Ratatouille as a Lesson in Non-Elitism

I just finished watching Ratatouille on DVD. This is the second time I've seen the movie (the first time was in the theatre). It usually takes me two to three viewings before I feel comfortable declaring a definite opinion on a movie which is why you will never see me as a New York Times movie critic (and why I haven't reviewed Caspian on my blog yet).

I have boundless respect for Pixar and for John Lasseter (head of Pixar) in particular. Every production Pixar creates is thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing and although some are better than others, none of them, in my view, are actually bad. However, although I enjoyed Ratatouille the first time, I can't say I was bowled over by it.

The second viewing gave me a chance to reflect more on the plot and theme of the movie. First of all, I would be surprised that Pixar marketed the movie specifically to children if it wasn't for the fact that in the United States (as opposed to Japan), animation is automatically (and erroneously) equated with a juvenile audience. In any case, I think Ratatouille deserves a broader audience.

The plot of Ratatouille is complex as is the dialog. There is NO attempt to "talk down" the dialog or even, as in Toy Story and Shrek, to keep the plot dialog basic while throwing in funny and more complex subtext. All of Ratatouille's dialog demands close attention. Still, it is possible that for young children, the images carry most of the story. And I happen to believe that while a child may get bored with an overly complex work (i.e., War & Peace), complexity doesn't automatically hurt a child's appreciation of a film or book: even if the child doesn't understand every plot point, innuendo, or theme, the child still responds to the film or book's created world and the human tensions within it.

Likewise, I think a child can appreciate the rather complex theme of Ratatouille, especially since the theme has multiple levels. When I first saw the movie, my English-teacher's brain was mislead by Gusteau's slogan, "Everyone can cook." I jumped to the conclusion that the movie was another one of those Disney films about someone trying and trying and trying until he or she achieves her goal! The Little Engine That Could, version 3,025.

But really, Gusteau's slogan should be "Everyone may cook" or, rather, "Everyone with talent should have the right to cook." In other words, Gusteau's point is not "hey, if you just try, try, try again, you can make it" (after all, Linguini freely admits at the end of the movie that he has absolutely no talent); rather, Gusteau is challenging the position of elitists.

"Everyone can cook" as in EVERYONE. Although Remy is the ultimate example of this, there are constant and sometimes subtle references to Gusteau's slogan throughout the entire movie: Colette challenges Linguini to doubt her talent (and her chutzpah) because she is a woman in a "man's world"; Skinner deplores Linguini's achievements because he is (1) a garbage boy and (2) untrained. Elitism--specifically the elitism that claims superiority for reasons other than talent (I have the right schooling; I know the right people; I belong to the right class/clique/political party)--is being attacked. In this context, Ego's name, of course, is a dead giveaway. His critiques (until the very end of the movie) aren't about enjoyment, pleasure, the fun of the thing; they are all about ego.

What makes Ratatouille, like so many Pixar films, unusual is that the issue of anti-elitism is not allowed to stop there. Yes, attacking elitism is great, but the writers force Remy to examine his budding anti-elitism. Will it (like it has for so many angsty college graduates) simply make Remy an anti-elitist elitist? Because Remy's family doesn't really understand or care about his talent does that mean they are stupid, capitalist, thieving philistines who should be shoved out of his life as quickly as possible?

Not at all. Remy's brother Emile will never lose his taste for Ramen noodles, tater tots, and Hostess cupcakes. The guy just isn't a gourmet. But he loves his brother, and his brother loves him, so . . . what does it matter? In fact, Brad Bird, the writer and director of Ratatouille, attempts to answer that question: Why does Remy's talent matter (if not for elitist reasons)? His answer: Remy's talent isn't about being better than other people; it's about doing something that will add to the world.

I like that because it bypasses the whole elitist versus self-esteem-for-everyone argument. (I dislike the first position and consider the second counter-productive.) In my thesis, I argue that people enjoy artistic works because those works enable them to use their creativity, but I also argue that creativity is a very broad desire. Speaking of those college grads, creativity does not (necessarily) mean "feeling angst and staring at my navel." Here's what I wrote in the second chapter of my thesis:

Creativity is not a specialized right-brained activity, reserved for artists, poets, and performers. People want to create all kinds of things: loving families, good filing systems, decent web sites, tasty treats, well-groomed animals, a trusty lesson plan. How that desire plays out may very well be influenced by social, cultural environments and institutions but votary theory [my theory that I present in my thesis] postulates its existence regardless of external frameworks. The creative desire like any human desire (envy, hate, love) exists throughout time and history. The modes of its expression are influenced by context but context does not determine the desire. A contemporary Shakespeare would not, perhaps, write plays (unless he teamed up with Andrew Lloyd Webber); that a contemporary Shakespeare would have creative impulses I have no doubt.

