneth Ruoff. The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On. Flicks Books, 1998. ———. “Japan’s Outlaw Filmmaker: An Interview with Hara Kazuo.” Iris: A Journal of Theory on Image and Sound, no. 16, Spring 1993, pp. 103–113. Schilling, Mark. “A Second Look at Bloody WWII Novel ‘Fires on the Plain’.” The Japan Times, 22 Jul. 2015, www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/07/22/ f i l m s /f i l m - re v ie w s /s e c ond -lo ok-blo o dy-w w i i- novel-f i re s -pl a i n / #. XHS3wpMzbOQ. Accessed 7 Jan. 2019. Shimazu, Naoko. “Popular Representations of the Past: The Case of Postwar Japan.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 38, no. 1, 2003, pp. 101–116. doi:10.1177/0022009403038001966. Shindo, Kaneto, director. Ningen. Art Theatre Guild, 1962. “Sourcing Misinformation from Japan’s Right Wing.” The Point, 2015, http://newasiapolicypoint.blogspot.com/2015/01/sourcing-misinformationfrom-japans.html. Accessed 1 July 2018. Stephens, Chuck. “Fires on the Plain: Both Ends Burning.” The Criterion Collection, 13 Mar. 2007, www.criterion.com/current/posts/473-fires-on-theplain-both-ends-burning. Accessed 1 Nov. 2017. Tanaka, Yuki. Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. 2nd ed., Westfield Press, 1996. Tsukamoto, Shinya. “Director’s Comment.” Fires on the Plain Press Kit. Coproduction Office, 2014. Tsukamoto, Shinya, director. Fires on the Plain. Kaijyu Theater, 2014. Walkow, Marc. “Interview: Shinya Tsukamoto.” Film Comment, 19 Feb. 2015, www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-shinya-tsukamoto/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2019. Wisnewski, J. Jeremy. “A Defense of Cannibalism.” Public Affairs Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 3, 2004, pp. 265–272. “Withdraw the Production and Distribution of the Film Whose Contents are Contrary to the truth!” (事実に反する内容の映画の製作と配信を撤回すべき！) Change.org, www.chng.it/ZhxLfL8jRB. Accessed 1 Jul. 2018.

5

“Such a thin slice of watermelon!” Eating and Hunger in Macabéa’s Malnourished World Benjamin Legg

Like consumers of food, consumers of literature in the Global North are often torn between the comfortingly familiar and that which is seen as exotic. We long to both see ourselves on the page and receive messages communicated directly to us, and to expand our palate through exposure to the other. By consuming the exotic, both on the page and the plate, there is a perceived escape from the flaws of development and “the West.” Despite this, that which is most translatable to the extant palate is often most digestible. The Vietnamese banh mi has been such a trendy food item in the United States because it reminds eaters of the many other varieties of large sandwich eaten throughout the country, while furnishing a flavor palette that contrasts with longer established lunch options. In choosing a tofu and mushroom banh mi over a six-inch ham and cheese sub, we believe that we have challenged our mundane tastes and perhaps even made a lighter, healthier choice free from the detritus of development. The banh mi’s mere existence, however, belies a history of colonialism, with French colonists’ introducing the baguette to Vietnam. Its availability to the American consumer is a result of belligerent American foreign policy, and the massive wave of refugees compelled to leave their homeland after the Vietnam War. The lighter option still weighs us down with its history. Similarly, for aficionados of literature, the work of Brazilian author Clarice Lispector presents existentialism through a tropical filter. To read Lispector’s work is to feel a connection to universal discussions of the human condition, while its Brazilian origin others it so the reader (and the literary establishment) feels like it may be overcoming the biases of the Global North. Nevertheless, a close reading of the role of food and eating in Lispector’s penultimate novel, The Hour of the Star (1977), can upset our digestion of the apparent harmony between the universal and the exotic we desire in our reading of Lispector. The protagonist Macabéa’s hunger, and her fraught relationship with food, reflects centuries of colonialism, enslavement, and social injustice. Her hunger is Brazil’s hunger, and its existence builds a bridge between the exploitation of the enslaved and disenfranchised on the sugar plantations of Brazil’s Northeast (home region to both Lispector and her fictional protagonist) and

Eating and Hunger  89 the subaltern status of Brazil in a US-dominated world system. It makes American readers grapple with the influence of slavery on our own dietary habits as well as the pernicious influence of our culinary exports. To better comprehend Lispector’s deep critique of this hunger, one must examine the materiality of Macabéa, a character frequently linked by critics like Hélène Cixous to the intangible and the ineffable, as well as of the character’s diet. In this chapter, I will undertake a close reading of scenes from Lispector’s novel where Macabéa encounters food as well as hunger, and where she compares her own malnourished body to those of the well-fed. My final analysis will then link Macabéa’s indigestion and nausea, specifically caused by excessive consumption of sugar, to discussions of the historical repercussions of plantation monoculture, slavery, and economic injustice in the Northeast’s relationship with food. The past decade has witnessed a boom in the globalization of the work of Clarice Lispector, who, despite her death in 1977, has become the striking, glamorous face of Brazilian letters for many of those uninitiated to its rich tradition. Benjamin Moser and Katrina Dodson, through their respective biographical research and translation work, have increased appreciation of Lispector’s work in the English-speaking world. The work of Moser and Dodson has brought Lispector’s writing, which had been primarily consumed in academic contexts, to a broader reading public. This is a phenomenon documented by Vanessa Lourenço Lopes Hanes and Andréia Guerini, who highlight increases in mentions of Lispector in The New York Times in 2009 and 2015, years which coincide, respectively, with the publication of Moser’s biography Why This World? and the vast anthology of Lispector’s short works, The Complete Stories (44–45), edited by Moser and translated by Dodson. This recent attention in more mainstream American publications often focuses on Lispector’s unique writing style and the universality of her themes; she now appears to be among the few Brazilian authors to participate in a broader system of world literature. In an article on the challenges of globally disseminating Brazilian literature without reduplicating stereotypes, Krista Brune describes Lispector (like nineteenth-century author Machado de Assis), as a rare Brazilian writer granted universal status: “While this desire for an exotic Brazil persists in literature and culture, it is contrasted with praise from cosmopolitan intellectuals for the content and style of writers like Machado or Clarice Lispector” (12). This observation is borne out in Larry Rohter’s review of The Complete Stories for The New York Times, where, apart from references to pineapples and monkeys being among his few direct citations of the author’s work, he minimizes evocation of the “exotic” provenance of the stories in a 2015 review. Similarly, in a 2012 profile of the writer from Bookforum in which Rachel Kushner, though she does dig deeper into Lispector’s Brazilianness than Rohter (or Terrence Rafferty, who barely makes mention of Brazil and the tropics in his Times Sunday Book Review),

90  Benjamin Legg nevertheless, focuses more on specific personality quirks (such as Lispector’s use of cosmetics) and unique narrative technique. In defining the concept of world literature, French critic Pascale Casanova employs the metaphor of a Persian carpet containing many motifs and colors, contributing to a larger overall pattern. We most appreciate such a carpet by considering it as a whole, and not just examining those individual motifs, metaphors for individual national literary traditions (73). While I admire Casanova’s conception of a “World Republic of Letters,” I also believe it is important to understand the specific Brazilian motifs and colors in that republic. By doing so, we can better articulate a critical response to the social injustices, both local and global, that Lispector embodies in her creation, Macabéa. The protagonist of The Hour of the Star is a retirante (migrant) from Brazil’s drought-stricken, starving Northeast, whose emaciated body wanders the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Macabéa, raised hungry by an abusive aunt, is a character that Lispector describes in an interview as “so poor that all that she ate were hot dogs” (Tóibin ix). As she passes life in a poor neighborhood in the center of Rio de Janeiro and suffers the judgment of her co-worker Glória and the abuse of her boyfriend Olímpico, she develops deeper personal consciousness and a desire for self-fulfillment – most fully expressed during a visit to a fortune-teller, which is immediately followed by her demise in a car accident. As the Northeastern girl slowly comes into a deeper understanding of herself and her existence in a harsh world, she keeps flesh and soul together with a diet of hot dogs, bologna sandwiches, coffee, and Coca-Cola. In the same interview referenced in Colm Tóibin’s introduction to Moser’s 2011 translation of the novella, Lispector speaks of the broader ramifications of Macabéa’s story: “The story is about a crushed innocence, about an anonymous misery” (ix). Macabéa, who is described in vivid detail by the novella’s narrator, Rodrigo S.M., is among Lispector’s most memorable characters; readers gain a strong sense of her malnourished, sickly physicality through constant illustrations of physical fragility and poor diet. But Macabéa’s malnutrition goes beyond the character’s corporeal form or even her equally well-documented inner life. Through Macabéa, the reader suffers the hunger of Brazil, and in particular of the Northeast and its impoverished retirantes. Her diet of internationalized and industrialized junk food, and her romanticized idealization of the sweets of her native region, connects this hunger to Brazil’s violent history of plantation agriculture and to global power dynamics and patterns of dependency. She is physically sickened and weakened by the processed foods and sweets that comprise her diet. The thinness and indigestion of this protagonist comment on the material results of poverty and malnourishment, and the ways in which both a colonial mercantilist slave economy and later twentieth-century capitalism have contributed to food insecurity and social instability in more contemporary Brazil.

Eating and Hunger  91 There is a lengthy close reading of The Hour of the Star in the 1990 anthology of Hélène Cixous’s commentary, Reading Clarice Lispector. From the very beginning, Cixous focuses on Macabéa’s diminutive size, and she draws parallels to the novel’s brevity: “In The Hour of the Star, Clarice gathers up what Macabéa is, which is not much. She is just a little bundle, but for Macabéa that is everything” (144). Macabéa’s lack of physical substance confounds Cixous, but it is altogether too common for Lispector and her narrator, Rodrigo S.M., who see Macabéa’s lack of substance as reflective of many other women’s realities. Our protagonist first manifests as a recalled apparition in the beginning of the novella: “Because on a street in Rio de Janeiro I glimpsed in the air the feeling of perdition on the face of a northeastern girl” (Lispector 4). The next reference to this character already refers to the materiality of food and eating: “I know there are girls who sell their bodies, their only real possession, in exchange for a good dinner instead of a bologna sandwich. But the person I’m going to talk about scarcely has a body to sell…” (5). Amid steady references to food and hunger, she emerges as a synecdoche for the broader reality of poor Northeastern migrants. It is through this girl’s corporeal fragility that she embodies the existences of (hundreds of) thousands of nordestinas. Her thinness, rather than a unique trait, is one she shares with others: Like the northeastern girl, there are thousands of girls scattered throughout the tenement slums, vacancies in beds in a room, behind the shop counters working to the point of exhaustion. They don’t even realize how easily substitutable they are and that they could just as soon drop off the face of the earth. (6) Nevertheless, and despite the narrative wanderings of our narrator, an upper middle-class intellectual named Rodrigo S.M., the Northeastern girl on the sidewalk emerges as a unique character. The continued descriptions of the character’s body and its relationship to food will bring her to life and transform the language into a material reality that millions of Brazilians have lived or witnessed. By the time Macabéa first speaks, “Forgive me the trouble, sir” (16), and apologizes to her boss and her readers, the narrator has already referred to eating a number of times. He says that he cannot use a rich, “meaty” language because it will over-embellish her story. The narrator adds, “I’m not going to adorn the word because if I touch the girl’s bread the bread will turn to gold – and the girl (she’s nineteen) the girl wouldn’t be able to bite it, dying of hunger” (7). He describes the alimentary sacrifices necessary to describe such a character – first by referring to the symbolic eating of the Eucharist, “Eating the host will be tasting the flavorlessness of the world and bathing in the no” (11), and then by describing the facetious privation he must endure to write: “…I have to

92  Benjamin Legg feed myself frugally with fruits and drink iced white wine because it’s hot in this cubbyhole…” (14). Once Macabéa herself materializes, food continues to highlight the character’s newfound textual corporeality. She is “cold coffee” (19) and “a thin slice of watermelon” (19). Through his abundance of food metaphors and objectification of Macabéa as a series of unappetizing comestibles, Rodrigo belies his privileged position. In order to create a character, he must undergo a somewhat disingenuous fast. Macabéa has no such agency in her own hunger. Her leisure times are defined by the absence of food: “That the girl on a Sunday without manioc flour had an unexpected happiness that was inexplicable” (28). In that same paragraph, Lispector informs the reader of Macabéa’s abusive upbringing and highlights that worse than the physical violence for Macabéa was the violent withholding of food: “What hurt more was being deprived of her daily dessert, guava preserve with cheese, the only passion in her life” (20). Macabéa’s thinness and her fragile insubstantiality are the primary elements of the character’s physicality in the novel. There is also considerable space dedicated to a description of external physical traits, such as her blotchy skin, as well as her internal health problems: a calcium deficiency, childhood rickets, tuberculosis, and shriveled ovaries. Like her thinness, many of these maladies are exacerbated, if not rooted, in her hunger. Food insecurity is the overwhelming fact of Macabéa’s physical existence, and the need to fulfill her hunger by any means leads to certain forms of self-harm. In a portrayal of her bedtime habits, Lispector coldly writes, “Sometimes before falling asleep she was hungry and got a little giddy thinking about a side of beef. The thing to do then was to chew paper into a pulp and swallow” (23). When Macabéa sees an advertisement for a face cream, her strongest desire is to eat it: There was one ad, the most precious of all, that showed in full color the open pot of cream for the skin of women who were simply not her. Blinking furiously (a fatal tic she had recently acquired), she just lay there imagining with delight: the cream was so appetizing that if she had the money to buy it she wouldn’t be a fool. To hell with her skin, she’d eat it, that’s right, in large spoonfuls straight from the jar. Because she lacked fat and her body was drier than a half-empty sack of crumbled toast. (30) In this poignant passage, Lispector suggests the fusion of the anxiety caused by food insecurity with the self-indulgent false sense of well-being instilled through a culture of mass consumption. For an impoverished character like Macabéa, the indulgence evoked by the consumption of a beauty product is sublimated into the consumption of food. The consuming desire of a twentieth-century capitalist society is overcome by the more primal desire to nourish the body through eating, a deeper

Eating and Hunger  93 necessity that is out of reach for a character as destitute and low on the social ladder as Macabéa. Toward the end of the book, she visits a self-acknowledged “doctor to the poor” (58), who diagnoses her with tuberculosis. At the beginning of their consultation he asks her about her diet, and it is here where we learn that it mostly consists of hot dogs, bologna sandwiches, coffee, and soft drinks. The doctor pretends to believe it is a fad diet: “[He] took a good look at her and was well aware that she wasn’t on a diet. But it was more comfortable to keep insisting that she shouldn’t diet to lose weight” (58). He goes on and scolds her, “This whole thing about the hot dog diet is pure neurosis and what you need is to see a psychoanalyst!” (58). At the end, in a gesture that further emphasizes both the doctor’s inability to face the inequality of his society and Macabéa’s low social position, he prescribes that she prepare “a nice Italian spaghetti” when she does not know what to eat, and adds that this regimen helped him to grow his own belly (59). A Northeastern girl newly arrived in Rio de Janeiro would have little knowledge of the immigrant cuisines encountered in Brazil’s industrialized heartland, and sure enough, Macabéa responds to the doctor by asking if spaghetti is good. Though Macabéa’s thinness is unequivocally linked to poor health and ugliness in Rodrigo’s narration, Lispector also uses Macabéa’s body both to critique female beauty standards upheld in many industrialized societies and to emphasize the fact that Brazil and other peripheral nations are merely masking their problems by following such standards. The doctor’s ruse, equating an impoverished woman’s malnourishment with the disordered eating of an economically secure woman in the metropolis, crystallizes Brazilian literary critic Roberto Schwarz’s theory of “misplaced ideas” as it pertains to Brazil. In a 1973 essay on the work of José de Alencar and Machado de Assis, Schwarz conceives a Brazil in which forward-thinking ideologies from Europe, and later the United States, are fated to serve as no more than intellectual window dressing on a society originating from the violence of slavery and class hierarchy. Positivist “order and progress” could not overcome the hierarchical violence inherent to Brazilian society, and Macabéa’s “fad dieting” is one more such misplaced idea, a mask over the harsh poverty of her, and by extension, Brazil’s, existence. Critics Anna Krugovoy Silver and Gillian Beer link the eating disorder anorexia nervosa with gender norms in their study of Victorian British literature. They question, “Why, also, does the disease primarily affect white middleand upper-class women rather than poor women or women of African descent, who might have similar dynamics?” (Silver 6). As a response, they summarize, “Cultural explanations of anorexia vary, but they all posit that the disease is in some sense a distillation of specific ideologies about femininity and its relationship to appetite” (6). This summary expands on a citation they provide from anorexia nervosa expert Susan

94  Benjamin Legg Bordo: “The psychopathologies that develop within a culture, far from being anomalies or aberrations, [are] characteristic expressions of that culture… the crystallization, indeed, of much that is wrong with it” (3). In the case of Macabéa, we see in her struggles with food and eating the physical results of economic injustice, while in her doctor’s disordered response we encounter Brazilian society’s anxieties around that injustice and its status on the global periphery. This deluded doctor is a fat man, and his cursory examination of Macabéa is one of several awkward confrontations with the well-fed that pepper the character’s existence. The drama with Glória, her co-worker, is another such example. Their relationship may be defined through Macabéa’s association of ugliness with thinness and fatness with beauty, thus asserting that well-fed people are beautiful and more successful in love. Malnourished Macabéa is perceived by both the narrator and Glória as ugly; at one point, Glória even jabs, “… does being ugly hurt?” (53). For Macabéa, and the reader, ugliness is intimately linked with poverty and malnourishment, and while our narrator beautifies her more in his descriptions as his affection grows, we are never deluded to believe that Macabéa is a conventional beauty. Because of her malnutrition, fat is Macabéa’s ideal, which leads her to admire her co-worker, a plump butcher’s daughter. Lispector writes: Glória was a fanfare of existence. And it must have been all because Glória was fat. Fat had always been Macabéa’s secret ideal, since in Maceió she’d heard a guy say to a fat girl walking down the street: ‘your flesh is fresh!’ From then on she’d aspired to fleshiness… (52) Macabéa is not alone in praising Glória’s flesh. Olímpico, Macabéa’s ex-boyfriend, also admires Glória’s access to “… a hot meal at the same hour every day” (51) as well as her connection to butchery, a trade that provokes both his hunger for food and his thirst for blood. Despite her attraction to food and her desire to grow fat, Macabéa’s relationship to food is fraught with rejection, but psychological and physical, as illustrated in the visceral descriptions of the character’s indigestion. The very cure for Macabéa’s malnourishment sickens her the most. Lispector writes many passages in which Macabéa’s relationship with food is disordered and food is toxic to the character. When Olímpico breaks off his relationship with Macabéa, he tells her, “You have the face of someone who ate something and didn’t like it” (43). Although she needs to eat more, Macabéa perceives danger in food. Some of her abusive aunt’s advice was alimentary in nature: “Speaking of hens, the girl sometimes ate a hardboiled egg in a snack bar. But her aunt had taught her that eggs were bad for the liver. So she obediently got sick, feeling pains on her left side opposite her liver” (25). Her childhood trauma at the hands of her aunt has manifested itself both psychologically and

Eating and Hunger  95 physically in her relationship to the egg, among the most innocuous of foods. In addition to her aunt’s violent inculcation of caution over the potentially insalubrious nature of some foods, broader memories of hunger fuel some of Macabéa’s trauma-fueled suspicion of eating. Lispector writes: I forgot to say that sometimes the typist was nauseated by the thought of food. This came from when she was little and discovered she had eaten fried cat. It frightened her forever more. She lost her appetite, all she had was the great hunger. It seemed to her that she’s committed a crime and that she’s eaten a fried angel, its wings snapping between her teeth. (31) The idea of accidentally eating cat has, with a certain black humor, been consecrated in Brazilian Portuguese, where, to this day, beachgoers and late-night revelers jokingly purchase churrasquinho de gato (cat kebabs) from street vendors who sell cheap skewers of lower-quality cuts of beef or chicken. People still use the expression “comer gato por lebre” (to eat cat instead of rabbit) to refer to somebody who has been swindled, an expression that stems from an era when cat skins were used to create drum heads for the Carnaval season, leading to a cheap supply of cat meat (Marthe). Like much of The Hour of the Star, there is a jarring humor in this passage, as Lispector links Macabéa’s poverty-driven trauma to popular sayings and urban legends reflective of Brazil’s food insecurity. Nevertheless, despite the dark comedy, she also evokes an underbelly of poverty and hardship with this reference to inadvertent cat eating. Macabéa’s traumatic childhood poverty has ruined the act of eating. No food causes worse physical illness in Macabéa than refined sugar. Macabéa loves sugar and sweets, as evidenced by her above-mentioned love for guava paste and cheese, her often articulated taste for Coca-Cola, and her habit of taking too much advantage of the free sugar offered with coffee. We see the toxicity of all of this sugar when she is on a date with Olímpico, who buys her a coffee: Only this time when he bought her a coffee with milk which she stuffed with so much sugar that she almost threw up but managed to hold it down and not disgrace herself. She put in a lot of sugar to take advantage of the opportunity. (46) The excessive sweetness in her coffee is the result of her food insecurity – her concern that such an abundance of free sugar may never again arise – as well as a desire to emphasize the sweetness of her time with Olímpico, her first romantic companion. Though she feels sick, she avoids the waste of such rare abundance. In a later scene, one which triggers her visit to the doctor, she is unable to avoid the inevitable purge. After Glória

96  Benjamin Legg claims Olímpico, she feels some remorse and invites Macabéa to her house for a Sunday afternoon snack. Macabéa is stunned by the bounty of food she encounters in the world of the lower-middle class, “Because amidst the dirty disorder of the lowest reaches of the middle class there was nonetheless the dull comfort of people who spend all their money on food, in that neighborhood people ate a lot” (57). Her exposure to Glória’s food security is among the few instances in which Macabéa develops a deeper consciousness of her social class. She feels that Glória has given her “… so much. That is, a cup filled to the brim with thick real chocolate mixed with milk and many kinds of sugared buns, not to mention a small cake,” and she even steals a cookie when Glória leaves the room (57). After her confrontation with such abundance, Macabéa falls violently ill. Lispector writes, “The next day, Monday, maybe because of the liver affected by the chocolate or because she was nervous about drinking rich people’s stuff, she got sick” (57). It is this illness that triggers her visit to the doctor who denies her poverty by chastising her for going on a slimming diet. Macabéa’s overindulgence at Glória’s house is among the most visceral scenes of Suzana Amaral’s 1985 cinematic adaptation of the novella. In this sequence the camera switches between shots of the coquettish Glória, a paunchy and balding potential suitor brought by her father, and the homely Macabéa shoveling birthday cake into her mouth. The camera slowly zooms in on Macabéa (portrayed by Marcélia Cartaxo) as small pieces of cake fall from her mouth, icing smears her lips, and her eyes glaze over. There is then a jump cut to Macabéa, surrounded by her roommates and vomiting into a bucket, agony in her eyes. When she visits a psychic, Madame Carlota, Macabéa has learned a harsh lesson about her place in the world through her struggles with sweetness. She watches the psychic eat liqueur-filled chocolates, but “… she didn’t covet the bonbon because she’d learned that things belong to other people” (64). Sugar, with its deep institutional connection to historical injustices in Brazil’s Northeast, has taught our heroine to know her place. In order to best understand the Brazilian motif in Lispector’s contribution to discussions of food insecurity in world literature, we must understand the novella’s specific connections to the Northeast of Brazil, locus of the world’s first large-scale sugar monoculture. This region links protagonist, narrator, and author. Regarding the narrator, Rodrigo, among Cixous’s deepest points of interest of The Hour of the Star is the use of a male narrator in a female-authored book, a rhetorical tool to which she attributes great significance. Cixous attributes Lispector’s choice of a male narrator to a decision to abandon herself for the sake of her character: “To work on someone who possesses ‘nonhaving’ to such a point, Clarice tries to dispossess herself of everything, sexual signs included” (153). I disagree with Cixous’s reading of Rodrigo S.M.

Eating and Hunger  97 as Lispector’s having fully dispossessed herself to tell Macabéa’s story. Clarice, Rodrigo, and Macabéa all share an intangible, but undeniable legacy: Northeastern identity. Our narrator, as soon as he first mentions a Northeastern girl on the street, reminds the reader that he, too, spent his boyhood in the Northeast (Lispector 4). Lispector, too, is Northeastern. She was born in present-day Ukraine and, although she spent her most literarily fecund years in Rio de Janeiro, she grew up in the Northeast, including the same Alagoas where Macabéa spent her violent childhood of privation. Earl Fitz writes: Clarice Lispector is not commonly thought of as a Northeastern writer. But she is, and profoundly so. The northeast part of Brazil, where Clarice and her family had emigrated in the early 1920s, always occupied a powerful place in her imagination, her sense of self-identity, and her writing. Present from the beginning, this close and visceral identification with the Northeast, its language, its culture, and its tormented history, would percolate through her middle years as she steadily gained recognition as one of modern Brazilian literature’s most revered author. And, by the end of her life, in 1977, it would flower in her unforgettable final novel, The Hour of the Star. (43) Fitz cites several of Lispector’s shorter texts published in the Jornal do Brasil newspaper in which she writes about her Northeastern upbringing, and he attributes her commitment to “questions of social, political, and economic justice” to her upbringing in the region, which he parallels to Appalachia in the United States (45). He cites comments from the first translator of the novel, Giovanni Pontiero, “Clarice Lispector began to experience an almost obsessive nostalgia for Recife in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, where she spent her childhood…” (46). Fitz also cites Pontiero as claiming that Lispector would visit the Feira Nordestina, a gathering place for Northeastern migrants in Rio de Janeiro that appears in the pages of the novella when Olímpico takes Glória on a date and uses his regional palate to impress and intimidate the carioca (native of Rio de Janeiro) by eating a fiery hot pepper. The Northeast, with its pleasures and its pains, is one of the commonalities between Macabéa and Olímpico. In one of the few affectionate scenes of their relationship, Lispector writes: The couple’s rare conversations touched on flour, beef jerky, dried beef, brown sugar, molasses. Because this past belonged to both of them and they had forgotten the bitterness of childhood because childhood, once it’s over, is always bittersweet and even makes you nostalgic. (38)

98  Benjamin Legg Much like its protagonist’s brutal family background, The Hour of the Star’s major romantic relationship lacks tenderness. In describing both of these dysfunctional relationships, however, Lispector makes explicit references to Northeastern specialties: In the case of the aunt it is the guava preserve and cheese, and with Olímpico, it is this collection of nordestino staples. None of the foods mentioned in that passage are festive, elaborate fare; rather, they are non-perishable subsistence staples, foods available (albeit with diminishing frequency) during the frequent cycles of drought. Descriptions of the starvation diet of the Northeastern migrant are present in other iconic literary works associated with the region, and Lispector updates this portrayal in her discussions of Macabéa’s diet. In O quinze, Rachel de Queiroz’s 1930 novel, she narrates the harsh lives of inhabitants of Ceará state dislocated by drought conditions. De Queiroz takes great pains to describe their meager subsistence diet, discussing the rare opportunities when food is available: Eating was when God was served. Sometimes they stopped in settlement or a village. Chico Bento, at the great cost of subjecting himself to the most punishing occupations, would arrange a cruzado, some brown sugar, a liter of manioc flour. But this was only now and then. If it weren’t for a mucunã root pulled from the ground here and there, or a wild potato that the drought teaches one to heat, they would have all been left by the wayside of those pebble-strewn, red clay roads, on which they trooped along, dragging themselves and moaning. (66–67) In another noteworthy literary depiction of food insecurity in the Brazilian Northeast, we encounter a parallel with Macabéa’s traumatizing fried cat, when the family at the center of Graciliano Ramos’s Vidas secas (Barren Lives, 1938) has to eat its pet parrot; this scene is reproduced in Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s noteworthy cinematic adaptation, one of the first great Cinema Novo films. We can return to de Queiroz’s work for other examples of impoverished carnivorism, as Chico Bento’s family does not solely subsist on market staples and foraged wild plants, but also the carcasses of animals encountered on their grueling sojourn in the backlands. In a particularly noteworthy scene, when the family procures the filthy intestines of a stolen goat, de Queiroz writes, “And on a little fire for gnarled twigs that Cordulina arranged with one of the last matches she carried in the waistband of her skirt, they roasted and ate the guts, unseasoned, dirty, emptied only with their hands” (72). Much like Macabéa’s consumption of fried cat, the scavenging of carcasses and consumption of offal in Queiroz’s and Ramos’s novels evoke the desperation of hunger and provoke revulsion in their readers. Furthermore, the waste meat that nourishes the characters of these works

Eating and Hunger  99 has a parallel in Macabéa’s “hot dog diet.” Like in the United States, urban legends about the mysterious origins of the meat in processed sausages like frankfurters and bologna thrive in Brazil. Macabéa’s meager diet of fast food and soft drinks, punctuated with sickening sweets, can be seen as an updating of the subsistence diet of the flagelados that permeates the pages of 1930s Northeastern Regionalist works. A power dynamic in which Brazil is subservient to an economically and politically dominant United States also emerges in this updating of the alimentary portrait of Northeasterners fleeing from food insecurity. During Rodrigo’s earlier ramblings, he claims Coca-Cola as a sponsor of his work: … the account that soon is going to have to start is written with the sponsorship of the most popular soft drink in the world even though it’s not paying me a cent, a soft drink distributed in every country. Moreover it’s the same soft drink that sponsored the last earthquake in Guatemala. Even though it tastes like nail polish, Aristolino soap and chewed plastic. None of this keeps everyone from loving it with servility and subservience. Also because – and now I’m going to say something difficult that only I understand – because this drink which contains coca is today. It’s a way for a person to up-to-date and in the now. (15) The United States enters Lispector’s portrait of Brazilian poverty through these references to comestibles, a reflection of that nation’s increasing political and economic dominance south of the Equator. The arrival of American-style fast food in Brazil was strongly critiqued by some Brazilian intellectuals, including one of the most important figures in the Northeastern Regionalist movement: Gilberto Freyre. In an article on food in Freyre’s work, Nil Castro de Rocha comments on Freyre’s dismay at the arrival of industrial food processing in Brazil, which he equates to the destructive sugar monoculture of the colonial era, “Nor is Freyre benevolent toward the general process of industrialization. On the contrary: Freyre repeatedly critiques the industrialization of, for example, sweets, lollipops, and hard candies that threaten traditional sweetmaking” (17).1 In a 1954 article from the popular Cruzeiro magazine, entitled “Há quitutes em U.S.A.” (There are goodies in the U.S.A.), Freyre cites Professor Silva Melo as he criticizes the industrialization and homogenization of food culture in the United States. These processes are “… exceedingly hygienic, almost as beautiful in appearance as the illustrated advertisements for canned hams, but for the most part tasteless and without an ‘it’ factor” (24). 2 Freyre attributes this lack of “it factor” to the North American zeal for homogenization, something that he sees as threatening to Brazil. Despite this concern over the processed Yankee menace, Freyre could be surprisingly critical of the conditions that led to weaknesses in Brazil’s traditional diet.

100  Benjamin Legg In the above-cited article, de Rocha expresses near-surprise at the almost-Marxist approach Freyre takes when he describes the negative results of the sugar monoculture on the Brazilian traditional diet, particularly that of Macabéa’s (and Lispector’s) Northeast (8–9). Although Freyre ceaselessly celebrated the Northeast’s traditional cuisine, with a particular passion for its sweets, 3 he excoriated the colonial sugar monoculture’s role in Brazilian malnourishment. In his influential 1933 book, Casa-grande e senzala/The Masters and the Slaves, he describes food insecurity in the colonial Northeast: The diet of the Brazilian colonial family, in particular that of the plantation and even more notably that of the city, surprises us with its poor quality. We are surprised by the evident poverty of animal proteins and possibly albuminoids in general; by the vitamins; by the lack of calcium and other mineral salts; and on the other hand, by the richness of certain toxins. (113)4 The culprit for this historical nutritional scarcity was the environmental and social violence of the sugar monoculture, a stark paradox when one considers the importance of sugar and sweets in the very Northeastern cuisine that was so important to Northeastern migrants Macabéa and Olímpico, let alone Freyre’s privileging of the sugar plantation as the cradle of Brazilian civilization. Nevertheless, as evidenced by the violent indigestion sugar evinces in Macabéa, we can observe the bittersweet nature of that historically important Northeastern product. When we harken back to the short list of Northeastern foods that are among the few common points of reference for Macabéa’s and Olímpico’s relationship, we notice the presence of brown sugar and molasses (rapadura and melado in Portuguese), by-products from the refinement of the very sugar that has sickened Macabéa throughout the text. These two staple food products link the novel to broader global conversations on agriculture, food insecurity, slavery, and malnutrition. In the introduction to Sweetness and Power (1985), his influential study on the history of sugar production, anthropologist Sidney Mintz remarks on brown sugar loaves he encountered in Jamaica: Such sugar, which contained considerable quantities of molasses (and some impurities), was hardened in ceramic molds or cones from which the more liquid molasses was drained, leaving behind the dark-brown, crystalline loaf. It was consumed solely by poor, mostly rural Jamaicans. (Mintz xxi) He goes on to describe similar forms of sugar consumed throughout the Caribbean, and gives its name in Haitian Creole and Spanish, rapadou and raspadura, respectively, cognates to the Portuguese rapadura (xxii). This subsistence food of the poor, the result of centuries of plantation

Eating and Hunger  101 sugar monoculture, is a direct connection between the precarious existence of Macabéa and Olímpico in Rio de Janeiro and tens of millions of similar existences throughout the Americas and beyond. Mintz’s work, although it focuses on British history and colonies, was a pioneering text for highlighting how our eating habits influence socioeconomic conditions for people far removed from our realities. Europe’s appetite for sugar had ramifications on the demographics, social organization, and economies of different societies throughout the Americas. Tens of millions of Africans were enslaved and forced to labor on the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean. Enslaved Africans played a crucial role in the formation of much of the Americas’ culinary habits. Dishes of African origin like acarajé, a black-eyed pea fritter, are so associated with Northeastern culture (and Brazilian culture at large) that they have been officially recognized by IPHAN (the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute, a Brazilian government entity) as a key element of Brazil’s intangible cultural heritage. In the documentation attached to this proclamation, there is explicit recognition of the violent racial and social dynamics connected to this food: “It bears emphasizing that the profession of the baiana de acarajé can be considered one of the hallmarks of the history and resistance of Black people, and particularly of Black women, in Brazil” (Soares 7).5 Similar processes have happened in the United States. Food historian John T. Edge writes: There are hosts of ways to tell the story of the South through food. Bowls of hoppin’ John, mixed with pearlescent grains of rice and dank brown cowpeas, bespeak an antebellum past when plantation agriculture fueled the slave trade and peas provisioned ships for the Middle Passage. (Edge 5) The large-scale plantation monoculture necessary for sweetening the European diet created a regime of racial inequality and violence, and left as its legacy a despoiled environment and a patriarchal power structure where the enslaved and their descendants remained impoverished. Sugar and sugar by-products became one of the few dependable sources of nutrition for the poor of these societies, a reality that led to the malnutrition that even Freyre decried in colonial Brazil, and to current epidemics of obesity and diabetes in many of the more economically developed regions of the Americas. With a twentieth-century shift of global power from Europe to the United States, that nation’s appetite for sweetness and its corporations’ appetite for profit have woven themselves into this global narrative of sugar’s more pernicious effects on the contemporary world. The diet of Macabéa, a seemingly peripheral element to Lispector’s broader narrative of a woman’s self-actualization, is in fact the element that links the novel both to Brazil’s history of social injustice and slavery on the sugar plantation, and to a global discussion on the role of sugar and other edible commodities in the creation and maintenance of violent

102  Benjamin Legg systems of power and repression. The sugar that delights Macabéa in her guava paste and cheese also sickens her. The sugar economy that necessitated the mass enslavement of Africans also, in the view of intellectuals like Freyre, created the conditions for the evolution of Brazil’s unique culture. While she may be such a “thin slice of watermelon,” Macabéa’s diet, with its connections to the rural Northeast of Brazil and to global twentieth-century markets, is the Brazilian motif within a global narrative pattern that speaks volumes on history, trade, and inequality. But Lispector herself highlights for the reader, just how important this eating is to understanding Macabéa and her position in the world when she writes, “She had what’s known as inner life and didn’t know it. She lived off herself as if eating her own entrails” (29). Our appreciation of Macabéa’s inner life and our search for significance in Lispector’s novella are linked to the universal human concerns of sustenance and eating. The novel’s visceral evocations of hunger pangs, gustatory pleasures, and the pain of indigestion manipulate the reader’s desire and disgust. In so doing, Lispector reminds us of the very real repercussions of social injustice and historical exploitation. As we float through the world with the frail Macabéa, the bitter aftertaste of Brazil’s (and the Atlantic World’s) history of slavery and environmental despoliation triggers our indigestion and reminds us that history affects not only the page but the body.

Notes 1 “Freyre tampouco é benevolente com o processo geral de industrialização. Pelo contrário: Freyre critica repetidamente a industrialização, por exemplo, dos doces, pirulitos e balas que ameaçam a doçaria tradicional” (Rocha 17). 2 … primorosamente higiênica, quase tão bonita de aspecto quanto os reclames ilustrados de presuntos em lata, mas de ordinário sem gosto ou sem “it” (Freyre, “Há quitutes…” 24). 3 In 1939, he published Açúcar/Sugar, a book-length essay on the importance of sugar in the development of Brazilian civilization that includes over 150 traditional recipes for cakes, candies, jams, and ice creams. 4 De modo que a nutrição da família colonial brasileira, a dos engenhos e notadamente das cidades, surpreende-nos pela sua má qualidade: pela pobreza evidente de proteínas de origem animal e possível de albuminoides em geral; pela falta de vitaminas; pela de cálcio e outros sais minerais; e, por outro lado, pela riqueza de certas toxinas (Freyre 113). 5 Ressalte-se ainda que o ofício da baiana de acarajé pode ser considerado um dos marcos da história e da resistência do povo negro e em especial, da mulher negra no Brasil” (ibid., 7).

Works Cited Brune, Krista. “The Necessities and Dangers of Translation: Brazilian Literature on a Global Stage.” Comparative Critical Studies. vol. 15, no. 1, 2018, pp. 4–26. doi:10.3366/ccs.2016.0257.

