I saw The Hundred-Foot Journey this afternoon. I thought immediately of this blog, and it took quite a bit out of me to resist the urge to begin writing this post on my phone during the movie. Why is that?
First, a look at DreamWorks’ own description of the film:
A stimulating triumph over exile, blossoming with passion and heart, with marjoram and madras, it is a portrayal of two worlds colliding and one boy’s drive to find the comfort of home, in every pot, wherever he may be.
“Triumph over exile,” “two worlds colliding”, and “marjoram and madras”—this is ostensibly one set of descriptors for the preceding film—one enacting the particulars of post-colonial-type cultural criticism in a way that manages still to reinforce a solipsistic cultural dynamic. I don’t want to do that!
I’ve written some already about literacy and feelings, working primarily from my personal experience and with concepts of intimacy, dexterity, and endurance. Referring to The Hundred-Foot Journey and literacies of cooking, I’d like to frame each concept in some more detail.
As you’ll have gathered from the film’s trailer, an Indian family flees for Europe following a riotous political turnover that claims their restaurant and their mother, living briefly near London before settling, by providence or chance, in small-town South France. The eldest son, Hassan, a self-described “cook” (specifically not “chef”), and his family improvise a sensational Indian restaurant—the town’s first—across the road from a comparatively elegant and distinguished French one (oh la la! it has a Michelin star!). It’s a good story: the rivalry that ensues is variously bitter and comical (and, SPOILER: it resolves happily); but I’m keenest to explore it as a literacy narrative.
Hassan is “just a cook,” without any credentials to formally substantiate his great culinary talent, having “learned everything from his [now deceased] mother.” Here is the infamous critical-cultural high/low curio (which we’ll ignore), but here also is love. References are made throughout to an intimate spiritual connection between Hassan’s father and his late mother: she “wants [them] to open a restaurant” there in the South of France, and she “wants [Hassan] to become a great, classically-trained French chef.” “Pa” decides to stay because he has fallen in love with the food (the vegetables have “soul”), and Hassan’s ability to improvise is founded upon a sacred familiarity with his mother’s spices. There is love-for and love-of—a vital† and meshy intimacy among the material, the craft, the family, and the self.
“Why change a recipe that is two hundred years old?” “Maybe two hundred years is long enough.”
In the above exchange, Mme. Mallory (French chef and owner of the rival restaurant across the road) asks Hassan about his variation on a (basic) bechamel sauce. His reply is reverent but firm: he now has a feel for the sauces. From intimacy comes basic ability. Dexterity is a literacy of talent and practice. The above exchange is not hand-it-over post-colonialism, and it’s not shaky-hand post-modernism; it is hands-with-feeling literacy. It is not like kinesthetic dexterity, and it is not either sensual or kinesthetic. It is sensual, and it is kinesthetic too. They together are dexterity.
In another sequence, Hassan asks Madame if he can prepare for her an omelette (doing so as an interview for a position at her restaurant). His hands have been badly burned and are heavily bandaged, so he asks her to prepare as he instructs. Hassan asks her to portion a little bit of a certain spice. No, it is not right. He asks her to draw another portion that is ever so slightly smaller. He is patient, and she is willing, but still it’s clumsy. This is, I think, a neat exemplar of a fragmented dexterity—Madame’s hands and Hassan’s sense—the fragments grapple in disunity. “What will Hassan learn in [Mme.’s] employment,” his father asks? The answer is dexterity, or, in Madame’s exact words, “subtlety of flavor.”
Endurance is the decathlon. At its theoretical extreme, it is maybe the paragon of dexterity. My mom can follow Ina Garten’s recipes, and my grandmother can cook them with considerable flair, as grandmothers can, but The Barefoot Contessa would outperform either one of them as an event caterer. Professional caterers have endurance—as a requisite. Associate endurance with native or professional literacy. It’s surgical dexterity, a robust and meshy intimacy, and extraordinary love. I’ve described these concepts vaguely hierarchically, but they aren’t necessarily. You can have endurance without love. Imagine a fierce un-chivalrous knight. Or Madame’s former head chef, Jean-Jacques, an iron chef, “a soldier,” and utterly unloving. (He’s sent to “pack [his] knives.”)
♥
In one of our class discussions, someone remarked, casually, that “English is not about morals” (love). I disagree.
By now I’ve shown how “English”, the discipline, and “English”, the class, can be fundamentally moral enterprises. I also contend that English—any language—can be a meaningfully moral instrument (e.g. “I love you”). So Kenneth Turan was on point in his review for NPR; in it, he writes:
“The Hundred-Foot Journey” is a sweet and unapologetic fairy tale for adults.
He’s right, but it’s unfortunate that morality in art should survive only in fairy tales or that it should be restricted to them from a critical perspective. Maybe the modern meta-meta-meta mindset leads us awry from love (i.e. You don’t read just to study reading). Maybe formalistic techniques (like “close” reading) and critical theories are invasive species: they were introduced once for some particular purpose, but they’ve since gotten out of control, making it difficult to get to know ourselves and others, across boundaries and through time. They seriously threaten what should be a powerful and essential use of literacy, one that unites us instead of splitting us (e.g. old/new, here/there, high/low). Literature has become withdrawn from us, and literacy is in a mangled brawl, unwittingly at odds with a vital part of itself.
Has that happened or hasn’t it? Have literature and art become inaccessible? And, if so, what is the state of literacy? What do we stand to gain, and how do we move towards a literacy made whole?