Eat Drink Man Woman By Ang Lee Essay

This film has many protagonists. The main protagonist is Martin Naranjo. He is an accomplished chef who is a widower. He lives with his three adult daughters who are very beautiful, but remain single. Naranjo lost his wife approximately ten years prior to the setting of the film. Since then he has assumed the role of father and mother. Naranjo works as a chef fulfilling is fatherly role and he also does all of the cooking, cleaning and laundry fulfilling his motherly role. Naranjo maintains that on every Sunday, the family shares a meal to share their life experiences of the week with each other. The meal seems to be a tradition in that family that has been a part of the family’s ritual prior to the passing of the mother. Some of the daughters find the meal to be more of a punishment than an enjoyment. Martin for most of the film has lost his ability to taste the flavor in the food he creates. He relies at work upon his best friend and fellow chef, Gomez played by Julio Mechoso, for taste. Martin is the main protagonist as he demonstrates the most change. He lets go of his adult daughters, one at a time while gaining two more daughters, Eden the daughter of his much younger bride than he and his unborn child with the same, Yolanda.

When watching the movie, “Eat Drink Man Woman”, I was able to learn a lot about the Chinese culture and the food that they eat. Even though all the food that was prepared in the film was high end cuisine, I was still able to get a glimpse of what it had to offer. When a lot of Americans think of Chinese food, they tend to think strictly about American Chinese food, and that is not the case. Many meals were prepared in the film that ranged from elegant soups, chicken, duck, and fish, to fancy dumplings, and desserts. The film was able to show me a lot of what the food they eat looks like, even if it was five star meals, and had a great storyline to back it up.

The text ”When Rich Came to Sunday Dinner” by Amy Tan, brings up multicultural aspects in the USA such as cultural differences. In the text the daughter of Chinese parents brings her American boyfriend Rich to Sunday dinner. Rich and her parents experience cultural differences which consequently make for misunderstandings between the two parties. An example of the cultural differences is during the dinner when Rich refuses to have seconds. The father took small, but several portions of the dinner, whereas Rich took big portions and declined seconds. This scene from the text portrays the different values these two cultures have when it comes to food. By declining the chefs food Rich insulted he, according to

The video presents a “China” that is attractive under the beauty standards established by the narcoculture (Ortiz Uribe, 1). The narcofashion began after Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug trafficker who was the most powerful at the time, sents Madellín cartel’s members to the United States to complete a business. His people took this opportunity to have sexual relationships with women from Playboy. When they returned to Medellin, they expected similar characteristics of Colombian women. Since some women were economically dependent from these traffickers, they began altering their bodies in their efforts to appeal to these capos. As the drug business grew in Mexico, Mexican drug dealers also adopted some of this beauty standard (Yagoub, 1). Therefore, by illustrating a “China” who follows a beauty standard created by and for males sexual fantasies, the video sexualices the buchona and reduces her autonomy, revelry, and independence. The fact that “la China” is sexualized like this for a business meeting, disempowers her personality and instead, places the power to negotiate and achieve her goals through her sexuality--it reduces the buchona’s stereotypical leadership to the mujer trofeo’s decorative service. This reinforces the sexist idea that, for women, success depends on their body (Yagoub 1). Furthermore, since sunglasses are a symbol that hides emotions (Wang & Dalton 728), by wearing sunglasses throughout the video, including when she is inside the house, the producers mask “la China’s” feelings, simultaneously hiding her identity and personality. The history of sexualization of “la China’s” clothing and the attempt to erase her personality, objectifies and dehumanizes the women who Rosas ironically described as

“Confucius still lives in the hearts and minds of the most older Chinese, and the social values he taught remain the bedrock of mainstream Chinese society.” (De Mente, 33) To most Chinese parents, they are still very traditional, especially in raising their children. However, it may not be well receive and appreciate by their westernized children. Amy Tan, a famous American born Chinese writer, often discusses how she struggled to accept her mother’s strict parenting when she was young. Thus, their relationships were strained because they always argue.

Woman, Demon, Human is a film that explores woman’s dilemmas in her own lives. Such an exploration differs greatly from the PRC’s socialist-feminist tradition of using women for propaganda and focuses more on individuality, ambiguity, and women’s vulnerability in life. The film is a powerful allegory for the predicament of femininity: playing male roles on-stage empowers Qiuyun, the protagonist, while off-stage, she remains helpless and besieged by a sense of guilt for being a woman. The actor’s performance of masculinity makes it clear that merely translating gender roles does not yield emancipation for women. By dressing in men's costumes and pursuing her career on an opera stage, Qiu Yun identifies her gender as a "man" in mask.

The role of the woman has said to serve a humble and very significant aspect in tradition and ritualistic beliefs in Chinese culture in pre-modern times. Traditionally, woman were to stay loyal to the man they were married to and were required, by custom, to stay in the household of “the-in-laws” as a sign of respect to the family. We consider the words loyalty, respect, and submission a numerous amount of times when analyzing the women’s role and how it pertains to Chinese culture when we read about it in articles, newspapers, and novels. In the piece, “No Name Woman,” Maxine Hong Kingston insists on clarifying the ignorant notion that women were always acquiescent to the word of the man. Kingston reflects on her adolescent fascination about the aunt she never knew by engaging in heavy discussion to examine the for that not all women shared those values. Using the story of a speculated aunt that the narrator was told she had by her mother, Kingston asserts that even if the story of her aunt may not be factual, the message of the piece is to communicate that women were both obedient and strictly submissive in Chinese culture.