Eating and Hunger  103 Casanova, Pascale. “Literature as a World.” New Left Review. no. 35, Jan–Feb 2005, pp. 71–90. ProQuest. ProQuest document ID: 57637390. Cixous, Hélène. Reading with Clarice Lispector. Translated by Verena Andermatt Conley. U of Minnesota P, 1990. Edge, John T. The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South. New York: Penguin, 2017. Fitz, Earl. “Clarice Lispector as a Northeastern Writer.” Review 92/93: Literature and Arts of the Americas. vol. 49, no. 1–2, 2016, pp. 42–48. Freyre, Gilberto. Casa-grande e senzala. 1933. 41st ed. Editora Record, 2001. ———.“Há quitutes em U.S.A” Cruzeiro. vol. 24, no. 17, 2 Feb 1954, p. 24. Hanes, Vanessa Lourenço Lopes and Andréia Guerini. “Clarice sob a ótica da imprensa norte-americana: o caso do The New York Times.” O eixo e a roda. vol. 25, no. 1, 2016, pp. 37–60. Portal UFMG. doi:10.17851/2358-9787. 25.1.37-60. The Hour of the Star, Directed by Suzana Amaral, 1985, U.S. Release, Kino International, 1987. Kushner, Rachel. “Lipstick Traces: Novelist Clarice Lispector’s Radiant Nothingness.” Bookforum. vol. 19, no. 4, Dec 2012, https://www.bookforum. com/print/1904/novelist-clarice-lispector-s-radiant-nothingness-10575. Lispector, Clarice. The Hour of the Star. 1977. Translated by Benjamin Moser. New Directions, 2011. Machado, Valéria Aparecida de Souza. “Realismo e (des)subjetivação: as várias faces da fome em três momentos da literatura brasileira.” Scripta. vol. 20, no. 39, 2016, pp. 60–80. Portal PUC-Minas. doi:10.5752/P.2358-3428. 2016v20n39p60. Marthe, Marcelo. “Um bocado de história: nas crônicas de O Pais das Bananas, o critic gastronômico J.A. Dias Lopes revisa a origem de clássicos da cozinha nacional—e desfaz mitos alimentados pelo ufanismo.” Veja. 9 July 2014, p.  100+. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A385797453/ AONE?u=tel_a_vanderbilt&sid=AONE&xid=2b366e14.  Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Viking, 1985. Queiroz, Rachel de. O quinze. 1930. 104th ed. José Olympio, 2016. Rafferty, Terrence. Review of Clarice Lispector’s The Complete Stories. The New York Times. Sunday Book Review, 1 Aug 2015, p. 1. The New York Times. nytimes.com/2015/08/02/books/review/the-complete-stories-by-claricelispector. Ramos, Graciliano. Vidas secas. 1938. 135th ed. Editora Record, 2003. Rocha, Nil Castro de. “Culinária e alimentação em Gilberto Freyre: Raça, identidade e modernidade.” Latin American Research Review. vol. 49, no. 3, 2014, pp. 3–22. JSTOR. www.jstor.com/stable/43670191. Rohter, Larry. Review of Clarice Lispector’s The Complete Stories. The New York Times. 11 Aug 2015, C1. The New York Times. nytimes.com/2015/08/12/ books /review- clarice-lispec tors-the- complete-stories-sees-lifewith-existential-dread.html. Schwarz, Roberto. “Misplaced Ideas: Literature and Society in Late-Nineteenth Century Brazil.” 1973. Translated by Edmund Leites and author. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. Ed. John Gledson. Verso, 1992, pp. 19–32.

104  Benjamin Legg Silver, Anna Krugovoy and Gillian Beer. Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body. Cambridge UP, 2002. Soares, Ciane Gualberto Feitosa. “PARECER nº 002/2004.” 28 Oct 2004, Portal IPHAN.portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/ckfinder/arquivos/Oficio_baianas_ acaraje_parecer_DPI.pdf. Tóibin, Colm. “A Passion for the Void.” Introduction to The Hour of the Star. Clarice Lispector. Translated by Benjamin Moser. New Directions, 2011, vii–xii. Vidas secas. Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Luiz Carlos Barreto Produções Cinematográficas, 1963.

6

Multiplicities of Identities and Meanings behind Devouring Characters in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away Katsuya Izumi

In her essay, “An Anorexic in Miyazaki’s Land of Cockaigne,” Susan Napier negates the notion that the witch and her bathhouse in Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning animated film Spirited Away (2001) are sharp satires of capitalist Japan. Napier counter-argues, Rather than a critique of capitalism, the bathhouse suggests a return to traditional Japanese values, encapsulated in its work ethic, its traditional architecture, and of course its time-honored function of providing baths, a culturally specific rite in Japan for at least a millennium. (277) Indeed, while Miyazaki’s use of the traditional Japanese setting certainly creates nostalgia among contemporary viewers of the film for the past, the following essay contends that a return to traditional values does not provide contemporary Japan sufficient opportunity to recover from the loss of its authentic culture. This loss has been reflected in the influences of Western ideologies, especially those from the United States, which include capitalism and consumerism. With this in mind, this chapter closely examines the characters of Miyazaki’s film which carry devouring predilections as well as the film’s traditional Japanese setting of the bathhouse. Through this examination, I will argue that the acts of devouring by certain characters, chiefly No Face and the parents of the ten-year-old female protagonist Chihiro, work to reveal a multiplicity of identities among the devourers. I will then highlight Miyazaki’s implementation of a postmodern approach to language whereby the signified is never fixed sites of meaning. In viewing the story from this perspective, the devourers are revealed as reflections of the absence of the fixed subject and the proliferation of a multiplicity of identities in the vein of postmodern tradition. Each devourer thus serves as a signifier that resists being reduced to any single fixed identity.

106  Katsuya Izumi

Inside the Bathhouse It is easy to consider Spirited Away as Chihiro’s bildungsroman. Moving to a small neighborhood in the western part of Tokyo at the film’s beginning, Chihiro’s family loses its way. The father drives to a mysterious building which has a red wooden gate and identical stone statues on both sides of the gate. Despite Chihiro’s remonstrations, her parents, followed by their reluctant daughter, walk through the gate and the building. When they come out on the other side of the building, they find a mysterious place, which seems like an abandoned theme park. Proceeding further into the area, they come to a street replete with food vendors and restaurants. Chihiro’s hungry parents gorge themselves on the various foods on the counter, and, as a result, turn into pigs. As it becomes dark, street lanterns come on, and enigmatic, ghost-like shadows appear and inundate the streets. In a panic, Chihiro tries to go back to the gate only to find that the large field with grass, through which she and her parents walked, has become like a lake. Before long, a ship arrives, carrying spirits of various shapes and colors who visit the bathhouse. Not knowing what she is looking at, Chihiro tells herself to think that this is all a dream, but she is aghast when her own hands and body start to become transparent. A mysterious boy named Haku comes to the scene and gives her a confectionary medicine so that she can prevent herself from disappearing. Convinced by Haku that she needs to work for Yubaba, a witch who presides and controls the bathhouse, in order to stay human in the bathhouse town, Chihiro gradually reenergizes herself. Her adventure thus begins as she undertakes missions to turn her parents back into humans and to find a way for the three of them to escape from this world. With help from Haku, her coworker Lin, and a six-armed creature called Kamajii, who provides hot water from the boiler room for the baths, Chihiro works at the bathhouse and overcomes various obstacles, eventually succeeding in turning her parents back into their human forms. Miyazaki might be conveying that anyone can grow up to be courageous and strong like Chihiro, since she is of average stature as a tenyear-old girl. It is also important to note that, in this respect, she differs starkly from the heroic protagonists, male or female, of Miyazaki’s other films. Chihiro, however, becomes the unlikely hero directly following her first shifts at the bathhouse. For example, Yubaba assigns her with the difficult task of treating a spirit named “Okusare-sama” (or the “Stink God”), who will later reveal himself to be a famous river god. Covered in mud and garbage, indicative of the water pollution prevalent in the big cities of Japan, the Stink God comes to take a bath. While all the other workers are overwhelmed by his stench, Chihiro, with Lin’s help, gives him a thorough bath and successfully washes away all the dirt and mud from him. In return, the river god leaves Chihiro a medicinal dumpling,

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away  107 with which she later helps other characters, such as Haku. This scene of problem-solving is crucial in Chihiro’s transition from a naive girl to a courageous one. However, the setting – that of the bathhouse – is even more important for my argument. Unlike Miyazaki’s previous films, whose settings are quasi-European cities, Spirited Away chooses the traditional Japanese setting of a bathhouse. For this reason, Napier, for example, has discussed this film as a representation of the nation and a contemporary reaction to Western influence. As Miyazaki states, “it [the space of the bathhouse] is Japan itself” (258), we need to see reflections of what has happened in Japan when we analyze all the events in the bathhouse. A result of its many volcanoes, Japan is full of hot springs, or onsen, which have become the setting of many myths. During the Meiji period, the nation started to build bathhouses so that people could take baths indoors, while also replenishing themselves enjoyably with food and drink. Dogo Onsen (Dogo Hot Spring), which Miyazaki used as one of the models for Yubaba’s bathhouse, is one of the oldest hot springs in Japan. It can therefore be argued that Miyazaki attempts to bring back a traditional Japanese aesthetic by setting his film in a bathhouse. Alistair Swale, however, criticizes Napier’s “culturalist” approach, which “does retain a concern to engage with a past and an identity that are particularly Japanese” because Miyazaki’s past, Swale continues to state, “is a past… that can’t be accessed in any unproblematic way – it is a past that is lost, vanishing, or in the case of Spirited Away, subject to pollution and contamination” (417). Spirited Away, with a nostalgic atmosphere that speaks to an old and traditional Japan, in terms of its setting as well as its characters’ attire, also complicates the site of the bathhouse. This is because Yubaba’s bathhouse is comprised of eclectic elements not readily found in Japanese cultural traditions. While all the bathhouse floors shown are Japanese-style, the top floor and Yubaba’s room have many Western elements combined with Arabic and Islamic elements, such as urns and walls with distinctive patterns. The seemingly traditional setting marked by detailed foreign elements highlights a disconnect within the argument that Miyazaki’s film strictly represents traditional Japanese culture. It is important to note that Chihiro’s father reminds the viewer of the fact that what appears to be a traditional place has undergone modernization through the construction of a theme park on site. At the same time, the bathhouse’s structure also supports the hierarchical capitalistic relationship between Yubaba and the laborers, because her room is situated at the top of the building; meanwhile, the room of Kamaji, who constantly employs his six arms to provide hot water for the baths, is at the bottom of the building. Thus, the setting of the bathhouse, with its facade of traditionalism, does not have a nostalgic and idyllic atmosphere, and therefore, the viewers are compelled to rethink the Japanese traditions associated with the bathhouse.

108  Katsuya Izumi I also maintain that Miyazaki shows a multiplicity of Japanese identities because the setting is actually Japan itself. The film asks of the viewer to reconsider presuppositions about Japanese identity typically associated with the traditional styles of architectures and garments. Besides the cultural mixtures, Miyazaki inserts other structural elements into the bathhouse as a means to disrupt the viewers’ general understandings of Japanese culture. Built in traditional Japanese style, many walls of the bathhouse have latticework with diagonal lines, but the same pattern of latticework is used on the floor of the hallway to Yubaba’s room. The vertical walls and the horizontal floor use the same pattern, as if Miyazaki has tried to create confusions in the viewer’s sense of direction. Careful viewers will notice these confusions of direction when Chihiro plummets with Haku, who is severely injured by the magic spell of Zeniba, Yubaba’s twin sister; they are supposed to fall from the top to the bottom of the bathhouse building, but their actual trajectory changes direction a few times during the process. In this way, Miyazaki seems to reveal his familiarity with the postmodern approach to the notion of a space that appears to be fixed by deconstructing the sense of direction. Miyazaki’s gesture to return to tradition does not reveal the true self of Japan, but only seems to obfuscate it with culturally and spatially eclectic traits of the bathhouse. It is easy to notice that in the bathhouse there are high-speed elevators, an embodiment of modernity, but at the same time, that place has pre-modern elements of visible excrement (the Stink God) and naked bodies, as there is only a thin partition between the bathtubs in which the gods take baths. Because of its temporal ambiguity and eerie spatial allocation, the bathhouse, which has gone through the process of modernization into a theme park, is resistant to the idea that it is a setting used to retrieve Japan’s cultural authenticity and evoke nostalgia. Using all of these eclectic traits of Yubaba’s bathhouse, Miyazaki does not bring us back to the lost past of Japan; rather, he depicts temporally, spatially, and culturally mutable admixtures behind the facade of the bathhouse. To sum up, he reveals the absence of a set Japanese sense of self, and tries to cultivate the viewer’s understanding of Japanese identity. Yoshiko Okuyama names Miyazaki’s incorporation of various elements borrowed from Japanese folktales in the bathhouse community Ikai (which literally means “a different world”) and states: Kawai Hayao (1928–2007) believed that the content of folktales reflects today’s society. As a Jungian psychologist, he thought that by exploring folktales on a deeper level, the world of the unconscious would lead to the examination of contemporary social problems and help us recapture the totality of human experience irrespective of the time in which we live. (102)

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away  109 Besides the folkloric figure, yamamba, on which the depiction of Yubaba seems to be based, Spirited Away incorporates another folkloric character named Kintarō. Miyazaki makes fun of this legendary figure through Yubaba’s son, Bō. The legend says that Kintarō is kind and strong enough to beat a big animal like a bear in the game of sumo and grows up to marry a beautiful princess. In contrast to that legendary figure, Bō always stays in his bedroom, buried in tons of pillows, and never goes out because of Yubaba’s excessive care. Bō’s example shows that Miyazaki is interested in revising the literary tradition by constructing a different identity behind the facade of Kintarō. If Kawai Hayao is right in contending that to scrutinize folktales will “help us recapture the totality of human experience irrespective of the time in which we live,” Miyazaki’s movie, which includes his revisions of the content of folktales, should also deal with the universality of human psychology. Therefore, rather than reading this film’s narrative in the specific cultural setting of the traditional Japan, I contend that Miyazaki deals with more universal and philosophical concepts through the multiple identities and meanings of the characters, as well as the setting of the bathhouse, whose interior designs and embellishments cannot be categorized into a specific culture and time. It is in this context that I discuss the characters of this film with proclivities for devouring.

No Face and His Devouring Act In order to further explain the plurality of identities, I turn to a character in the film who devours but is unable to digest. The character is called Kaonashi, or “No Face,” who enters the film as an outsider because he is neither a spirit god nor a bathhouse worker. Chihiro, who now works for the bathhouse, invites this uninvited guest inside because it is raining outside. No Face starts to feel intimacy with her, but only superficially. Covering his face with a Noh mask (Noh is an important genre of classical Japanese drama), and his body with a black featureless cloth, he embodies the Japanese tradition only in the sense of theatricality and the absence of substance (no visible body or face), along with the fact that he is voiceless. Miyazaki’s naming of this character, Kaonashi, emphasizes that there is no solid identity behind the mask. Just like his use of the traditional bathhouse, Miyazaki uses the character with the traditional traits to make the viewer question the idea of Japan’s authentic tradition, rather than bringing us to the lost past of the nation heavily influenced by Western cultures. While No Face first appears as an enigmatic but docile-looking character, he starts on his rampage after Chihiro rejects his offer of many taglike tickets that can be used to order high-quality bath water. No Face begins to eat everything in his line of sight, starting with a frog, who seems to occupy the lowest rung on the social ladder in the bathhouse

110  Katsuya Izumi community. Miyazaki depicts his eating in a formidable manner with a slobbery big mouth and a big tongue. Only after swallowing the frog can he start speaking, but the voice coming out from his mouth never becomes his. As if he were obsessed with the idea of gaining a certain voice, he keeps eating and swallowing, but across the process, he gradually loses his own shape while becoming enormous. Until the end of the film, he does not know and does not even try to know what he eats and swallows; his lack of knowledge and interest in knowing what he eats is reflected in the speed of his act of eating, which inevitably leads to his indigestion. His devouring acts, therefore, can be compared to the process of Japan’s development since the Meiji period, in which traditional cultural elements were rapidly replaced by Western industrialization, militarization, imperialism, and capitalism. However, No Face’s loss of authenticity does not begin with the act of devouring; rather, he devours because he does not possess an authentic self. No Face’s acts of voracious eating represent both the absence of a solid identity and a multiplicity of identities in his assuming various bodily shapes and voices. In an article published in a Japanese magazine called Daily Shincho, Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki revealed that No Face was supposed to be only a minor character. Suzuki initially thought that Miyazaki’s plot was too simple. Miyazaki, in turn, immediately developed a new idea about No Face, whose body would be disproportionately bloated by gobbling up various items and beings, including the workers in the bathhouse, during a rampage. Reflecting on Miyazaki’s improvisation of this character, Suzuki analyzes the scene: “I think that there are two types of writers: One is the type who consciously analyzes the time and creates; the other is the type who grabs what is at the deep level of that time before they know it while they earnestly struggle with the stories. Miyazaki is the latter.” If Spirited Away is a film centered on the ten-year-old girl Chihiro and No Face, rather than about a semiromantic relationship between Chihiro and Haku, then a close reading of No Face’s actions in the bathhouse reveals a linkage with the film’s main theme, as well as what Suzuki names “the darkness at the bottom of human mind,” with which Miyazaki subconsciously dealt.1 Pertinent to this idea, Napier writes: No Face is perhaps the most intriguing character in the film. Originally intended to be in only one scene (when Chihiro passes it on the bridge to the bathhouse), its role was expanded enormously when the original screenplay for Spirited Away was deemed too long. The creature is exemplary, therefore, of an unplanned element from Miyazaki’s unconscious. (“Matter Out of Place” 304) On one hand, to maintain or recover one’s name seems important in Spirited Away, because Haku remembers his real name at the climax

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away  111 scene; on the other hand, the film is about multiple identities, as the original Japanese title, “Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi,” indicates. When Chihiro signs a contract with Yubaba to work for the bathhouse, Yubaba takes away three kanji from Chihiro’s name (荻野千尋) on a whim and Chihiro becomes Sen (千). Ogino (荻野) is her family name; Chihiro (千尋) is her given name, from which the second kanji is taken away. While Haku reminds her of the importance of remembering her name after she signs the contract with Yubaba, the fact that one can easily forget one’s own name in the film, even with the witch’s sorcery, reveals, or rather reminds, the viewer that naming does not have a fundamental correlation with one’s existence and traits. Chihiro’s change from a naive girl to a courageous one, and back into a naive one, demonstrated by her clinging to her mother when they exit through the tunnel at the end of the film, 2 clearly shows the proliferation of contradictory personality traits, whether active or dormant. If the movie were about Chihiro’s coming-of-age process, Miyazaki would not describe her as a timid girl frightened by the dark tunnel, especially after she went through the adventures of the bathhouse town. Miyazaki’s use of the twin sisters – one is manipulative and the other kind and conscientious – further demonstrates that one’s identity is not just assumed by one person. Speaking about her twin sister Zeniba, Yubaba mentions her own unstable self by saying that she and Zeniba will not be an independent person until combined with each other. There is also a character named Kashira in Yubaba’s office who is depicted as three heads, each of which is a copy of the other. Thus, even on the surface level, one can tell that Miyazaki deals with the problem of identity in this film. There is an emphasis on maintaining or regaining one’s identity when Haku liberates himself from Yubaba’s spell by remembering his original name as a river, Nigihayami Kohakunushi. Acknowledging that Miyazaki makes a conscious effort to place importance on one’s name and identity, I will remain focused on the fact that the film frequently portrays the artificiality of identity. Michael Lucken analyzes the characters’ personalities at a deeper level and contends that the film’s “human relationships… are based on duplicity (expressed, for instance, in the two faces – sometimes friendly, sometimes authoritarian – that Haku and Rin show Chihiro)” (186). In front of the gate to the bathhouse, there is a stone statue of an eerie-looking god who has two faces; the same stone statue is on the road side when Chihiro looks out of the car window before reaching the gate, as if Miyazaki emphasizes that the liminal world in which the protagonist encounters the difficulty of distinguishing reality from fantasy is the world of two faces. The authoritarian attitude of Rin, who becomes Chihiro’s caretaker at the bathhouse, toward Chihiro is often a facade that she assigns herself when they are in front of others such as the bathhouse’s workers, but Haku becomes authoritarian even when he is alone with

112  Katsuya Izumi Chihiro in an elevator. This is why Chihiro later asks Rin if there are two Hakus in the bathhouse. In fact, having the original form of a river, which was buried under newly constructed buildings, he also assumes a human body and a dragon body and frequently alternates between these two in the plot to the extent that his identity becomes ambiguous. After Chihiro and her parents enter the bathhouse town, her father notices and says that someone has tried to “make” a river in the large field. This reference underscores the artificiality of Haku’s identity as a river. Understandably, Ayumi Suzuki reads this film as “Miyazaki’s denunciation of a capitalist mentality, especially in relation to issues we see in post-modern Japan, namely the loss of spiritual value and identity” (first page). In contrast to her political reading to situate the film in a specific time frame, postmodern Japan, however, I approach the film’s problem of identity from a philosophical point of view.

Chihiro’s Parents and Their Devouring Acts Two other characters engage in devouring: Chihiro’s parents. As soon as the family finds many restaurants and various foods on the counter, the parents start to eat without any hesitation and without paying. Although they are clearly punished for eating those foods when they are changed into pigs, Chihiro’s hungry parents, just like No Face, do not seem to care what they eat and thus put as many kinds of foods as possible on their plates. Some of the foods they eat look like sausages and roasted chickens, but most of them are so hard to describe that many viewers have named them “mysterious.” Again, this lack of knowledge may be linked with a Japan that lost its authentic identity while influenced by foreign countries. The act of eating excessively in Spirited Away links the film with a philosophical question if it leads to losing one’s self. When the parents gobble up the foods incessantly, grabbing them with one hand while using chopsticks with the other hand (the father), and biting off the meat of what looks like a whole chicken (the mother), the viewer is aghast when reminded that they are supposed to be wellmannered, middle-class Japanese parents who drive an Audi and carry a credit card. Their identities do not correspond to their actions. Chihiro’s parents turn into pigs not just because they eat food without paying, but because they eat the food of the gods; Yubaba tells Chihiro later that the food was prepared for the gods or spirits who visit there. Yubaba’s bathhouse is for the gods who want to receive comfort and solace and to relieve themselves from tiredness. This indicates that the food No Face gobbles was also cooked for gods. Inevitably, Chihiro’s parents are punished, and No Face, after throwing up everything he has eaten because he takes the medicinal dumpling that Chihiro received from the River God, becomes a character who needs to be educated in terms of daily manners including table manners at the house of Zeniba.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away  113 In Spirited Away, No Face may not be the only character who swallows people; there are human-eating traits attached to the enigmatic human-like and reptile-like workers whose original forms are unknown. Toward the end of the film, Yubaba says to her subordinates, “They [Chihiro’s parents] must be fine fat pigs by now. Turn them into bacon or ham.” The viewer knows that the workers in turn have the eerie desire to eat the humans who stray into their world because Haku tells them when Chihiro is about to start working there, “If she [Chihiro] doesn’t work hard, roast her, boil her, do whatever you want,” and also one of the workers who smells humans says that they smell “tasty.” Haku says to Chihiro that Yubaba changes into animals the ones who stay in the bathhouse without working. On the outskirts of the bathhouse, there is a stable in which many pigs are kept. We can assume that they are humans who have been turned into pigs, perhaps because they, just like Chihiro’s parents, devoured the restaurants’ foods. In the bathhouse, they habitually serve and eat humans who have turned into pigs. The bathhouse workers eat humans only when they assume different species’ forms. Why, then, does Yubaba first have to change humans into different animals by her magic spell? Although the bathhouse workers are aware of the metamorphosis, Chihiro’s parents do not know that they may be eating humans when they gorge on the foods on the restaurant’s counter. In this sense, their act of devouring is a taboo in many senses: they eat without paying; they eat the foods prepared for the gods; and they practice cannibalism because they are humans who are eating humans. Napier also touches upon cannibalism in a more indirect way in Spirited Away: As her parents turn into pigs, there is the very real fear that they may be eaten. Chihiro must rescue her parents not merely from their transformation but also from being devoured. Although the witch Yubaba is figured as a nonhuman, her human appearance suggests an implicit theme of cannibalism, or more symbolically a cannibalistic world where humans feed on each other. This theme will reappear later when the spirit No Face devours the bathhouse attendants in a frenzied rampage. (278) Indeed, Chihiro rescues her parents from “being devoured,” but she cannot rescue them from devouring humans. When Haku leads Chihiro to the bathhouse after the spirits disembark from a large boat, they run through storage rooms located in the dark underground where there are many barrels, jars, and various kinds of fish of enormous sizes. These fish may originally have been humans not only because the fish storage room is adjacent to the pig stable, but also because of Yubaba’s ability to turn humans into various animals. We need to remember that a big head of a fish was on the counter of the restaurant when Chihiro’s parents started to gobble all kinds of foods there.

114  Katsuya Izumi The theme of multiple identities here works as a device to make this implicit cannibalism possible. Humans in this story can assume the forms of different animals, and, as a consequence, the eater cannot recognize the “food” they eat. Chihiro’s father almost swallows the big chunk of meat that many viewers have confessed they cannot recognize. Her parents’ act of devouring unidentifiable foods first cancels out their status as middle-class people who are supposed to be well mannered and eventually cancels out their human status, and marks the moment of assuming the identity of pigs. Viewing her parents who have lost their identities because they eat various unidentifiable foods without knowing the consequences, we can argue that this is a metaphor of contemporary Japan, which has lost its authentic and traditional culture because of various foreign influences. The moments of the characters’ devouring acts in Spirited Away are the moments of revelations that the concept of the solid identity is a cultural construct. As No Face, who has embodied the absence of solid self even before the film’s beginning, changes his physical forms and assumes the voices of the different characters he swallows, Chihiro’s parents lose their human selves and become pigs through their unintentional cannibalism. The multiplicity of identities of the devouring characters is similar to “the festival” or “the carnival” that Napier designates as one of “three major expressive modes” (other two modes are “the apocalyptic” and “the elegiac”) of anime in her Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke (2000). In order to explain “the festival,” Napier elaborates on Mikhail Bakhtin’s similar term “carnival,” which has become prominent in literary studies since Bakhtin published his Rabelais and His World in 1965. Pointing out that, in the Middle Ages, carnivals were the only occasions in which the lower-class and upper-class people intermingled with each other on equal terms, Bakhtin states, “During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom” (7). Critical postmodern perspectives of literary and cultural studies use this anti-authoritarian aspect of the carnival to argue that the solid individual subjectivity vanishes during the carnival. In this Bakhtinian sense, the multiple identities behind the devouring acts in Spirited Away are linked with polysemous relationships of the self and the other, and this link seems to be what Napier finds in the relationship between the animation’s trait of privileging changes and Bakhtin’s “carnival”: According to Bakhtin the ‘carnival sense of the world’ is one predicated on ‘the pathos of shifts and changes, of death and renewal.’ This privileging of change is at the heart of animation, but animation’s narrative structure and themes can also be carnivalesque. In Bakhtin’s view carnival is a liminal period of topsy-turvy that expresses ‘the joyful relativity of all structure and order, of all

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away  115 authority and all (hierarchical) position.’ For a brief moment norms are transgressed or actually inverted. The weak hold power, sexual and gender rules are broken or reversed, and a state of maniac intensity replaces conventional restraint. (All emphases are hers; 13) This is exactly what happens at the moment of devouring and cannibalistic acts or the moment of “transgressing norms.” When No Face swallows the frog, the old self, or lack thereof, of No Face comes to an end, and the new self comes into existence; in other words, “death” is followed by “renewal.” Just like the hierarchy between the lower- and upper-class people during the events of the carnivals in the Middle Ages, the hierarchical relationship between the passive and the active disappears at the moment of the devouring. Although No Face and Chihiro’s parents’ eating reflects the negative aspects of individuals who lose control over their own actions – and, by extension, the loss of Japan’s authentic cultural traditions – their devouring acts are powerful because they are linked with multiple identities that can break the hierarchical relationship between humans and animals, and the upper- and lowercultural statuses.

Postmodern Aspects in Spirited Away Aside from the devouring characters’ multiple identities, a different eerie characteristic of the bathhouse, which is a sign of kanji 油, more fundamentally reveals that Miyazaki might have referred to the postmodern notion that there is always slippage in a word’s meaning. The kanji 油, which means “oil,” is used on the sign of the bathhouse instead of 湯 (kanji for “hot water”), typical for the bathhouses of Japan. Apparently, this is one of Miyazaki’s puns, because both kanji are pronounced “yu” in Japanese, but this goes beyond the mere word-play because of the abundant use of 油. The bathhouse chimney has the kanji 湯, but in many other places, the viewers encounter the other kanji 油: the bathhouse’s front sign says 油屋, 3 which literally means a “store of oil”; street lanterns have the kanji 油; the elevator inside the building has the kanji 油; the guest gods wear Japanese-style bath gowns that have the kanji 油; the hallway to Yubaba’s room has the kanji 油, and so do many doors to her room, her desk, and her chair. The use of this kanji of oil – as if 油 takes over 湯 in the bathhouse – leaves the possibility that the spiritvisitors are either taking baths of oil or are deep-fried. On the one hand, Yubaba wants to give the spirits comfort and solace by preparing various kinds of baths and delicious foods; on the other hand, the kanji 油 imposes an interpretation, at least discursively, that the spirits, as well as the abducted humans, are cooked in oil because of its omnipresence. In an earlier scene when Chihiro’s parents gorge on the foods on the restaurant counter, her mother says while chewing on a fried chicken,

116  Katsuya Izumi “Why don’t you eat too, Chihiro? This is so soft, even the bone.” The foods in the film are really deep-fried. The abundant use of the kanji 油 itself does not bring Miyazaki close to the postmodern slippage of meaning, but it is the combination or the dichotomy of the kanji’s abundance and what the graphic in the film conveys to us that makes us consider the absence of solid identity behind the devouring characters as Miyazaki’s familiarity with the postmodern approach to identity and meaning. In Spirited Away, resistant to being digested, 油 and many other kanji are signifiers without fixed signified; we can only understand or assume that we understand them by using the contexts and often our own respective interpretations. Even with the abundant use of 油, spirits do not seem to take a bath of oil and become foods in the film. When they start taking baths, each bathroom has a partition that says the kind of hot water or its effect, such as “sulfur-rich” hot water and “life extension” hot water, respectively, and Miyazaki uses the kanji 湯 on the partition. Despite the omnipresent 油 in the bathhouse, the bath water from the boiler room does not look like oil on a graphic level. The difficulty of digesting Spirited Away partly comes from this discrepancy between the visual images and the use of Japanese characters. Lucken explains the ambivalent aspects of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and says that the film “is both open and closed, understandable by all and reserved to a limited few who are familiar with Japanese writing, especially kanji, and who make the effort to look beyond the surface of the story” (176–177). When Chihiro walks through the street of restaurants with her parents, the viewers encounter enigmatic kanji that seem to be randomly placed on some signs. A sign on an overhead arch above Chihiro’s family says, “飢と食と会,” but “と会” becomes a mirror-writing respectively, written in the direction that is the reverse of the normal way; only its mirror image would be the normal writing. Still, the strange syntax of “飢と食と会” already refuses to produce any meaning. Another overhead arch sign says, “通丁横丁豚,” which does not make sense in its entirety.4 When the sun sets and the town becomes dark, red lit-lanterns hung up as a sort of marquee in front of a store say, “おでいおでいおで い,” with dark ghost-like figures beckoning from the inside of the restaurant. If you bring the leftmost お to the rightmost and read it from right to left, then it becomes “おいでおいでおいで,” which becomes compatible with the graphic, because “おいで” in Japanese means “come here,” used with the gesture of beckoning. At the same time, the Japanese viewers may be lured to change い into ん to read it as three repetitions of おでん (Oden, which is a type of Japanese stew with various ingredients such as fish cakes, eggs, daikon, and bundles of seaweed) because oden’s pushcart vendors often have red lit-lanterns that say “おでん.” All these signs are impossible to read as they are and there are discrepancies between the graphic and the verbal, unless the viewers of Spirited Away make some changes to the signs.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away  117 What Miyazaki suggests by using the difference between 湯 and 油 may be for “a limited few,” but what the difference suggests is still crucial for understanding his films if Miyazaki, as Toshio Suzuki thinks, is a kind of writer who can grab and express something important about the society almost without making conscious effort to do so. Lucken gives us his astute observations and interesting analyses about many kanji characters such as 目, 眼, 生, 千, 尋, 博, and I do not repeat them here except for 生 in “生あります” (“There is 生 here,” or “We have 生”), the phrase written on one of the signs that comes up when Chihiro and her parents walk into the restaurant area.5 Lucken states, [S]ince the action takes place in an alley filled with shops and businesses, we are spontaneously inclined to translate the sign, which is not grammatically correct, to mean ‘draft beer sold here,’ since ‘draft beer’ in Japanese is referred to as 生ビール (nama biru [literally, “raw beer”]) or simply 生 (nama). Obviously, it is a lure. (178) My question is for whom this sign is written? What does this 生 really mean? Why is 生 so attractive that the owner of the restaurant decides to have it as “a lure”? Once one considers the importance of 油 (oil) that is used for cooking, one feels tempted to read this 生 as “raw,” as in not cooked, instead of reading it as a more proximate signified, “draft beer.” When No Face gobbles many dishes that the workers bring to him, the viewer notices that, except for the sushi rolls, almost all of the foods are cooked. If we read “生あります” in relation to these cooked and “deep-fried” foods in the bathhouse, that particular restaurant says that they have something raw, and that implies the rare status of raw food, which may be hard to obtain elsewhere because of the abundant use of 油 (oil). Claude LéviStrauss in his “Culinary Triangle” explicates the social implication of the raw. Making connections between cooking and language, he says, “If there is no society without a language, nor is there any which does not cook in some manner at least some of its food” (36). The society of the bathhouse definitely utilizes language, and they also cook and deep-fry food, but Miyazaki’s use of some words without fixed meanings seems to be related to the possibility of eating something raw. Speaking about this example of 生 (“raw” / “draft beer”) that carries multiple meanings, we will also remember cannibalism – especially the cannibalism of No Face because he is the only character, among all the possible cannibals in the bathhouse, who swallows the workers raw. Simply engulfing and consuming “raw,” No Face does not digest any singular meaning, and he is assigned no one marker of identity. Consequently, he has to throw up the workers as “raw” as they were on the moment of engulfment. Likewise, the enigmatic words of No Face, “Ah, ah,” which are more

118  Katsuya Izumi like mere sounds with no meanings, may be as powerful a source as the language of Benjamin Compson in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929). If No Face’s cannibalistic and linguistic moments are, thus, potentially the moments of plural identities, his empty self behind the Noh mask is not something that we should lament as an emptied tradition, but it is instead something that we should cherish as the source of creating multiple meanings. It may be up to Zeniba, who is now the educator of No Face, to create multiplicity of meaning without cooking his words – or his language – and thus developing a fixed identity. In Miyazaki’s films, there are often two kinds of worlds: the human world and the world of nature or spirits. As many have noticed, it is difficult to distinguish the good from the evil in his films, but his human world is usually viewed through a critical eye. In Spirited Away, we notice that there is no hierarchical relationship between the humans and the workers in the liminal world that seems to be located between fantasy and reality; while the workers think that the humans stink, they cook and eat humans, presented in the form of different animals. Above all, we need to direct our attention to Miyazaki, who equates the devouring moments of his characters as the revelations of their multiple identities. His postmodern approach to cultural identity is all the more significant partly because it is manifested through our fundamental activity for survival, eating, and partly because he makes ambiguous identities at both ends: the eater and the eaten. Literary and cultural studies about the relationship between food and identity tend to break their monolithic link by denying “we are what we eat.” In Spirited Away, however, the identity of food becomes unreachable, because the food ingredients could be humans’ flesh or animals’ meat. Just like the words on the signs that the viewer sees on the restaurant street, the foods in the film do not have their signified. Although he claims that the bathhouse is Japan itself, there may be a universal, rather than local, philosophy of language and interpretation behind the act of devouring.

Notes

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away  119 Miyazaki might have had in his mind, I still want to suggest the possibility of reading 油 as an indication of oil for cooking because of its abundant use in the film that includes various foods. 4 The kanji that I use as examples here are understandably related to food and eating because they show up in the restaurant street. 飢 means “starving”; 食 means “eating or food”; 横丁 can be something like “food court”; and 豚 means “pig.” However, by using these examples, I cannot say that the signifiers without the signified in this film show the close link between the devouring acts and multiple identities that I have explained in the previous sections because there are many other kanji in this film that are not related to eating or food and that cannot be read in any coherent ways. What I argue with these signifiers is Miyazaki’s familiarity with the postmodern theory of language and I try to rescue multiple identities/meanings or the lack thereof from their status of negative connotations. 5 I only briefly explain the importance of the kanji Lucken uses: 目 and 眼 are interesting because both mean “eye”; 千 and 尋 are important because they transcribe Chihiro’s first name, 千(chi) and 尋 (hiro); 博 is also important because it is read “haku” although Haku’s name in kanji will be 珀, a different kanji. I will explain the importance of 生 in my text because it is important for my argument.

Works Cited Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky, Indiana UP, 1984. “‘Kaonashi wa tōsho, namae mo nai hashiyaku datta,’ Intai wo tekkaishita Miyazaki Hayao no aidea ryoku to Studio Ghibli no shigoto Jyutsu” [“‘No Face at the beginning was a side character who did not even have a name,’ Power of idea of Miyazaki Hayao who withdrew his retirement and the art of work of Studio Ghibli”]. Daily Shincho, vol. 24, May 2017. www.dailyshincho.jp/ article/2017/05241730/?all=1. Accessed 17 Dec. 2018. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “The Culinary Triangle.” Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik. Routledge, 1997, pp. 40–47. Lucken, Michael. Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryusei to Miyazaki Hayao. Columbia UP, 2016. Miyazaki, Hayao. Orikaeshi ten, 1997–2008 [Turning point, 1997–2008]. Iwanami shoten, 2008. Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi [Spirited Away]. Studio Ghibli, 2001. Napier, Susan J. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. Palgrave, 2001. ———. “An Anorexic in Miyazaki’s Land of Cockaigne.” Devouring Japan: Global Perspectives on Japanese Culinary Identity, edited by Nancy K. Stalker. Oxford UP, 2018, pp. 274–284. ———. “Matter out of Place: Carnival, Containment, and Cultural Recovery in Miyazaki’s ‘Spirited Away.’” Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 32, no. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 287–310. Okuyama, Yoshiko. Japanese Mythology in Film: A Semiotic Approach to Reading Japanese Film and Anime. Lexington Books, 2015.

120  Katsuya Izumi Suzuki, Ayumi. “A Nightmare of Capitalist Japan: Spirited Away.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, vol. 51, Spring 2009, www.ejumpcut.org/ archive/jc51.2009/SpiritedAway/. Swale, Alistair. “Miyazaki Hayao and the Aesthetics of Imagination: Nostalgia and Memory in Spirited Away.” Asian Studies Review, vol. 39, no. 3, 2015, pp. 413–429.

7

The Dangerous Vegan Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and the Anti-Feminist Rhetoric of Disordered Eating Laura Wright

Margaret Atwood’s first novel, The Edible Woman (1969), is the story of Marian, a white middle-class Canadian woman, who overcomes an eating disorder linked to the loss of self that she feels at the prospect of marrying her fiancé Peter. Over a dinner out one night, during which Peter orders filet mignon for the two of them, Marian realizes that she has started letting Peter make decisions for her – about the wine and the food – which, she notes, “got rid of the vacillation she had found herself displaying when confronted with a menu” (159). She watches him cut his meat and realizes that doing so is a “violent action” (162): watching him operating on the steak like that, carving a straight slice and then dividing it into neat cubes, made her think of the diagram of the planned cow at the front of one of her cookbooks: the cow with lines on it and labels to show you from which part of the cow all the different cuts were taken. (163) When she looks back down at her own half-eaten steak, she suddenly becomes aware that the meat on her plate was once a living animal, suddenly seeing the meat as “a hunk of muscle … Part of a real cow that once moved and ate and was killed” (164). Marian finds herself unable to continue eating the meat, even as she talks to herself, telling herself that meat is good for her, that everyone eats cows. Nonetheless, she eventually finds herself unable to eat “anything that had an indication of bone or tendon or fiber” (165). Over time, Marian’s aversion to specific foods becomes more pronounced, becoming, by all critical estimations, anorexia nervosa of a specific variety in that “she not only loses the ability to eat anything with a semblance of vitality but is also haunted by the idea that she herself is being consumed” (Hobgood 147). The novel ends with Marian’s apparent recovery from anorexia as she bakes a cake in the image of a woman and eats it with her friend, Duncan. She decides not to marry Peter, but the novel leaves us wondering what other options are available for a woman like Marian, confined as she is by Western conceptions of appropriate early 1960s-era femininity.

