Death By Consumption
Hi there. Been a while. Here I am, alive and well. I'm going to try out a new format to this shit because why not. I'm calling it Death By Consumption, because I love consuming things but I also feel like it's going to eventually kill me. This is where I try to process it all.
CONSUMED:
"The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South" by Michael W. Twitty
Family has been especially on my mind lately, with my boyfriend going through some difficult family shit, with my sister becoming a mother for the first time, with the daily updates on the kids being torn from their parents just because they're not white and weren't lucky enough to be born here. A family can be defined in infinite ways, of course, but family separation hurts the same for everyone.
The documentary Three Identical Strangers tells the insane story of three identical twins who were separated at birth and given to three families who also didn't know, the story only coming to light after two brothers bumped into each other at college and became national news. I was completely unfamiliar with this story, so I was gripped from the first seconds of the film and almost died from a burst bladder in the theater, because I couldn't find a moment to run to the bathroom without missing the next shocking revelation. It's a tightly-packed roller coaster.
The ending, however, is infuriating. I won't spoilt it for you, except to say that the film draws some insanely dangerous conclusions with regards to nature vs. nurture. The overall message of the film was bullllllllllllllshit, and I only get more upset about it by the day, but, still, I loved the film. It was like a deliciously trashy magazine article. It's not good, but it is great.
A while ago, I went to a preview screening (I'm bragging here) of the just-released documentary Far From The Tree, adapted from Andrew Solomon's book of the same title. It explores the concept of what happens when a child falls "far from the tree," or turns out quite different from their parents — gay, with Down syndrome or autism, etc. — and shows how the child finds their own community, and how the parents and the child try to find common ground.
I have yet to read the book, a fact my friend Nora badgers me about on a weekly basis, mainly because I've heard it's as intense an experience as the movie, but longer and more in-depth. I cried throughout, oh, 95% of the film? It's outrageously beautiful, and does what a good documentary should do: I walked out of the theater and saw the world differently. It should be required viewing for everyone (but especially Republicans).
What's most affecting is how it explicitly ties together previous generations' attempts to "cure" gayness (and still some current generations, I'm looking at you "conversion therapy"), with modern discussions around gene editing "curing" things like Down syndrome and autism. So it's incredibly effective to hear it directly from the subjects' mouths, that they don't want to be erased. One of the best moments in the film — one that prompted the theater to burst out into an extremely emotionally complicated round of laughter — comes when the "little people" married couple Leah Smith and Joseph Stramando discuss, with more than a hint of worry, what happens if their child is born of average height? It's a simple moment, and turns the entire concept of "far from the tree" on its head — many parents worry their kids will be different, but these two, different their entire lives, worry theirs will come out like everyone else. It's the best documentary I've seen in years.
Mamma Mia 2 might be the best movie I've seen in years, period. I'm not even sure I'm exaggerating here. I spent $140 on tickets for the opening night, and we all partied so much and so hard that I couldn't leave the couch all the next day. I insisted we get to the theater early because I didn't want to be forced to sit in the front row because the theater would fill up (there were ultimately about 12 other people at our opening-night showing). My boyfriend has listened to the soundtrack ~50 times in the past week. Nora has said, "Maybe I'll go see Mamma Mia 2 again after work," to me about every day since we saw it. The movie is taking over our lives.
The only people who won't like it are assholes who are fully incapable of just giving in to some harmless joy. Sucks to be them, because the rest of us get to enjoy Pierce Brosnan scream-singing his fucking heart out, Stellan Skarsgard and Colin Firth embracing at the prow of a ferry full of dancing extras, and Christine Baranksi saying lines like, "Be still my beating vagina." If we're lucky, we'll get at least 5 more of these films. They make the same Marvel movie every 6 months, have we not earned this???
Incredibly, we all found ourselves tearing up at the end of the movie. It's unexpectedly emotional: where the first film treated the "I don't know who my father is" plot as more or less a silly bit of frivolity, the second film steers hard into the emotional baggage between parents and children. How does it affect a person, never knowing their father growing up? What happens when the one parent who loved and raised you your whole life is suddenly not there? How does a person become the best version of their parents to their own kid, without repeating their mistakes? It's heavy shit, and further proof that Meryl Streep can make anyone cry, in any film, whether you like it or not. It's a dangerous power she holds over us.
On the reading front, I've been tearing through The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty, a book that has repeatedly blown my mind. Tying together genetic science with a history of cooking, he dives into his personal family history, which reveals the many many ways the legacy of slavery still affects all of us today. Upon discovering his white, slave-owning ancestors, he writes:
I have often wondered whether the white people who know we are kin actually see us as family. It's critical for me to think about the possibilities of every Southern white family connected to African Americans on DNA tests truly reaching out and vice versa, to create a dialogue. Would we be better off if we embraced this complexity and dealt with our pain or shame? Would we finally be Americans or Southerners or both if we truly understood how impenetrably connected we actually are? Is it too late?
Maybe I'll just invite everybody to dinner one day and find out.
The book is full of revelatory facts about the history of Southern cooking, and sprinkled throughout are cheeky recipes that reveal and celebrate the blended history of the cuisine, as well as Michael Twitty's own multicultural heritage as an African-American gay Jew (on that note, I'm particularly eager to try his recipe for West African Brisket).
It's an eye-opening exploration of family — in this case expanding the concept of "family" to its largest, which ultimately encompasses all of us — through the one specific example of his own self. "All I ever really wanted was a recipe of who I am and where I come from," he writes. Through his reporting on his own DNA and his culinary heritage, he shows how silly the concept of "borders" and "us vs. them" actually is, how those of us who fall far from the tree — or, in this case, are brutally torn from the tree — are still connected at the roots.
Finally, on the subject of family, spare some thoughts and prayers for this completely random man who found himself accidentally added to our enormous family reunion email chain:
DEATH
I want to inhale this profile of Gwyneth Paltrow by Taffy Brodesser-Akner and hold it in my lungs until I die. Her descriptions of Gwyneth's home life — Apple and Moses drifting about, playing beautiful music under the tutelage of Chris Martin, while Gwyneth's new husband nuzzles her as she prepares clams — are so surreal yet expected that you feel like she must have staged it all, knowing it's what we expect from her home life. There's nothing fully revelatory about Gwyneth in the profile, but this story is about the journey, not the destination. Just click the link and let yourself drift away. Go towards the light.
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Bye!