The short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan is one that focuses on a mother’s dream for her daughter. As part of an immigrant family, Jing-Mei’s childhood was different from the rest of the United States’, as well as her family’s home country, China. Her mother wanted to provide for her what she thought was the American Dream and her methods of doing so simply caused tension between her and her daughter. The significant cultural divide between Chinese and American upbringing has been a consistent source of conflict in the relationship between Jing-Mei and her mother. The story delves into the disparity of hardships between immigrant mother and second-generation daughter, and the outcome of their differences.

“What’s Cooking” overall was a very meaningful movie with a lot of drama and seriously scary situations between four families that anybody would stereotype just by looking at them. Each family had it’s own lessons it was trying to teach the audience and an broad lesson involving all the families at the end. One family in particular that interested me and really taught me something was the Nguyen family. The Nguyen family consisted of many divergent dramatis personae each going through their own self conflicts that you wouldn’t expect that culture or race to have that later on through the movie involves the whole family.

Fisher (1989) recalls his childhood food memories, were women long ago used to perform their family duties much more than recently women do. He remembered the enjoyable cannings with his mother and grandmother, although his grandmother denied men and children participation and help specifically with cooking as she thinks its prohibited. However, despite the horrible, hot and dirty kitchen they used to work in, the food they cook seems

In Edward Yang’s filmYi Yi (2000), the audience witnesses the Jian family over the span of about a year and can be marked by three events: a wedding, a birthday, and a funeral. These events are built with traditions and social functions, and are meant to be a gathering of family and friends around tables, sharing in food and memories. We can potentially understand the table is a metaphor of life, as it represents in a direct and exacting way both membership in a group and the relationships defined within that group. How then, can we understand a film such as Yi Yi, which centres around the gatherings of a wedding, birthday, and funeral, but makes little effort to show the food, consumption of food, or even the successful gathering of the family without bickering or trauma? Through understanding the lack of on-screen food, but with a film still focused on food-based events, we can look at what food in Yi Yi signifies in a larger thematic scale. In what follows I will explore three ways of understanding the consumption and absence of food in Yi Yi, namely, food as function, food as language, and food as perspective.

Eat Drink Man Woman is a movie directed by Ang Lee. The movie takes place in Taiwan in the year 1994. The movie is about a widowed, senior chef, Mr. Chu, and his three grown daughters. Chu Jia-Jen, the oldest, is an unmarried chemistry teacher who is not being able to love someone after being heartbroken in her college years. Chu Jia-Chen, the middle daughter, is a thriving airline executive whose career comes before all and is handed opportunities like never before, although has the passion of culinary skill from her father.

Throughout the film, Chef Chu prepares carefully family dinners, which his daughters attend, but half-heartedly and with a degree of frustration, irritability, and irreverence. It is traditional Chinese culture has been develop for several thousands of years. Although, social and cultural changes are implied through the obstacles presented by modern life, the Chinese love of food because it gives a better a better image of what we are reading. How the gender role attitude can affect, what is going on at home and how women can be more freedom. In this way, food so oft considered a conventionally domestic; concern emerges as a powerful and dynamic symbol of change in all its complexity, and ushers in evolving gender roles, family structures, and global

The first scene that fully exposed what was happening in the kitchen was when the chef was coming to take charge. The chef happened to be male, and the staff was mainly composed of men. There was only one female in the kitchen, she also happened to be the only female in the whole movie. This scene depicts the way masculinity is defined in our culture. The chef came in and started barking orders at everyone below him, he stood firm and tough. The chef in the movie was male, which allowed him to be in a position where he was able to display success or high status. This plays into gender

Family plays a vital role in East Asian Society. While familial bonds are an integral part of many cultures, the nuclear and extended family relationships in Asian societies are stronger than those in other countries. In Asian Society, children are expected to take care of their parents when they get older and often stay in the home for longer periods of time than we see in other cultures. In Eat Drink Man Woman, the children are all grown up going about their own lives. However, for most of the film, they live together under the same roof. As time passes, the three daughters move away from their fathers’ home. When the father gets sick, the oldest daughter moves back home to care for him. On Sundays, throughout the movie, they all gather to prepare and eat elaborate meals. Despite the fact that they have moved away from the family to live their own lives they continue the tradition of gathering to eat on Sundays. Commensality can be seen as the bonding agent for their family relationships. The meal serves as both physical and emotional nourishment. It is reminiscent of meals I have with my grandparents every few weeks, as everyone in my immediate family meets at my grandparents’ home and we set up several extra tables. My Grandparents cook; we all eat a delicious meal and talk for hours about our daily lives, politics, religion, and family, and on occasion, there are boisterous bouts of agreeing to disagree. The same thing happens during dinner in the movie, everyone