122  Laura Wright Atwood’s narrator longs “to become again a carnivore, to gnaw on a good bone” (189), and the novel ends with her finally hungry, eating a cake that she has fashioned to look like her. In her resistance to her own commodification and consumption, she becomes aware of the ways that the bodies of animals are rendered commodified and consumable objects, and she is physically unable to eat them for a period of time; her recognition restores what Carol J. Adams refers to as the “absent referent” (20) – the animal itself – to the discourse of meat. But the novel’s ending is ambiguous, leaving the reader to wonder whether or not Marian, who by the end is “again a carnivore,” will choose marriage and motherhood, or whether there are even any other options available to her. I begin this discussion of Korean novelist Han Kang’s 2007 novel The Vegetarian1 with a brief examination of Atwood’s The Edible Woman as both works assert that a woman’s refusal to consume meat and other animal-based products marks her body and psyche as unfeminine, pathological, and disordered. I consider that both works, despite the temporal and cultural distance between them, leave their vegetarian and vegan protagonists in a position of profound and all too contemporary uncertainty, designating them as what I call dangerous vegans: women whose dietary choices are based on ethical convictions that politically and socially subvert acceptable social norms and gender-based expectations in ways that leave them trapped between empowered vegan identity and pathologized anorexia, in spaces of uncertainty with regard to their abilities to self-determine. With regard to Atwood’s vegetarian characters, Chloe Taylor notes: vegetarianism and compassion for nonhuman animals are thus consistently represented by Atwood in her fiction as a self-defeating persecution-paranoia and a loss of touch with reality. In the semihappy endings of her novels and short stories, from The Edible Woman and Surfacing to “Moral Disorder” and The Year of the Flood, Atwood has her female vegetarian characters overcome their mental turmoil and return to eating meat. (135) Taylor reads Marian’s dietary restriction as orthorexia, noting that for many of Atwood’s female protagonists, “various kinds of delusion that … result in vegetarianism, and vegetarianism is just a quick slide from insanity” (140). In this chapter, I examine the slippage between the categories of vegan and anorexic – between self-actualized ethical mode of existence and culturally sanctioned madness – that marks women’s dietary choices in both fiction and throughout lived history as those dietary choices made by women are policed and critiqued within patriarchal and carnivorous cultures.

Dangerous Vegan  123

Dangerous Resistance in The Vegetarian The Vegetarian is the story of Yeong-hye, a South Korean woman who, as the result of a dream, not only stops eating meat but becomes a vegan, throwing out all the meat, eggs, and milk in the house, an act that is met with resistance and anger by her husband and the rest of her family. The novel is made up of three parts that were originally published as separate novellas. The first, “The Vegetarian,” is narrated by Yeong-hye’s husband, but Yeong-hye’s voice appears in italics throughout. Aside from these intrusions, Yeong-hye’s voice is absent within the novel, subsumed by the perspective speculations of other narrators who seek to explain her actions in the face of her refusal to confess the reasons for her dietary choices. The second section, “Mongolian Mark,” is narrated in the third-person and focalized through the perspective of the unnamed husband of In-hye, Yeong-hye’s sister, who becomes obsessed with a birthmark on Yeong-hye’s buttocks that his wife casually mentions. For her husband, “the fact that his sister-in-law still had a Mongolian mark on her buttocks became inexplicably bound up with the image of men and women having sex, their naked bodies completely covered in flowers” (67). The two engage in a ruinous affair that leads to the destruction of his marriage and a mental breakdown for both of them. The third section, “Flaming Trees,” is again narrated in the thirdperson, but now, the narrative is focalized through In-hye as she visits her sister at Ch’ukseong Psychiatric Hospital, where Yeong-hye has stopped eating altogether and insists that she is becoming a tree, needing only water and sunlight to live. The novel ends with Yeong-hye near death, in an ambulance with In-hye, who has abandoned her son and come to a kind of conscious realization that her sister and husband had “smashed through all the boundaries” (186), ultimately allowing her to move beyond them as well. Yeong-hye’s veganism constitutes an act of resistance so dangerous that she must abandon it in order to remain within the frame of cultural and familial representation. When she refuses, the only option for her is death by starvation. The choice to end the narrative before Yeong-hye’s death, at a point after which she has declared to her sister that she is, in fact, becoming a tree, places Kang’s narrative in a space of limbo – a moment of life becoming and ending, neither of which is fully actualized in the text. In just the few years since the time of the novel’s publication, however, women’s status in South Korea has changed dramatically, with the dismantling of laws that made abortion a crime as recently as April 2019 (Yang) and increased open discussions about sexuality and sexual harassment in the wake of the #MeToo movement. This cultural moment constitutes the space into which Yeong-hye’s sister, In-hye, steps as, at the end of the novel, she abandons her old life, realizing ultimately that her sister’s transformation

124  Laura Wright has liberated her from the bonds of marriage and motherhood, a fate impossible to imagine for Atwood’s Marian. In the first novella, the dream that leads to Yeong-hye’s veganism is of a place “almost remembered” (19) and terrifying: Across the frozen ravine, a red barn-like building. Straw matting flapping limp across the door … A long bamboo stick strung with great blood-red gashes of meat, blood still dripping down. Try to push past the meat, there’s not end to the meat, and no exit. Blood in my mouth, blood-soaked clothes sucked onto my skin. (italics original 19–20) The reasons for Yeong-hye’s rejection of meat and dairy are allusive, even as her recurrent dreams are of trying to escape meat and blood, of “animal eyes gleaming wild, presence of blood, unearthed skull, again those eyes” (41), of “yells and howls, threaded together layer upon layer.” She acknowledges, “I ate too much meat. The lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there. Blood and flesh, all those butchered bodies are scattered in every nook and cranny” (49). These dreams indicate a rejection of the cruelty of slaughter and abuse – her father’s torture not only of a dog that bit Yeong-hye, but of Yeong-hye herself. Her sister’s later recollection that their father abused Yeong-hye, as well as Yeong-hye’s husband’s narrative of his father-in-law hitting Yeong-hye after she becomes vegetarian, mashing a piece of “pork to a pulp on my wife’s lips as she struggled in agony” (47) during a family dinner-turned-intervention, indicates a rejection of the patriarchal control of the men in her life who insist upon her consumption of animal flesh as well as a rejection of a culture in which women have historically had limited agency.2 The fact that Yeong-hye never narrates and refuses to give a reason for her veganism, other than saying “it’s because of a dream I had” (98), forces the reader to accept the rationale of the dream – that her veganism is the result of recognition, of meeting the gaze of the “animal eyes” (41) and being unable to look away thereafter. Carol J. Adams has written extensively about the connections between meat eating and patriarchy, particularly with regard to the association of meat with masculinity in the West. She notes that “people with power have always eaten meat,” and those with power have tended to be men: “women, second-class citizens, are more likely to eat what are considered to be second-class foods in a patriarchal culture: vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than meat” (4). But what are the considerations for Yeong-hye, a woman in postcolonial Korean society, one that has become in some ways defined by its affinity for and prevalence of meat-centric diets that emerged after the nation’s rapid economic development beginning in the 1970s (Hyun-Ju)? In reading The Vegetarian, Caitlin E. Stobie points out a fairly common misreading of East Asian diets as being more vegetarian/vegan

Dangerous Vegan  125 than their Western counterparts, noting that “Westerners tend to imbue those from the East Asian cultural sphere with a mystical sense of organic unity. Some incorrectly believe that Oriental dishes are mostly vegetarian, but the diet is actually fairly uncommon in the Sinosphere,” attributable most often to Buddhist monks (788). She also notes the selective outrage that many Western animal rights activists feel over the South Korean dog meat trade, even as they continue to eat pigs and cows. It is worth noting that vegetarianism and veganism have increased in acceptance and recognition in South Korea, but the shift only began in the early 2000s (Hyun-Ju), even as the concept of plant-based diets in South Korea “is still commonly met with bafflement, particularly when ethical reasons – and not health or religious issues – are behind the choice to go vegetarian or vegan” (Carretero-González 165). Therefore, any reading of meat eating, veganism, and gender in The Vegetarian must consider, as Stobie notes, the “paradoxical co-existence of different ethical terrains within animal rights movements, posthumanism, and critical animal theory – particularly in light of postcolonial studies.” Further, Stobie recognizes that “that which is culturally permissible is rendered acceptable, whereas the foreign practices of ‘others’ are treated with suspicion – even if their rituals and beliefs are actually motivated by the same moral imperative” (788–789). In such postcolonial and meat-centric circumstances, therefore, Yeong-hye’s rejection of meat can be read as a rejection of modernity, of her nation’s postcolonial independence, and of, perhaps, an unconscious refusal of an insidious Westernization marked by an increasingly carnivorous – and cruel – diet. Margarita Carretero-González argues that the novel is not about redemption or transformation but, rather, about a woman with a disease who finds herself, at the end, on the verge of death and that “the beautiful prose almost runs the risk of romanticizing a mental illness, a dangerous tendency,” particularly in narratives about anorexia (176). This concern is apt, but in order to situate The Vegetarian within a narrative history of dangerous female veganism, I want to unpack the specific mental illness to which Carretero-González refers – anorexia nervosa – particularly in terms of the troubling ways that numerous psychological studies treat veganism as synonymous with disordered eating or find veganism to be a prevalent characteristic in people – women in particular – who develop anorexia. Further, if the novel is not about the redemption and transformation of Yeong-hye, it is nevertheless about the transformation of Inhye as a consequence of her sister’s suffering. Therefore, the slide from Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism/veganism to anorexia requires greater scrutiny in terms of “disorder” if we are to fully recognize and understand her veganism as distinct from her anorexia and as an attempt to fulfill a rite of passage that she is ultimately unable to realize. The decision to stop eating altogether, not the ethical veganism that underscores her initial dietary shift, constitutes her anorexia. The anorexia that ensues

126  Laura Wright is due to the lack of attachments to people who are likeminded. Read in this way, The Vegetarian becomes an entreaty for greater acceptance of vegan identity and for greater female autonomy within South Korea.

Eating Disorders I explored the ways that plant-based diets become part of narratives of disordered eating in depth in “Death by Veganism, Veganorexia, and Vegaphobia: Women, Choice, and the Politics of ‘Disordered’ Eating,” the fourth chapter in my 2015 monograph, The Vegan Studies Project, so I will not replicate that work here, except to cover some key points on the problematic policing of women’s dietary choices broadly speaking, and the pervasive narrative of disorder and privation that is often associated with women’s vegetarianism and veganism more specifically. Matthew Cole and Karen Morgan note that the few sociological studies of veganism that exist generally treat vegans “as a subset of vegetarians and their veganism tends to be viewed as a form of dietary asceticism involving exceptional efforts of self-transformation” (135). Because so much contemporary discourse about veganism rhetorically constructs veganism as restrictive, women’s often anti-speciesist reasons for becoming vegan are subsumed by societal narratives of disorder and privation that fail to recognize veganism as a potential form of transformative feminist resistance. Female self-starvation has a long history of being associated with mysticism and extra-human power. According to Arthur Crisp, “Researchers have found case material in the historical literature suggestive of anorexia nervosa over many centuries” (147), which has been more common in women than in men. Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s foundational study, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (1988), discusses the medieval European phenomenon of anorexia mirabilis, prolonged female fasting that was considered miraculous (43), and anorexic women “are perceived (want to be perceived, and perceive themselves) as … special, superhuman, or even sub-human, animal-like beings” (Medeiros 13). Such associative perceptions are clearly at work in Yeong-hye, who, at the end of the novel, believes that she is becoming a tree. But veganism, on the other hand, is marked by none of these assumptions; rather, it is considered a confrontation to peoples and cultures in which the consumption of meat is the norm. In other words, women who nonpathologically refuse to eat meat and animal products in meat-centric societies are policed differently from women who refuse to eat anything at all. Veganism is treated as pathological when practiced by women within social structures that do not accommodate veganism. One could argue the pathology of capitalist patriarchal societies, not the women in them, for their often-violent enforcement of standardized eating.3 For Kim Chernin, there is a clear connection between the act of eating and the “struggle for identity” (xviii), and eating disorders function as

Dangerous Vegan  127 unsuccessful rites of passage for women in societies that do not recognize or condone transformative female rites of passage: “Much of the obsessive quality of an eating disorder arises precisely from the fact that food is being asked to serve a transformative function that it cannot carry by itself” (Chernin 167, my emphasis). Similarly, Brumberg characterizes food refusal as evidence of “mentalities in transition” (99, emphasis original). In the West, anorexia nervosa became an official clinical diagnosis late in the nineteenth century, but it did not gain visibility until the 1960s. Historically, women who suffer from eating disorders have been white, middle- to upper-class, and Western, but that trend is changing. In Asia, before 1990, only one country – Japan – reported the incidence of eating disorders (Nozari), but the number of cases of eating disorders in Asia has risen at an alarming rate since then. In Kathleen M. Pike and Patricia E. Dunne’s 2015 article, “The Rise of Eating Disorders in Asia: A Review,” the authors examine the rise of eating disorders in Asia, consider the role of Asian cultures in their prevalence, and explore the linkages between economic transformation led by Japan and “followed by the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea.” They note that “increases in rates of clinical eating disorders and associated risk factors were observed in South Korea in conjunction with a period of pervasive societal change from the early 1960s through the late 1990s, which was further buoyed by a rapidly accelerating economy” and that “native Korean values may also promote eating disorders, owing to their emphasis on appearance rather than ability or talent as the factor crucial to a woman’s success in marriage and in career.” The authors note an increasingly competitive work environment where women are expected to develop new skill sets, placing them under greater scrutiny by colleagues and, additionally, by themselves. In such cases, “Physical appearance becomes one of several domains in which women ‘measure’ themselves against an aspirational ideal.” Further, they note that “with growing numbers of women pursuing employment and educational opportunities, familiar definitions of ‘femininity’ and conceptions about gender roles are called into question and traditional family structures are subject to change as well,” all of which may be fueling an increase in eating disorders in South Korea.4

Veganism as Disordered Eating At the very beginning of the novel, Yeong-hye’s husband says, “Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way” (11), noting that her “passive personality … suited [him] down to the ground” (11). Because of her decision to become vegan, Yeong-hye’s passivity and unremarkable nature are challenged, and no one in the novel will tolerate or allow her to remain vegan. I contend that it is this refusal to accept her ethical veganism, and not the

128  Laura Wright veganism itself that causes what should have been a positive and healing dietary and lifestyle decision to become disordered to the point of her probable starvation. In a considerable amount of the psychological literature about eating disorders, a connection between vegetarianism and veganism, characterized as a more “severe” form of vegetarianism based on abstention (Kadambari et al. 541), is noted, and a plant-based diet is often characterized as either a precursor to or symptom of an eating disorder. Rao Kadambari, Simon Gowers, and Arthur Crisp’s 1986 study on linkages between anorexia and vegetarianism concludes that vegetarianism “is probably associated with overall dietary restraint within the illness” (544). More recent studies have upheld this assertion, offering such analyses as “although the evidence on the whole is limited and contradictory, it does seem that there is at least a passing association between vegetarianism and dietary restraint and possibly eating disorders” (Sullivan and Damani 265). In The Vegan Studies Project, I wrote about the ways that vegetarianism functions as a kind of cover for anorexics, and I have asserted that claiming to be vegetarian as a way to avoid eating is not the same thing as being a vegetarian for reasons other than dietary restriction. The language of “restriction” gets in the way, here, in that it fails to recognize that vegetarians and vegans often eat more broadly and eat a greater variety of foods than omnivores. Further, I have written about the ways that ethical veganism is largely omitted from studies that purport to explain the connection between not eating meat and anorexia. Veganism, if it is mentioned at all, is treated as a more restrictive form of vegetarianism, but the underlying reasons for vegan women’s decisions to become vegan, or vegetarian, for that matter, are completely omitted from the scholarly explorations of women, vegetarianism, and eating disorders. The sole study that engages with the flawed methodology of previous studies is one done in 2012 by C. Alix Timko, Julia M. Hormes, and Janice Chubinsky, which recognizes “problems with the operational definition of ‘vegetarian’” (983) in a majority of earlier studies that linked vegetarianism and eating disorders. The study by Timko, Hormes, and Chubinsky found that vegetarians – people who really do not eat meat – were less likely than “quasi vegetarians,” or, in my reading, carnivores, to engage in disordered eating practices. The problem with previous studies, it seems, is their reliance on a fundamentally flawed understanding of what it means to be a vegetarian, in that these studies accommodated people who claimed to be vegetarian but who ate animals sometimes or who claimed to be vegetarian as a way to mask not eating at all. Neither of these groups is vegetarian in any real sense. Furthermore, the authors explicitly note that “vegans appear to have the healthiest attitudes towards food” (989), an assertion that undercuts the assumption that vegans are pathological with regard to their consumption. The bodies of the animals that Yeong-hye has eaten, and her refusal to consume animals further, function as an overt recognition

Dangerous Vegan  129 of the suffering of animals, and unlike Marian in The Edible Woman, Yeong-hye does not return to her carnivorous ways, as she instead extends the circle of her empathy to include the natural world via the kinship she feels with trees. And this empathy offers a tacit acknowledgment of the ways in which her own body has been policed and abused by the men in her life, a point realized by her sister at the end of the novel. Therefore, her decision not to eat animals allows her sister to understand her refusal as a confrontation to the men who have hurt her, and the eating disorder that ensues after her initial veganism weakens Yeong-hye to the point of death, as it cannot serve as an act of resistance to her inscription within the patriarchal narrative that has heretofore defined her. The transformative power behind Yeong-hye’s rejection of meat and other animal products is stunted when she develops anorexia nervosa because she has no communal support. The policing of women’s dangerous appetites results in a repression of those appetites, often to the point of starvation.

The Dangerous Vegan In the West, veganism is certainly having a moment. I define Vegan Studies as a “product of the discourse of vegan representation as it is situated within and outside of the three-pronged field of animal studies (critical animal studies, human-animal studies, and posthumanism), animal welfare/rights/liberation, and ecofeminism” aimed at unpacking the “tension between the dietary practice of veganism and veganism as an identity category that is at once created by vegans and simultaneously interpreted and reconstituted by and within contemporary media and art” (Wright, “Doing” xv). And veganism is perhaps threatening the status quo in ways that might mark a shift at a crucial point in the existence of our species. Veganism is disruptive, part of the so-called resistance, and to be vegan poses a very real threat. According to Susan Zieger, Veganism could be a motivating force for left-wing populism … To understand how we – vegans and non-vegans alike – might seize this moment, we must review the economic and cultural forces behind the recent vegan hoopla, and assess veganism’s broader potential to inspire social change. Veganism is prevalent enough to find a place of prominence and ridicule in the current US political moment. When Dennis Kucinich ran for President back in 2000, his veganism, like the rest of his progressive platform, was mocked and misunderstood. Kucinich has said that people did not even know what the word “vegan” meant, thinking it something akin to membership in a religious cult. In 2018, however, the Washington Post heralded him as ahead of his time, the future of progressive politics (Montgomery). And democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination are running on platforms that address climate change,

130  Laura Wright champion animal welfare, and generally all things for which Kucinich was mocked. Bernie Sanders has spoken out against factory farming, and Marianne Williamson has made food insecurity and the dangers of the Standard American Diet talking points of her campaign. Cory Booker is an avowed vegan, even as he has shied away from advocating for veganism more broadly. Mississippi just backed down from trying to ban the word “burger” from plant-based burgers after a challenge in court (Piper), and the dairy industry is doing its best, in the United States and abroad, to ban the word “milk” from being used to denote plantbased milk alternatives (Irfan). All of this agitation is clear evidence that veganism poses a threat, at least to a capitalist system that thrives on animal exploitation, and the language of “threat” characterizes much current media coverage of veganism, generating headlines like “Vegan Threat to Dairy Should Be Taken Seriously Says Farming Expert” (Chiorando) and “Is the Mainstreaming of Veganism a Threat to Your Brand?” (Cansler). In turn, big business is beginning to reconsider the specific wars that they are willing to wage in the marketplace. Fast food restaurants suddenly all seem to offer the Impossible Burger (even as they continue to serve meat), and Disney World has committed to including hundreds of vegan options for guests within the park (Oliver). And this change in the marketplace is being driven by and large by women, who make up the majority of the vegan population. According to Maria Chiorando, “Young women are driving the growth of the vegan movement, according to market analysts cited in a recent BBC report.” Filmmaker James Cameron claims that vegan women will save the world (Pointing), and women are driving the surge in veganism in Mexico (Kat Smith) and in Spain (Hernando). Yeong-hye’s husband considers his wife’s veganism to be “selfcentered” (21), claiming that as far as he is concerned, the only reasons to change one’s eating habits are for weight loss, to get rid of physical ailments, “being possessed by an evil spirit, or having your sleep disturbed by indigestion. In any other case, it was nothing but sheer obstinacy for a wife to go against her husband’s wishes as mine had done” (22). Since her husband perceives her behavior as defiance of his wishes, he is “convinced that there was more going on here than a simple case of vegetarianism” (23). In response to the changes in his wife that he deems as threatening, he rapes her repeatedly, noting that after the first time, “it was easier for [him] to do it again” (38). Her father, too, tries to reclaim control. When Yeong-hye first announces that she does not eat meat, he hits her “so hard that the blood showed through the skin of her cheek” (46). Later, her father tries to force-feed her a piece of pork – while her husband and brother hold her arms to keep her from resisting – but when she still refuses to unclench her jaw, he hits her again. The violence inflicted on her body by the men in her life is clear evidence of the danger that her veganism poses to the patriarchal established order of both her

Dangerous Vegan  131 family and her culture more broadly. Her husband can understand not eating meat if one is a Buddhist monk, but Yeong-hye’s decision not to eat meat and animal products lies so far outside of codified acceptability that it is met with violent attempts to force her back into the position of appropriate daughter and wife. Furthermore, her sister and mother are complicit in the attempts of Yeong-hye’s husband and father, denying her a sympathetic community of women who, unlike her, remain trapped within the confines of their marriages: Yeong-hye’s mother to her violent husband and In-hye to her young son and to a man who does not work, making her the sole breadwinner. Yeong-hye’s transition from woman to plant begins as a metaphor when In-hye’s husband paints flowers all over Yeong-hye’s body and dreams of her with pale green skin, as her “body lay in front of him like a leaf that had just fallen from the branch … The Mongolian mark was gone; instead, her whole body was covered evenly with a pale wash of green” (103). After she is committed to the psychiatric hospital by her sister, Yeong-hye tells her that “all the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters” (150), and later, she tells In-hye of a dream: “I was standing on my head … leaves were growing from my body and roots were sprouting from my hands … so I just down into the earth … I don’t need this kind of food, sister. I need water” (154). As In-hye watches her sister starve, she questions whether she could have done more to stop the abuse that Yeong-hye suffered at the hands of their father, and whether she should have forbidden the marriage of Yeong-hye to her husband, whom she perceives as cold. Through these questions, In-hye sees the error in her past decisions to try to make everything alright for everyone else, telling herself, “Everything would be fine as long as she just kept going, just carried on with her life as she had always done” (169). When the hospital staff tries to force-feed Yeong-hye, In-hye stops them, going so far as to bite the arm of the nurse who is restraining her, as she and Yeong-hye beg them to stop. She thinks of the video of her former husband and her sister, covered in painted flowers and vines, and realizes that “they were trying to shuck off the human” (184), to become something else. She abandons her child, recognizing that “if her husband and Yeong-hye hadn’t smashed through all the boundaries, if everything hadn’t splintered apart, then perhaps she was the one who would have broken down” (186). Sneja Gunew considers South Korea’s status as a postcolonial society and reads the novel as “a sustained allegory of female han – a suffering that is composed not only of individual elements but involving as well the collective suffering experienced by women under patriarchy” (16). Han is a Korean concept akin to a personally felt historical and political awareness that offers a “link between the singular and the plural – historical and social suffering intertwined with individual experience. It also suggests that the social is modified by how individuals actually deal with han” (16). Yeong-hye’s dreams may indeed be about collective

132  Laura Wright suffering, but I would argue that, in addition to providing an allegorical reading of female han, the novel positions this holism in a more ecofeminist space, allowing Yeong-hye’s acts of dietary resistance to function not only as a response to the collective suffering of women under patriarchy but also as the suffering of non-human animals as well as the destruction of the natural world, as ultimately evidenced in her desire to have flowers bloom from her crotch (154) and her attempt, however unsuccessful at the end of the novel, to become a tree. And while she may not be able to survive the current moment of the narrative, she ushers her sister through the space of a South Korean cultural interregnum between a not-too-distant past during which not long ago in South Korea, it wasn’t uncommon for female students to feel embarrassed walking around campus with a physiology textbook. The functions of the body – especially the female body – were embarrassing, dirty, and taboo; a topic that could not be openly discussed (Yang) and a future marked by increased autonomy for South Korean women ushered in by “activism led by young women, from teens to women in their 30s, who have been willing to confront taboo issues head-on” (Yang). Veganism, once treated as such a taboo, has likewise become more socially acceptable, as a result of the challenges to the status quo championed by dangerous vegan women like Yeong-hye. In-hye says to her sister at the end of the novel, “I have dreams too, you know” (187). And unlike Yeong-hye, In-hye may be able to fulfill them.

Notes 1 Kang’s novel was translated into English in 2015. 2 According to Human Rights Watch’s 2019 World Report, “Between June and August 2018, tens of thousands of women demonstrated to demand the government take action against spycams in women’s public toilets and other violations of women’s privacy involving cameras.” Further, until April of 2019 abortion was a crime punishable by up to one year in prison or fines up to two million won (US$1,794), and married women had to have their spouse’s permission to get an abortion. Finally, “the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women reviewed South Korea, and raised concerns regarding the absence of the comprehensive antidiscrimination laws and the low levels of reporting of domestic violence.” 3 An examination of media coverage of several deaths of children whose parents were vegan, as well as media scrutiny of pregnant women who are vegan makes clear the ways in which veganism is perceived as a danger to children when it is practiced by their mothers. For a more comprehensive analysis, see The Vegan Studies Project, pp. 89–96. 4 In addition, there has been a rise in pro-anorexia (pro-ana) websites in South Korea in recent years, prompting increased concern by medical professionals and lawmakers in that country (Han-soo).

Dangerous Vegan  133

Works Cited Adams, Carol J. The Sexual Politics of Meat. Bloomsbury, 2015. Atwood, Margaret. The Edible Woman. Anchor, 1998. Brumburg, Joan Jacobs. Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa. Vintage, 2000. Cansler, Cheryh. “Is the Mainstreaming of Veganism a Threat to your Brand?” FastCasual.com, 3 Jan. 2019, www.fastcasual.com/articles/is-themainstreaming-of-veganism-a-threat-to-your-brand/. Accessed 4 Nov. 2019. Carretero-González, Margarita. “Looking at the Vegetarian Body: Narrative Points of View and Blind Spots in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.” Through a Vegan Studies Lens: Textual Ethics and Lived Activism, ed. Laura Wright, U of Nevada P, 2019, pp. 165–179. Chernin, Kim. The Hungry Self: Women, Eating, and Identity. Harper, 1994. Chiorando, Maria. “Young Women ‘Driving Growth of the Vegan Movement’ Say Analysts.” Plantbasednews.com, 18 Jun. 2018, www.plantbasednews. org/culture/young-women-driving-growth-of-the-vegan-movement-sayanalysts. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019. Cole, Matthew and Karen Morgan. “Vegaphobia: Derogatory Discourses of Veganism and the Reproduction of Species in U.K. National Newspapers.” British Journal of Sociology, vol. 62, no. 1, 2011, pp. 135–153. Crisp, Arthur et al. “The Enduring Nature of Anorexia Nervosa.” European Eating Disorders Review, vol. 14, 2006, pp. 147–152. Gunew, Sneja. “Excess of Affect: In Translation,” vol. 42, no. 2, 2016, pp. 7–22. Han-soo, Lee. “Anorexia Craze Among Korean Girls Raises Concerns.” Korea Biomedical Review, 2 Oct. 2019, www.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView. html?idxno=6532. Accessed 4 Nov. 2019. Hernando, Silvia. “The Vegan Era, or the End of Carnal Pleasures.” El País, 8 Feb. 2019, https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/02/07/inenglish/1549556881_820642. html. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019. Hobgood, Jennifer. “Anti-Edibles: Capitalism and Schizophrenia in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman.” Style, vol. 3, no. 1, 2002, pp. 146–167. Hyun-Ju, Ock. “Korea Turns Corner on Going Meat Free.” Korea Herald, 16 Jun. 2017, www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170616000617. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019. Irfan, Umair. “‘Fake Milk’: Why the Dairy Industry is Boiling Over Plant-Based Milks.” Vox, 21 Dec. 2018, www.vox.com/2018/8/31/17760738/almondmilk-dairy-soy-oat-labeling-fda. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019. Kadambari, Rao, Simon Gowers, and Arthur Crisp. “Some Correlates of Vegetarianism in Anorexia Nervosa.” International Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 5, no. 3, 1986, pp. 539–544. Kang, Han. The Vegetarian. Hogarth, 2015. Medeiros, Paulo. “Cannibalism and Starvation: The Parameters of Eating Disorders.” Disorderly Eaters: Texts in Self-Empowerment, ed. Lilian R. Furst and Peter W. Graham, Pennsylvania State UP, 1992, pp. 1–27. Montgomery, David. “The Vindication of Dennis Kucinich.” Washington Post, 9 Apr. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/04/09/feature/ dennis-kucinich-was-mocked-in-his-presidential-bids-turns-out-he-was-thefuture-of-politics/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2019.

134  Laura Wright Nozari, Elaheh. “The Truth About Asian Women and Eating Disorders.” Cosmopolitan, 19 Feb. 2016, www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/a53979/ the-truth-about-asian-women-and-eating-disorders/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019. Oliver, David. “Disney World, Disneyland to Debut Hundreds of Vegan Options. When are they Coming?” USA Today, 24 Sept. 2019, www.usatoday. com/story/travel/experience/america/theme-parks/2019/09/24/disney-worlddisneyland-vegan-meals/2426690001/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2019. Pike, Kathleen M. and Patricia E. Dunne. “The Rise of Eating Disorders in Asia: A Review.” Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 3, no. 33, 2015, doi:10.1186/ s40337-015-0070-2. Accessed 4 Nov. 2019. Piper, Kelsey. “Mississippi will no Longer ban Calling Veggie Burgers ‘Veggie Burgers.’” Vox, 6 Sept. 2019, www.vox.com/future-perfect/ 2019/9/6/20853246/mississippi-veggie-burger-ban-laws-plant-based. Accessed 4 Nov. 2019. Pointing, Charlotte. “Vegan Women will Save the World, Says James Cameron.” Livekindly.co, 21 Mar. 2019, www.livekindly.co/vegan-women-savethe-world-james-cameron/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019. Smith, Kate. “Women are Leading the Growing Vegan Movement in Mexico.” Livekindly.co, 17 Aug. 2018, www.livekindly.co/women-are-leading-thegrowing-vegan-movement-in-mexico/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019. “South Korea: Events of 2018.” Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org/worldreport/2019/country-chapters/south-korea. Accessed 4 Nov. 2019. Stobie, Caitlin E. “The Good Wife? Sibling Species in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.” ISLE, vol. 24, no. 4, 2017, pp. 787–802. Sullivan, Victoria and Sadhana Damani. “Vegetarianism and Eating Disorders – Partners in Crime?” European Eating Disorders Review, vol. 8, no. 4, 2000, pp. 263–266. Taylor, Chloe. “Abnormal Appetites: Foucault, Atwood, and the Normalization of an Animal-Based Diet.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies, vol. 10, no. 4, 2012, pp. 130–148. Timko, C. Alix, Julia M. Hormes, and Janice Chubski. “Will the Real Vegetarian Please Stand up? An Investigation of Dietary Restraint and Eating Disorder Symptoms in Vegetarians Versus Non-Vegetarians.” Appetite, vol. 58, 2012, pp. 982–990. Wright, Laura. “Doing Vegan Studies: An Introduction.” Through a Vegan Studies Lens: Textual Ethics and Lived Activism, ed. Laura Wright, U of Nevada P, 2019, pp. vii–xxi. ———. The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror. U of Georgia P, 2015. Yang, Sung-hee. “Young Women in South Korea are Driving an Era of Change.” Huffington Post, 18 Apr. 2019, www.huffpost.com/entry/southkorea-me-too-abortion_n_5cb88498e4b09dc528ced991?guccounter=1&guce_ referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig= AQA A AGRi0bEnfhgXa8ysfowm0MuDOdpHy5dHGyOem1PG -IM ZI 1q-h6uUSAyT6P-If VPpBEn94N28nM8yXfYmJG6wdREW84tOiMjmbC 4OZ1RESK9Q8mpVv9XF3gh-LXZV08vl766cL6H5QTnTcMuz6tnMBnb7trgCB5z77uNz-hkjHuL. Accessed 5 Nov. 2019. Zieger, Susan. “The Vegan Resistance.” Publicbooks.org, 26 July 2017, www. publicbooks.org/the-vegan-resistance/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019.

Section Three

Disordered Eating in the West

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

8

Dietary Perversions and Subversion of Nature in Huysmans’s Against Nature Romain Peter

Joris-Karl Huysmans was a French writer from the nineteenth century, generally regarded as the preeminent member of a literary movement known as “end-of-century literature,” or “decadentism” of which Against Nature constitutes a founding work. Yet the young Huysmans was not considered decadent, but primarily a “naturalist”: He was one of the keenest disciples of Emile Zola whose “naturalism” defended a realist literary approach grounded in documentation, scrupulous descriptions, and the refusal of devices and peculiarities common in fiction works. At the time, realism was in vogue: Gustave Flaubert and the Goncourt brothers believed that the role of literature was to propose an artful, skilled depiction of reality. Between 1874 and 1882, under the patronage of Zola, Huysmans published realistic novels, short stories, and prose works which are faithful to these guidelines. But Huysmans progressively felt confined in this narrow framework imposed by his master; his style, even tamed and canalized by the constraints of naturalistic writing, is already characterized by its vivacity, acuity, and extraordinary perceptual exigency, and by its prolific vocabulary. In this novel, Huysmans reconnects – with some immoderation – with everything the naturalistic school sought to refuse, not only on a literary level but also on a philosophical one. The pillars of the naturalistic approach, as defined by Zola in the preface to the second edition of Therese Raquin (2019), are the following: 1 2

The exact reproduction of life excluding any sign of romanticism, hence any imaginary deformation. The aim of naturalism is to reproduce real human lives in their environment as faithfully as possible. The disappearance of the hero as an exceptional character and fate. Zola explicitly wants to describe characters which are submitted to a strict determinism: “I have selected persons, absolutely swayed by their nerves and blood, deprived of free will, impelled in every action of life, by the fatal lusts of the flesh” (Zola, Preface). This principle is profound, philosophically speaking; it implies nothing less than the disappearance of human free will.

138  Romain Peter 3

The withdrawal of the author who must not seek to appear as an inventor or to borrow in his own biography the basic material for his works. The writing must rely only on documentary inquiries.

In Against Nature, Huysmans chooses to brutally violate these guidelines by focusing on an extraordinary protagonist strongly inspired by the author’s own obsessions, and whose general attitude is oriented around a fundamental axis: the affirmation of human free will by the systematic negation of nature and natural order.1 The novel tells the story of a morbid aesthete: Des Esseintes, the last heir of an old blood-tired lineage who decides, after a career of Parisian debauchery, to confine himself to a country house to rest his nerves and escape the mediocrity of worldly life. In this voluntary solitude he will nevertheless become a victim of his own excesses of refinement and exigency; in search of higher perceptual satisfactions and pleasures, he will waver between the various passions – literature, perfumes, cultivation of rare plants, and aesthetic contemplation – which will monopolize him, one by one, until reaching weariness and disgust. He indulges in these passions with a mystical fervor, to the point where it seems accurate to speak of a hypersensitivity mystique.2 This mystique consists in a frantic, fervent quest for intense experiences – both physical and intellectual – and can be divided into three main components: 1 2 3

Search for a maximum sensitive and intellectual satisfaction (hedonistic aspect) Exaltation of human free will (demiurgic aspect) Negation of nature and of any form of natural order (controversial aspect)

Huysmans’s novel is divided into chapters which follow these various activities as they are methodically exhausted by Des Esseintes and lead up to a global failure. Nervously worn out by these pastimes which are anything but relaxing, Des Esseintes is summoned and almost forced by his doctor to abandon his scholarly confinement to regain a more common and healthy lifestyle. The search for rare pleasures thus leads to a dead end. Against Nature had a tremendous impact, which surprised even Huysmans himself, who confessed afterward: Yes, this book has imploded in the artistic youth like a grenade. I thought I was writing for ten persons, working a kind of hermetic book, padlocked for fools. To my great surprise, a few thousand of people sowed at every point of the globe happened to be in a state of the soul similar to mine, disgusted by the ignominious boorishness of the present century.

Huysmans’s Against Nature  139 Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, Oscar Wilde, and André Breton were avid readers of the book, which became emblematic of decadent literature – a dark, desperate, neurotic literature which wallowed in the ugliest aspects of modern life and laments over the loss of sense, traditional values, and religious sensibility which characterize this modern life. For many, the very prose of Huysmans, by its frantic research for intense descriptions and compact images, paved the way to literary symbolism. In French literary classics, Huysmans now occupies an intermediate status. On one hand, he is recognized as a major writer, especially because of his style. The novel is a compulsory study in most French academic literary curricula, and Huysmans entered the “Pléiade” collection in 2019 (collection which, in France, constitutes the unofficial pantheon for writers). On the other hand, his notoriously difficult prose, made of technical or archaic terms, neologisms, and obscure references, confine him to a circle of specialized and educated readers, forbidding him to obtain a greater audience. This detour in Huysmans’s literary career is anything but incidental: The massive rejection of the naturalistic doctrine will be essential to understanding through which perspective we must interpret Des Esseintes’s dietary disorders and perversion in the novel. Our approach will not be strictly a literary, interpretative one. Our aim is to extract from this literary work the underlying philosophical assumptions, the latent conceptual theses and problems, and to elevate them to a proper conceptual level. Huysmans, despite his admiration for Schopenhauer, was not a conceptual thinker. His genius is in the intellectual, affective, and social situations he builds. Our methodology will be to consider Against Nature as a literary form of “problem posing,” which can be transcribed into philosophical problems, and especially here, our aim will be less to contribute to the literary studies on Huysmans, than to highlight Huysmans’s original contribution to the problems of embodiment and human limitation.

Aesthetic and Transformative Functions of Food The prologue of Huysmans’s novel places Des Esseintes at a crossroads, ready to abandon his dissolute life for a more retired one. Huysmans gives not only a short biography of the protagonist but also a list of his most distinctive traits and notable eccentricities. Far from anecdotal, the relation to food which appears in this prologue expresses a state of mind which will progressively change throughout the novel. Food is categorized by two aspects. The first one is the display, the outward and the aesthetic appearance. Huysmans mentions one of the most memorable episodes of the protagonist’s libertine career: a mourning dinner, hosted in honor of a “virility, lately but only temporarily deceased” (27) in which dishes are not selected for their taste or for

140  Romain Peter their gustatory pairing but only for their dark colors in order to create a macabre atmosphere: … turtle soup, Russian rye bread, ripe olives from Turkey, caviar, mullet botargo, black puddings from Frankfurt, game served in sauces the colour of liquorice and boot-polish, truffle jellies, chocolate creams, plum-puddings, nectarines, pears in grape-juice syrup, mulberries and black heart-cherries. From dark-tinted glasses they had drunk the wines of Limagne and Roussillon, of Tenedos, Valdepeñ as and Oporto. And after coffee and walnut cordial, they had rounded off the evening with kvass, porter and stout. (27) Des Esseintes is not interested in the gustatory features of these foods, but only in the aesthetic effect produced by their outer configuration. In that respect, their gustatory aspects and their relation to the digestive process are completely absent. The aesthetic effect intended by Des Esseintes could be entirely achieved without eating the food, which only has to be displayed to the diners, and call for a visual contemplation. For Pierre Jourde, the black color used as a common denominator for all dishes and decorative items symbolizes Des Esseintes’s attitude of indifference toward all the objects of desire. It “makes visible at their surface the negative work operated on things by the subject” (2001, 44). As such, the surprising coupling of profusion and pictorial neutralization is a symbolic and public distancing from earthly pleasures by the protagonist. The second aspect of food is a very strong affinity established between nutrition and sexuality. This affinity is a constant in the writing of Huysmans, who regards sexuality as a need as necessary and urgent as nourishment. In that respect, “drunken women [loosening] their dresses at dessert” (22) are usual elements of the libertine’s everyday life and their available bodies are seen as ready-to-consume dishes. This attitude must be linked to the very definition of the libertine. A libertine is a person who regards sexual pleasure as a commodity, refusing the moral weight traditionally imposed on it by public and religious morality. This literary topos is already well established at the time of Huysmans, who reproduces this cliché in his initial sketch of Des Esseintes’s character as a sign of belonging to the libertine community, a sign which is transparent to the nineteenth-century reader. These two modalities form a distant, superficial relation to food. In the first case, it is an overall effect which is intended; made of heterogeneous components, the importance of food is only visual, and not greater than that of any other set of everyday objects. In the second case, Huysmans implicitly asserts the interchangeability of pleasures, the source of which does not matter as long as they properly satisfy the body. We can synthesize these modalities under a unique term: the “aesthetic function” of food, as even the second case ultimately involves the aiesthesis, the sensitive faculty and the pleasure that can be derived from it.

