Here’s a conversation you might’ve overheard in 2014:
Asian person: *mentions their specific ethnic heritage*
White person: “Oh, I love that Thai (or Indian or Japanese or…) restaurant around the corner! Aren’t the drunken noodles amazing?
Asian person: *baffled*
Are immigrant food stories overdone or still relevant?
It’s 2023, I would like to think that this conversation happens less and less. And in diasporic media, using Asian food as a placeholder symbol for ancestral relations has become less prevalent. Notably, the most prominent food in the recent Oscar-sweeping Everything Everywhere All at Once is bagels, a food with Jewish connotations.
Food is an undeniable cultural touchstone for the Asian diaspora and the non-Asians that interact with us. So, for a long time and still today, movies and shows with Asian leads heavily emphasizes food or cooking to symbolize familial ties.
Food and family go together for almost all humans. Our senses of taste and smell have strong connections with our memory. And for many, memories involving food feature family.
However, Asian diasporic media might be departing from food-driven storylines. Movie makers fear being pigeonholed into the same stereotype and assimilationist storyline.
To avoid trope-ridden plot lines, I am not convinced that stepping away from food as a symbol in movies is a necessary solution. There are interesting and nuanced narratives left to tell through the lens of food. Storytellers perhaps need to think more creatively with food-related symbolism. Instead, they should lean into the specificity of cultural experience—like The Hundred-Foot Journey.
Hassan, Family, and Food
The 2014 movie, The Hundred-Foot Journey, centers on Hassan and his large, boisterous family, who are forced to flee to France upon the traumatic death of their mother.
Hassan’s family is in the restaurant business, and he is the cook. They struggle to have their…
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