Huysmans’s Against Nature  141 It is across the novel, as a result of his retreat, that Des Esseintes will progressively discover a new type of relation to food, but not entirely on his own initiative. The protagonist being unable to eat because of the hypersensitivity of his body is a recurring motif. His digestive system has seemingly collapsed at the same time as his nerves; his breakdown explains why he must often take light meals, without meat, or even skip lunches. This intolerance gradually worsens to the point where Des Esseintes becomes near-anorexic. “Near” nevertheless, because the reader discovers that the protagonist’s dietary disorder is not characterized by a stable symptomatic kernel but rather by the mobility of these symptoms. His illness seems to be structured not by stable physical causes but by his intellectual whims. This feature leads the reader to suspect the psychogenetic nature of the disorder and underlines the profound continuity between the physical condition of the protagonist and his various aesthetic and moral doctrines, fantasies, and passions that seem to lead to psychosomatic reactions in a spectacular fashion. One of the most vivid examples of such a spectacle is the “trip” to London, during which Des Esseintes reconstitutes the simulacrum of a foreign trip without leaving France, through the purchase of accessories and the implementation of artificial ambiances. On this occasion he suddenly finds himself able to eat lavishly in a restaurant, even tolerating the heavy meat and rich sauces that his stomach ordinarily refuses. His overactive imagination and enthusiasm thus seem to remove the difficulties caused by a pathology in which coherence can only be found at a psychosomatic level. However, and in accordance with his usual state of mind, Des Esseintes chooses not to simply endure this digestive limitation as a fate, but to appropriate such necessity, to play with it, even to reverse it sometimes, to make it the opportunity for additional refinements and perversions. The reader then understands that the behavioral pattern of perversionseeking, acquired by Des Esseintes during his former libertine life, is still active, and has only been shifted on new objects. Three passages are exemplary on that regard. First, there is the cheesetoast episode. Disgusted by the smell of a meat dish, and burned by the few drops of wine absorbed instead, Des Esseintes goes outside to get some fresh air where he encounters unkempt and messy children eating a disgusting cheese-toast. Huysmans writes, Des Esseintes sniffed the air, and a depraved longing, a perverse craving took hold of him; the nauseating snack positively made his mouth water. He felt sure that his stomach, which rebelled against all normal food, would digest this frightful tidbit and his palate enjoy it as much as a banquet. (169) Regarding the “perverse craving,” the original French text uses a medical term, “pica,” which is a perversion of the appetite characterized by

142  Romain Peter a tendency to eat substances which are unfit for human consumption. “Pica” remains a poetic exaggeration, as the cheese-toast is not inedible, but only too simple, too vulgar for someone as sophisticated as Des Esseintes. It is a clear expression of the aristocratic pathos of the protagonist, who regards as a serious perversion the desire for foods which are clearly below his standards of excellence. He asks his servants to make him the same toast, but the impulse disappears when the toast is ready; Des Esseintes’s desire has already vanished. We can see how Des Esseintes develops a form of perverted desire for despicable foods only by the play of his imagination, even though he should rather pursue easier and lighter ones. Second, the “digester” episode is the occasion for Des Esseintes to engage in a path of progressive elimination of food. Having to deal with his constant digestive problems, Des Esseintes first finds a potential solution: Then, all of a sudden, a gleam of light shone through his distress: he remembered that one of his friends who had been very ill some time before had succeeded, by using a patent digester, in checking his anaemia, halting the wasting process and keeping what little strength remained in him. He sent his man-servant off to Paris to buy one of these precious instruments, and with the help of the manufacturer’s directions, he was able to instruct his cook how to chop some roast beef up into little pieces, put it dry into the digester, add a slice of leek and one of carrot, then screw down the lid and leave the whole thing to boil in a double saucepan for four hours. At the end of that time you pressed the juice out of the threads of meat, and you drank a spoonful of this muddy, salty liquid that was left at the bottom of the digester. Then you felt something slipping down like warm marrow-fat, with a soothing, velvety caress. This meat extract put a stop to the pains and nausea caused by hunger, and even stimulated the stomach so that it no longer refused to take in a few spoonfuls of soup. Thanks to the digester, Des Esseintes’s nervous trouble got no worse. (178) This passage ends quite brutally, and Huysmans does not develop the consequences of the discovery of the digester. Yet related to the next episode, it is clear that the “digester” is the first step in a “dematerialization” strategy toward food, as remarked by Geneviève Sicotte: “Essences, of meat, condensed aliments, wafers and peptone which spice up the menu of the Huysmansian eater reveal the existence of another strategy, which aims to create a food purified from its heaviness and completely cut off from the world” (2001).

Huysmans’s Against Nature  143 Finally, there is the enema episode. Diminished by his unbridled experiments, Des Esseintes must call a doctor, as he is unable to stop the downward spiral of weakening in which he is caught. When Des Esseintes cannot keep the food down, the doctor prescribes a peptone enema. Far from reaching full recovery, Des Esseintes already begins to foment the hijacking of these enemas: ‘How delightful it would be,’ he said to himself, ‘to go on with this simple diet after getting well again. What a saving of time, what a radical deliverance from the repugnance meat inspires in people without any appetite. What an absolute release from the boredom that invariably results from the necessarily limited choice of dishes! What a vigorous protest against the vile sin of gluttony! And last but not least, what a slap in the face for old Mother Nature, whose monotonous demands would be permanently silenced!’ (208–209) Here again, imagination transforms medical necessities to moments of experimentation. Fantasizing about a minimalist way to feed, in which oral ingestion of foods would become obsolete, and replaced by the anal absorption of a nourishing solution, Des Esseintes promptly develops the sketch of a scandalous theology. By referring to the “sin of gluttony” which would be avoided by such a practice, Des Esseintes proposes an even more scandalous solution. To preserve himself from the perversion of natural ingestion, he wishes to completely subvert the digestive process, and to promote the most shameful part of the human body as a new mouth. The reader can easily understand how this experimentation, close to the sin of sodomy, was made to shock the moral and religious sensibility of the time. At the end of the French nineteenth century, religious categories continue to implicitly shape the moral judgments of most people, and as such, the assimilation of the rectum – which evokes excreta and perversions – to a second mouth has a strong subversive potential. Before going further by making etiological assumptions about these eating disorders, it must be acknowledged that this new attitude profoundly upsets Des Esseintes’s relationship with food. The aesthetic relation does not disappear, as we will see, but is rather enriched, heightened by a new layer of meaning. Through his various experiences of fasting and perverting his digestive process, Des Esseintes progressively discovers the “transformative” function of food. It is no longer a question of enjoyment of a certain aspect of food or of pleasure derived from its consumption, but of the capacity to absorb, to metabolize: the possibility of taming and disciplining the body. The relation moves to the register of dietetics – and more precisely, the kind of dietetics which frequently accompanies mystics. Indeed, the mystical quest of Christian saints – to which Huysmans is constantly referring in his works – was often

144  Romain Peter accompanied by a scrupulous concern about nutrition. The “hypersensitivity mystique” thus naturally encompasses this canonical concern. By shifting his relationship to food, Des Esseintes hopes to achieve a more complete effort, joining the body and the soul in a common, multilayer endeavor toward maximum intensity of experience.

Holy Anorexia In addition to the protagonist’s vast array of experiments – incorporated in the endeavor of mystical research for greater pleasures and stronger stimulation, along with the food-related episodes described above – Des Esseintes also conducts experiments designed to intensify aesthetic pleasures in visual arts, music, botany, perfumery, and interior design. This kind of dietetics reactivates well-known mystical patterns which surely pre-exist Huysmans’s work. Long before his conversion to Christianity, 3 Huysmans was a keen reader of mystical literature,4 and his knowledge of the dietary dimensions of the mystique is unquestionable. More specifically, given the extreme food deprivation in Against Nature, one is reminded of the hagiographies of Christian mystics, which often included prolonged, uncompromising fasting. Huysmans even mentions briefly in Against Nature the case of the engraver Jan Luyken who among other eccentricities attempts to stop eating.5 The progressive disgust for usual foods, the allusion to gluttony, and the minimalist fantasy of the enema are literary inventions which all share a common, religious background, and cannot be fully understood without first understanding the Christian mystical models which Huysmans had in mind, and the peculiar relationship they entertain with regard to food. In Holy Anorexia (1985), historian Rudolf M. Bell observes that in hagiographies of Christian female saints – such as Catherine Benincasa – we frequently find depictions of symptoms and behaviors reminiscent of modern cases of anorexia. For Bell, the mystics displaying these symptoms were presumably women who had developed dietary disorders for reasons unrelated to religion, and which likely derived from the state of subservience imposed on women in a strongly patriarchal society. It led some women to transfer their desire for emancipation into a more physical independence – the independence regarding food, which can be more easily achieved by an effort of will. What happens across these hagiographies, then, is a strategic coupling between the desire for emancipation and religion. To this end, it is important to transcribe Bell at length: Among an unknowable total number of medieval anorexics probably only a small percentage managed to convince parents and then church officials that their strange behavior was inspired by God. Clearly it required enormous charisma and outward self-confidence

Huysmans’s Against Nature  145 (despite inner doubts that they never eradicated completely) to initiate and then to sustain such a lofty claim. The few who did so successfully quickly became objects of awe and reverence, people who seemed to exercise the power and might of carrying forth God’s work and of knowing His will. Their anorexia came to be seen as part of a wider pattern of heroic, ascetic masochism amply justified in the literature of radical Christian religiosity. (21) In this way the mystic progressively manages to upset the rules of religious and patriarchal societies to her own advantage, forcing religious representatives to acknowledge the divine character of her trouble. As explained by Ida Magli, on which Bell grounds his own inquiry, “Like a child who obstinately repeats his play so that it becomes real, within monastic discipline a woman becomes master of the cultural rules of which she has been a passive object and thereby discovers her original potential in all its significance” (55). What was originally a reaction of powerlessness toward male domination became an opportunity to acquire a position of dominance when strategically inserted in the fabric of mystical practices: a position which cannot be denied by religious patriarchy, as it would betray its own dogmas. This point will be of major importance for my analysis; in certain circumstances, a reaction grounded in powerlessness can be subverted into an affirmation of the individual’s freedom. In Huysmans’s work, the centrality of an individual’s liberty and autonomy is undeniable. In Against Nature, Huysmans rebels against the negation of human free will promoted by the naturalistic school. The character of Des Esseintes is clearly a celebration of human freedom stated in excessive terms, simultaneously grandiose and pathetic. The whole prologue presents a libertine who is disgusted by worldly conventions and by the paradoxical uniformity demanded by Parisian life, even when it is a dissolute one. His retreat specifically tends to unbound himself, to free himself from these mediocre standards. It seems that his eating disorders follow the pathological pattern highlighted by Bell in his study of the female mystics. In his confinement, Des Esseintes becomes unable to absorb food and progressively develops an aversion to it, as well as a desire to set him free from dietary constraints. The comic peptone enema episode stages a desire which is in essence a tragic one; stuck in a weakening situation, Des Esseintes confesses his desire for a superior, almost divine state, in which he would not have to succumb to the repetitive and degrading ritual of nourishment anymore. Not so much because the enema makes the biological curse disappear; human animals would still have to feed, but it would reduce this animality, this dependency on the environment to such a tiny proportion that it would make it almost imperceptible. It is clearly shown by the end of the passage quoted above: “What a slap in the face for old Mother Nature, whose monotonous demands would be permanently silenced!”

146  Romain Peter Des Esseintes’s desire is not oriented toward the negation of the physical body, contrary to the Christian mystics upon which Huysmans draws. Christian mystique heavily relied on Platonic assumptions regarding the superiority of the soul upon the body, and derived from this conceptual hierarchy the necessity to get rid of the body. Mortification and privation thus constitute privileged means to operate a negation of the body in order to fight against the “flesh.” In contrast, the object of Des Esseintes’s negation is rather the dependency of the individual regarding natural laws which enslaves and limits him. It is not the body as an obstacle to the spiritual becoming of the individual that is negated, but rather the body as a flanged engine, with a limited capacity for intense experiences, and too closely tied to the satisfaction of natural needs. Feeding thus becomes subject to a vigorous negation because it stands as the most fundamental dependency to which an animal can be submitted.

Mystical Anorexia and Perversion in Huysmans The aforementioned passages from Against Nature are, however, far from being simple repetitions of the “holy anorexia” pattern described by Bell. Huysmans adds a pathetic scope by removing the dignity of religious deprivation – by describing all the prosaic dimensions and failures of such a discipline, which religious hagiographies chastely pass over. Furthermore, he gives a central role to perversion, which was absolutely excluded from Christian hagiographies and which aggravates anorexia. Indeed, the perversion implies an enjoyment derived from the behavior itself, which is clearly forbidden to the religious mystic, who must only find a spiritual enjoyment in God’s proximity. The pathetic scope arises from the distinctive frame in which Huysmans builds his characters and situations. The characters are always torn between the majesty of their ideals and the mediocrity of their body and will. The excess in Huysmans’s celebration of human free will is never to be found in the character’s plain embodiment of a heroism of the will, in which Huysmans’s friend Léon Bloy will later indulge in his Soul of Napoleon, celebrating the superhuman capacity to bend the world to his desires. Huysmans’s literature focuses entirely on failure, defect, and weakness in the achievement of the ideal, and is always oriented toward the gap between what we would like to become and what we manage to become. The core of Against Nature will be the monumental failure of Des Esseintes’s aesthetic and mystical ambitions; in The Damned (1891), the defection of the mediocre Durtal when facing a Satanism which fascinates him, but of which he cannot stand the extreme nature; in En Route (1895), the difficulties experienced by the same Durtal on the road to religious conversion, and the inability to adopt the rigorous Christian lifestyle displayed by monastic life. Contrary to hagiographies which procure unreliable information and obviously tend to idealize the

Huysmans’s Against Nature  147 spiritual achievements of the saints and mystics, Huysmans’s literature gives us a more realistic account of mystical dietetics, especially when carried out by individuals whose body and will cannot keep pace. In other words, against the idealization of eating disorders displayed in hagiographies, real disorders are more pathetic, more comical sometimes and less inspiring, because their incoherent and unpredictable nature always appears in contradiction with the spiritual efforts of the mystic. The second originality of Huysmans is in introducing perversion into the mystical dietetics. The holy anorexia exemplified by Christian mystics functions around an axis of progression which goes from normal nutrition to the complete absence of food. The end of the process is generally the death of the mystic, perceived as a release from the body and from the patriarchal society: “… it leads to death as a direct consequence of starvation and related harsh austerities” (Bell xiii). It unambiguously demonstrates that the aim was to eliminate food, and that the architectonic goal was death. According to Bell, “Death becomes a logical, sweet, and total liberation from the flesh. The path of saintly austerity is well marked, and its rewards are ultimate” (13). On the contrary, deprivation is not a systematic rule in Against Nature, in which Des Esseintes’s aim is, rather, to adopt a behavior opposite natural expectations. When it is normal to eat, he does not eat, or tries to indirectly feed with enemas. But when the body is accustomed to food deprivation, the perverse reaction is to develop the desire to eat something totally unexpected – in our case, a disgusting cheese-toast. The logic governing Des Esseintes’s dietary whims is not the simple rejection of food, but something deeper: the rejection of any stabilized habits. As such, the uniformity of the meals deplored in the passage quoted above is no more detestable than the uniformity of fasting. As soon as a behavior is sufficiently reproduced to constitute a habitus, as soon as the body has made this behavior his normal pace, Des Esseintes perceives it as the reflection of this nature which he tries so hard to escape. All the protagonist’s behavioral patterns are indeed oriented toward the negation of nature: the search for atypical sexual partners, like a masculine female acrobat or a ventriloquist who is able to simulate a wide range of fictitious situations; the parody of a trip that replaces reality with simulacra; the cultivation of exotic plants which look like fake fabric plants; the creation of false landscapes by using perfumes; and the decoration of his bedroom to make it look like a parody of a Carthusian monk’s cell. In all of these experiments, Des Esseintes rejects the natural order of things and replaces it with a fake, unprecedented order produced by human imagination. This attitude is synthesized in the falsely frivolous watchword pronounced in Against Nature that he nevertheless takes very seriously: “Nature, he used to say, has had her day” (36). The novel thus firmly opposes nature – dull, insipid, repetitive, uniform, constraining, producer of dependencies, enemy of originality – to

148  Romain Peter the free productions of the human mind. The only subtlety is to avoid an easy confusion between this nature/free will distinction and the usual distinctions between nature and culture. For Huysmans, not all the productions that man adds to nature can be opposed to nature. On the contrary, the vast majority of human actions obey the criteria of stabilization and repetition which are almost natural: habits. It is for a good reason that everyday language is calling them “second nature,” as they are behavioral patterns almost as stabilized as biological functions or natural phenomena. Des Esseintes nourishes hate not only for the “old crone” (37), the real nature – the original French text says “sempiternelle radoteuse,” which describes an old lady repeating the same things over and over – but also for any human behavior displaying repetitive traits which reminds him of the cyclical mediocrity of nature. Remaining faithful to this radical negation of nature, Huysmans adds perversion to fasting. Fasting remains, after all, a habit of living without food: a habit of no longer relying on fundamental natural resources. But for the protagonist, this is not enough; negating nature’s offering entirely means constantly counteracting the natural habit of homeostasis, regardless of whether this stabilization is nutrition or deprivation. Therein lies the profound coherence of the various dietary whims of Des Esseintes, such as eating a disgusting cheese-toast, feeding with enemas, fasting, or eating voraciously in a restaurant after days of fasting. If those behaviors are undeniably “whims” in the sense that they take arbitrary forms, they are not whims in the sense that they are not without purpose. The whim is precisely the only strategy adapted to the war conducted by the protagonist against his own digestive system. Contrary to Christian mystics who are searching for self-mastery through food deprivation, which can be understood as a stabilized behavior, or an excellence (hexis, which for Ancient Greeks means a virtuous disposition acquired by voluntary repetition), Des Esseintes is searching for what can only be called a squared excellence, or meta-excellence: not the acquisition of a stable valuable behavior, but the acquisition of an aptitude to constantly counteract any behavioral stabilization. The digestive system thus stands as the supreme representative of nature, as the real enemy. The mourning dinner, as we saw, linked explicitly sexuality and nourishment. Natural, instinctive activities par excellence, they are the major natural features in man. Nourishment and sexuality appear as natural functions when they malfunction. Their affinity is never more explicit than when they fail to function. As Jean Borie remarks, “Anorexia, as we know, is far more serious: it is for nutrition what impotence is for sexuality, but in this precise domain, life does not maintain itself anymore, by renunciation to its function” (189). Functioning in a very regulated manner, the digestive system registers the greatest number of attacks from the protagonist, and it is also this system that will ultimately put an end to his mystical – yet

Huysmans’s Against Nature  149 heterodox – endeavor. The doctor will be able to “[put] right the digestive functions” (Huysmans 211), but he will also warn Des Esseintes that if the nervous trouble is not treated, it will continue to undermine the digestive system, and no improvement will be possible. As long as he fights homeostasis, he will be in mortal danger. Indeed, homeostasis is one of the most fundamental prerequisites of life. To undermine it is to undermine the very possibility of the existence of the undermining subject and, thus, is altogether a risky and contradictory behavior. Jérôme Solal highlights the fundamental ambivalence of Des Esseintes’s attitude: On one hand Des Esseintes aspires to celebrate the end which is his share, he goes further and cheerfully into artificial darkness, he assumes disaster, throws the last fireworks; on the other hand, he tends to slow, even to stop the process towards the nothing, the void and death. (351)

The Failure of the Mystique, or the Verdict of the Body The core message of the novel is that of the powerlessness of man in trying to escape the limits of his body and, more precisely, to make the body follow the extreme demands of imagination. Bell explains that the scenario of holy anorexia usually leads to the death of the individual. Des Esseintes’s mystique does not appear any less violent in its consequences, but it is probably more tragic. The female religious mystic firmly believes in a superior reality which she approaches as she deprives herself of earthly foods. The culmination of her discipline, the ultimate satisfaction of her yearning, can only be found in the death of the mortal body. In that respect, the death of the mystic is not a failure but, rather, a success which rewards she who managed to push the exigency to its extreme limits. The same cannot be said of Des Esseintes’s mystique, which is a godless mystique without any afterworld. All his efforts are oriented toward the maximization of earthly enjoyments on their various and more refined forms: toward the systematic elimination of all marks of nature, and in that sense, it is a mystique of immanence, which has the living body as a condition of possibility. Nevertheless, it is a “mystique,” since it still consists of an uncompromising transition from the actual situation of the individual to a state that seems to the imagination the optimum promised by immanence: the enjoyment of rare pleasures, independently from any natural constraint. This tragic mystic, thus, is not deprived from hope. As remarked by Emmanuel Godo, “Des Esseintes does not choose escape and exile… but the construction of an utopia, of an anti-world by which he affirms here and now that a life is possible – and a happiness too – which has nothing to do with the law and principles of the here and now” (112).

150  Romain Peter The first deadlock experienced by the protagonist is in trying to eliminate nature within him. A living human being can only arrive at the negation of himself: fighting the regularity of the digestive system is implicitly and obscurely desiring the outcome of this negation, which is death by starvation. There is no possible outcome to this behavior that can be compatible with biological life. The second, more tragic deadlock is that over the course of this (lost) struggle against his own digestive system, Des Esseintes discovers that the demiurgic celebration of human free will is self-contradictory. Despite systematically replacing nature by productions of free will, nature remains the substrate of free will. More trivially, the most exceptional dandy who wishes to live among modern devices and gratuitous cultural productions – as Des Esseintes, who follows this Baudelairian desire – cannot live without a stomach, and therefore the desire for artifice has its limits. Dietary troubles in Huysmans’s masterpiece are far from being anecdotal, as they constitute a significant element of the curious mystique that Des Esseintes develops more or less consciously. Nor is it the plain repetition of centuries-old mystical patterns, since the religious background and the holy anorexia pattern are used as an inspiration for a deeper questioning of the body balance. The digestive system and its regularity embody the essential limitation of man, as dictated by nature. For Huysmans, man’s imagination is craving for absolute: It would like to get rid of the mediocrity and dullness of biological life, to pursue chimeric states of enjoyment and complete emancipation from the body. Biological limitations, however, remain the condition of possibility of man’s existence and freedom. Furthermore, the digestive system possesses a revealing role: By standing as a “reality principle,” it unmasks the impossible demands of imagination. Des Esseintes is the exemplary victim of this misleading power of imagination as he falls prey, again and again, to the illusion that the ideal that he conceives is de jure applying to the real body. The novel is structured as a repeated reminder of man’s inability to transcribe his boundless desires of freedom and pleasure into reality. The digestive system, opposed to the sublime yet a deceptive character of imagination, functions as a symbol of human mediocrity, as a human body is unable to endure and tolerate the enjoyments and disciplines invented by imagination.

Notes 1 This attitude generally called “dandyism” promotes the superior valor of devices and feats of modernity over the beautiful nature worshipped by romanticism. Charles Baudelaire is one of its most preeminent figures and Huysmans confesses his great admiration for the poet in Against Nature. It is undoubtedly from him that he inherits the taste for the beautiful artifact.

Huysmans’s Against Nature  151 2 For a more comprehensive treatment of this hypersensitivity mystique, see R. Peter, “Mystique et subversion de la nature chez Huysmans,” Bulletin de la société J.-K. Huysmans. 111 (2018): 53–66. 3 Huysmans will become famous for his conversion to Catholicism after a long career of scandalous works involving the themes of blasphemy, Satanism, sexual perversions, and debauchery. His works are usually split into two periods (“two Huysmans”): the first spans the early naturalistic works up to Against Nature, Stranded, and The Damned, and the second proceeds from En route. Yet he always refused to disavow his first period, and considered his writings as a whole, coherent despite his evolution, and even because of his evolution. 4 The epigraph of Against Nature reflects this acquaintance, as it is a quote from the Flemish mystic Rusbrock: “I must rejoice beyond the bounds of time… though the world may shudder at my joy, and in its coarseness know not what I mean.” 5 The Baldick translation erases the radicality of this passage by translating “living on a crust of bread,” which gives the impression of voluntary poverty. The original French text, again, is bolder: “S’essayant à ne plus manger,” which must be translated to “making attempts not to eat,” which would preserve the experimental dimension of the engraver’s behavior.

Works Cited Bell, Rudolf M. Holy Anorexia. Chicago: Chicago Press, 1987. Borie, Jean. Huysmans. Le Diable, le célibataire et Dieu. Paris: Grasset, 1991. Godo, Emmanuel. Huysmans et l’évangile du réel. Paris: Cerf, 2007. Huysmans, Joris-Karl. Against Nature. London: Penguin Books, 2003. ———. The Damned. London: Penguin Books, 2002. ———. En Route. Australia: Leopold’s Classic Library, 2016. Jourde, Pierre. “Huysmans, la structure et l’excès” Huysmans à côté et au-delà. Leuven: Peeters, 2001. Magli, Ida. “Il problema antropologico-culturale del monachesimo femminile.” Enciclopedia delle Religioni. Florence: Vallecchi, 1970. Peter, Romain. “Mystique et subversion de la nature chez Huysmans.” Bulletin de la société J.-K. Huysmans. 111 (2018): 53–66. Sicotte, Geneviève. “La chère et le verbe. Une critique gastronomique de l’oeuvre de Huysmans.” Huysmans à côté et au-delà. Leuven: Peeters, 2001. Solal, Jérôme. Huysmans et l’homme de la fin. Caen: Lettres modernes Minard, 2008. Zola, Emile. Therese Raquin. Project Gutenberg. n.p. 2006. Web. 21 Feb. 2019.

9

Eating the Dead Transgressive Hungers and the Grotesque Body in Ulysses Wilson Taylor

Leopold Bloom is a hungry man. The opening sentence of “Calypso” introduces the wandering protagonist of Ulysses as a voracious, pleasureseeking gastronome: “Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls” (45). Through James Joyce’s tactile language of epicurean (and textual) pleasure, Bloom’s entrance into Ulysses immediately establishes him as a corporeal site of appetitive desire and embodied delight. Bloom enjoys “thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he [likes] grilled mutton kidneys which [give] to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine” (45). Bloom’s desire for “organs of beasts and fowls” situates him in an explicitly material and corporeal relationship to the phenomenal world, and the urges and rituals of consumption function as an index of his imagination – he has “kidneys” on “his mind” (45). However, the uneasy overlap of Bloom’s carnivorous hunger for these organs and abject desire for the “tang” of “urine” signals a collapse of distinctions between food and waste, with metaphorical overtones of life and death, that animates and upsets his material and corporeal consciousness throughout Ulysses. James Joyce evocatively referred to his modernist masterpiece, Ulysses (1922), as an “epic of the human body” (Birmingham 14), as it catalogues the peripatetic itinerary of Leopold Bloom, a “wandering Jew,” through 1904 Dublin. Throughout its index of hunger and consumption  – and with particular emphasis on the sections of “Hades” and “Lestrygonians,” in which the protagonist devours a morning kidney and a midday gorgonzola sandwich – Leopold Bloom’s self-surpassing hunger signifies more than itself, expanding to incorporate sexual desire; human waste and death; theology and ritual; and, to complete the chain of consumption, cannibalism. Bloom’s insistent and anxious corporeality signifies both desire and lack, ingestion and waste, sacrality and profanity, life and death. In this way, his hunger becomes repulsive, his corporeality at once all-too-human and abject. His undisciplined hunger provides a lens into the material and corporeal logic of Ulysses – all thoughts, ideologies, and abstractions, including nation and language, originate in and return to the transgressive hungers and grotesque consumption of the

Eating the Dead  153 individual body and collective body politic. Moreover, Joyce’s emphasis on food and waste gestures toward critiques of the English colonization of Ireland and the blanched cultural imagination of commodity capitalism; Bloom’s appetitive and digestive processes undermine the ideological foundations of modern selfhood, culture, nation, and empire. At the same time, his status as a Jewish Other questions whether his own body is always already represented as indigestible waste unable to be incorporated into the body politic of Catholic Dublin. Whereas Ulysses’s Stephen Dedalus mystifies his phenomenal existence, abstracting world into word, Bloom’s imagination is distinctly embodied; Bloom resists abstraction, and his body becomes a site for the deconstruction of conceptual categories. In this way, Bloom de-mystifies the symbolic world, anchoring his experience and imagination firmly in the material body: His body functions as an analogue to a material universe in constant, protean flux. In another way, Bloom’s material body might also become a corporeal signifier for the linguistic and textual corpus of Ulysses itself – the transgressive body engendering a surplus of signification while resisting static and stable representation.

“Mr Leopold Bloom Ate with Relish”: Transgressive Hungers and the Desiring-Machine Leopold Bloom feels “a bit peckish” in the morning of the novel – his corporeal experience is frequently one of lack, so he visits the butcher to procure the “moist tender gland” of a breakfast kidney (49). While at the butcher’s, and after “tranquilly” savoring the “lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs’ blood” at the meat-market, his experience of hunger exceeds the gastronomic – Bloom’s hunger and “general thirst” quickly expand to encompass sexual desire as he ogles the “moving hams” and “new blood” of the “nextdoor girl,” with her “sodachapped hands” and “crusted toenails,” while the sharp “sting” of her “disregard” only intensifies the “weak pleasure within his breast” (48–49). Bloom’s commingled desires for his purchased “prime sausage” and the smell of “pigs’ blood” alongside this woman’s “hams” and “new blood” trouble distinctions between carnal and carnivorous hunger; his desire continually swells and signifies beyond itself. Immediately, however, Bloom’s irrepressible imagination abandons the present of “Dorset street” as he, “reading gravely” and noting for the first time “the cattle, blurred in silver heat,” reminisces about a series of “pleasant evenings” with his wife Molly in which they enjoyed olives, lemons, and citrons – the “heavy, sweet, wild perfume” of the “cool waxen fruit” scenting his sexual memories of Molly (49). Bloom insists that the assorted fruits were “always the same, year after year,” though they “fetched high prices,” as they were “coming all that way” from “Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant” (49). Dorset Street, in Bloom’s expansive and subversive

154  Wilson Taylor imagination, appears to be at once emphatically local, anxiously global, and temporally fluid, and his transgressive hungers enact a pleasurable elision of gastric and erotic desires. Although momentarily sunk in a “heavy, sweet, wild” nostalgia for the stasis of his summoned past, imagined as both Edenic and lascivious, Bloom’s proleptic imagination immediately leaps to consider the alienated labor power and to condemn the global commodity networks mobilized to spirit these signifying citrons to Dublin: “Crates lined up at the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navies handing them barefoot in soiled dungarees” (49). Bloom in turn envisions the collapse of the earth into “a barren land, bare waste,” trade markets reminiscent of the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race… The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. (50) As he peers beneath the veil of commodity fetishism and market capitalism, Bloom’s hunger clarifies the dim contours of imperial and global modernity – the keen perceptiveness of Bloom’s appetites functions to illuminate the oppressive processes, violent machinations, and ecological devastations of global markets that are both animated and obscured by consumerist hunger. At the same time, his skepticism regarding his own Jewish ethnicity and inheritance undermines the stability of his own selfhood and subject-position in Catholic Dublin – the Jewish people, including Bloom, are estranged from their barren homeland, wandering, rootless, in a “dead land” as the Dead Sea spoils: “an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt of the world” (50). Bloom’s apocalyptic meditation on the oppression of the Jews anticipates his later anti-imperial critique of the British colonization of Ireland. Ultimately, the abjection latent within his desire and the critical edge of his consciousness complicate triumphalist assumptions of modernity or history and, in a sense, invite or imagine the collapse of these ideological superstructures – Bloom’s unruly hungers whet his expansive consciousness with a keen criticality. The unsettled promiscuity with which Bloom’s imagination leaps from his wanton gaze upon the “nextdoor girl” to memories of Molly, then to livestock and produce, alienated labor, global markets, divine destruction, and the death of “the oldest people,” suggests an anxious confluence between libidinous and gastronomic desire, global capitalism, ecological collapse, and cultural or ethnic extinction in his expansively self-surpassing consciousness. Bloom’s voracious hunger persistently outstrips itself and becomes transgressive – his promiscuous desire both imagines and insists upon the collapse of conceptual categories and

Eating the Dead  155 distinctions, as well as the social norms, of modernity. Through such voracious energies, Bloom’s generative hunger further expands to incorporate a multiplicity of desires that compels Bloom’s wandering mind and restless body; the untamed energy of Bloom’s desire burnishes the lens of his consciousness and animates Ulysses’s subversive energies. Noting again the collapse of his erotic and gastric desire to abject despair – “Desolation. Grey horror seared his flesh” – Bloom returns to Molly, “hurrying homeward” as “cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak” (50). While his existential condition again trends toward the grotesquely gastronomic – with his “[chilled] blood” and “seared” flesh seasoned with a “cloak” of “salt” and “oil,” Bloom seems ready to be cooked himself – he is impelled homeward in search of the domestic sensory pleasures of the “gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter” (50). Yet again, his untamed appetites bleed into an erotic (and foreclosed) desire to be “near [Molly’s] ample bedwarmed flesh” (50). Bloom’s doubled interest in “flesh” again signifies both his carnal desire for Molly (50) and his carnivorous desire for the kidney (53) – Bloom repeatedly dissolves distinctions between sexual and gastric hunger and imagines sex as akin to consumption. Noting the troubling persistence of Bloom’s appetites in the text, critic Elizabeth Blake in “Obscene Hungers: Eating and Enjoying Nightwood and Ulysses” identifies a transgressive potential in the ravening force of his hunger and its frequent slippage into sexual desire (and vice versa). She argues that Joyce’s obscene elision of hunger and sexual desire functions to trouble and undermine social, cultural, and moral conventions – that “Ulysses use[s] hunger as a way of thinking about the problem of assimilating desire into a normative social order” (155). Joyce infuses transgressive energies into Bloom’s insistent hunger, which stubbornly refuses to be directed or channeled into such a normative structure or system – his hungry gaze and voracious imagination devour the phenomenal world, collapsing the world into a single plane of immanence and blurring any distinction between self and other, between subject and object. As Blake notes, “The link between hunger and sexual desire … is not metaphorical; they are linked instead by association and contiguity. Both are potential pleasures” (158). Both potential pleasures, however, are foreclosed – an anxious and distracted Bloom clumsily burns his breakfast kidney after finding a letter addressed to his wife in the “bold hand” of her lover, Blazes Boylan, which she furtively “[tucks] under her pillow” (Joyce 50). Sexually and gastronomically, Bloom can never be fully sated or satisfied, never fully happy in his home. Although (or because) Bloom eats at the opening of “Calypso,” he is excreting by the end of the chapter. Bloom’s delighted description of his own post-prandial defecation, “seated calm above his own rising smell,” again collapses distinctions between food and waste, body and abject, subject and object, life and death (Joyce 56). After defecating, Bloom

156  Wilson Taylor wipes himself with a newspaper; his bodily waste intermingles with the cultural, linguistic, journalistic, and informational flotsam of a textual modernity – even language itself is rendered material and exists alongside the grotesque and abject body.1 (Ironically, Bloom, employed by a Dublin-based newspaper, Freeman’s Journal, places advertisements in print to fund and fill the paper; his labor, like his body, produces waste and excess – Bloom resists seamless assimilation and incorporation into Dublin’s body politic.) Around Bloom’s hungry corporeality revolves a constellation of desire, sex, waste, and death – hunger gives rise to fullness, desire to decay, in the transient and transformational materiality of Bloom’s embodied imagination and experience. Pursuing the breakdown of the body and the generation of waste in the text, Henry Staten in “The Decomposing Form of Joyce’s Ulysses” identifies Joyce’s epic as a project of “realist mimesis” tracking “two decompositional series, one involving language and the other the body: the smearing of the logos with shit emblematizes the correspondence between these two series” (380). For Staten, the logic and form of Ulysses are animated by an entropic drive toward dissolution – a ceaseless process of bodily and linguistic decay that festers throughout the novel. In this way, Joyce’s attention to consumption, digestion, and waste undermines the stability of selfhood and individual identity – Bloom is not only himself; he is a corporeal site and source of a continuous and generative cycle of transformation. While Joyce’s project functions more to explore and imagine alternate modes of being, rather than simply hasten their decomposition, Staten identifies a radical undermining of modernity in Joyce’s entropic drive. Joyce’s wild, willful text cultivates a counter-modern impulse through its tracking of the sordid underside of modern ideology, epistemology, and ontology, and his aesthetic traces the grotesque, the abject, the excess, the physical, imaginative, and ideological waste generated and obscured by modernity – Joyce celebrates the shit. Moreover, Staten argues that “the decomposition of the individual body and its incorporation into the transindividual organic cycle” allows Ulysses to register, enact, and celebrate an “anxiety of individuation” and identity through exploring the vulnerability, permeability, and instability of Bloom’s body and selfhood (381). Staten further suggests that “every aspect of organic life – especially sexuality – is comprehended in Ulysses as a moment or aspect of a general circulation whose primary figure is eating and the digestive process” (384). Joyce’s erotic celebration of the abject and grotesque establishes Bloom’s material corporeality as a site and source of cultural critique and social deconstruction while locating a transgressive potential firmly in the material body. Fundamentally, Bloom’s body – hungering, desiring, consuming, defecating – functions in the text as a subversive site of flux, instability, and transformation, or as what French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari identify as a “desiring-machine” (1). Deleuze and Guattari

Eating the Dead  157 consider such phenomenologies of embodied desire in their 1972 work of “materialist psychiatry,” Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, in ways that further clarify the transgressive potency of Bloom’s gastronomic and imaginative hunger. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that the desiring-machine “is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines” (1). And, like Bloom’s appetitive body, the “desiring-machine” is inherently generative, committed to the “production of productions, of actions and of passions” and “productions of consumptions, of sensual pleasures, of anxieties, and of pain” (4). At the same time, Anti- Oedipus suggests that a “desiring-machine,” which “deliberately scrambles all the codes” (15) of a capitalist modernity, undermines the categories of “self and non-self, outside and inside,” which “no longer have any meaning whatsoever” due to the ravenous and transgressive urgency of desire (2). 2 Deleuze and Guattari locate the subversive potential of this “rediscovery” in the potently and peculiarly embodied nature of hunger. Through such emphatic corporeality, this figure “deliberately seeks out the very limit of capitalism: he is its inherent tendency brought to fulfillment, its surplus product, its proletariat, and its exterminating angel” (35). Capitalism, they argue, functions through “the decoding of flows [of desire] and the deterritorialization of the socius,” which generates what they famously define as the “unproductive” and “unconsumable” body, the abstracted “body without organs” (8). In so doing, capitalism becomes a “mystic being” that functions by at once foreclosing desire and “allowing it free reign” upon an abstracted, deterritorialized “social machine” (11). In this way, Bloom’s hungry vitality and emphatic embodiment adopt an anti-capitalist and counter-modern urgency – Bloom’s insistent and imaginative corporeality functions to re-imagine and re-embody his desire, to re-claim his hunger from the deterritorialized flows of desire and capital engendered by capitalism through a process that Deleuze and Guattari define as “reweaving” and “what Joyce called re- embodying” (11). Bloom’s hungry insistence on his own intensely material corporeality resists and undermines the abstracting impulse of capitalism, re-inscribing his own carnality into the social and colonial space of Dublin; his hunger renders him a site and source of anti-imperial and anti- capitalist critique. In another way, Ulysses itself functions as a form of desiring-machine, re-locating its concerns back into the body as it represents, generates, and celebrates unruly desires in an effort to resist and undermine modernity’s violent and relentless impulse toward abstraction, deterritorialization, and destruction. Through its lurid corporeality and grotesque materiality, Ulysses attempts to overcome the abstraction and alienation of the modern condition, including through its reliance on ideologies of self and identity, capitalism, and nation and empire.

158  Wilson Taylor

“Love Among the Tombstones”: Death, Desire, and the Grotesque Body While3 Joyce celebrates Bloom’s unruly hungers and their transgressive implications, Ulysses also imagines the body, in its desire and decay, to be abject and grotesque. In his 1965 masterwork Rabelais and His World, Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin identifies “grotesque realism” as a Renaissance trope reflecting a corporeal “phenomenon in transformation, as a yet unfinished metamorphosis, of death and birth, growth and becoming” (24). Bakhtin’s concept of the grotesque further illuminates the cultural and political potency of Joyce’s overt attention to bodies – in their desire and decay, in their unruly and untamed energies – in Ulysses. Bakhtin notes that Rabelais celebrates “the material bodily principle” of the “human body with its food, drink, defecation, and sexual life” (18). In this way, Bakhtin provides a language and sensibility through which best to approach Bloom’s subversive appetites throughout Ulysses. Joyce, inheriting and resurrecting this Renaissance tradition, likewise locates something “positive, assertive,” and radical in this subversive attention to the body. Bakhtin notes that “the body and bodily life have here a cosmic and at the same time an all-people’s character; this is not the body and its physiology in the modern sense of these words, because it is not individualized” (19). Like Joyce, Bakhtin celebrates the “grotesque body” as “not separated from the rest of the world … it is not a closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits” (26). This unstable and transgressive body always contains and signifies more than itself, physically merging with or consuming other bodies, generating desires and waste, and gesturing toward alternate systems and structures of signification. A body is never only itself, and Bakhtin further celebrates in the tradition of grotesque realism the dissolution and reformulation of the boundaries of individual selfhood: “The material bodily principle is contained not in the biological individual, not in the bourgeois ego, but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed” (19). In this way, the grotesque body enacts a counter-modern impulse with avowedly political energies. Bakhtin’s celebration of the deterioration of the individual body and ego induces a new commitment to a collective people through a rejection of abstraction, including of the stable and static self, of nation and empire, and even language itself: All meaning generates in and returns to the fertile materiality of the body. Indeed, Bakhtin argues that this lurid materiality of this tradition promotes a celebratory “degradation” in the “lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract” to the “material level” (19). Ultimately, Bakhtin locates in the grotesque tradition a “utopian element” in its disclosure of “the potentiality of an entirely different world, of another order, another way of life” (48). To insist on and celebrate the grotesque body is to reject ideological processes of alienation, estrangement, and oppression.

Eating the Dead  159 Joyce celebrates this drive toward the material in his de-mystification of ideologies and abstractions that continually collapse onto the material body, and the transgressive energy of Bloom’s profane hunger soon trespasses onto the sacred as he visits a church service in “The LotusEaters.” Bloom, a Jew, wanders into All Hallows Church, where he notes the priest, “holding the thing in his hands,” placing Communion wafers into the open mouths of women (66). Bloom’s hungry, lascivious gaze – he speculates that the service might be a “nice discreet place to be next some girl” (66) – intrudes awkwardly on the solemn ritual of the Eucharist. Significantly, he defamiliarizes the symbolism of the sacrament by emphasizing its corporeal materiality – alienated from the church’s symbolic logic, Bloom again returns to the body. Considering the Eucharist, the transubstantial body of Christ, Bloom first refers to it, vaguely, as “the thing,” and then, grotesquely, as the “Corpus: body. Corpse” (66). While he does compare the substance to both an “unleavened shewbread” and a “bread of angels,” Bloom’s emphasis on the bread as a literal human body and comparison of the sacramental Eucharist to “eating bits of a corpse” and as a “rum idea” that “the cannibals cotton to” reveals the material and profane sensibility underpinning the symbolic sacrament – and Ulysses itself (66). Bloom translates the symbolic to the material and returns to the body as the site and source of signification; he unveils the symbolic apparatus of the Catholic Church to expose its cannibalistic logic. As Irish writer Declan Kiberd suggests in Ulysses and Us: The Art of the Everyday in Joyce’s Masterpiece (2009), “Bloom wishes to strip away all evasive metaphors from the ritual, and to reinstate it at a more honest, everyday level” (105). With a transgressive thrill, Bloom deliberately punctures the inflated metaphoricity of the Church – and, by extension, the apparatus of abstraction and mysticism that scaffolds modernity itself – in favor of a grotesquely vivid materiality that begins and ends in the body. Christianity, Bloom imagines, is a “clockwork” machine committed, in theory and practice, to eating the dead (Joyce 68). Bloom’s collapsing of categories between the sacred and profane, between life and death, through the totalizing logic of consumption reaches an unsettling apex when he attends the funeral of his late friend Paddy Dignam in “Hades” – “Extraordinary the interest they take in a corpse,” he notes (72). Although nominally commenting on “an old woman peeping” at a human body, Bloom also reveals his own obsession with the grotesque corporeality of death (72). En route to the funeral, the carriage stops for a “divided drove of branded cattle” and “raddled sheep bleating their fear” (80). Bloom reflects that “tomorrow is killing day” for Irish cattle, in keeping with the imperial logic of Dublin’s meat-markets: “Roastbeef for old England. They buy up all the juicy ones” (81). Again, his tracing of the violent machinations and dreadful logics of empire – which, in disturbing this funeral procession, disrupt the cultural and

160  Wilson Taylor religious practices of Ireland, as well as his mourning of Dignam  – animates his anti-imperial critique and empathy for the colonized nation. England’s extraction of the “juicy ones” has rendered Ireland barren and famished, and Bloom’s twinge of empathy for the fearful sheep informs the compassionate corporeality of his imagination as he considers “all that raw stuff, hide, hair horns” of the “dead meat trade,” the “byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, margarine” (81). In addition to his grotesque catalogue of animal bodies, Bloom attends to the excessive material surplus, the ghastly “byproducts,” of the meat industry and commodity markets. Curiously, and only a moment later, he envisions Dignam’s “corpse” spilling out of his coffin and “rolling over stiff in the dust” (81). Bloom insists on imagining the bodily decay of his friend in lurid detail: “Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open … Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly” (81). The bodies of slaughtered cattle and of his dead friend intermingle in Bloom’s imagination, collapsing a categorical distinction between human and animal, while identifying both as victims of colonial violence. Bloom’s emphasis on the object-ness of Dignam’s body, reminiscent of the animal corpses of the imperial slaughterhouses, again elides food with human corpses and again gestures grotesquely toward the eating of the dead. Bloom’s curious and attentive desire directed toward and alongside other subjects, as well as other bodies, decenters his own identity from his perception and consciousness while establishing him in empathetic relationships within an enmeshed community of mutual desire. In this sense, Bloom’s unchastened hungers might function as a form of what critic Ethan King identifies as Joyce’s “intercorporeal ethic.” Although King primarily focuses on physical touch in Ulysses, as opposed to hunger and desire, he notes that Bloom’s contact with others functions to “transcends the tactile violence of his community” through a “recognition of their untraversible alterity and of their bodily or circumstantial vulnerability” (55). In this way, Ulysses’s intense corporeality serves to undermine “the physical and ethical limitations of Irish nationalism and British colonialism” and establishes a “mutual intimacy” as “the primary basis for living an ethical life and throwing off the nets of oppression” (55). Accordingly, Bloom’s hungry gaze might engender an anti-imperial recognition of a mutual human corporeality, a recognition that transcends even death. King further suggests that Bloom’s empathetic corporeality ultimately functions to cultivate “a space outside the coercions of ideology” that “proves liberating by beginning with our very bodies” (71). Bloom wanders through Dublin with an empathetic and intimate curiosity that undermines the violent and oppressive structures of British colonialism, and his “intercorporeal ethic” establishes him in a mutual network of vulnerable embodiment with his neighbors as they participate in a common and collective body politic.

Eating the Dead  161 Upon arriving at the burial ground, the underworld of “Hades,” Bloom, echoing Hamlet, reflects on the cemetery as an “unweeded garden” and considers the tedious constancy, the quotidian banality, of death. Bloom notes that there “must be twenty or thirty funerals every day” in that cemetery, and “funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. Shoveling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world” (83). While Bloom attends Dignam’s funeral, his imagination expands to consider a global inventory of death. Again insisting on a corporeal interpretation of the world, Bloom dismisses the palliative language of the priest – language which “stupefies” and “lulls” believers into abstract meta-narratives of the afterlife and resurrection (66) – while instead asserting that “once you are dead you are dead” (87). “In the midst of death we are in life,” Bloom notes, inverting the Catholic liturgy and signaling the ephemerality of life amidst the ubiquity and inevitability of death (89). In Bloom’s material imagination, the heart is just “a pump … pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day … [until] one fine day it gets bunged up … old rusty pumps” (87). Similarly, he absurdly and delightfully imagines resurrection as a moment of slapstick chaos, with “every fellow mousing around for his liver” – comically echoing Bloom’s own hunger for organs that morning (87). Meanwhile, Bloom’s playful hunger serves to alleviate his despair and enliven his desire: He gazes upon the burial with ironic and humorous detachment, even imagining “picking up a young widow” in the graveyard and making “love among the tombstones” – the specter of death offering the “spice of pleasure” for his sexual hunger (89). This carnal pleasure, he continues, might be as “tantalising for the poor dead” as the “smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving” (89). Bloom’s promiscuous hunger again compels him to collapse boundaries between desire, death, sex, and consumption. Bloom’s chthonic imagination trends increasingly grotesque throughout Dignam’s burial. As he stands upon the “trim grass and edgings” of the graveyard, Bloom imagines how “honeycombed the ground must be” with dead bodies (89). Whereas Stephen Dedalus imagines history as an abstract “nightmare from which [he] is trying to awake” (28), Bloom instead envisions history as an ever-expanding “charnelhouse” of material wreckage and human corpses (89). Bloom’s corporeal imagination again emphasizes the materiality of death in a meditation reminiscent of his concern for the road-crossing cattle and is informed by his stubborn obsession with food and consumption: I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and decomposing. Rot quick in the damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of tallowy kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black

162  Wilson Taylor treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed on themselves. (89) While Bloom draws explicit connections between the dead bodies and “tallowy” cheese, and while the language of the human “charnelhouse” echoes the bovine slaughterhouse, he does signal an unexpected optimism in his emphasis on the paradoxical deathlessness of these dead bodies that “feed on themselves.” Bloom conjures a material afterlife in the self-cannibalizing, cellular body that can “live for ever.” Throughout the novel, Bloom’s recurring concern with “metempsychosis,” what he terms “the transmigration of souls” (52), appears less as a metaphysical belief than as a material and corporeal reality – it becomes a comment not about souls, but about bodies. The collapsing of boundaries in Bloom’s grotesque imagination corresponds to the material world’s own self-deconstructing, cannibalistic, metamorphic impulse. As he leaves the burial and exits his imaginative underworld, Bloom clarifies the sequence of his logic. Noticing a rat in the cemetery, Bloom considers that “one of those chaps would make short work” of a human corpse, “pick the bones clean” – that “a corpse is meat gone bad … salt white crumbling mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips” (94). Bloom again imagines eating the dead, the grotesque body as readily consumable, in a way that distressingly foregrounds his midday meal in “Lestrygonians.”

“Never Know Whose Thoughts You’re Chewing”: Eating the Dead After failing to place an ad in the Journal, Bloom feels renewed pangs of hunger, as well as despair surrounding Dignam’s burial. “This is,” Bloom notes, “the very worst hour of the day” – he “[feels] as though [he] had been eaten and spewed” (135). Bloom is hungry, but also feels “eaten” by the incomprehensible everydayness of death, for which “words” are “useless” (134). Desire again descends to despair as Bloom feels entrapped in the inevitability of death and the insignificance of life – by the awareness that “in the midst of death we are in life” (89). “Things go on same, day after day,” Bloom laments: “Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second somewhere. Other dying every second … Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other coming on, passing on” (134–135). Dignam’s death sparks an existential crisis for Bloom; he concludes that “no-one is anything” (135). This evacuation of the subject’s significance inverts the hungry Bloom such that he feels “eaten” himself – he has become the object of a vast, inevitable cycle of human birth and death; his subjectivity has

Eating the Dead  163 been decentered and emptied of meaning. Feeling “eaten and spewed,” Bloom might even feel himself to be yet another waste product, another object of material excess, in an inhuman historical cycle of birth, production, and death, or even as human surplus within Dublin – a feeling perhaps sharpened by his Jewish alterity within the Catholic city and by his colonized status within the British empire. He continues in this nihilistic mode, expanding the scope of his despair from the human to the cosmic: “Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dinging always. Gas: then solid: then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock, like that pineapple rock. The moon” (137). As the living human body is transformed into “meat gone bad,” heavenly bodies themselves, according to a similar logic of protean flux, devolve into the “dead shell” of planetary death. The material world flows toward meaninglessness and death –desire becomes disgust, food becomes waste, subject becomes object, bodies become corpses, and the living universe itself becomes “frozen rock.” Hoping to alleviate his renewed hunger, and perhaps hoping to cheer himself up, Bloom seeks a midday meal. He imagines his hunger as a “warm human plumpness settled down on his brain” – again, Bloom articulates his hunger through terms of sensual embodiment and elides his desire for food with his erotic desire for Molly. However, Bloom, after the burial, finds meat abject and upsetting, and the spectacle of grotesque consumption in the restaurant of Dublin’s Burton Hotel disgusts him: “I hate dirty eaters,” he complains darkly. “Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff. Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!” (139). Consumption, Bloom realizes, is a law of the universe, governed by the dreadful logic of eating the dead. And, again collapsing distinctions between consumption and consciousness, between eating and thinking, and with a deep empathy for the eaten dead, Bloom notes that you “never know whose thoughts you’re chewing” (140). Bloom’s corporeal anxieties surrounding Dignam’s burial resurface when he again considers the slaughterhouse and industrial processing of meat: “Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glassed sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered sniveling nosejam on sawdust” (140). Repulsed, Bloom abandons the “famished ghosts” of the Burton and enters Davy Byrne’s pub (140). In a revealing meditation at the pub, Bloom, noticing a ham sandwich, begins reciting a ubiquitous advertisement for “Plumtree’s potted meat” (140). The ad has recently appeared “under the obituaries,” and Bloom conflates this banal commodity and its ubiquitous marketing with his buried friend and again makes literal his speculations on cannibalism – he again considers eating the dead: “Plumtree’s potted meat” becomes “Dignam’s potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice” (140). To be safe, Bloom decides to

164  Wilson Taylor order a “mity” Gorgonzola sandwich, comforted that “cheese digests all but itself” (141). At the same time, his vegetarian lunch is likely informed by Bloom’s anti-colonial empathy for Dublin’s to-be slaughtered livestock – he refuses to participate in the dreadful (animal and human) slaughterhouse of British imperialism. His consumption of “strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese” echoes his introductory passage in “Calypso” (142). While he enjoys the fresh cleanness of the bread, the mustard’s “relish of disgust” and the cheese’s “feety savour” underscore that the abject and grotesque always inform Bloom’s hunger. Moreover, while he seems to find his gorgonzola, unlike the ham sandwich, in keeping with practices of “hygiene” and dictates of Kosher law – “no meat and milk together” (141) – Bloom had previously commented in “Hades” that dead bodies resemble a “tallowy kind of cheesy” (89) and, as “a corpse is meat gone bad,” cheese too is only a “corpse of milk” (94). Even with his gorgonzola, Bloom cannot avoid eating the dead. As Bloom’s introduction in “Calypso” is marked by the elision of food and sex, such conflation of carnivorous and carnal desire resurfaces near the end of “Lestrygonians.” After enjoying his lunchtime wine and cheese, Bloom again surrenders to an erotic memory of Molly. He recalls her hair “pillowed” on his “coat,” the caress of her hand “coolsoft with ointments,” the steady gaze of her eyes (144). In this remembered erotic encounter, the moment of consummation is also a moment of consumption: “Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy” (144). Bloom’s signifying seedcake – which Ulysses later regurgitates in Molly’s expansive and sublime soliloquy of “Penelope” – functions at once as an ironic Eucharist and an inverted insemination through a moment of climactic and grotesque sublimity. Further tightening the thematic knot of food and sex and death, with its undercurrents of the ritualized, fetishized abject in the semi-digested seedcake, Bloom, now pestered by a pair of buzzing flies, elides female beauty with bodily waste. He contrasts immortal goddesses, “lovely forms of women sculped Junonian,” to embodied humans “stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine” (144–145). Bloom again conjures the body as a sort of desiring-machine, always hungering and desiring and producing waste. This protean cycle of corporeal embodiment emphasizes the material processes of life while also gesturing toward the inevitability of death – that, as Bloom notes, “no-one is anything.” The human body is not a thing-in-itself, but rather the site and source of flux, of material transformation and

Eating the Dead  165 transmigration, a vessel and vehicle of want and waste, desiring life but destined for death. For Bloom, pleasure is inseparable from pain as desire is inseparable from decay – “in the midst of death we are in life,” he reaffirms.

“Metempsychosis”: History, Myth, and the Textual Body of Ulysses Bloom’s hungry and restless phenomenology invites a corporeal elision of his own body with the novel’s body: Ulysses imagines both human being and textual novel as material bodies, and Bloom’s body functions as an index for the material and corporeal imagination of the novel. In this way, Ulysses’s supremely self-conscious approach to its own materiality demands that readers consider the novel itself as a form of “desiring-machine” and “grotesque body,” as a living textual corpus in itself. The body of Ulysses, like Bloom himself, consumes, cannibalizes, digests, processes, and generates itself in a continual cycle of meta-textual transformation –through what Bloom might term “metempsychosis.”3 In addition to re-processing itself, Joyce’s epic famously cannibalizes Homer’s Odyssey while also voraciously consuming the language and imagination of history, nation, and selfhood – all categories and concepts are ultimately re-processed in the grotesque materiality of the text. Kiberd notes that Bloom’s “vision of a world in which almost everything can be recycled – even bodies helpfully manure the earth – is one he shares with Joyce, who in his book is recycling both the epic and the novel in order to give birth to a new form” (107). History may be a “charnelhouse” (Joyce 89), but new histories, new potentialities, new narratives, may yet sprout from the wreckage. The material body, both living and dead, is protean, transient, in constant flux, selftransmigrating and self-transgressing, self-feeding and self-generating, in a permanent performance of impermanence. Joyce’s language is voracious, exhaustive, and all-consuming, offering the potential to recycle and recreate the phenomenal world through the textual body of Ulysses itself. In this way, Joyce conceives the grotesque body of Ulysses as a desiring-machine dedicated to reformulating and re-imagining the language and narrative of history. It is this metamorphic potential latent within Joyce’s language itself that T.S. Eliot cites as the transfiguring potency of “mythical method” implicit in the epic’s re-appropriation of Homer: Joyce swallows Homer, and the entire textual and linguistic world, in order to generate new forms, languages, and narratives. Like Joyce, Eliot does not imagine that art or poetry can redeem the past or offer an escape from history  – however, literary narratives can (re)process and reformulate the past, (re)incorporating it within a new architecture of

166  Wilson Taylor representation and signification; the textual body of Ulysses renders history digestible. Eliot argues that Joyce anchors his novel in the mythic framework of Homer as “a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history” (Eliot 177). According to Kiberd, “Homer set out to heroicise the domestic, even as Joyce wishes to domesticate the heroic” in an “extended human to the dignity of everyday living … against the backdrop of a world war. It is as if Joyce has turned Homer inside-out” (Kiberd 288). While “contemporary history” and life resist order and meaning, the potency of myth re-injects the banality of the present with a new significance; this voracious text consumes and processes history and transforms it anew.

“This Is My Body”: Sanctuary, Salvation, and the Sacred Body While Joyce’s Ulysses first imagines the material body as a site of radical and ruthless critique – as ephemeral, unstable, subject to death and decay  – Joyce’s epistemologies of pleasure ultimately suggest that the transgressive, appetitive body might offer some sanctuary and renewal from the all-consuming anxieties of modernity. At the conclusion of “Lotus-Eaters,” after Bloom’s estranged experience at the church service, Bloom envisions a future bath. He knows that “the stream of life” is “always passing” but charmingly sings that “the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all” (71). Despite his existential despair and corporeal ephemerality, Bloom (re)invests his own life and body, his own “stream of life,” with profound significance. “Enjoy a bath now,” he thinks: “clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream” (71). He imagines admiring his own “pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melted soap, softly laved,” his penis “the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower” (71). Whereas the body has appeared grotesque and abject, Bloom can nonetheless foresee and savor this baptismal cleanliness, beatific pleasure, and bodily restoration in a symbolic resurrection. “This is my body,” (71) he announces, deliberately and triumphantly echoing the language of the Last Supper. While the sacrament of the eucharist in “LotusEaters” had appeared as absurd and cannibalistic, Bloom affirms the profound significance of his own material embodiment with generous and celebratory sincerity. At the same time, the significance of the Christ-utterance foregrounds the consumption of the transubstantiated corpse in a process of sacramental abstraction – but Bloom instead overwrites that eternal and unearthly symbolic body with his own historical and fleshy material body; he translates the abstract into the material and imbues his own all-too-human corporeality with a sacred signification

Eating the Dead  167 and divine enchantment. If the material body offers Ulysses a lens into a destabilizing swirl of corporeal and existential anxieties of modernity, Bloom’s bath may yet suggest some sanctuary and salvation.

Notes 1 Throughout this chapter, my use of the word and concept of “abject” and “abjection” relies on Julia Kristeva’s definition, explained in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982), as the simultaneous desire and disgust – the “vortex of summons and revulsion” – that “draws [one] toward the place where meaning collapses” and beckons one to “the border of [the] condition as a living being.” The abject is “what disturbs identity, systems, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite” (1–4). Bloom’s transgressive hunger similarly functions to “disturb identity, systems, order,” and, as such, subverts the ideological constructions and processes of modernity. 2 Deleuze and Guattari repeatedly refer to their work as a “schizo-analysis” and the “desiring-machine” as a figure of “schizophrenia,” which they define as the “universe of productive and reproductive desiring-machines” and as “the essential reality of man and nature” (5). They later note that “schizophrenia is the product of the capitalist machine” (33) – that the urgent vitality of the “desiring-machine” is itself engendered by its entrapment within virtual dimensions of deterritorialization and abstraction generated by capitalism. To this end, Bloom himself might function as such a model of what they term “schizo-analysis” (and Ulysses might as well – they also argue that “the work of art is itself a desiring-machine” [35]). A “schizophrenic,” such as Bloom, might “continually wander about, migrating here, there, and everywhere as best he can” while “[plunging] further and further into the realm of deterritorialization… . it may well be that these peregrinations are the schizo’s own particular way of rediscovering the earth” (33). 3 Ulysses also plays with the transformative potential of language through its impulsive reconfiguration of Leopold’s “metempsychosis” to Molly’s “met him pike hoses” – the word itself undergoes this transfiguration in the novel’s endless re-processing of its own metamorphic logic in both form and content.

Works Cited Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolksy. Indiana UP, 1984. Birmingham, Kevin. The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses. Penguin Books, 2014. Blake, Elizabeth. “Obscene Hungers: Eating and Enjoying Nightwood and Ulysses.” The Comparatist, vol. 39, 2015, pp. 153–170. JSTOR, www.jstor. org/stable/26254724. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Penguin Books, 1977. Eliot, T.S. “Ulysses, Order, and Myth.” Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot. Edited by Frank Kermode. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975, pp. 175–178.

168  Wilson Taylor Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter Gabler and with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior. Vintage Books, 1986. Kiberd, Declan. Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece. W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia UP, 1982. Staten, Henry. “The Decomposing Form of Joyce’s Ulysses.” PMLA, vol. 112, no. 3, 1997, pp. 380–392. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/462947.

10 Hungry for Honey Desire in Dacia Maraini’s Il treno per Helsinki Eilis Kierans

In the opening scene of Dacia Maraini’s Il treno per Helsinki (1984), the protagonist Armida listens to the radio as she peels potatoes in the kitchen. She stops short, pointed knife in hand, as she hears the familiar voice of an old lover, Miele,1 emanate from the speaker as he pontificates about peace. Armida’s memory takes her back in time eighteen years to the 1960s, and for a few minutes she reminisces about her tumultuous past as a young woman in her mid-twenties living in Rome. She relates: I eat Alice’s mushroom. I become tiny. I step into the mirror and I slide inside a black funnel, a glutinous tunnel with soft walls that chase me to the bottom towards the roots of the intestines, towards the bottlenecks of the anus that twist, and plop I shit myself out in a fragrant garden, and I look around stunned. (3)2 Akin to Alice in Wonderland (1865), Armida’s metaphorical mushroom guides her along a path toward self-realization. The mushroom induces growth and regression, and as such, she oscillates from little to large as she struggles to find her footing. Neither extreme is ideal, but as she gradually overcomes a series of difficulties, the reader is left reassured that Armida has finally secured a life of independence and equilibrium by the book’s end. Indeed, Armida’s tortuous path to autonomy is reflected in her relationship to food, a tumultuous rapport that is inextricably linked to the vicissitudes of her amorous trysts and political activism. During the late 1960s, Armida and a group of friends participate fervently in protests against the Vietnam War, which Armida declares is “devouring the bare bones of Vietnamese peasants piece by piece” (30).3 It is a time of revolution and change. In Italy, new laws allow women the right to divorce (1970), equal rights in marriage (1975), and abortion (1978). Additionally, a wider variety of social role options are available to women. Paradoxically, however, it is a period in which Armida feels voiceless. In her mind’s eye she is tiny, a reflection of how powerless she feels in a suffocating relationship with her husband, Paolo, and subsequently with her manipulative partner, Miele, whose behavior profoundly affects her

170  Eilis Kierans appetite. In the following pages, I will explore Armida’s rich and complex relationship to food. Her palate serves as a map of her emotions, and as she transforms, her diet echoes her inner and outer development. It is apparent that Armida’s journey to maturation embodies the objectives of second-wave feminism in Italy. Armida’s memories are imbued with wistful recollections of marriage, miscarriage, divorce, and Miele. As I will demonstrate, all of these life-altering events are linked to food and/or its preparation. Armida’s internal turmoil is at times reflected in the bitter foods she consumes. In other instances, vivid memories are evoked by an overabundance of food or lack thereof. In some scenes, it is the sensuality of sugary foods that renders them a powerful vehicle of memory. In particular, Armida is fascinated by sickly saccharine fare associated with Miele. At one point, she becomes food, as her swollen breasts are ripe with milk for her miscarried son. Most notably, cooking and the kitchen are related to remembrances of housewifery and oppression. In essence, Armida’s food memories are closely tied to physical and emotional indigestion. In Il treno per Helsinki, sugar is a magical ingredient that propels the plot forward. One of the female protagonist’s earliest memories is of her first exclusive outing with Miele, a recollection rendered rich by the presence of a cocktail. At a bar, Miele orders a daiquiri, an alcoholic beverage that reminds him of a married woman he courted in the past. The drink is served in a chalice, the rim dusted in sugar. It is composed of an opalescent liquid reminiscent of sperm4 and symbolic of Miele’s slew of lustful affairs. When Armida asks to taste the concoction, he describes it as too sweet to swallow. He exclaims: “It is disgusting. I drink it because it reminds me of a woman I loved” (6).5 Miele’s daiquiri leaves him nostalgic for an old darling, the apple of his eye, whose husband locks her at home “like a precious pig” (7).6 The scene recalls Proust’s “petites madeleines,” the tea cakes that involuntarily inspire the narrator’s fond memories of Sunday mornings spent in the company of his aunt. In contrast to Proust’s delicately sugared madeleines, however, Miele’s daiquiris are saccharine, excessively sweet and deceivingly delicious. Although the cocktails arouse negative feelings wrought with melancholy and resignation, Miele drinks them in order to fleetingly return to his poignant past. The bittersweet romance that unfolds between Armida and Miele is foreshadowed by the representation of daiquiris. A mixture of rum, sugar, and citrus juice, they signify desire: poison of choice for the heavy-hearted. In a later scene, Armida meets a potential landlord at a bar where she sucks down cocktails composed of a “white sticky liquid” (94).7 She has decided to leave her husband indefinitely and is searching for a home of her own. As Armida savors her drink, she closes her eyes and ruminates about Miele, who is no man for monogamy. Although she repeatedly confronts him about his infidelity, he adamantly denies

Hungry for Honey  171 dabbling with other women and employs excessive sweet talk to win back her favor. Time after time, Armida brushes his acts of betrayal under the carpet and allows him to return to her bed. It is only after she is immersed in his mysterious world “like a fly in milk”8 that she realizes he is too sweet to be true (8). Armida is uninspired in her marriage, and thus she is easily lured by the cloud of mystery that enshrouds Miele and the frivolous pleasure that he seems to offer her. At the beginning of their affair, she is pleasantly surprised when he knocks on her door, a day too early for Paolo’s birthday party, carrying an ornate cake. It is an awe-inspiring dessert covered in violets fashioned from sugar. Armida personifies the torta as “[she] waits for it to tell [her] something more about [Miele]” (12).9 Yet she recognizes that “the white icing hides the inside of the dessert. And [the] violets are so bright, so fake, that they hide the truth” (12–13).10 On the eve of celebration, the narrator notes that Miele’s intentions are not transparent, and as such, the guests view him with suspicion. At the conclusion of dinner, Miele brings the cake to the table, and the narrator fixates anew on its appearance; the milk-white icing is impenetrable, and it is adorned with glittering violets that resemble plastic. The color white is often associated with purity and understanding. However, the icing is misleadingly light and conceals the core of the cake. The violets are also likely difficult to digest. On the whole, it is a dessert as inscrutable as Miele. It ultimately serves as an augury of Armida’s ensuing inability to regulate a relationship with her lover. In many of Maraini’s texts, specific foods are instilled with a soul and serve as a means of communication. Clearly the food that Miele consumes emits an unsavory spirit. Roland Barthes, in “Toward a Psychosociology of Food Consumption” (1961), discusses the “spirit” of food. He describes: By this I mean that a coherent set of food traits and habits can constitute a complex but homogeneous dominant feature useful for defining a general system of tastes and habits. This ‘spirit’ brings together different units (such as flavor or substance), forming a composite unit with a single signification, somewhat analogous to the suprasegmental prosodic units of language. (31) Barthes points out that “[s]ubstances, techniques of preparation, habits, all become part of a system of differences in signification; and as soon as this happens, we have communication by way of food” (30). Similarly, in “Food, Self and Identity” (1988), Claude Fischler explains that food is integral to identity. He maintains that “[to] incorporate food is, in both real and imaginary terms, to incorporate all or some of its properties: we become what we eat. Incorporation is a basis of identity” (279). Accordingly, it is easier to understand the essence of others when we know what

172  Eilis Kierans they eat, but Miele/Honey complicates this axiom. Maraini implies that saccharine foods are superficially satisfying. The spirit of Miele, like the products he consumes, is appetizing to the eye. Yet it is one that leaves Armida unsated and famished for more Miele/Honey. Sugar aside, acetic flavors also pepper the pages of Il treno per Helsinki. While Miele is closely associated with sickeningly sweet foods, Paolo’s role is a pinch more pungent. In an early chapter, Armida falls asleep in the car after participating in a political protest during the night. Paolo tenderly awakens her with boiling coffee served in a paper cup as fragile as their relationship, a harbinger of the demise of their connubial bliss. After finishing her caffè in one gulp, despite the heat of the coffee, Armida is overcome with cold shivers; subsequently she and Paolo kiss. The narrator’s reflections conclude the chapter: “The taste of his tongue, bitter from coffee. Cheek against cheek” (20).11 In a later chapter, as Armida is engulfed in Paolo’s embrace, again, she feels/tastes bitterness and expresses a sense of suffocation. She relates: “I fall asleep in Paolo’s arms. A sense of bitterness in my mouth because of the abundance of wine I drank. Bloated stomach, heavy eyelids. I dream that I am uncomfortable in my skin. And I want to escape” (48).12 Perhaps at first glance Armida’s allusion to coffee seems innocuous, yet her repeated reference to acrid beverages while in her husband’s arms serves as a code that transmits an important message: Armida is miserable in her marriage. At the outset of the book, Armida recalls the humdrum routine of living with her husband Paolo, whom she obsequiously serves like a slave. In particular, Armida recollects a time when he raped her. One morning she is awoken by “a sense of weight on her stomach”13 as he stubbornly “attempts to push himself inside of [her]” (10).14 She is unaware of or indifferent to his behavior, and she does not explicitly refer to it as sexual abuse. In her memory she merely desires to dream, rather than be used as an outlet for his penetration/frustration. Maraini suggests that marital rape is normalized, and it is futile for a wife to resist. As she poignantly points out in her poem “To a Timid Sister”: you who laugh alone while you wash a plate in the kitchen, happy to have said no to a husband master, and he hardly noticed that no it’s all the same for him, for he’s counting on all the other yes which he’ll wring from you in the future. (21–27)15 If given the choice, it is likely Armida would forgo carnal relations with her husband altogether. As she grows distant from him, she does not object to his sexual escapades with other women, and when he blindly accuses her of being angered by his promiscuous behavior, Armida responds: “I am not jealous… the fact is that I am not jealous enough” (15).16 She is relieved to discover that Paolo is in the company of another woman, as she feels free from “an excess of marital intimacy” (15).17

Hungry for Honey  173 Armida is increasingly disgusted by her spouse’s sense of entitlement and attempts to consume her piece by piece like a slab of meat. Throughout the pages of Il treno per Helsinki, Armida does not openly address Paolo’s exploitation of her. After sleepily succumbing to an orgasm to which she does not consent, Armida listlessly tends to the needs of Paolo’s intellectually disabled brother; shops for groceries; and, as her husband bangs on drums, she cooks, slices, washes, peels, greases, and fries food in preparation for Paolo’s birthday dinner. The fruits of her toil produce spaghetti al pesto paired with meat and cream pie. Although Armida dedicated much time to preparing the meal, she reports that her pasta dish is devoured in minutes. Thereafter, she vividly describes the eating behavior of her male guests, who have starkly different reactions to her pie:18 Miele barely eats and chews listlessly. Lamberto greedily serves himself three times. Paolo orders him to leave some for others. He shrugs his shoulders. Cesare thrusts his fork into the mess as if in hand-to-hand combat. Nico slowly savors every bite, first dissecting them suspiciously with a knife on his plate. (14)19 Despite that it is a dinner attended by both male and female friends, Maraini focuses solely on the palates of men. She implies that they take for granted the domestic labor of women, and even though they do not cook the dinner, they ultimately measure its worth. Armida, however, receives no acknowledgment for meticulously planning Paolo’s party. Feminist sociologist Marjorie DeVault emphasizes that “[t]asks such as planning and managing the sociability of family meals are also invisible, and since maintaining their invisibility is part of doing the work well, people are often unable, or reluctant, to talk explicitly about them” (242). Undoubtedly, Armida’s household work goes unrecognized, as it is an expected labor of love and a sign of submission. On one exceptional occasion, Paolo discusses the division of household chores. When Armida discovers she is pregnant, devoid of excitement, she shares the news with Paolo, who is quick to establish that the child is his possession too: “I want to be present when it is born. It is also mine” (53).20 Elated, he insists on taking care of the daily errands: “From now on I don’t want you to move a finger” (54). 21 However, Paolo’s words reveal a double bind and belie reality. He declares: “I will do the grocery shopping today. Where is the leash? You clean the house and I will take care of everything” (54).22 Armida is charged with the task of protecting Paolo’s precious heir; at one and the same time she must not move a muscle for the child’s safety, but she ought to dedicate herself to chores for her husband’s sake. Paolo has starkly conflicting expectations of Armida throughout their marriage. He is unfazed by her affection for Miele and supportive

174  Eilis Kierans of her participation in political events in the public sphere. Yet he upholds patriarchal values in the home, as Armida is implicitly expected to attend to household duties, succumb to sex, and sacrifice her office space for the baby’s crib. Armida has a job writing scripts for the stage, although Paolo is responsible for the majority of their income. In Italian society, traditionally the male breadwinner performs fewer chores than his female partner. However, Paolo is a student, a painter, a stranger to hard work, and as much as he harbors hatred “for the family wealth he never understood or digested,”23 he allows his mother to generously supplement his wages (4). He is accustomed to being cared for by women while rarely reciprocating. Thus, he perceives Armida’s sacrifice as natural. Although Armida does not explicitly articulate the reasons for which she feels unsatisfied in her marriage, she suggests that she is oppressed by the demands of housewifery. Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963) explains that, during the 1950s and ‘60s, many American women were ashamed to admit their domestic and sexual discontent, “the problem that has no name,” so they suppressed the voice inside of them that cried out for more than domestic drudgery (63). Many of these women desired education and self-actualization outside of the home, but they were led to believe, largely by media, that their worth was equated with their ability to maintain a stable home environment for their husband and children. 24 Armida recognizes the problem that has no name. This is reflected in the tone of her writing, mechanical like the tasks she completes, as well as in the frequency with which her memories linger on the dull details of household and marital duties. However, unlike many women in the wake of World War II, she has a creative job, and she is politically active outside of the home. Furthermore, she is free to sexually explore other men. Indeed, the conflicting demands of women during the 1960s caused many wives to feel exasperated and unable to negotiate the various roles they were now expected to play. Undeniably, Armida’s sense of disempowerment at home seeps into and soils her political life. During a protest, she is ill at ease and unable to assert/insert herself in the public sphere, and so she plays a more passive role in the movement. She describes: “I am not able to yell like the others. As a result of a mixture of timidity and a sense of ridiculousness that I carry around like a bluish suckerfish that constantly swims with me in the deep waters of consciousness” (29).25 Armida would like to participate in rallies like her comrades, but she is ashamed of the sound of her own voice. In The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir explains that although some women share the same legal rights as men, they have never been equal: “Even when her rights are recognized abstractly, long-standing habit keeps them from being concretely manifested in customs” (9). While Maraini portrays men and women as sexually and politically equivalent in the public domain, she concretely

Hungry for Honey  175 depicts the home as the feminine realm where Paolo expects Armida to uphold traditional gender roles. Paolo establishes a clear slave/master dynamic within the confines of their abode, where Armida is positioned as Other. Inevitably, Armida begins to act in an acrimonious manner, and she gradually rejects her husband. The acidic foods she consumes in his presence represent her growing resentment toward him. Armida’s behavior and corresponding food choices reflect the Chinese phenomenon of “speaking bitterness.” In “Food and the Senses” (2010), David E. Sutton points out that in many societies the ingestion of bitter foods is symbolic of bitter experience (216). He coined the term “gustemology” in order to define how the intermingling of food and senses sheds light on larger social issues. In Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China (2002), Judith Farquhar exemplifies the idea of gustemology. In particular, she explains that the term “eating bitterness” is commonly used to convey suffering in China, where patients often complain that herbal medicine is awfully bitter. Farquhar maintains that in order for this medicine to be effective it “must assault the sufferer with a strong and complex flavor” (63). Thus, although the remedy may be hard to swallow, it is undoubtedly as beneficial as “speaking bitterness.” This revolutionary exercise began when exploited peasants refused to believe that their condition was natural, and so they started to articulate the oppression to which they were subjected. The feminist concept of “consciousness-raising” stems from the Chinese practice of “speaking bitterness.” Juliet Mitchell describes this form of activism: The first symptom of oppression is the repression of words; the state of suffering is so total and so assumed that it is not known to be there. ‘Speaking bitterness’ is the bringing to consciousness of the virtually unconscious oppression; one person’s realization of an injustice brings to mind other injustices for the whole group. (62) When women come together to express the subjugation they experience in their own homes, they become collectively aware of wider issues. In 1968, second-wave feminism spread throughout Italy where there was a growing awareness among feminist groups that “the personal is political.” These groups argued that men’s mistreatment of women in the home perpetuated society’s sexual and social control over them. In 1970, Italian feminist Carla Lonzi, cofounder of the collective Rivolta Femminile, released a manifesto titled “Let’s Spit on Hegel,” in which she claims that: The world of equality is the world of the legalized abuse of power, of one-dimensionality; the world of difference is the world where terrorism throws down its weapons and the abuse of power gives

176  Eilis Kierans way to respect for the variety and multiplicity of life. We realize now that ‘equality between the sexes’ is what is used today to mask the inferiority of women. (277) Rivolta Femminile did not uphold the idea that equal legal rights liberated women, and so they sought to undermine marriage, an institution they believed subordinated women. Moreover, they were opposed to the status quo of motherhood. Lonzi states: “We do not want to be described any longer as those who carry on the species. We will not give our children to anyone, neither to man nor to the State. We will give them to themselves and we will give ourselves back to ourselves” (291). In Il treno per Helsinki, Maraini echoes the ideas of Lonzi and the practice of consciousness-raising. Armida has most of the same legal rights as men; however, at home she is treated as inferior. Consequently, following her miscarriage, she is rather relieved to have escaped the burdens of motherhood. Eventually she divorces her husband, and it is assumed that she will never marry or reproduce again. Violence against women is a major theme that permeates Maraini’s texts. In line with consciousness-raising, she addresses her own experience of oppression numerous times in her work. In particular, in her autobiographical book, Bagheria (1993), she discusses the ubiquity of sexual violence in Sicily. She briefly describes the abuse she experienced as a child, when a family friend found her alone and took it as an opportunity to slip his phallus into her hand. Maraini ardently seeks to expose and comment on the trauma that many women have suffered as the Other, as secondary citizens in a patriarchal society. In an interview titled A Conversation with Dacia Maraini (2011), she asserts that, despite the passage of time, she is still committed to the same issues. She specifies: “… I would say that for me the relationship between the person and the collective—meaning the political, not political in the sense of parties but ethical – those fundamental values are there” (Seger 28). Consciousness-raising is also a theme that features prominently in Maraini’s earlier book Donna in guerra (1975), in which the female protagonist, Vannina, is portrayed quite similarly to Armida. In Donna in guerra, food symbolism is a powerful language that communicates women’s oppression. Vannina spends her summer vacation on the island of Addis catering to the whims of her demanding husband, Giacinto. Her time is divided between buying food at the market, preparing coffee, and cooking meals for company. Although she is permitted to prepare the dishes of her choice, she is primarily excluded from male talk, shuffling back and forth between kitchen and table, bringing and clearing provisions. Her daily duty of buying groceries is hardly done with gusto, but rather it is an opportunity for her to meet her female friends in town, where they devour dolci and playfully exchange gossip. The only provision that Giacinto brings to the table is fish. A fisherman

Hungry for Honey  177 by trade, he spends his days exploiting the fruits of the sea in the same way he indifferently exploits his wife. When Vannina is coerced into participating in coitus, she flounders listlessly on the bed like a dead fish; her pleasure is of no concern. Eventually Vannina engages in consciousnessraising with a group of female friends, and she ultimately plucks up the courage to leave her husband and abort a baby conceived through rape, after which food and husband disappear from her life altogether. It is only once Vannina wages a personal war against housewifery, what de Beauvoir defines as the “inessential intermediary,” that she develops a passion for politics and finds the courage to embrace her individuality in a room of her own (481). Yet Vannina’s story is cut short and the reader is left to ponder her fate. In Il treno per Helsinki, Armida’s development continues where Vannina’s leaves off. Perhaps unexpectedly, just as Armida gains independence, her beguiling suitor leads her to spiral downward until her sense of self is shattered all over again.  Armida experiences emotional and physical indigestion as she becomes more deeply entrenched in a love affair with Miele. She describes: In the morning I awake with my stomach in knots. I think: maybe I  ate something rotten. But no, it is him that I ate. And I am not able to digest him. My gut contracts and I am choked up. I get up to prepare coffee and I realize that I am not paying attention to what I am doing; they are mechanical gestures that have become habit. My thoughts are fixated on him (24). 26 Armida bites off a bit more Miele than she can chew, and as time passes, she grows even more emotionally hungry. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), he emphasizes that emotional and physiological indigestion are intertwined. Indigestion is often provoked by emotional upset and vice versa. Nietzsche explains: If someone cannot cope with his ‘pain of the soul’ it is not, crudely put, due to his ‘soul’; more likely to his belly (crudely put, as stated: which in no way expresses a wish also to be heard crudely, understood crudely …) A strong and well-formed human digests his experiences (deeds, misdeeds included) as he digests his meals, even when he has hard bites to swallow. If he ‘cannot cope’ with an experience, this kind of indigestion is just as physiological as that other one – and in many cases in fact only one of the consequences of that other. (93) Armida’s eating habits reflect her powerlessness in her relationship with Miele. In an act of metaphorical cannibalism, she consumes him, but he is not easy to digest. In a later chapter, Armida is enamored when Miele ardently professes his love for her, at which point she is unable to eat

178  Eilis Kierans at all. She relates, “I return to the table. I nibble on something. But my stomach is blocked shut” (56). 27 She expresses her ambivalence about the arrival of her baby, as she intuits a complicated future. Yet she is incapable of thinking ahead, as she believes a mother should, because she is assailed by thoughts of Miele. After Armida suffers a grave hemorrhage and is whisked away to the hospital and constrained to bedrest, she is immersed in tender thoughts of Miele. She is convinced that her fixation enrages the baby in her womb, and she repeatedly refers to the child in derogatory terms. She reflects: “But him, the other one there inside my stomach is jealous. He cannot bear the presence, even if only imagined, of anyone else but himself…. He wants that all my attention, my thoughts, my cravings and desires are for him and only for him” (71).28 Armida supposes that the child is practicing cannibalism of the mind. She deems him disrespectful and lunatic, prone to kicking in order to convey his discontent. Furthermore, she believes that she and the child understand the source of her hemorrhage. She relates: “Only he and I know what it is about: a calm, carefree desire to disobey the laws of pregnancy. This son, who is anticipated, cuddled, and loved even before birth, mocks those who already consider him theirs, letting himself go to a risky but inebriating game” (71). 29 It is telling that Armida desires to disobey the laws of pregnancy. Ultimately her body becomes a site of protest; her hemorrhage, indigestion, and miscarriage are linked to a subconscious urge to break free from the toil of motherhood and a marriage grown stale. In Un clandestino a bordo (1996), Maraini recounts the details of her own miscarriage, which closely mirrors the experience of her surrogate character, Armida. During convalescence, feeling empty and swollen, Maraini spends her days in the garden of her mother-in-law. Although she is dejected as a result of her loss, she fully understands that motherhood is complex and not a fate desired by all women. She explains that abortion is both an active and passive act. While some women wish to liberate their bodies from an intruder, others desperately seek to make the intruder feel at home. She sheds light on the reality that maternity does not naturally lead to generosity and self-sacrifice; rather, some mothers feel such resentment toward the child that it disrupts their being. She emphasizes that we are so inundated with images of the satisfied mother that we neglect to consider the conditions of young mothers, and submissive mothers, who, like Armida, are sometimes raped beneath the sheets of their own bed and are subsequently constrained to carry a pregnancy to term. In Il treno per Helsinki, themes such as marriage, motherhood, and oppression are astutely explored through the vehicle of food. Maraini has set a precedent of using food as a relational lens through which she views the world around her. Her profound attraction to food is influenced by the deprivation she experienced as a child. In Bagheria, she

Hungry for Honey  179 briefly recounts the harsh conditions and incessant hunger she suffered as a young girl in a Japanese prison-of-war camp during the early 1940s. She compensates for a dietary deficit in her youth by infusing her work with descriptions of cuisine and cooking. In “La cipolla era un sogno celeste,” Severino Cesari interviews Maraini, who describes how, during confinement, she passed her days discussing food with fellow prisoners. She specifies that the meager cup of rice she was given daily inspired her food fetish. Understandably, as an adult Maraini has a profoundly spiritual connection to the food that peppers the pages of her work. She relates to Cesari: My mind, however, remained tied to the myth of food, of its sacredness. I could spend hours in front of dessert windows, because I am attracted to the beauty that sweets promise. Food promises something that invites our senses and that is not only pure nourishment, but through enticing tastes, colors, and smells promises a magical metamorphosis. Like Alice’s mushroom, it can make us become big or small. (Cesari 47)30 Unsurprisingly, the eating habits of Maraini’s characters are often symbolic of their mindset. Indeed, it is Armida’s diet that communicates her instability. Notably, it is her inability to digest and eventual unwillingness to eat at all during pregnancy that reflects her inner conflict. Although Armida does not undergo an illegal abortion like her hospital mates, she is hardly excited about motherhood and endures pregnancy with a sense of resignation.31 Her body perceives her lack of conviction and it rejects the fetus. First, she suffers from a stubborn hemorrhage, which foreshadows her body’s climactic backlash. Thereafter, in a later stage of pregnancy, she experiences acute indigestion as visitors shower her with candy: “The nightstand covered in almond sweets, chocolates that I don’t eat, orange biscuits, candied fruit, cream puffs” (72).32 However, she cannot keep down her food, and so she ceases to eat at all. Finally, one night she sleeps peacefully, and the defiant kicks of her unborn son disappear altogether. For the first time in days, she is even hungry. She drinks a cup of milk and eats an entire sleeve of cookies. She fears her stomach might rebel, but her digestive system has returned to normal. As she regains her appetite, her back muscles stiffen and her stomach is taut like a drum – she has lost the child for good. It is interesting to note that milk is a life-giving substance with which a mother nourishes a child. Armida’s fetus perishes after she drinks from the cup of milk, an act symbolic of her desire to nurture herself as she reestablishes her independence devoid of maternal duties and marriage. Nietzsche employs metaphor in order to elucidate the relationship between mind and body, instability and indigestion. He claims that when

180  Eilis Kierans one is unable to suppress or forget, which he compares to dyspepsia, they are subject to unrest, as well as to “no happiness, no cheerfulness, no hope, no pride, no present without forgetfulness” (GM:35). Throughout Armida’s pregnancy, she is unwilling to cast Miele from consciousness, and so he consumes most of her thoughts. She has difficulty focusing on the forthcoming birth of the baby and instead she experiences what Nietzsche terms “a true memory of the will” (GM:36). Nietzsche explains that “[t]he human being in whom this suppression apparatus is damaged and stops functioning is comparable to a dyspeptic (and not just comparable –) he can’t ‘process’ anything” (GM:35). It is not until Armida’s body rejects the baby, who competes for her thoughts, that she regains her appetite. Relieved of maternal duties, she is now free to wholeheartedly pursue Miele. Following Armida’s miscarriage, “pale as a bean”33 and “[b]loated from poorly digested food,”34 she is hesitant to allow Miele see her in such disarray (77). Still confined to a hospital bed, they exchange passionate phone calls. It is his melodious voice that motivates her to refuse further hospital treatment, and subsequently she is transferred to the decadence of her wealthy mother-in-law’s home where she resolves to eat bread, figs, and prosciutto – foods rich in symbolism. She says: “I only eat what I want, when I want” (79). 35 Bread has traditionally been associated with resurrection while figs are enclosed flowers that blossom inwardly and are often identified with enlightenment. Prosciutto, a cured ham that is widely consumed in Italy, is reminiscent of a phallus and suggestive of power. As Armida seeks to reclaim bodily autonomy, she fills her stomach with wholesome foods that are easy as pie to prepare. More importantly, however, her simple but hearty diet marks the beginning of her rebirth. She is relieved to have control over her life again and, despite feelings of resentment toward Paolo, she returns with him to Rome. Upon returning home, Armida prepares a pasta dinner for Paolo and friends. She anxiously awaits Miele, who is running late. When he finally arrives, she is so overwhelmed by desire that she embraces him voraciously. She describes, “The delight of eating and being eaten, predator and prey of each other, tenaciously filling one’s mouth with the most desired pieces: lips, cheeks, eyelids, ears, tongue, neck” (89). 36 It is in this moment of insatiable passion that Armida makes peace with her traumatic past. She resolutely decides to leave Paolo and subsequently subsists on fruit and vegetables in order to cleanse herself inside and out. Following Armida’s liberation, she and her friends decide to participate in the Helsinki Festival, an event attended by socialist youth from all over Europe. Armida is invited to partake in the festival as a playwright. The group spends eight days traveling by train to Finland. During the trip, food is scarce, and they barter, scrounge for scraps, and at times starve. They are constantly hungry and incessantly on the prowl for something cheap to chew on. Once they arrive, Miele secretly

Hungry for Honey  181 leaves aniseed biscuits and apple juice on Armida’s bed. His kind gesture is hardly enough to appease her appetite. During this period, Miele is elusive and Armida is increasingly anxious; she is more interested in keeping an eye on Miele than engaging in the event. As Armida feels increasingly entrapped in a relationship with an unfaithful lover, her political life and sense of self are compromised. She wanders Helsinki aimlessly, like a lost dog looking for her master. When she finally tracks down Miele’s whereabouts, she is sorely disappointed when she finds him in the company of another woman. She is so upset by his behavior that she knocks back vodka with her new friend, Asia, who attempts to talk her out of her sorry, sentimental state. Asia, considered the crazy girl, suggests that if women are to engage in sex, often devoid of equal sexual pleasure, they should at least seek compensation for it. When it is Armida’s turn to give a speech at the festival, she is so inebriated she forgets her discourse altogether and ends up recounting the comical details of her train trip; Miele, an ardent political activist, is less than impressed by her performance. Armida and Miele struggle to connect intellectually and physically in Helsinki, and as such, Miele’s appeal slowly starts to dwindle. When the couple is thwarted in their attempt to make love in their sleeping quarters, Miele suggests that they resort to the woods, from which emanates the odor of resin and mushrooms: an allusion to Alice/Armida’s growing pains. The couple never makes it into the woods, and in a later scene Miele rolls out of the bushes with another woman, whom he claims not to know. Armida is distraught, but Miele pleads that he needs her, and so he quickly finds a quiet place in a cellar. They make love on a floral-scented sleeping bag beside bins of fermenting apples and a case of smoked fish. However, unlike the imperishability of preserved products, their relationship quickly decays. At the close of their sexual embrace, Armida reflects: “This time we divide. But to remain divided. The odors recompose themselves, they lose that fiery zest that intoxicates. We are no longer suspended in emptiness, in a mysterious space between land and sky, between exploding apples and fish that fly …” (229).37 Armida comes to her senses. She realizes “[she] must leave him how he is, enclosed in mystery as in a second skin” (230).38 Armida is no longer tiny, but rather, she is just about right. Upon their return to Rome, Armida and Miele meet for what will be, unbeknownst to them, a farewell meal. Miele announces that he will marry a Guatemalan refugee to save her from risk of torture in her own country. He continues to profess his love for Armida: “I love you Armida… it is this that I wanted to tell you… that nothing changes even if it seems to change. I feel you closer than ever and I love you” (260).39 Yet Armida does not believe his pleas, and she demands to know from whom he contracted gonorrhea. She stops short and reflects: “It is right that he appears how he wants to appear. Even if it is not the truth.

182  Eilis Kierans But  the truth, as he would say, what is it?” (261).40 After their meal, Miele drops Armida at home and begs to know when he will see her again. But Armida decidedly needs nobody but herself. She closes the door and does not look back. Her emotional recovery takes place in the solitude of her home next to her loyal dog. During convalescence, she sleeps during strange hours and vegetates in front of an open window. She seals herself off inside and consumes plain foods from cans in an act of self-preservation. Soon enough, she is ready to reintegrate into the outside world, and it is all a bittersweet memory. At the close of the book, Armida is cast back to the present, and in her hands she holds a “potato that in its white simplicity and tender compactness seems to enclose the mediocre and at the same time magnificent mystery of Miele” (267).41 It is only after Armida peels through layers of bittersweet memories that she makes peace with her past and the plot comes full circle.

Notes 1 “Honey” is the English translation of the Italian “Miele.” 2 Original: Mangio il fungo di Alice. Divento minuscola. Entro nello specchio e scivolo dentro un imbuto nero una galleria glutinata dalle pareti molli che mi cacciano in fondo in fondo verso le radici degli intestini verso le strettoie dell’ano che si torce e plof esco cacata da me stessa in un giardino profumato e mi guardo intorno stordita. (3) 3 “divorando pezzo a pezzo le ossa scarne dei contadini vietnamiti” (30). 4 Tommasina Gabriele, “Too Sweet for the Sweet: Dacia Maraini’s Il treno per Helsinki,” Rivista di Studi Italiani 2.2 (June 2004): 69–77. 5 “Fa schifo. Lo bevo perché mi ricorda una donna che ho amato” (6). 6 “come un maiale pregiato” (7). 7 “liquido bianco appiccicoso” (94). 8 “come una mosca nel latte” (8). 9 “Aspetto che mi dica qualcosa di più su di lui” (12). 10 “la glassata bianca nasconde l’interno del dolce. E quelle violette sono così brillanti così finte non dicono la verità” (12–13). 11 “Il sapore della sua lingua amara di caffè. La guancia contro la guancia” (20). 12 “Mi addormento fra le braccia di Paolo. Un senso di amaro in bocca per il troppo vino bevuto. La pancia gonfia le palpebre pesanti. Sogno che sto male nella mia pelle. E ho voglia di scappare” (48). 13 “un senso di peso sul ventre” (10). 14 “sta cercando di spingersi dentro di me” (10). 15 Dacia Maraini, Devour Me Too, trans. Genni Donati Gunn (Guernica, 1987) 40. 16 “Non sono gelosa… il fatto è che non sono abbastanza gelosa” (15). 17 “un eccesso di intimità matrimoniale” (15). 18 It is noteworthy that Western society has traditionally considered meat a male food that symbolizes power and virility. For a feminist critique on the relationship between meat and men, see, for example, Marti Kheel, “Vegetarianism and Ecofeminism: Toppling Patriarchy with a Fork,” in Food for

Hungry for Honey  183

19

20 21 22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29

30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat, ed. Steve F. Sapontzis (Prometheus Books, 2004), 327–341. “Miele mangia appena masticando svogliatamente. Lamberto si serve tre volte ingordamente. Paolo gli raccomanda di lasciarne un poco anche per gli altri. Lui alza le spalle. Cesare immerge la forchetta nel pasticcio quasi affrontando un corpo a corpo. Nico assapora lentamente i bocconi sezionandoli prima sospettoso col coltello nel piatto” (14). “Voglio essere presente quando nasce. È anche mio” (53). “Da ora in poi non voglio che tu faccia un gesto” (54). “Faccio io la spesa oggi! Dov’è il guinzaglio? Tu pulisci la casa che io penso a tutto” (54). “per una ricchezza di famiglia mai compresa né digerita” (4). In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan focuses on the plight of educated white women who, as bell hooks points out, represented a small fraction of women. Hooks emphasizes that the majority of women during the 1950s and 1960s were from working-class backgrounds, and many of them considered it a privilege to stay at home and take care of the family. For further discussion of feminist class struggle, see bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Pluto Press, 2000), 37–44. “Non riesco ad urlare come gli altri. Per quel misto di timidezza e senso del ridicolo che mi porto appresso come una remora bluastra che nuota sempre con me nelle acque fonde della coscienza” (29). “La mattina mi sveglio con lo stomaco in subbuglio. Penso: avrò mangiato qualcosa di guasto. Ma no è lui che ho mangiato. E non riesco a digerirlo. Mi contrae le viscere mi strozza la gola. Mi alzo mi preparo un caffè e mi accorgo che non sto attenta a quello che faccio: sono gesti meccanici che vengono fuori per abitudine. Il mio pensiero è fisso su di lui” (24). “Torno a tavola. Spilluzzico qualcosa. Ma lo stomaco è chiuso sbarrato” (56). “Ma lui l’altro lì dentro la pancia è geloso. Non sopporta la presenza anche solo immaginata di un altro oltre lui. …Vuole che tutte le mie attenzioni i miei pensieri le mie voglie i miei languori siano per lui e solo per lui” (71). “Solo io e lui sappiamo di che si tratta: una quieta allegra voglia di disobbedire alle leggi della gravidanza. Questo figlio aspettato coccolato amato ancora prima di nascere si prende beffe di chi lo considera già suo lasciandosi andare ad un gioco rischioso ma inebriante” (71). “La mia mente però è rimasta legata al mito del cibo, alla sua sacralità. Potrei stare delle ore davanti alle vetrine di dolci, perché mi attira la bellezza di quello che il dolce promette. Il cibo promette qualcosa che attira i nostri sensi e che non è solo puro nutrimento, ma attraverso l’incanto degli odori, dei sapori, dei colori, promette una metamorfosi magica. Come il fungo di Alice. Può farci diventare grandissimi o piccolissimi” (47). In 1978, abortion was legalized in Italy. “Il comodino carico di dolci alla mandorla di cioccolatini che non mangio di biscotti all’arancio di frutta candita di bignè alla crema” (72). “pallida come un fagiolo” (77). “Gonfia di cibo maldigerito” (77). “Mangio solo quello che mi va quando mi va” (79). “La delizia di mangiare ed essere mangiati predatore e prede l’uno dell’altro accaniti nel riempirsi la bocca dei pezzi più desiderati: labbra guance palpebre orecchie lingua collo” (89). “Questa volta ci dividiamo. Ma per rimanere divisi. Gli odori si ricompongono perdono quel bruciore speziato che ubriaca. Non siamo più sospesi nel vuoto in un misterioso spazio fra la terra e il cielo fra mele che esplodono e pesci che volano …” (229).

184  Eilis Kierans





Works Cited Barthes, Roland. “Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption.” 1961. Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan et al., 2nd ed., Routledge, 2008, pp. 240–258.  Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. 1949. Translated by Constance Borde et al., Vintage Books, 2011. Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1865. Illustrated by John Tenniel et al., 1992. Cesari, Severino. “La cipolla era un sogno celeste: Intervista con Dacia Maraini.” Dedica a Dacia Maraini, edited by Claudio Cattaruzza, LINT, 2000, pp. 19–48. DeVault, Marjorie. “Conflict and Deference.” 1991. Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan et al., 2nd ed., Routledge, 2008, pp. 240–258. Farquhar, Judith. Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China. Duke UP, 2002. Fischler, Claude. “Food, Self and Identity.” Information (International Social Science Council), vol. 27, no. 2, June 1988, pp. 275–292.  Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963. Norton, 2001. Gabriele, Tommasina. “Too Sweet for the Sweet: Dacia Maraini’s Il treno per Helsinki.” Rivista di Studi Italiani, vol. 22, no. 1, 2004, pp. 69–77. Gribaldo, Alessandra et al. “An Imperfect Contraceptive Society: Fertility and Contraception in Italy.” Population and Development Review, vol. 35, no. 3, 2009, pp. 551–584. Holtzman, Jon D. “Food and Memory.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 35, 2006, pp. 361–378. hooks, bell. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. South End Press, 2000. Kheel, Marti. “Vegetarianism and Ecofeminism: Toppling Patriarchy with a Fork.” Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat, edited by Steve F. Sapontzis, Prometheus Books, 2004, pp. 327–341. Lonzi, Carla. “Let’s Spit on Hegel.” 1970. Translated by Giovanna Bellesia and Elaine Maclachlan. Feminist Interpretations of G. W. F. Hegel, edited by Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, Pennsylvania State UP, 1996, pp. 275–298. Maraini, Dacia. Bagheria. 1993. Rizzoli, 2009. ———. Un clandestino a bordo. Rizzoli, 1996. ———. Donna in guerra. Einaudi, 1975. ———. Il ricatto a teatro e altre commedie. Einaudi, 1970.

Hungry for Honey  185 ———. “To a Timid Sister.” Devour Me Too. 1978. Translated by Genni Donati Gunn, Guernica Editions, 1987, pp. 40–42. ———. Il treno per Helsinki. Einaudi, 1984. Mitchell, Juliet. Woman’s Estate. 1971. Verso, 2015. Nietzsche, Friedrich W. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. 1887. Translated by Maudemarie Clark et al., Hackett Pub. Co, 1998. Pallotta, Augustus. “Dacia Maraini: From Alienation to Feminism.” World Literature Today, vol. 58, no. 3, 1984, pp. 359–362. Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. 1913–1927. Translated by D. J. Enright et al., Modern Library, 2003. Samà, Cinzia. “Il treno per Helsinki e l’ambiguità di Dacia Maraini di fronte al Sessantotto.” Carte Italiane: A Journal of Italian Studies, vol. 2, no. 4, 2008, pp. 66–79. Seger, Monica. “A Conversation with Dacia Maraini.” World Literature Today, vol. 85, no. 4, 2011, pp. 28–30. Sutton, David E. “Food and the Senses.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 39, 2010, pp. 209–223. Willson, Perry R. Women in Twentieth-Century Italy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

11 “Identica a loro?” (In)digesting Food and Identity in Igiaba Scego’s “Salsicce” Francesca Calamita Over the last few decades, Italy has experienced a growing influx of migrants from Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, including, but not exclusively, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, and Somalia: former Italian territories during the first half of the twentieth century. As Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo remind us in Postcolonial Italy (2012), Italy did not deal with large-scale immigration after the decolonization of its regions, following the fall of fascism in the 1940s, but more gradually from the late 1970 onward, when France, the Netherlands, and West Germany, following the oil crisis, started to considerably reduce permits for migrant workers from their former colonies, thus putting an end to their open-door policy on immigration; over these decades, Italy became an alternative European destination for migrants from the most diverse areas of the globe. As a result, Italian society has become more diverse, particularly in terms of race and religion, and the traditional narrative of the so-called italianità is currently also in evolution. According to Sandra Ponzanesi (2004), Roberta Pergher (2007), as well as Lombardi-Diop and Romeo, Italian culture lacks postcolonial consciousness, due to the absence of significant immigration until recent times, and given its particular geographical location at the center of the Mediterranean Sea, a pathway for many populations over the course of history. Similarly, Simone Brioni suggests that the fact that Italy did not receive as many migrants as other European countries in the past has prevented Italians from learning about Italy’s colonial past (5). Furthermore, as Lidia Curti (2007) points out: “Italy, a nation of emigrants especially in the south, unconsciously mirrors itself in these figures, whilst ignoring or preferring to forget that a part of them come from our ex-colonies” (62). Italy is currently one of the main ports of arrival to the European Union, thus still retaining its role as crossroad toward migrants’ final destinations, despite the pressure of the recent government and particularly its far right Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini,1 on reducing entries by sea. 2 Furthermore, the controversial principle of the ius sanguinis does not contribute to a much-needed integration between “old” and “new” Italians; according to this principle, citizenship

“Identica a loro?”  187 is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parents who are citizens of the state. On the contrary, the ius soli gives the right to anyone born in the territory of a state to become her/his/their citizen. In other words, under the current legislation, the children of migrants are still considered migrants themselves, even if born in Italy, and they might be able to have an Italian passport only when they reach the age of eighteen.3 With the past and recent migration dynamics, shaping an alternative Italian identity, a new literary genre has also emerged: migrant Italian women’s writing.4 This new literary wave has produced an extensive and diverse body of work which Curti labels as “diasporic literature,” thus referring to writings linked to the ex-colonies and those from other parts of the globe, including writings by children of migrants born in Italy (64–65). From Nassera Chohra’s Volevo diventare bianca [I Wanted to Become White] (1993) and Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque’s Princesa [Princess] (1994) to Ubax Cristina Ali Farah’s Madre piccola [Little Mother] (2007) and Igiaba Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono [My Home is Where I Am] (2010), to mention just a few well-known works written in Italian by “diasporic” writers.5 Their marginal position – because of their origins, race, and gender – is discussed in these autobiographical and fictional writings, which also address contemporary debates on immigration.6 For example, Chohra’s autobiography is set between France, where the protagonist lived her childhood, and Italy, where she moved as an adult, and analyzes the writer-protagonist’s feelings toward her heritage as well as the difficulties she faced in establishing her own identity. Similarly, the story of the autobiographical protagonist of Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono is divided between Rome, where she lives, and Mogadishu, where her Somalian roots originated. By the same token, in Farah’s Madre piccola, the Somali diaspora is discussed by several women who voice their gender troubles in different worldwide settings. In Farias de Albuquerque’s Princesa, the discourse on migration is parallel to the discussion on transgender identity; furthermore, the autobiographical protagonist recounts her story from her adolescent years in Brazil to her prostitution days in Milan where she will become addicted to heroin; Princesa spends significant time in the Rebibbia jail, following allegations of a tentative homicide, where she writes her book while battling with HIV, thus describing the harsh reality that many migrants have to face in Italy as well as in Europe.7 In this chapter, I focus in particular on Scego whose narrative production has been at the center of current literary debate over the last few years. Scego was born in Rome in 1974 after her Somali parents had immigrated to Italy following Siad Barre’s 1969 coup d’état.8 In her works,9 she widely discusses her Somali roots and Italian citizenship, navigating between two different cultures and religions; furthermore, she frequently denounces Italy’s colonial past and its sexist and racist legacy

188  Francesca Calamita in the present. In particular, I concentrate on “Salsicce” [Sausages], an autobiographical short story written in 2003,10 where the young Muslim protagonist negotiates her identity through food by attempting to eat pork, which is traditionally unlawful in accordance with the Qur’an. Holding an Italian passport is not enough to make the protagonist feel safe: since her physical appearance does not conform to mainstream Italian girlhood, her future will always be that of an outsider. Reading Scego’s short story through intersectional feminist lenses and framing my argument in feminist postcolonial studies,11 which include the voices of indigenous and other non-Western feminist movements into mainstream Western women’s thought, I discuss the protagonist’s troubled relationship with food; her desperate attempt to prove that she is an “authentic” Italian girl, despite her black complexion and her religion; and her effort to preserve her cultural heritage. Migrant writers often use food scenes – preparation, consumption, and rituals – to discuss their heritage and identity. This is not typical only of “diasporic literature”; food is a central means of connecting to one’s native country.12 For example, Scego often recalls Somali recipes and meals in the short story “Dismatria” [Exmatriates] (2005), and in the novels Rhoda (2004) and La mia casa è dove sono. Brioni also notes that in the appendix of Rhoda, as well as La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock [The Nomad Who Loved Alfred Hitchcock] (2003), not only does Scego present some Somali recipes, but she also invites the Italian readers to establish physical contact with the “other,” by eating his or her food (96). In doing so, Scego attempts to make her Somali origins more visible through food habits and share her heritage with Italian audiences, thus attempting to reinforce connections among cultures. However, as Sandra Federici (2014) suggests: “Claims related to food […] are a full-fledged request to be recognized, which could be defined as complete, and made up not only of physical, but also cultural and psychic elements, including undeclared or badly declared or unconscious demands related to affection” (2).13 If food can be read as an instrument to build community and relations, to demonstrate love and affection among friends and family members, and to create new links between people, it also true that it demarks differences among populations and brings with it stereotypes related to different cultures. In other words, food can be read as a powerful social “glue” in many contexts, but also as a strong marker of identity, a way to delineate boundaries rather than building cultural bridges. On this point, Peter Scholliers (2001) adds: Because people absorb food, they seize the opportunity to demarcate their own and the other group. People eating similar food are trustworthy, good, familiar, and safe; but people eating unusual food give rise to feelings of distrust, suspicion and even disgust. Food

“Identica a loro?”  189 taboos formalize to an extreme the position with regard to particular foods, hence the existence of a culinary classification and norms, which attribute to food and its eaters a given place in the world. (8) This is particularly related to the short story “Salsicce,” where the protagonist attempts to eat sausages in order to feel more Italian, yet she is unable to shallow them, thus demarking cultural and identitarian boundaries with a particular food. As I will discuss shortly, this moment will be made up of negative feelings, such as/among them disgust and fear, since this food does not belong to the protagonist’s heritage and background, but it is, rather, an “intrusive” object used to be momentarily converted into a different person. In “Salsicce,” food has multiple connotations: It is an object of desire, therefore is deeply wanted, yet something to be refused to protect the cultural roots of the protagonist. It is precisely these multifaceted, complex, and – at times – paradoxical messages related to food, as described by Federici and Scholliers, that I look to explore with this analysis of Scego’s short story. Scego starts her autobiographical work reflecting on the purchase the protagonist has made: “What was odd about it, in fact, was not the object bought, but the subject buying the sausages: I, me, myself in person. Me, a Sunni Muslim.”14 With this remark, the protagonist highlights the tension between the object of desire, sausages, and the expectations placed on her as a Muslim woman, regardless of her citizenship.15 She is also reminded of her religious faith by the shopkeeper, Rosetta, who knows the protagonist personally, and after her unusual request says: “What’s this, sweetie, have you converted? Wasn’t it a sin for you to eat sausages?”16 This question deeply embarrasses Igiaba and she decides to reply that the sausages are not for her but for someone else in the neighborhood. In this scene, the Italian shopkeeper feels entitled to seek explanations and the protagonist prefers not to say the truth. In other words, the presumably Roman white woman expresses her cultural privileges through this question and highlights the religious limitations experienced by the black woman in a predominantly Christian country. As Audre Lorde suggests (2003), white women privileges have been often achieved at the cost of their black counterparts over the course of history (25–28). Igiaba’s conversation with Rosetta is a modern example of this unequal relationship where the Roman shopkeeper assumes that she can investigate the protagonist’s eating habits and also warn her about possible consequences. This is not the first time Igiaba transgresses the rules about eating imposed on her by her religion and feels ashamed for the food she wants to eat. She remembers that when she was a child, she ate some pork by mistake, and was told by her parents to vomit the insalata di riso where tiny pieces of würstel with sottaceti were mixed; furthermore, the frying pan where the dish was prepared was also thrown away. Igiaba is not

190  Francesca Calamita interested in eating sausages to taste their flavor but in the potentially transformative effects they might have on her: “If I swallow these sausages one by one, will people understand that I am Italian just like them? Exactly the same as them?”17 In other words, by buying them, Igiaba attempts to negotiate her identity and transform into a new self. Purchasing sausages, therefore, is a form of transgression to feel closer to the culture of the country where she grew up. As in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman (1969), one of the first Western novels where food is depicted as an instrument to question the patriarchal order, in “Salsicce,” Igiaba attempts to establish herself through food. It is also interesting to note that exactly like in the biblical episode of Eve and the apple, a woman, Igiaba, and food are at the center of a complicated story. However, like the apple, sausages have little to do with nutrition but bring with them a different and more complex meaning. They represent transgression in accordance with Igiaba’s religion, and are forbidden exactly like the apple was for Eve. The readers find themselves in the middle of a present-day story of disobedience where rules imposed by the patriarchal order affect a woman’s behavior and might bring some form of punishment if not respected, as in the case of insalata di riso when Igiaba was a child. In her chapter on migrant women’s writing and food, Federica Angelini (2013, 252) reminds us that Igiaba’s desire for eating sausages is related to her desire to sin. As a result, Igiaba’s gestures, like Eve’s actions, might be read not only as consequences of the exploration of cultural differences, but also as the need to escape the physical and cultural boundaries imposed on her by the patriarchy. In other words, by buying and attempting to eat sausages, Igiaba is transgressing the rules imposed on her not only by her religion but also by the patriarchal impositions related to her faith. Her desire to sin, like Eve’s, has little to do with nutrition, and much to do with the necessity to pursue self-determination and establish her persona. Similarly, Naci, the autobiographical Muslim and black protagonist of Chohra’s Volevo diventare bianca, decides to taste some forbidden food during the reception of her white, Catholic friend’s first Communion in Marseille: Beside desserts, at the reception there were also salami, sausages, prosciutto and red wine; a concentration of great sins, according to [the] Qur’an. […] When I would be completely lost in the crowd and no one would have paid attention to me, then I could have started my conversion. How? Eating salami and drinking wine, of course. According to everyone, that was the only difference between us and Catholic people!18 In both instances, the protagonists target food commonly eaten by Catholic people in Italy and France and forbidden by their faith. Yet, as Igiaba does with sausages, Naci does not realize that by ingesting those

“Identica a loro?”  191 Western dishes, she will not be able to cancel the patriarchal impositions placed on her. By eating forbidden dishes, Naci and Igiaba will embrace the lifestyle allowed by another religion, the Catholic one, yet they will not move away from the patriarchal system. In other words, food in these stories allows the protagonists to fluctuate between more than one culture, yet as women, it does not allow them freedom from the patriarchal system in which both cultures, even if in different ways, are still very much trapped. In relation to this point, it is also necessary to reflect on the particular food choice made by Igiaba in the short story. While it is true that sausages are popular in Rome and all over Italy, it must also be noted that they are an unusual choice when traditional Italian food comes to mind. Unlike in several other European countries, a traditional Italian breakfast does not include sausages, but the protagonist, unsure about the right way to cook them, would like to eat them in the morning. However, this food choice also reveals Igiaba’s strong roots in Italian culture, since she did not pick a stereotypical Italian food, like pasta or pizza, but something that potentially might symbolize an attempt to eradicate her family origins, culture, and religion at the same time. In other words, a stereotypical Italian dish would not have the same effects on her, since it would not eliminate the religious impositions placed on her. Sausages can also be read as symbols of the patriarchy for their phallic form, and their acceptance and rejection as a form of the complicated relationship Igiaba experiences with both cultures in terms of gender norms. By eating them, she also “swallows” the patriarchal dictates they represent; however, she decided to attempt to eat something that might change her deeply and in all her aspects, even if this particular food does not make her free from those patriarchal influences to which Italian culture is still subjected. “Salsicce” takes place in Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy and at the time of the well-known Bossi-Fini Law (2002), which required fingerprints for all non-European Union immigrants; Igiaba believes that her excessive anxiety toward her identity originates in this new regulation: “Where did I stand in all of this? Would I be considered a non-EEC immigrant […]? Or [an] Italian […]? Italy or Somalia? Fingerprints or no fingerprints?”19 As Brioni notes, the protagonist believes herself to be a citizen of a liberal country and therefore she experiences difficulties in understanding the conservative nature of the Bossi-Fini Law (95). The protagonist is the owner of an Italian passport; however, while her legal citizenship cannot be questioned, she is unsure about her italianità and how people perceive her due to her skin color and religion: “Deep down, am I truly Italian?”20 This is not the first time, Igiaba deals with this question; she remembers that when she was a child, many people used to ask her if she preferred Italy or Somalia, while others tried even more intimate questions by saying, “Do you feel more Italian, or more Somali?”21 Eating

192  Francesca Calamita the sausages means feeling more Italian than Somali and is therefore a way to remind herself and the people around her that she does not need to deposit her fingerprints since she is a “(stereo)typical” Italian person, not only legally but in her daily eating habits, based on a series of unwritten rules in terms of skin color, religion, and habits, including those about food and clothing, that still affect contemporary society. As Jacqueline Andall and Derek Duncan note (2010, 6), despite several decades of secularization, there have been multiple attempts to demarcate Italy as a Catholic country in recent times, 22 an idea that has also been supported by several political parties, such as Lega (formerly known as Lega Nord) and Fratelli d’Italia, particularly after the terrorist attacks planned by ISIS that have been taking place in Europe since early 2015. If Islamophobia has spread across the continent, dark skin colors are also often associated with “the other” and contrast with the relatively traditional European person with a fair complexion. Until recent times, being European has often been associated with being white and practicing Catholicism. This is particularly true in Italy, where mass immigration has affected society only in the last few decades, and as a consequence, complete integration between different races and religions is still very difficult.23 For a long time, being Italian in Europe meant also being only white, as demonstrated for example by the well-known 1996 episode of the first black Miss Italy. The election of Denny Mendez, born in the Dominican Republic, caused a scandal through the nation for her origins and her dark complexion which were not perceived as typical Italian standards of beauty. Like Mendez, for her religion and skin color, Igiaba feels like an outsider; therefore, the symbolic gesture of buying sausages acts a sort of cultural mediator between her heritage and her citizenship. Postcolonial feminist theorists, such as the alreadymentioned Lorde and Adrienne Rich (2003), have insisted for long time on the importance of recognizing the privileges that white women have under the patriarchal order. If Igiaba were a white migrant, she could have faced identity issues but in a less oppressive way. In other words, the Bossi-Fini Law would have affected her differently, since people around her might not have mistakenly identified her as an extracommunitaria for her skin color.24 However, her complexion reveals her heritage and makes her feel unsafe. At the beginning of the 2000s, similar to the present day, right-wing political parties demarcated diversity as negative. White migrant women, however, were not as targeted as black women “thanks to” their skin color. Despite being oppressed by both patriarchal values and laws, white migrant women could still have an advantage if compared with their black counterparts, as Scego’s short story depicts. Food is a fundamental marker of identity in every context, and as Massimo Montanari (2004) suggests, “it is the first way we have to familiarize with different cultures.”25 As I noted at the beginning of the

“Identica a loro?”  193 chapter, other migrant writers have dealt with food in their narratives and they have often portrayed it as a means of cultural negotiation, such as in the already-mentioned Volevo diventare bianca by Chohra and Laila Wadia’s Curry di pollo [Chicken Curry] (2003), as well as in Carmine Abate’s “Il cuoco di Arbërìa” [The Cook from Arbërìa] (2000). In Wadia’s short story, a Milanese teenager of Indian origins invites her boyfriend home for a meal and asks her mother to cook pasta rather than traditionally Indian dishes. The mother decides to have a typical Italian meal; however, her father mentions several times a recipe that they often eat at home – chicken curry – thus suggesting that they should have had it on the table. Anandita, the protagonist of Wadia’s short story, acts very differently from Igiaba in “Salsicce”; she feels completely Italian and would like to erase her Indian origins. However, similar to Igiaba, who, as will be shown, is unable to swallow the sausages, Anandita throws away the Indian dishes that her mother prepares for her: “They do not know that […] I throw away the bag with the Indian bread and vegetables full of oil and spices that my mum makes me bring to school as snack for the afternoon break.”26 Analyzing the elements that make her feel more Italian and less Somali, and vice versa, Igiaba mentions several dishes that belong to the cuisines of the two countries: I feel Somali when 1) I drink tea with cardamom, cloves and cinnamon; […] 6) I eat bananas with rice (I mean in the same dish); 7) we cook up all that meat with rice or angeelo;27 […] I feel Italian when: 1) I eat something sweet for breakfast; […] 5) I eat a 1.80 euro ice cream: chocolate chip, pistachio, coconut without whipped cream.28 If food is a powerful tool to establish identity, by eating sausages, Igiaba might metaphorically confirm her italianità and also feel more Italian than Somali. In doing so, Igiaba attempts to eliminate the issue she is experiencing with the fingerprints: “Perhaps, by eating a sausage, I might go from neutral fingertips to real ‘Made in Italy’ fingerprints, but is this what I really want?”29 It is precisely through this question that the protagonist expresses her doubts about complex identity. However, the protagonist is unable to taste the sausages; she decides to steam them but she is not fond of their color or smell. At first bite, despite her efforts, she vomits them. The love-hate relationship Igiaba establishes with sausages is a metaphor for her identity and her inability “to digest” them confirms her ambivalent position. She feels part of Italian culture, but she fears erasing completely her Somali origins. Through the consumption of pork, she would not only defy the rules imposed by Islam but also the habits and practices of her family. “I haven’t yet decided whether I am going to eat them or not. I don’t know what to do,”30 Igiaba thinks while watching TV in a desperate effort

194  Francesca Calamita to forget about this episode and her identity crisis, but a segment on the black community brings her back to her original point. In the end, Igiaba decides not to eat salsicce because with this gesture, she would not solve her identity issues, and white Italians would still perceive her as an outsider. She admits to herself that she cannot be fully Italian or fully Somali, but she is a mix of these two cultures. “No, I would be the same – the same mix – and if this bothers someone, I won’t give a damn in the future!”31 While reflecting on her identity in the short story, Igiaba thinks also about several sociocultural issues that affect many African and/or Muslim women and have concerned her only partially: among others, female genital mutilation. Procedures and age vary according to the ethnic groups or the country. From a Western feminist perspective, this practice, marked by gender-inequality, is an attempt to control women’s sexuality and impose on them ideas of purity (Ponzanesi 2000). 32 Igiaba, who did not undergo the procedure, is often questioned by her Somalian relatives who do not agree with her Western lifestyle in terms of sex: “But you are a nijas; you still have your kintir. You’ll never find a husband.”33 The protagonist, however, embraces a Western attitude and states that “infibulation has nothing to do with religion, and that it is nothing less than a form of violence against women.”34 Similarly, in Catholicism, women have been marked as impure for premarital sex, and virginity has long been regarded as a moral value. In both religions patriarchal authorities have imposed their power on women’s bodies, thus attempting to discipline their behaviors.35 While it is true that the protagonist is not controlled by the patriarchal society as much as one could have been in the past, it must be also stated that the standards set by both religions in terms of eating and sexuality shape her identity. Food, too, has been politicized by Islamic and Catholic religions. If the Qur’an forbids pork, and Igiaba had to vomit the insalata di riso in order to be forgiven when she was a child, the so-called peccato di gola has been marked as one of the worst sins by Catholic ideology.36 Much emphasis has been placed on the consumption of sweet food by the Catholic religion and fare un fioretto, a practice particularly taught to children, is compelled to abstain from candies and chocolate in exchange for the fulfillment of a wish. Furthermore, according to the collective imaginary, Eve was the person who ate the apple, rather than Adam; therefore, women’s relationship with food has been perceived as complicated since its early development and often associated with sin, lust, and misbehavior. In other words, regardless of religion, Igiaba is oppressed as a woman, as ways of eating and of sexual freedom are imposed on her by the patriarchal authority. In “Salsicce,” Igiaba is unable to solve her dilemma with her complex identity, neither Italian nor Somali, but she attempts to negotiate it through food. Food is an instrument of communication par excellence

“Identica a loro?”  195 for marking an identity situated between cultures; it is also a powerful tool for expressing the emotions central to Scego’s story. Refusing sausages is an act of acceptance of Igiaba’s Somali origins, but at the same time, courageously buying them reveals an attempt to solve her identity issues and assert an Italian identity. As Vera Horn (2010, 161) suggests, “From the beginning, she is not sure about the stunt […] both dimensions, Italian and Somali, are part of her identity, without chances of dominance on each other or chances of assimilation, which would lead to negation.”37 The fact that Igiaba does not choose between the two cultures is not a simple way to solve her issue, but, on the contrary, a way to remark that she does not want to belong to a category, a limited space demarked by class, gender, sex, ethnicity, or race (Horn 2010, 161). By reflecting on female genital mutilation in the short story, Igiaba also recognizes that colonialism, gender, and religion have often been contradictory for women who have been at the same time colonized objects – this is the case for black women – but also colonizing race-privileged subjects: white women, who, however, are still controlled by the patriarchal order and their religion. At the end of the short story, Igiaba gets a phone call from a friend who lets her know that she won a concorso, “without anyone ‘mentioning’ my name! […] and with no fingerprinting!”38 In this particular episode, Igiaba expresses love for herself: a woman with a complex identity where traits of Somali heritage and Italian citizenship cohabit together. The protagonist and author also remarked this point during an interview for Radio 3: “I am Roman but I am not certain about the rest. I do not like choosing among my identities. I feel myself to belong to the border generation, the crossroads generation. One is everything and its reverse, Italian and Somali or something else that goes beyond citizenship” (2007). This confirms that her double identity exists and coexists, despite the complex and multifaceted challenges she experiences with it.

Notes 1 Regularly closing ports to NGO boats has become a strategy of the far-right wing of the current government to stop new migrants from reaching Italy by sea. For example, in summer 2018, Italy did not allow Acquarius to disembark; only after several days of debates were migrants allowed to reach Spain and be admitted by the country. In January 2019, Sea Watch 3 was not allowed to disembark its forty-seven migrants in Sicily. For the case of the Italian coastguard ship Diciotti, with 177 migrants on board who were not allowed to disembark in Catania, Salvini might face trial for kidnapping. 2 Robert Press’s article (2016) focuses on emotions of migrants over the course of their journey from Africa to Europe. “Dangerous crossings” are retold by the author who interviewed sixty African migrants in 2014–2016 in Italy and France, providing a portrait of resilience and courage, which deeply differs with the images media offer every day on Italian television and newspapers.

196  Francesca Calamita 3 18 Ius Soli (2011) is the title of a documentary by Italian-Ghanaian director Fred Kuwornu; it addresses this issue and explores feelings and frustrations as perceived by several children of migrants who were born in Italy. 4 On migrant women’s writing and issues of gender, see another publication by Lidia Curti: La voce dell’altra: scritture ibride tra femminismo e postcoloniale (2006). 5 Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque wrote Princesa in collaboration with Francesco Iannelli while Nassera Chohra wrote Volevo diventare bianca with Alessandra Atti Di Sarro. 6 Ali Farah and Scego were born in Italy; however, they both defined themselves in the past as “immigrant women’s writing.” Brioni reminds us that Scego also identifies herself as part of “la prima generazione di figlie di immigrati nate e cresciute in Italia” [the first generation of immigrants’ daughters, born and raised in Italy] (47). 7 The so-called tratta delle donne nigeriane refers to the escalating number of young Nigerian women who are trafficked to Italy to work illegally as prostitutes. Recent statistics confirm that in 2015, about five thousand women were promised a new European life and found themselves trapped at the mercy of their protectors. See http://inchieste.repubblica.it/it/repubblica/ rep-it/2016/06/27/news/la_tratta_delle_nigeriane_gestita_dall_ italia142510895/?refresh_ce (last accessed January 19, 2019). 8 Scego’s father was a well-known politician who worked in various diplomatic positions, including ambassadorial roles. She spent her childhood and adolescent years in Italy and she graduated in Foreign Literature at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” In 2008 she obtained her PhD in Pedagogy at the Roma Tre University with a thesis on the writings of Erminia dell’Oro, Cristina Ali Farah, and Gabriella Ghermandi. She collaborates regularly with largely read Italian newspapers, such as La Repubblica and Il Manifesto, as well as online magazines specializing in migration issues, such as Carta and Corriere Immigrazione. A complete biography, compiled by Brioni, is available on the website of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women Writing in the University of London. See http://modernlanguages. sas.ac.uk/igiaba-scego (last accessed January 27, 2019). 9 Scego’s corpus of work is extensive; among some of her well-known writings are: La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock (2003); Rhoda (2004); “Dismatria” and “Salsicce” in Pecore nere (2005); Italiani per vocazione (2005); “Identità” in Amori Bicolori (2007); Quando nasci è una roulette. Giovani figli di migranti si raccontano, with Ingy Mubiayi (2007); Oltre Babilonia (2008); L’albero in Nessuna Pietà (2009); Roma Negata, with Rino Bianchi (2014); Adua, (2015); and Caetano Veloso. Camminando controvento (2016). 10 “Salsicce” was awarded the Eks&Tra prize among migrant writers. 11 In particular, Reina Lewis and Sara Mills, Feminist Postcolonial Theory (2003). 12 Italian literature has also many culinary representations from medieval times to present-day writing. See, for example, Christiana Purdy Moudarres, Table Talk: Perspectives on Food in Medieval Italian Literature (2010); Francesca Calamita, Linguaggi dell’esperienza femminile: disturbi alimentari, donne e scrittura dall’Unità al miracolo economico (2015); Peter Naccarato, Zachary Nowak and Elgin K. Eckert, Representing Italy through Food (2017). 13 “le rivendicazioni legate al cibo […] costituiscono a tutti gli effetti una richiesta di riconoscimento che si potrebbe definire completo, composto di elementi non solo fisici, ma anche culturali e psichici, incluse indichiarate o mal

“Identica a loro?”  197

14

15

16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23

24 25 26

dichiarate o inconsce istanze affettive (2).” My translation in the main body of the chapter. All translations of the short story into English by Giovanna Bellesia and Victoria Offredi Poletto. This translation first appeared in Metamorphoses (2005). “La stranezza non è nell’oggetto comprato, ma nel soggetto compratore di salsiccie: io, me medesima, in persona, musulmana sunnita” (24). In the memoir La mia casa è dove sono, Scego reveals that “Salsicce” is an autobiographical work. As Brioni notes (107), in La mia casa è dove sono Scego describes her bulimic attitude and how her frequent episodes of vomiting are a metaphorical way to erase her sense of guilt for living in a Western country where she can afford a wealthy life (2010, 143). Therefore, in this chapter, I will refer to the protagonist of the short story as Igiaba, the first name of the author. “Ma che cara, ti sei convertita? Non era peccato per te mangiare salsicce?” (25). “Se ingoio queste salsicce una per una, la gente lo capirà che sono italiana come loro? Identica a loro?” (26). Oltre ai dolci, sul buffet c’erano anche salame, salsiccia, prosciutto e vino rosso: un concentrato di peccati gravissimi, secondo il Corano. […] Quando mi fossi completamente confusa tra la folla e nessuno avesse più badato a me, allora avrei potuto dare inizio alla mia conversione. Come? Mangiando il salame e bevendo il vino, naturalmente. A sentir tutti, era solo quella la differenza tra noi e i cattolici! (66–67). My translation in the main body of the chapter. “E io che ruolo avevo? Sarei stata un’extracomuninataria […] O un’italiana […]? Italia o Somalia? […] Impronte o non impronte?” (27). “ma ero davvero un’italiana nell’intimo?” (27). “Ti senti più italiana o somala?” (27). In particular, they refer to Cardinal Biffi’s proposal to accept migrants on the basis of their religion, which was made in 2000. See Jacqueline Andall and Derek Duncan, Italian Belongings. Hybridity in Italian Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures (2010), 6. Several Facebook pages of the leaders of the current government have contributed to spread hate among Italians. In particular, the official page of Matteo Salvini has numerous posts where migrants are not only criticized but also insulted by his followers. Several main European and American newspapers have addressed the issue and compared present-day Italy to Fascist Italy of the 1920s–1940s in terms of integration and lack of rights. Together with the campaign against diversity, Lega is also attempting to reduce women’s and LGBTQ rights, particularly in terms of reproductive freedom. Gender Studies has also been deeply misunderstood by the current Minister of Family and Disability, Lorenzo Fontana, and other members of the Lega, reinforcing and creating stigma on a much-needed subject in schools and universities. While complete integration in Italy has been difficult and in evolution for a long time, with the current government even more challenges have been added. Extracommuniatrio/a originally refers to non-European union citizens; however, in Italy, it has been mistakenly used as an umbrella term to refer to all migrants, particularly black migrants. My own translation: “è il primo modo per entrare in contatto con culture diverse” (154). “Non sanno che […] butto via il sacchetto con il pane indiano farcito di verdure strangolate nell’olio e nelle spezie che la mamma mi fa portare a scuola per merenda” (45). My translation in the main body of the chapter.

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Works Cited Abate, Carmine. “Il cuoco di Arbërìa,” Nuovi Argomenti, vol. 10, 2000, pp. 328–338. Ali Farah, Ubax Cristina. Madre piccola. Frassinelli, 2007. Andall, Jacqueline and Duncan, Derek (eds.). Italian Belongings. Hybridity in Italian Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures. Peter Lang, 2010. Angelini, Federica. “Food and Identity in Laila Wadia and Igiaba Scego.” Anuario de Literatura Comparada, vol. 3, 2013, pp. 249–257. Atwood, Margaret. The Edible Woman. McClelland and Stewart, 1969. Bellessia, Giovanna and Offredi Poletto, Victoria. “Translation of Igiaba Scego’s ‘Salsicce.’” Metamorphoses, vol. 13, no. 2, 2005, pp. 214–225. Calamita, Francesca. Linguaggi dell’esperienza femminile. Disturbi alimentari, donne e scrittura dall’Unità al miracolo economico. Il Poligrafo, 2015. Curti, Lidia. “Female Literature of Migration in Italy.” Feminist Review, vol. 87, 2007, pp. 60–75. ———. La voce dell’altra: scritture ibride tra femminismo e postcoloniale. Meltemi, 2006. Farias de Albuquerque, Fernanda e Iannelli, Francesco Iannelli. Princesa. Sensibili alle foglie, 1994. Federici, Sandra. “Cibo, intercultura, Africa.” Africa e Mediterraneo. Cultura e Società, vol. 81, no. 2, 2014, pp. 2–4.

“Identica a loro?”  199 Horn, Vera. “Assaporare la tradizione: cibo, identità e senso di appartenenza nella letteratura migrante,” Revista de Italianistica, vol. xix–xx, 2010, pp. 155–175. Kuruvilla, Gabriella, Scego, Igiaba, Mubiayi Ingy e Wadia Laila. Pecore nere, a cura di Emanuele Coen, Flavia Capitani. Bari, Laterza, 2005. Kuwornu, Fred. 18 Ius Soli, 2011. Lewis, Reina and Mills, Sara (eds.). Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Routledge, 2003. Lionnet, Françoise. “Feminism and Universalisms: ‘Universal Rights’ and the Legal Debate Around the Practice of Excision in France,” in Lewis and Mills, Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Routledge, 2003, pp. 368–380. Lombardi-Diop, Cristina and Romeo, Caterina (eds.). Postcolonial Italy: The Colonial Past in Contemporary Culture. Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. Lorde. Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Lewis and Mills, Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Routledge, 2003, pp. 25–28. Montanari, Massimo. Il cibo come cultura. Laterza, 2004. Naccarato, Peter, Nowak, Zachary Nowak and Eckert, Elgin K., Representing Italy through Food. Bloomsbury, 2017. Nassera, Chohra, Volevo essere Bianca. E/O Edizioni, 1993. Pergher, Roberta. “Impero immaginato, impero vissuto: Recenti sviluppi nella storiografia del colonialismo italiano.” Ricerche di Storia Politica, no. 1, 2007, pp. 53–66. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Il postcolonialismo italiano. Figlie dell’Impero e letteratura meticcia.” Quaderni del ’900, IV. La letteratura postcoloniale italiana, no. 4, 2004, pp. 25–34. ———. “Writing against the Grain: African Women’s Texts on Female Infibulations as Literature of Resistance.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2000, pp. 304–318. Press, Robert. “Dangerous Crossings: Voices from the African Migration to Italy/Europe.” Africa Today, vol. 64, no. 1, 2017, pp. 3–27. Purdy Moudarres, Christiana. Table Talk: Perspectives on Food in Medieval Italian Literature. Cambridge Scholars, 2010. Rich, Adrienne. “Notes Towards a Politics of Location,” in Lewis and Mills, Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Routledge, 2003, pp. 29–41. Scego, Igiaba. Adua. Giunti, 2015. ———. L’albero in nessuna pietà. Salani, 2009. ———. Caetano Veloso. Camminando controvento. Add, 2016. ———. “Dismatria,” Pecore nere. Laterza, 2005, pp. 5–21. ———. “Identità,” Amori Bicolori. Laterza, 2007, pp. 5–33. ———. Italiani per vocazione (ed). Cadmo, 2005. ———. La mia casa è dove sono. Rizzoli, 2010. ———. La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock. Sinnos, 2003. ———. Oltre Babilonia. Donzelli, 2008. ———. Rhoda. Sinnos, 2004. ———. Roma Negata, with Rino Bianchi. Ediesse, 2014. ———. “Salsicce,” Pecore nere. Laterza, 2005, pp. 23–36.

200  Francesca Calamita ———. “Salsicce” (trans by). Bellessia, Giovanna and Offredi Poletto, Victoria. Metamorphoses, vol.13, no. 2, 2005, pp. 214–225. Scego, Igiaba (interview). Damasco, Radio Tre, 24 December 2007. Scego, Igiaba with Ingy, Mubiayi (eds.). Quando nasci è una roulette. Giovani figli di migranti si raccontano, Terre di Mezzo, 2007. Scholliers, Peter. “Meals, Food Narratives, and Sentiments of Belonging in Past and Present,” in Peter Scholliers (ed.), Food, Drink and Identity: Cooking, Eating and Drinking in Europe since the Middle Ages, Berg Publishers, 2001, pp. 3–22. Wadia, Laila. “Curry di pollo,” Pecore Nere. Laterza, 2005.

12 From Bartholomew Fair to Bridesmaids Ben Jonson’s Fecopoetics and Gendered American Pop Culture Emily Gruber Keck When Bridesmaids was released, Karina Longworth lamented in The Village Voice that the hit film “vacillate[s] between two contradictory types of raw matter […] raucous, visual, and vacuous comedy that plays well in a trailer” and “a more nuanced approach forgoing immediate spectacle and punchline for character detail.” Longworth’s priorities are clear: In the comedic binary she defines, “vacuous” jokes and “spectacle” are suitable only for a trailer’s brief attention span, while the “nuanced approach” emphasizes more thoughtful “character detail.” Likewise, David Denby, writing in The New Yorker, described “awkwardly unfunny episodes that should have been dropped,” asking parenthetically, “Is there really that big an audience for vomit?” (88). Both critics were reacting to the same now-infamous sequence, in which a group of women succumb to food poisoning in a fancy bridal boutique, resulting in graphic digestive antics. Their reviews echo a theme common in the reception of popular comedies: Scenes of graphic excretion that are hits in the theater are often read by critics as products of a degenerating culture, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Far from being a sign of cultural decline, however, the “gross-out” scenes in American pop comedies are rooted in a rich cultural tradition of excremental humor, stretching back on the public stage to Aristophanes. The excremental mode evolved in medieval literature through writers like Chaucer, and flowered on the stages of early modern England, especially in the work of Ben Jonson. Mingling hilarious explorations of the digestive system and its mishaps with scathing satire of the foolish, the ambitious, and the greedy, Jonson’s plays serve as examples not only of excrement’s timeless comedic appeal but of its capacity for sociopolitical critique. His work offers a useful lens for reconsidering the graphic digestive humor in American pop comedy, to attend to such films’ potential for cultural reflection about gender and class. I will read the excretory comedy in the female-led Bridesmaids (2011) in contrast to that of American Pie (1999), a film in many ways representative of the male-led comedies of the 1990s and 2000s. Both films engage with food

202  Emily Gruber Keck and consumption at a symbolic level, which informs the metaphorical dimensions of their respective excretory scenes. Examining these heirs to Jonson together sheds some light on the distinct perspectives on class and consumption that popular comedies assume in staging differently gendered bodies. Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva offer converging theoretical models for investigating literary filth – what Susan Signe Morrison has termed fecopoetics – as an imaginative negotiation of hierarchy, highlighting the anxieties, tensions, and ambivalences of a prescriptive social order. Readings of excrement in early modern literature have been heavily influenced by Bakhtin’s concept of grotesque realism and the understanding of the body it fosters. Images of the grotesque body “degrade, bring down to earth, turn their subject into flesh” through laughter, “lowering […] all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract […] to the material level, to the sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity” (19–20). Bakhtin sees this “lowering” as a crucial symbolic operation of the carnivalesque mode; depictions of the grotesque body thus wield particular power, as they suggest the leveling of social distinction, and even political hierarchy. Kristeva’s analysis of filth has likewise played a pivotal role in critical approaches to literary excrement. Kristeva identifies excrement as an element of the abject, which, like Bakhtin’s grotesque body, “disturbs identity, system, order” and “does not respect borders, positions, rules” (4). Since the symbolic order is “a device of discriminations, of difference,” the abject thus exposes “the frailty of the symbolic order itself,” and of the social order it anchors (69). She reads excrement in cultural productions as metonymic of “the danger to identity that comes from without,” particularly “society threatened by its outside” (71). Reading Bakhtin and Kristeva in conversation illuminates the capacity of fecopoetics to challenge social hierarchies as well as push the boundaries of “taste” in art. In early modern England, this literary mode was frequently deployed to interrogate rigid ideals of social hierarchy. Ben Jonson’s welldocumented fascination with digestion led him to push the creative limits of fecopoetics in both his poetry and his dramatic productions. Engaging in carnivalesque degradation, Jonson’s work humorously associates the privileged with excrement, both figurative and literal. His mock-epic poem “On the Famous Voyage” follows two adventurers as they sail up the sewer of the Fleet Ditch, swamped by the contents of dung-carts and haunted by the ghosts of farts. Social distinctions break down, as rowing menials and the Lord Mayor of London all float on the same river of excrement. Jonson’s dramatic fecopoetics take a more explicit retaliatory turn; servants and rogues in his plays consistently use grotesque language and actions to degrade their superiors. In Bartholomew Fair, for instance, Humphrey Wasp, who is both guardian and servant to a wealthy minor, lashes out against his unstable social position by defying

From Bartholomew Fair to Bridesmaids  203 those whose elevation he resents – his young master, an upwardly mobile gentleman, a justice’s wife – with a “turd i’your teeth!” (BF 1.4.52, etc.). The play takes fecopoetic insult to carnivalesque extremes; at one point even a puppet invites his puppeteer to “kiss my hole here, and smell” (5.4.132). Such moments of coarse humor perform important imaginative work, calling the established order into question through a Bakhtinian “lowering” of the powerful. The three con artists in Jonson’s The Alchemist engage in directly revolutionary shit-stirring, as they dupe rich, unsuspecting Londoners by promising them magical avenues to wealth. United in their contempt for their social “betters,” Face, Subtle, and Doll also scheme to assert power over each other, and use filthy jokes as weapons to establish dominance with their gulls and among themselves, beginning with a verbal shit fight in the play’s first scene.1 Rich in excremental language, the episode suggests the range of fecopoetic strategies at work throughout the play. Face is nominally superior, as he was recently employed as a high-ranking servant, and Subtle’s defiance of his threat – “Thy worst. I fart at thee” (Alc 1.1.1) – exercises excremental power by discursive proxy. Reading the hypothetical fart as “deliberate and aggressive, signifying control,” Gail Kern Paster declares that “Each [of the men] seeks to appropriate the patriarchal role of mind in order to subordinate the other as mere body” (145). In the same vein, Subtle tries to remind Face that he has “ta’en thee out of dung, / So poor, so wretched,” and invites him to “Lick figs [hemorrhoids] / Out at my—” something unspeakable before being cut off (Alc 1.1.64–65, 3–4). Face’s attempts to associate Subtle with excrement are differently inflected by class, referencing his history of deprivation and “the pull of necessity” that, as Elizabeth Rivlin observes, has drawn him to “fli[t] from one ‘course’ or subsistence scheme to another” (119). Reminiscing about seeing Subtle at Pie Corner, “Taking your meal of steam in from cooks’ stalls, / Where, like the father of hunger, you did walk / Piteously costive,”2 Face mocks him for “pick[ing] from dunghills” a “thin threaden cloak / That scarce would cover your no-buttocks” (Alc 1.1.26–28, 34, 36–37). The flexibility of Jonson’s fecopoetics is on display as he employs them to serve multiple ends. Face is degraded by association with the abject that strips him of his meager power, while Subtle is degraded by grotesque reminders of his body’s history, particularly the ways in which that body has been shaped by poverty. Both fecopoetic modes – degradation by abject, and class-marking of bodies – shape the play’s more infamous episode of grotesque critique, when the rogues bind and imprison the gallant Dapper in a privy for several hours, before requiring him to kiss the “departing part” of a fake Queen of Faery (5.4.57).3 Like all their marks, Dapper occupies a much higher social position than Face, Subtle, and Doll, and this makes him a target not only for exploitation but for the same animosity that

204  Emily Gruber Keck the con men vent on each other.4 Paster argues that the symbolic bite of his imprisonment lies in its “impos[ition of] a familiar discipline on the body’s orifices,” as Face and Subtle shame Dapper by returning him to the “enforced excretory control” of childhood (160), but this neglects the complementary role that food and drink play in Jonson’s fecopoetic retaliation.5 The details of the rogues’ deception highlight how their grotesque revenge targets the appetites that are the privilege of Dapper’s class. His mouth becomes metonymic of these appetites, as Face promises that his gambling wins will enable his extravagant consumption: The best attendance, the best drink, sometimes Two glasses of canary, and pay nothing […] The partridge next his trencher […] You shall ha’ your ordinaries bid for him, As playhouses for a poet, and the master Pray him, aloud, to name what dish he affects, Which must be buttered shrimps; and those that drink To no mouth else will drink to his, as being The goodly, president mouth of all the board. (Alc 3.4.64–65, 67, 69–74; my emphasis) This fixation on Dapper’s ability to eat elaborate meals, and the superiority of his mouth, shapes the subversive torments that Subtle and Face devise; after instructing him to fast for hours before meeting the Queen of Faery, they gag him with a piece of gingerbread to wait while she is “at dinner, in her bed,” and convince him to remain hungry until she sees him (3.5.64). Framing an exaggerated picture of how class inflected early modern eating habits, as the supplicant remains hungry while the person in power dines, the con men punish Dapper through a carnivalesque inversion of the privileged eating position he would normally enjoy. Face and Subtle also link their alimentary critique with the grotesque: As they force Dapper to await the Queen of Faery’s pleasure, they confine him in a privy, degrading him by association with the abject. This degradation succeeds at a material level, as his distress at his excremental surroundings betrays his physical weakness; when he emerges, he admits that he only ate his gingerbread gag because “The fume did overcome me / And I did do’t to stay my stomach” (5.4.5–6). Face’s reference to the gallant as their “puffin […] o’the spit” (3.5.55–56) also reveals the symbolic dimensions of the grotesque inversion: He imagines Dapper as their meal, a bird to be figuratively eaten, as they “digest” his financial substance. By locking him in the privy, they metaphorically excrete him, reducing his privileged body to just another turd, stuck among waste until they choose to release him. This symbolic operation both “lowers” him as an individual in Bakhtinian terms, and deploys the abject

From Bartholomew Fair to Bridesmaids  205 to challenge the hierarchy anchoring the distinction between Dapper’s body and those of Face and Subtle. Originally written for the indoor playhouse in Blackfriars, for a crowd and neighborhood considerably more upscale than those of the outdoor Globe, The Alchemist offers Jonson’s audience a sly reminder of the vulnerability of even elite bodies. To suggest that literary excrement functions solely as a mode of social leveling, however, would be to oversimplify its role in cultural production. For Jonson and his contemporaries, emerging standards of manners that regulated bodily functions – what Norbert Elias has called the “civilizing process” – reinforced behavioral norms that marked the physical openness of excretion as inferior. Juxtaposed with the grotesque bodily canon, Bakhtin describes the classical aesthetic of the body as “a strictly completed, finished product […] isolated, alone, fenced off from all other bodies,” self-sufficient and individual (29). By contrast, the excremental abject highlights the body’s openness, and hence its vulnerability; as Kristeva claims, the presence of the abject signifies that “the skin, a fragile container, no longer guaranteed the integrity of one’s ‘own and clean self’” (53). In stressing “those parts of the body that are open to the outside world,” Bakhtin argues, grotesque images of the body emphasize both the subject’s dependence on the material world, and the extent to which the subject is incomplete or in flux (26). Bakhtin’s elucidation of the classical body is gender-neutral, but as Elias explores, the courtly ideal of the “civilized” subject who maintains bodily discipline was popularized in sixteenth-century print culture; this led to a widespread understanding of the classical body as gendered and classed, as male and noble. By contrast, the grotesque body’s vulnerability to outside influence was understood as a lack of “civilized” control and was associated in early modern thought with both lower-class and female inferiority. These paradigms gave displays of bodily openness, like those in Jonson’s work, the power to reinforce social hierarchies by marking some bodies as “naturally” lesser. Examining gender, Paster identifies this reinforcement in the early modern trope of the leaky female body, in which “the female body’s material expressiveness” marks “a particular kind of uncontrol as a function of gender” (25), and the understanding of openness as weakness was equally available to represent the inferiority of lower-class bodies. The intact classical body thus linked social hierarchies with moral superiority, so that the vulnerable openness of the grotesque body at once naturalized existing class divisions and served, as Paster argues, “the powerful interests of patriarchal ideology” (63). Bakhtin’s observation that “to a certain degree we still live according to” the classical bodily canon is as true today as it was fifty years ago, and a subgenre of contemporary American films – often called “gross-out comedies” – have found great success by puncturing what he describes as “the impenetrable facade” of “a closed individuality”

206  Emily Gruber Keck (29, 320), often to interrogate the stereotypical social distinctions that frame such films. Scenes of excretion enjoyed a run of popularity in this subgenre starting in the mid-1990s. Comedies seeking to appeal to audiences with “low-brow” humor built comedic centerpieces around moments when characters who hold or aspire to elevated social status are degraded by graphic and often uncontrollable shitting. Although several scholars, like Ma del Mar Azcona Montoliú, have observed the subgenre’s affinity with the carnivalesque and even with grotesque realism, these films have attracted little analysis from a fecopoetic perspective. Alan O’Leary links American Pie and Bridesmaids with Italian cinepanettone films that rely on the grotesque to degrade specific cultural icons like the Great Pyramid of Giza, emphasizing how each comedy defiles “the emblem of the wholesome American family” and “a commoditized symbol of virginity and nuptial union” respectively (294). I would argue that American gross-out comedy has more in common with Jonsonian fecopoetics, which, as we have seen in The Alchemist, articulate sociopolitical critiques that rely on defiling bodies in order to interrogate their superiority. In Dumb and Dumber (1994), when Lloyd believes his compatriot Harry has stolen a wealthy woman’s affections, he puts laxative in his coffee; in National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002), Gwen does the same to the protein shake of her pre-med, fraternity boyfriend Richard, to punish his infidelity. Both films show affinities with Jonson’s fecopoetics of class retribution, with likeable characters who pursue excremental revenge strategies to bring those aspiring to better things down a social peg. Sometimes the structure of the comedic plot pursues similar class antagonism, as when the titular characters of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) bear unwilling witness as two impeccably dressed women engage in competitive shitting, until one declares, “You sank my battle-shit!” Social retaliation carried out by the filmmakers rather than any character, such moments nevertheless offer carnivalesque satisfaction: The episode’s comedy lies in the contrast between the well-groomed, refined female bodies and the graphic digestive noises that they delight in making, explicitly deconstructing their apparent superiority. Scenes like these came to characterize the gross-out comedy as a form. American Pie, released in 1999, was central to reinventing the grossout comedy after its early heyday with films like Porky’s (1981); among others, Mandy Merck identifies it as “the gross-out comedy that grossed large, reviving the fortunes of a subgenre” (259).6 Because the plot of American Pie revolves around sex – four male high school seniors make a pact to lose their virginity before they graduate – reviewers focused on the film’s sexual crudity when discussing its gross-out credentials, emphasizing that it “thoroughly […] exploit[s] the comic possibilities of randy adolescence and the desperate urge to score” (McCarthy 69). In the same vein, more scholarly treatments explore the exploits of the

From Bartholomew Fair to Bridesmaids  207 four protagonists as representations of a shifting adolescent experience, and examine the film’s dual vision of sexual ethics (Merck; Montoliú). Reconsidering American Pie through the lens of Jonsonian fecopoetics, however, brings into focus the appetitive strain of American masculinity it promotes. As its title indicates, American Pie frames consumption as an index of manliness; “warm apple pie” is used as a metonym for a certain level of sexual experience, and promotional images included the tagline “There’s something about your first piece.” Early in the film, the character Jim tests the equation of food and sex by humping a pie, an experiment that has invited psychoanalytic reading from scholars like Merck, who argues that the scene “locates [the film’s] comedy at the earliest stage of libidinal development, when sexual pleasure is predominantly oral” (263). From a Bakhtinian perspective, however, the scene stages an alimentary imagination of masculinity that redefines the early modern gendering of the grotesque and classical bodies. Contemporary manhood, the filmmakers imply, lies in appetites both gastronomic and sexual: in opening the male body to the world, but in ways that the male subject can control, as Jim controls his penetration of the pie. American Pie’s episode of graphic excretion inflects this perspective on manly consumption in class terms, operating on a logic familiar to Bakhtin’s carnivalesque grotesque; an extreme moment of excretion functions as a social equalizer, degrading a character with class pretensions by demonstrating the radical openness of his body. Among the film’s group of protagonists who fit Hollywood stereotypes of high school – geek, athlete, popular guy – Paul Finch is culturally pretentious, believing himself more refined than his friends. When Finch first appears, he is wearing a blazer and telling a joke in Latin, and he shortly rides away on a European-style scooter, announcing to his friends, “Gentlemen, destiny awaits.” The film links his pretensions with what he puts into his body; he’s not only drinking a “mochaccino,” but he corrects another character who calls it coffee. When, several scenes later, Finch shows up in the aftermath of a beer-keg party, he conspicuously drinks Scotch from a snifter. By the alimentary logic through which the film defines masculinity, Finch’s love of these drinks – like Jim’s “loving” of the pie – positions him as a certain kind of man. So, too, do his habits of defecation. His friend Kevin asks, “Don’t you think it’s time you learned how to take a dump at school?” and he replies, “When was the last time you looked at the facilities at this school?” The conversation, carried on as Finch is practicing his golf short game, associates his pretensions to higher things with a bodily ethic of privacy and cleanliness, hallmarks of the classical bodily canon. As the film uses apple pie to define American manliness by the controlled openness of sexual experience, however, other characters see Finch’s inflexible closedness as unmanly. The next time his bathroom scruples come up, Jim wonders aloud, “I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. How does a guy like that get a sudden reputation?”

208  Emily Gruber Keck The “reputation” is for sexual prowess, and Jim implies that no man who disdains a grimy restroom could be manly enough to satisfy women. Jim’s question illuminates the ways that masculinity, for American Pie, is contingent on social position, and the ways men enact class identity through their bodily ethic. The excretory scene in the girls’ bathroom is a turning point for Finch, re-inscribing his body in multiple ways. The episode undermines his class pretensions as it exposes the vulnerability of his body, but this lower-class openness also makes him more of a “real” man. Slipping a laxative into Finch’s mochaccino, the athlete Stifler retaliates against Finch’s pretensions to culture, in a Jonsonian social leveling. While one girl muses, “that guy is, like, so refined,” intercut shots of Finch emphasize the loss of his refinement along with his bodily composure. He’s not only writhing on the toilet, he’s also disheveled and sweating, emphasizing his body’s multivalent openness. This exposure to the world is driven home to the audience when he emerges from the girls’ bathroom to the applause and laughter of a largely female crowd who have heard his torments. Rendered vulnerable to the realm of female gossip, Finch’s “sudden reputation” is gone just as quickly. For a while, this social punishment seems to spell the ruin of Finch’s masculine aspirations by disrupting his chance for sexual fulfillment; he is the only one of the protagonists unable to secure a date for the prom. Suggesting that Finch’s exploits fit clearly within the “hooligan comedy tradition,” Montoliú reads his digestive episode within that genre’s conventions of humiliation, arguing that he fails to evolve (70–71).7 By film’s end, however, several moments suggest that his damaged manliness is salvaged by his shift in class identity. Finch seems to accept and even welcome that the experience has made him more of a man; at prom, he tells Kevin, “At least I learned to shit in school, right, buddy?” He has revised his bodily ethos to incorporate a more manly unconcern for filth. The film’s sexual economy rewards this with the loss of his virginity to an older woman, the “MILF” who, throughout the film, has been a subject of desire among her son Stifler’s peers. In addition to the status value of landing a local sex symbol, sleeping with the mother of the man who was responsible for his graphic shitting only adds to the conquest’s power to restore Finch’s damaged masculinity. Stifler’s mom’s attraction to several pretentious habits Finch has retained – he seduces her, in part, by disdaining the keg that “the cretins drink” and accepting her offer of single-malt scotch – has intriguing implications for the film’s definition of manhood. Like the infamous pie scene, their encounter links material and sexual consumption (Finch later observes, “Women, like a fine wine, only get better with age”) to suggest that the private containment of the classical bodily canon is outmoded, as the characters eventually consummate their attraction atop a pool table. In tandem with a Jonsonian fecopoetics of class retaliation, American Pie is imaginatively

From Bartholomew Fair to Bridesmaids  209 invested in the bodily ethos implied by its title: one of manly appetite, in which some openness to the world and its public-school dirt becomes a mark of male strength.8 By contrast, the fecopoetics of Bridesmaids reinforce and even naturalize class divisions among the ostensibly equal group of women that the film’s title implies. Although, as Scott Foundas observes, the release of Bridesmaids in 2011 was inflected by the economic disparity that sparked the Occupy movement the same year (47), critics have largely ignored the role of class in the protagonist Annie’s comedic insecurities and humiliations, focusing instead on her romantic failures.9 It seems logical to prioritize romantic inequities in a film that revolves around a wedding, but the filmmakers are also invested in exploring how weddings and their attendant female rituals are inscribed with assumptions about status; cultural capital; and, above all, money. One of the first things we learn about Annie when she and the bride, Lillian, spy on an outdoor workout class is that she is “on a budget,” and the film goes on to emphasize how out of place she feels at the upscale engagement party, from the moment she has to turn over her ancient car to a skeptical valet. The party has been planned by Helen, who appears in a full ball gown, and whose toast to Lillian references her trip to Thailand and includes an epigram in Thai, emphasizing both her wealth and her cultural capital. Annie clearly feels the weight of this pretentious superiority; in her follow-up toast she tries to compete by drawing on her high school Spanish. Their awkward country club lunch and game of tennis further highlight the social gap between the women. Helen’s privilege is not only obnoxious, but a threat to Annie, since it makes her more fit to take on the planning of wedding-related events. Though conspicuous displays of wealth are central to Helen’s superiority, Annie understands their class disparity primarily as physical and alimentary. Just as early modern thinkers imaginatively linked prosperity with great girth built by plentiful meals, Annie’s consciousness of Helen’s social position distorts her perception of the other woman’s body according to the contemporary equation of status and thinness. Kristen Wiig (Annie) and Rose Byrne (Helen) share the slim frame typical among Hollywood actresses, but Annie grumbles that Helen is “more successful… prettier… richer… skinnier.” Helen is “skinnier” not because of her weight, but because the inscription of class – success and riches – renders her identical body threateningly superior. The food and drink Helen provides at the bridal shower likewise signify social status, and as she endures, among other things, a horseback ride from her car to the house, Annie reacts violently against the shower’s ostentatious culinary choices: pink lemonade offered by an attendant on the long driveway, a giant cookie, and a chocolate fountain in a birdbath. Drinking the lemonade against her will, she mutters “god dammit, that’s good – shit, that is fresh,” then loses control and splashes the chocolate onto the ground, yelling at the other guests to “look at that fucking cookie!”

210  Emily Gruber Keck before she wrecks it. The food and drink’s expense, elegance, and visual beauty – like Helen’s well-groomed body – become emblematic of Helen’s threatening social superiority, and her own imaginary physical inferiority. Like Finch’s mochaccino in American Pie, the consumables of Bridesmaids metonymize social difference, framing the body’s relationship to eating and drinking as a key marker of class. The symbolic dimensions of food offer similar keys to reading the fecopoetics of Bridesmaids. Throughout the film, food not only serves to highlight social disparities but it also metonymizes personal success and validation – for Annie in particular, because she started a bakery that went out of business. While multiple characters mention the “good cakes” she made, Annie sees her failed venture as a sign of both personal and romantic inadequacy, joking, “I’m the genius that opened a bakery during a recession,” and revealing that her boyfriend left her when the bakery went under. Because of this failure, Annie insists that she no longer enjoys baking, and when she first engages in this activity on screen  – she makes herself a single cupcake and decorates it in an elaborate montage – she seems to take no pleasure in eating it. This entanglement of food with her sense of personal worth, or lack thereof, means that Annie’s every alimentary encounter has high stakes for her self-image. As a result, she explodes when her romantic interest Rhodes buys her baking supplies after their night together, yelling, “I don’t need you to fix me…. I don’t need any help.” Food has become the means by which she can either prove her value, or lose it. These valences of food, along with its importance to bonding for the friendships at stake, all shape Bridesmaids’s infamous food poisoning scene. On its release, the film was publicized as a comedy that crossed gender lines, “a chick flick guys might love as much as their dates do” (Hammond 17),10 and this context led most reviewers to hyperbolize the sequence’s atypicality for a female-led film, as they almost universally equated excremental humor with male comedic sensibilities. Some rejoiced that the film “reminded the industry that women can not only be funny, but also down-and-dirty” and called it “a step forward for mainstream female-focused comedies,” while others dismissed the scene, arguing that it merely “tosses meat to the traditional male comedy audience” with “a kind of dumb crassness that works against Bridesmaids’ often smart, highly class-conscious deconstruction of female friendship and competition” (Bart 2; Anna Smith, “Bridesmaids,” 58; Longworth).11 A careful reading of the scene’s fecopoetics, however, reveals that it holds more complex implications for the film’s presentation of gender, and its inflection by class, than this binary suggests. Though producer Judd Apatow – notorious for popular, male-led comedies12 – conceived the episode in re-writes, he did so to heighten the original draft’s argument over the cost of bridesmaid dresses (Farr 39), and the final sequence serves as a visual and auditory demonstration of the class anxiety permeating this

From Bartholomew Fair to Bridesmaids  211 ritual of female bonding. The stakes are established when Annie recommends the fateful Brazilian restaurant partly because of her financial insecurity, because “you get a lot for your money.” Helen’s reaction to the restaurant’s unassuming exterior also puts Annie’s value, as maid-ofhonor, planner, and friend, at stake; though Helen condescends that “Oh look, you can get your checks cashed next door,” Lillian says, “Annie’s really good at” finding good places to eat. The meal’s digestive fallout thus not only validates Helen’s judgment of the restaurant – she demands intensely, almost victoriously, “You got food poisoning from that restaurant, didn’t you?” – but implicitly validates her judgment of Annie and challenges Annie’s friendship with Lillian. Though it went unsaid in discussions of the scene’s potential for collective female liberation or abjectification, it is critical to recognize that Helen does not succumb to the involuntary bodily vulnerability of food poisoning. Instead, the sequence naturalizes the established class divide between Helen and her fellow bridesmaids, by emphasizing the contrast between her physical containment and their grotesque openness to the world. The other women sweat, flush, and eventually lose their bodily discipline in ways that link their digestive fireworks with the failure of civilized behavior and privacy mores. As Megan uses the sink to relieve her bowels while yelling, “Look away!” two other women bend simultaneously over the toilet in the same room to puke, Becca’s vomit landing in Rita’s hair; Lillian loses control of her bowels even more publicly, in the middle of the street. Bridesmaids cuts back and forth between these moments of radical openness and the main room of the salon, where the camera dwells on Helen’s perfect composure, her apparently natural physical control that she has maintained with her choice not to open her body to the polluting meat from the lower-class restaurant. On the screen, Helen’s social condition – wealth, and the refined tastes that come with it – renders her body impenetrable. As suggested earlier, O’Leary comments on the importance of venue to the scene’s comedic degradation, but the location of the episode likewise underlines Helen’s unique class position, and the impossibility of attaining it. Annie has taken the group to a snobbish bridal boutique where she has neglected to make the necessary appointment because she is ignorant of the rules by which such establishments operate; Helen gains them entrance through her personal connection with the saleswoman, forged, the film implies, over years of spending money there. This realm of affluence and the saleswoman’s loud anxiety that the bridesmaids will dirty it highlight the extreme bodily openness of the women who are only there by Helen’s grace, suggesting their unfitness for the realm of privileged femininity. Reversing American Pie’s deployment of shit as a radical equalizer among men, Bridesmaids echoes the early modern classical bodily canon by framing class among women as a natural physical impenetrability that, like Helen’s access, Annie cannot hope to achieve.

212  Emily Gruber Keck This hierarchy of bodies is reiterated when the bridesmaids travel by plane to Las Vegas.13 Like the boutique scene, the plane replaced an episode in an earlier draft – a Vegas gambling sequence in which Annie loses money and humiliates herself in front of Helen (Farr 40) – with a series of events that reframes the social gap between the women as a bodily inequity. Initially reluctant to go to Vegas at all because of the expense, Annie is overruled when Helen, whose disdain for “a bachelorette in a cabin?” suggests a major social faux pas, persuades the other bridesmaids. Annie, a nervous flyer, must sit in coach alone because she cannot afford a first-class ticket; Helen gives her medication and alcohol to help her deal with her anxiety, and she loses control, the fallout from her consumption leading to a series of hilarious disturbances. Like the food poisoning scene, the sequence underlines Annie’s bodily vulnerability in contrast to Helen’s physical composure, as the latter urges Annie to follow her pills with Scotch because “I do it all the time, and I’m much smaller than you.” The other bridesmaids also display their bodily openness, albeit less drastically: Rita and Becca drink double seven-and-sevens until they get teary and kiss each other, while Megan unashamedly tells her seatmate, “I gotta take a whiz and I’ll be right back.” As flight attendants repeatedly eject Annie from first class, declaring, “Coach passengers are not allowed up here,” the structure of the sequence emphasizes her marginal class position in tandem with her failure to stay sober. The body that cannot maintain its classical integrity against a cocktail of pills and Scotch is a body that does not belong in first class. After the group is kicked off the plane, Lillian’s request that Annie cede maid-of-honor duties to Helen reads as a judgment on their respective bodily discipline: She says, “You’re not fine, Annie, and we just need things to flow smoothly from now on, and Helen just knows how to do this kind of stuff.” At that moment, Bridesmaids re-inscribes Helen’s classical, impenetrable body with social values that parallel the different metaphorical weights food carries: She’s more fit for the elite realm of planning an expensive wedding, and a better friend for Lillian than Annie, whose digestive antics render her unfit. Given her history of disappointment with food, especially her failed business of “good cakes,” Annie understands this disparagement of her consumption as a reflection on her personal worth. Her attack on the elegant food at the bridal shower Helen plans thus makes perfect sense as a metonymic attack on Helen herself. Finally releasing her feelings in screaming as she destroys the food – a loss of control equivalent to verbal diarrhea – Annie focuses, among other things, on Helen’s “perfectly bleached asshole,” a target that represents the intersection of the class position and bodily discipline that she lacks. Even as it enacts a Jonsonian movement of class retaliation, the scene also ratifies in un-Jonsonian fashion the distinctions between differently classed bodies, distinctions that confirm all of Annie’s fears about her inferiority. One of the few critics to unpack the role of

From Bartholomew Fair to Bridesmaids  213 class in the film, Laura Otis, argues that Bridesmaids “show[s] the victims of economic downturns how to behave,” presenting socioeconomic difference as something that can be overcome; as a result, she oversimplifies Annie’s envy of Helen: “The desire to have never collapses into the desire to be” (141–142). On the contrary, the film’s humor thrives on the physical insuperability of class difference as Annie’s tragedy – and our comedy – stems from her repeated failure to emulate Helen’s classical intactness. Writing of early modern bodily norms, Paster highlights “the greater danger for the elite woman of exposure and bodily degradation” (29); Bridesmaids reverses this fecopoetic imbalance, emphasizing instead the inevitability of the less-privileged woman’s grotesque openness. The end of the film superficially undermines this inequality by revealing Helen’s emotional vulnerability. Overwhelmed by Lillian’s disappearance on her wedding day, Helen confesses to Annie that her husband does not care about spending time with her, and she has no female friends. Not coincidentally, that interaction is the closest Helen comes to displaying bodily openness; as she cries, Annie tells her, “This is the first time I’ve seen you look really ugly,” and she threatens to “hurl” when Annie spins the car recklessly to force Rhodes, a cop, to engage with them and help them look for Lillian. Annie’s romantic reconciliation with Rhodes led some reviewers and scholars to decry a conventional “Hollywood ending” that they see as betraying the film’s vision of female independence,14 but attending to the impact of social difference on Bridesmaids’s presentation of gender illuminates the progressive aspects of a dénouement that acknowledges the weakness of upper-class bodies. These narrative gestures toward grotesque parity, however, go only so far to balance the film’s earlier embrace of a class hierarchy inscribed on the body, and the graphic fecopoetics that reinforce it – fecopoetics that break with the conventions of the gross-out comedy genre in important ways. While both American Pie and Bridesmaids score comedically by grotesquely puncturing the body’s impenetrable facade, the contrasts between the two films’ fecopoetics of class suggest the distinct imaginative roles of alimentation and digestion in contemporary gendered bodily norms. The film focused on the male body indulges male desires, for social leveling and sexual success, in ways that validate a certain level of physical openness over the ideal of the classical body. By contrast, Bridesmaids reveals the persistence of that ideal in imagining the female body, as the film stages female fears of social inadequacy as bodily concerns. Such distinctions between films that share numerous generic elements certainly remind us of how gender shapes norms of privacy and composure, and of the differences in how popular culture appropriates male and female bodies. Read together, however, American Pie and Bridesmaids also point to the importance of food, and its complications, in mapping how class inflects gender in the cultural languages that shape such appropriations.

214  Emily Gruber Keck

Notes 1 This fight has been largely neglected by readings that focus on the trio of rogues as an egalitarian company or community (among others, Alwes and Rust), though some scholars have suggested the metaphorical resonances of Face and Subtle’s excremental language (see, for instance, Boehrer and Dustagheer). 2 Face is describing Subtle as constipated, a reference in which Paster finds pathos, since it seems to imply a case of “extreme hunger and humoral insolubility [in which] the body does not even have much to excrete” (147). 3 Critics have linked both grotesque elements of this punishment to historical practices that would have carried different social meanings for Jonson’s audience; see, for instance, Rust, Foley, and Willard. The similarities of this gulling to the opening are so distinctive, however, that Paster suggests Dapper’s imprisonment in the privy results from Face and Subtle “displacing onto him the anal aggression against each other they had earlier resolved to surrender” (160). 4 On various proposed class-bound motives for Jonson’s satire of various foolish dupes, including Dapper, see among others Alwes, Rivlin, Woolland, and Boehrer. Reading gold and waste as joint results of London’s population explosion, Boehrer argues that Jonson “draws [his] most basic social distinction between characters who recognize shit for what it is and those who mistake it for treasure”; he sees Dapper’s fate as a symptom of his folly, making visible his failure “to distinguish between purity and filth” (152). 5 Though they take explicitly excremental revenge only on Dapper, the rogues’ relationships with their other marks, and with Face’s master Lovewit, illuminate how concern for food shapes their understanding of the social hierarchy they so energetically disrupt; for example, the knight Epicure Mammon fantasizes about “The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels’ heels, / Boiled i’the spirit of Sol and dissolved pearl […] And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber” (2.2.75-76, 78). 6 See likewise Maher and Montoliú. 7 “Jim (Jason Biggs), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) y Stifler (Seann W. Scott), sin embargo, pertenecen claramente a la tradición de la comedia gamberra. […] Como sucede en la comedia gamberra, sus líneas narrativas son totalmente episódicas y los personajes no sufren ningún tipo de evolución hacia la madurez similar a las de Oz y Kevin […] esas humillaciones parecen más bien una convención genéricalí” (Montoliú 70–71). 8 Intriguingly, two characters who trumpet their sexual prowess are also punished: Stifler by unknowingly drinking another man’s ejaculation in a beer, and Sherman by exposure as a fraud, which causes him to urinate publicly at prom. These intersections of verbal openness with involuntary bodily openness, in the form of polluted consumption and excretion, indicate that the film’s ideal of manliness also demands the verbal intactness Oz maintains when he withholds his loss of virginity from his friends. 9 Eyre characteristically suggests that Annie has “hit ‘rock bottom,’ largely due to her lack of boyfriend or husband,” representing “the societal anxiety generated by the trend toward delayed marriage” (60). She follows reviews by critics like Denby and Anna Smith “In Cinemas,” and is followed by Klaes, who after describing Annie’s dire financial straits adds that she “most importantly, for the purpose of this paper, fails at sustainable relationships” (66). 10 As Paul Julian Smith notes, the poster with the characters “star[ing] down the spectator in a pink lineup” evoked “goodfellas in fuchsia” (8); other reviewers who emphasized the film’s appeal to men include Anna Smith “In Cinemas,” Medd, Longworth, and Alter.

From Bartholomew Fair to Bridesmaids  215





Works Cited Alter, Ethan. “WEDDING BELL BLUES.” Film Journal International 114.5 (May 2011): 8–10. MasterFILE Premier. Alwes, Derek B. “Service as Mastery in The Alchemist.” Ben Jonson Journal 17.1 (May 2010): 38–59. American Pie. Screenplay by Adam Herz, directed by Paul Weitz. Universal Pictures, 1999. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky, MIT Press, 1968. Bart, Peter. “Hollywood loses its zeal for the real.” Variety 423.4 (Jun 6, 2011): 2. Boehrer, Bruce. “New Directions: The Alchemist and the Lower Bodily Stratum.” The Alchemist: A Critical Reader. Edited by Erin Julian and Helen Ostovich, Arden Shakespeare, 2013, 150–170. Bridesmaids. Screenplay by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, directed by Paul Feig, produced by Judd Apatow. Universal Pictures, 2011. Denby, David. “The Better Life: ‘Midnight in Paris’ and ‘Bridesmaids.’” The New Yorker 87.14 (May 23, 2011): 88. Literature Resource Center. Dustagheer, Sarah. “‘Our Scene is London’: The Alchemist and Urban Underworlds at the Blackfriars Playhouse.” Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 147 (2011): 94–104. Eyre, Emily. “A Female Homme-Com?: Genre, Gender, and Sex in Bridesmaids (2011).” Film Matters 7.1 (Spring 2016): 58–62. Farr, Louise. “Bridal Sweet: The making and remaking of Bridesmaids.” Written by: the journal of the Writers Guild of America 15.6 (2011): 36–41. Foley, Christopher D. “‘Breathe Less, and Farther Off’: The Hazardous Proximity of Other Bodies in Jonson’s The Alchemist.” Studies in Philology 115.3 (2018): 505–523. Foundas, Scott. “The 99 Percent.” Film Comment 48.1 (Jan 2012): 47.

216  Emily Gruber Keck Hammond, Pete. “Film Review: ‘BRIDESMAIDS.’” Back Stage 52.19 (May 12, 2011): 17. Business Source Complete. Klaes, Kittsie. “Bridesmaids, Trainwreck, and the Regressive Role of Women in Romantic Comedies.” Film Matters (Winter 2017): 66–72. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia UP, 1982. Longworth, Karina. “Bridesmaids Gets Screwed.” The Village Voice. May 11, 2011. Web. www.villagevoice.com/2011/05/11/bridesmaids-gets-screwed/ Maher, Kevin. “American Pie.” Sight and Sound 9.10 (Oct 1999): 37–38. McCarthy, Todd. “Film Reviews: Spicy ‘Pie’ takes gross-out cake.” Variety 375.7 (Jun 28 1999): 69–70. Medd, James. “When Good Girls Go Bad.” The Word (Jul 2011): 16–18. Merck, Mandy. “American Pie (1999).” America First: Naming the Nation in U.S. Film. Edited by Mandy Merck, Routledge, 2007, 259–276. Montoliú, Ma del Mar Azcona. “La comedia gamberra coral. Descripciones de una comunidad adolescente hormonalmente alterada.” Secuencias 24 (2006): 63–74. Morrison, Susan Signe. Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. O’Leary, Alan. “The Single Take: Of Shite and Time.” The Italianist 35.2 (June 2015): 294–299. Otis, Laura. “‘Pity Party’: Metaphors for a Banned Emotion.” Anglia 133.1 (2015): 125–147. Paster, Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Cornell UP, 1993. Rivlin, Elizabeth. “The Rogues’ Paradox: Redefining Work in The Alchemist.” Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama. Edited by Michelle M. Dowd, Natasha Korda, and Jean E. Howard, Ashgate, 2011, 115–129. Rust, Jennifer R. “Forms of Governmentality in The Alchemist.” SEL 58.1 (2018): 95–121. Smith, Anna. “Bridesmaids.” Sight and Sound 21.7 (Jul 2011): 58. Proquest. ———. “In Cinemas: BRIDESMAIDS.” Empire 265 (Jul 2011): 46. Smith, Paul Julian. “Beneath the Glamour.” Film Quarterly 65.1 (Fall 2011): 8–9. Willard, Thomas. “Pimping for the Fairy Queen: Some Cozeners in Shakespeare’s England.” Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Mental-Historical Investigations of Basic Human Problems and Social Responses. Edited by Albrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough, De Gruyter, 2012, 491–508. Woolland, Brian. “Ben Jonson’s Comic Selves.” Shakespeare and the Soliloquy in Early Modern English Drama. Edited by A. D. Cousins and Daniel Derrin, Cambridge UP, 2018, 153–166.

Index

abject 3–4, 7, 152, 155–156, 158, 163–164, 166–167, 202–205; abjection 3, 9, 154, 167–168, 216; see also Kristeva, Julia acculturation 34, 37, 48, 58 aesthetic function of food 140 Against Nature (1884) 12, 137–151 America 6, 8, 12, 35–38, 43–44, 47–48, 71, 80, 83, 88–89, 99, 101, 103, 130, 174, 197, 201–216; see also United States American see America Americanization see America American Pie (1999) 201, 206–214 Anxious Appetites: Food and Consumer Culture 11, 13 anorexia 5–6, 10–12, 51–67, 93, 121–122, 125–129, 132–133, 144–151 Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) 12, 157, 167 Atwood, Margaret 121–122, 124, 133–134, 190, 198; The Edible Woman (1969) 121–122, 129, 133, 190, 198 Bacsó, Peter 18, 21, 23, 31; The Witness/A tanú (1969) 18, 21–22, 24, 26–27, 29, 31 Bakhtin, Mikhail 114, 119, 158, 167, 202–205, 207, 215; see also carnival Bathhouse see onsen Belasco, Warren 9, 19–20, 31 BFG, The 1; see also Roald Dahl blogs 6, 10, 51, 53–59, 61, 63–66; Pro Ana 6, 51–67; Pro Mia 51–67 body: black 8, 82–83, 101, 188–190, 192, 194–195; edible 7; female 53, 55, 93, 122, 125–126, 132,

164, 194–195, 198, 205–206, 213; grotesque 7, 9, 12, 152, 156–166, 202–207, 211, 213–215 body image 5, 51–67 Bordo, Susan 6, 58, 65, 93–94; see also anorexia Bossi-Fini Law 191–192 Bourdieu, Pierre 18–20, 31; Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979) 19, 31 Brazil 6, 11, 88–104 Bridesmaids (2011) 12, 201, 206, 209–216 Bulimia 6, 10, 51–67 Butler, Judith 8 cannibalism 71–87, 113–114, 117, 152, 177–178 care of self 51–67 carnival 114–115, 119, 202–204, 206–207 censorship 10, 18, 21, 28–30, 54–55, 64, 66 Christian 26, 33, 143–148, 159, 189, 198; Catholic 12, 35, 151, 153–154, 159, 161, 163, 190–192, 194 Chytilová, Věra 18, 24–25, 28, 30–31; Daisies/Sedmikrásky (1966) 18, 24–25, 28–31 cinema: American 12, 36, 43, 201– 216; Eastern bloc 17–31; Haptic 32–50; Japanese 71–87, 105–120; Mexican-American 10, 32, 34–50; Taiwanese 10, 32, 34, 36–38, 40–50; truth claims 24, 29, 71–87; see also film class: differences 7–8, 12, 17–31, 88–104, 201–216; taste 9, 12, 18–23, 27–29, 31, 171, 202, 211; see also Bourdieu, Pierre

218 Index comedy: gross-out 201, 205–206, 213, 216 Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses 10 communism 10, 17–31 consumption: of ethnicities 32–50 control 6, 10, 20, 29, 34–35, 46, 51–67, 115, 124, 130, 166, 175, 180, 194–195, 203–205, 207, 209, 211–212 corporeality 92, 152, 156–157, 159–160, 166 Culinary Triangle 117, 119; see also Lévi-Strauss, Claude cultural differences 35–36, 42, 44–49, 171; see also differences cultural representation 2, 38, 41–42, 46–47, 49, 84, 107, 123 Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism 8 Dahl, Roald 1–2; The BFG (1982) 1; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) 2; Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970) 2; Matilda (1988) 1 Daisies (1966) 18, 24–25, 28–31; see also Chytilová, Věra death 3, 60, 71, 73–75, 77, 114–115, 123, 125–126, 129, 132, 147, 149–150, 152, 154–156, 158–166 decadence 138–139 Deleuze, Gilles 3, 12, 156–157, 167; Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) 12, 157, 167 dependency 90, 145–147, 205 desire 3–4, 6, 8, 20, 29, 43, 49, 51, 54, 57–58, 60, 89, 92, 102, 140, 142, 144–146, 150, 152–158, 161–167, 170, 178–180, 189–190, 208, 213, 215 desiring-machine 153, 156–157, 164–165, 167 dietetics 143–144, 147 differences: cultural 35–36, 42, 44–49, 171; generational 32–36, 195–196 digester 142 digestion 4, 6, 9 digestive system 3, 9, 141, 148–150 Donna in guerra/Woman at War (1975) 176, 184; see also Maraini, Dacia eating: feminism and 24–25, 30, 126, 129, 132, 170, 173, 175, 182–185, 188, 192, 194

eating disorders see Anorexia, Bulimia ecofeminism see feminism Eliot, T.S. 165–167 The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987) 73, 79, 81–87; see also Kazuo, Hara enslavement see slavery erotics 46, 50, 154–156, 163–164 Escritos sobre la mesa: literatura y comida 9; García, Mariano and Mariana Dimópulos 8 exotic 11, 32–33, 42, 44–47, 50, 88–89; see also exoticization exoticization 44–46, 48 Everyone Poops 2 fecopoetics 12, 201–203, 206–210, 213; see also Jonson, Ben female 12, 26, 48–49, 53, 55, 93, 96, 105–106, 122, 125–127, 131–132, 144–145, 147, 149, 164, 170, 173–174, 176–177, 194–195, 198–199, 201, 205–206, 208–211, 213, 215; body 26, 53, 55, 93, 121–132, 147, 149, 164, 194–195, 198, 205–206, 213; voice 123, 169, 174, 187–188 (see also Women’s Writing) female genital mutilation 194–195, 198 femininity 35, 93, 121, 127, 211 feminism 31, 50, 65–66, 129, 170, 175, 182–185, 198–199; eating and 24–25, 30, 126, 129, 132, 170, 173, 175, 182–185, 188, 192, 194; theory 25, 50, 65–66, 126, 132, 173, 175, 182–185, 188, 192, 194, 196, 198–199 Fernandez, James 3, 13 film: food and 17–50, 71–87, 105–120, 201–216; subversive 18, 20, 24, 28–29, 43, 47; war 71–87; see also cinema Fires on the Plain (1952, 1959, 2014) 73–80, 85–87; see also Kon, Ichikawa; Shinya, Tsukamoto; Shōhei, Ōoka food: film and 17–50, 71–87, 105–120, 201–216; history 71, 88, 90, 97, 100–103, 122, 126, 166, 186, 189; ideology and 9, 18–20, 23–25, 28–29, 31, 71, 75, 93, 105, 152–154, 159, 167, 194; insecurity 90, 92, 95–96, 98–100, 130; metaphors 1, 3, 8–9, 11, 19, 76, 92,

Index  219 114, 152, 155, 159, 169, 177, 193, 202, 212; pornography (see visual erotics); processed 90, 99; rationing 17; refusal 4, 7, 11, 54, 74, 122, 125, 127–129; shortage 17–18, 23, 31; symbolism 2, 9, 11, 18–20, 22, 26, 29–30, 36–37, 48, 91, 113, 150, 159, 170, 175–176, 179–180, 182, 191–192, 202, 204, 210 Food, Media, and Contemporary Culture: The Edible Image 4, 12 Foucault, Michel 52–53, 56, 59, 63, 65–66, 134 free will 137–138, 145–146, 148, 150 French literature see Against Nature gender: gender studies 56, 58, 197, 199; see also feminism generational differences see differences genital mutilation see female genital mutilation globalization 10, 32–38, 44, 89 gross-out comedy see comedy grotesque: Bahktin, Mikhail 114, 119, 158, 167, 202–205, 207, 215; body (see body); female 207, 211, 213, 215; Grotesque (2013) 7, 12 Guattari, Félix 3, 12, 156–157, 167 habitus 18, 20, 147 hagiographies 144–147 haptics see cinema hooks, bell 183–184 A hora da estrela/The Hour of the Star (1977) 6, 11, 88–104; see also Lispector, Clarice hunger 18, 38, 54, 74, 76, 80, 82, 86, 88–92, 94–95, 98, 102, 142, 152–164, 167, 179, 214 hupomnemata 6, 52–53, 56–57, 59, 61, 63–64 Huysmans, Joris-Karl (J-K) see Against Nature hybrid identities 35, 37, 197–198 instability of language 115–119 Islam see Muslim Italian literature 169–200; Un clandestino a bordo (1996) 178, 184; Donna in guerra / Woman at War (1975) 176, 184; Maraini, Dacia 169–185; Il treno per Helsinki/The Train (1984) 169–185; Scego, Igiaba 186–200

Italian studies 8, 169–200 Italy 1, 12, 169–200 Jane Austen and Food 8 Japan 11, 71–87, 105–120 Japanese cinema see cinema Jonson, Ben 201–208, 212, 214–216 Jornal do Brasil 97 Joyce, James 12, 152–168 Kadambari, Rao 128 Kahneman, Daniel 39, 50 Kang, Han 11, 122–123, 132–134; The Vegetarian (2007) 11, 123–126, 133 kanji 111, 115–117, 119 Kasprzyk-Chevriaux, Magdalena 18, 31 Kat not Jas 63, 66 Kazuo, Hara 73, 86–87; The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987) 73, 79, 81–82, 84–87 Kei, Kumai 73 Kiberd, Declan 159, 165–166, 168 Kinji, Fukasaku 73, 86; Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (1972) 73, 79, 85–86 kitchen 22, 34, 37–38, 169–170, 172, 176 Klaes, Kittsie 216 knowledge 26, 38–40, 112, 144; cultural 32, 41–42, 49–50; self- 51, 53, 56, 64 Kon, Ichikawa 73–75, 78–80, 86; Fires on the Plain (1959) 73–75, 77, 79–80, 85–87 Korea i, 11, 122–127, 131–134; see also South Korea Kristensen, Lars 28, 31 Kristeva, Julia 3, 13, 167–168, 202, 205, 216; see also abject Kucinich, Dennis 129–130, 133 labor 156; camps 75; domestic 173; Communist 24; power 154; sugar plantations 101 Lacan, Jacques 49 Laine, Tarja 36, 41–43, 48–50 language 18–19, 91, 97, 105, 117–119, 128, 130, 148, 152, 156, 158, 161–162, 165–167, 171, 176, 202–203, 213–214 Latino 32, 35–37, 47–48; food 43; identity 35, 37

220 Index Lee, Ang 10, 32, 39, 48; Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) 10, 32–34, 36–38, 41, 44, 47–48, 50 Lega 192, 197 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 117, 119 Lispector, Clarice 6, 11, 88–104; A hora da estrela / The Hour of the Star (1977) 6, 11, 88, 90–91, 95–98, 103–104 A literatura e o gozo impuro da comida 8; Queiroz, Maria José 8 literature 4–5, 7–10, 56, 88–90, 93, 96–97, 126, 128, 137–139, 144–147; Brazilian 89; British 93; diasporic 187–188; medieval 201; modern 202; world 89–90, 96 Lorde, Audre 189, 192, 199 loss: culture 36, 105, 110, 112, 115; memory 75; self 33, 110, 121–122, 178, 208, 212; taste 11, 36; tradition(s) 34, 115, 139; weight 130 Lucken, Michael 111, 116, 119 malnutrition 90, 100–101 Manila 75 Maraini, Dacia 12, 169, 17–174, 176, 178–179, 182, 184–185; Bagheria (1993) 176, 178, 184; Un clandestino a bordo (1996) 178, 184; Donna in guerra/Woman at War (1975) 176, 184; Il treno per Helsinki/The Train (1984) 169–170, 172–173, 176–178, 182, 184–185 Marks, Laura 38, 40–41, 46, 49–50, 84, 86 Marxism 21, 28, 31, 100 masculinity 35, 124, 207–208; masculine 37–38, 147, 208 materiality 2, 89, 91, 156–159, 161, 165 Matilda 2; see also Roald Dahl meat 11, 17, 21, 74, 78, 80, 95, 98–99, 112, 114, 118, 121–126, 128–131, 141–143, 153, 160, 162–164, 173, 182, 193, 210–211 Meiji 107, 110 memory 17, 30, 39–41, 53, 56–57, 75, 95, 120, 153–154, 164, 169–170, 172, 174, 180, 182 metempsychosis 162, 165 metonymy 2, 6, 202, 204, 207, 210, 212

Mexico 37, 43–44, 130; MexicanAmerican 10, 35 milk 17, 95–96, 123, 130, 164, 170–171, 179 Mintz, Sidney 100–101, 103; Sweetness and Power (1985) 100, 103; see also sugar miscarriage 170, 176, 178, 180 misrecognition see recognition Mitchell, Juliet 175, 185 Miyazaki, Hayao 11, 105–112, 115, 120; Spirited Away (2001) 105–107, 109–110, 112–120 modernity 36–37, 108, 125, 150, 154–157, 159, 166–167 modes 6–7, 114, 122, 163, 205; behavior 56; being 156; carnivalesque 202; fecopoetics 201, 203; literary 202 Montanari, Massimo 192, 199 Moser, Benjamin 89–90, 103–104 multiplicity 72, 105, 108, 110, 114, 118, 155, 176 Mulvey, Laura 49–50 Muslim 12, 188–190, 198 mystic 12, 49, 125, 126, 138, 143–151, 157, 159 mystical see mystic mysticism see mystic Napier, Susan 105, 107, 110, 114, 119; see also Japan narrative 85, 91, 124 natural 149, 174–175, 178 naturalism 137, 139, 145, 151 naturalize 205, 211 nature 7, 22, 26, 48, 55, 84, 94–95, 100, 118, 127, 133, 137–139, 141, 143–151, 157, 167, 191 nausea 89, 95, 141–142 Nietzsche, Friedrich 177, 179–180; On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) 177, 185 normativity see norms norms 3–5, 7, 9–11, 52, 93, 115, 122, 126, 155, 172, 189, 191, 205, 213; patriarchal 4, 33–35, 37, 56, 101, 124, 126, 129, 130, 144–145, 147, 174, 176, 190–192, 195, 203, 205 nourishment 140, 145, 148, 179; sexuality and 140, 148; see also malnourishment

Index  221 Novel Approaches to Anthropology: Contributions to Literary Anthropology 4, 12; Cohen, Marilyn 4–5, 12 object 3, 26, 38–39, 46, 49, 85, 122, 140–141, 145–146, 155, 160, 162–163, 189, 195; cultural 8 objectification 56, 92 odor 39, 181 onsen: loss of traditions 105–118; see also Japan orientalism 11, 44 Pacific War 71–73, 81, 86 phenomenology 37–38, 48, 61, 148, 152–153, 157–158, 165, 175 pigs 21–22, 27, 82–83, 106, 112–114, 119, 125, 153, 170, 209 PoisonedShadow 58–63, 66 pork 12, 18, 21–22, 124, 130, 188–189, 193–194 pornography see visual erotics postcolonial 124–125, 131, 186, 188, 192, 196–199 postmodernity 105, 108, 112, 114–116, 118–119 Pro Ana 6, 51–67 Pro Mia 6, 51–67 propaganda 17, 20–21, 23 Queiroz, Rachel de 98, 103 O quinze (1930) 98, 103 Qur’an 12, 188, 190, 194 racism 58, 71, 83, 187 raw see Culinary Triangle recognition 5, 32, 42, 49, 101, 122, 124–125, 128, 160 retaliation 202, 204, 206, 208, 212 Rich, Adrienne 192, 199 Ripoll, María 10, 32, 39, 48; Tortilla Soup (2001) 10, 32, 34, 36–37, 39–40, 43–48, 50 The Routledge Companion to Literature and Food 7 “Salsicce”/“Sausages” (2013) see Scego, Igiaba salt 76, 80, 100, 142, 155, 162 Savoring Power, Consuming the Times: The Metaphors of Food in

Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature 8, 13; Palma, Pina 8, 13 Scego, Igiaba 12, 187–200; “Salsicce”/“Sausages” (2013) 12, 188–191, 193–194, 196–200 senses 38–42, 47–49, 175, 179 Shinya, Tsukamoto 73, 87; Fires on the Plain (2014) 73–80, 85–87 Shōhei, Ōoka 73, 87; Fires on the Plain (1952) 73–80, 85–87 Shōji, Yūki 73; Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (1970) 73, 79–81, 85–86 signifier 119 slave see slavery slavery 75, 88–90, 93, 100–102, 146, 172, 175 social retaliation see retaliation Somali see Somalia Somalia 186–188, 191–195, 197 Somalian see Somalia South Korea 123, 125–127, 131–132, 134 Soviet 10, 17–18, 22, 24, 28, 30; satellites 20; Union 20 Spirited Away (2001) 105–120; see also Miyazaki, Hayao Studio Ghibli 110, 118–119; see also Miyazaki, Hayao sugar 11, 21, 88–89, 95–103, 170–172 Sutton, David 175, 185 Suzuki, Ayumi 112 Swale, Alistair 107 sweet 11–12, 90, 95–96, 98–101, 103, 153–154, 164, 170–172, 179, 182, 193–194; see also sugar taboo 1–3, 9, 63, 72, 85, 113, 132, 189 Taiwanese 32–34, 37, 48, 127 taste 9–12, 18–20, 22–24, 27–29, 32, 36–41, 88, 95, 139, 150, 171, 179, 190, 193, 202, 211 textuality 92, 152–153, 156, 165–166 Thailand 209 theology 8, 143, 152 thinness 90–94, 209 Thompson, Becky W. 58, 67; A Hunger So Wide and So Deep (1994) 58 Il treno per Helsinki (1984) 169–185; see also Maraini, Dacia

222 Index Tompkins, Kyla 2, 8, 13; Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century (2012) 2, 13 tradition 33, 36–37, 44, 89, 105, 108–109, 118, 158, 201, 208 traditional 5, 9, 11, 33–36, 42, 44–45, 63, 76, 100, 102, 105, 107–109, 110, 114, 127, 175, 186, 191–192, 210 transgression 7, 115, 155–159, 166, 189–190; body 153; hunger 152–154, 167 trauma 6, 51, 53, 64, 79, 94, 98, 176 Ty, Eleanor 44–45 Ulysses (1922) 12, 152–168; see also Joyce, James Unbroken (2014) 71–72, 86 Under the Flag of the Rising Sun 73, 79–81, 85–86; Kinji, Fukasaku (1972) 73, 86; Shōji, Yūki (1970) 73 United States 5, 88, 93, 97, 99, 101, 105, 130; see also America USSR 30; see also Soviet

vegan x-xi, 11, 121–134; see also Wright, Laura The Vegetarian (2007) 11, 122–134; see also Kang, Han victim 56, 64, 71–87, 138, 150, 160, 213 victimhood see victim victimization see victim visual erotics 46; see also erotics waste 24, 28, 95, 98, 152–153, 155–156, 158, 163–165, 204, 214 The Witness/A tanú (1969) 18, 21–24, 26–27, 29, 31; see also Bacsó, Peter women see female; feminism; femininity women’s writing 187, 190, 196; see also Atwood, Margaret; Kang, Han; Maraini, Dacia; Scego, Igiaba World War II 11, 71–87, 174 Wright, Laura xi, 3, 11, 121–134 Zola, Emile 137–138, 151