In any case, all this thought about what constitutes talent and how it should be handled is extremely impressive for a movie that is, ostensibly, a light children's film, but then I have always found designations for films and books to be more confining than truthful. (I have to be careful about this as a teacher, however; I am perfectly willing to bring any writing to the table if I think it is good and will help my students. My students are not so broad-minded, and I have to explain to them that I'm not using children's literature because I think they aren't smart enough to handle "adult" material; I am using children's literature because it is usually better written than so-called adult material. "You can fake out an adult with big words and highfalutin' sounding sentences," I say. "You can't do that with kids. If you can't communicate clearly with kids, your writing just won't work.")

Back to Ratatouille: I think movies have exhibited a shift in perspective over the past few years, starting with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, where the protagonist's desire to grow is not immediately (and inevitably) pitted against the protagonist's family or culture. Compromises are presented, and the protagonist usually ends not by riding off, alone and self-satisfied, into the sunset but remaining, though changed, within the family/cultural circle. Which solution is, whether in a movie for children or for adults, far more mature.

MOVIES

The Fallacy of Nature-Loving Pagans

Since I've gotten somewhat more political lately, I decided to recyle a post I wrote when I was in grad school (in case anyone thinks my entire grad school experience was horrible, see this post).

One of the theories that cropped up in my grad school classes is that the pre-Christian world (i.e. pagan Europe and the Ancient Mediterranean civilizations) was populated by nature-friendly people. The image that emerges is a more sophisticated version of Walt Disney's Pocahontas: tree huggers with pro-nature beliefs flitting happily through the dank forests of Europe.

This is such a very stupid idea I have decided to address it here.

The image of a pure/good past is part and parcel of the whole noble savage doctrine promoted by people like Rousseau. It got quite a grip on Western Civilization in Rousseau's time and is still bandied about today. In the 1970s, alongside the feminist and environmentalist movements, a group of anthropologists/archaeologists promoted the idea of a pre-Christian, pro-woman, pro-nature "before the mists of time" idyllic society. Their idea was based principally on the discovery of goddess worship in the ancient world. How one leaps from goddess worship to all the rest escapes me; nevertheless, it was a big deal.

That is, until more archaeologists (and sometimes even the same archaeologists) went back and dug up more stuff and discovered, what do you know, that every time you find goddess worship, you find a big, thundering obnoxious patriarchal god right next door and he is, inevitably, calling the shots. You find temple prostitution to boot. So much for the non-exploitation of women.

What about the ancients' attitude towards nature?

The following list is a description of non-nature-friendly aspects of the ancient world, starting on the south side of the Mediterranean, progressing around to the east, back to the west and then north.

1. The salting of Carthage
2. The pyramids (see Stonehenge)
3. The lighthouse at Pharos (which would have burnt a tremendous amount of wood or oil on a daily basis--think smoky, smelly air pollution)
4. The mummifying of kittens for sale (commodification!)
5. Jericho: the oldest city possibly in the world was a fortress! (Tells you something about human nature)
6. Ziggaruts (see Stonehenge)
7. The Tale of Gilgamesh which, taken together with the story of Noah, is about how much is stinks to be flooded
8. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: the ultimate cultivation of nature
9. The Greek concept of civilization (basically: cities)
10. The Roman concept of civilization (basically: really big cities)
11. The Roman Games which killed thousands and thousands of animals from Europe
12. The Celts: agriculturists, traders and miners
13. Moving furthur north: Stonehenge. Stonehenge, along with the pyramids and ziggaruts, is a great example of ancient people quarrying huge amounts of rock (for fun!), hauling those rocks hundreds of miles to a completely different location and constructing a monument that does not blend into the landscape even remotely. (Ziggaruts are a little more blendable.)
14. Beowulf: an ancient tale that was brought into Britain by pagan Anglo-Saxons and later Christianized. The non-Christian parts of the tale are even less friendly about nature than the Christian parts. Nature is the enemy in the shape of big, angry monsters that eat you. You survive by having a good leader, good warriors, good trade, and strong defenses.
15. And then there's the Vikings . . .

It doesn't strike me as a particularly nature-friendly list.

CURRENT NOTE: In one of my classes, a student tried to tell me that pagan Europeans would have gotten a long with Native Americans better than Christian Europeans. I didn't laugh in her face because that would have been rude, but I remember thinking, "Yeah, right after they slaughtered them and burnt their villages" (see Vikings above). I can't speak to the beliefs of Native Americans, and I'm not going to try, but I do know from my own studies that European and Classical pagans were some of the least friendly people ever. And they were not big fans of nature. As far as I can tell, the only reason they didn't burn, ravage, destroy, mutilate, pollute, and decimate more of Europe and the ancient Classical world was lack of equipment.

In any case, when you consider that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (79 C.E.) was more powerful than an atom bomb (40 atom bombs according to this website), you realize the ancients were completely and totally and monumentally right to fear nature.

HISTORY & LEARNING

Jonah Goldberg, Calvinism, Genre Literature, and Anthropology

I just finished Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. In Liberal Fascism, Mr. Goldberg traces the historical link between progressivism, fascism, and liberalism. The history is interesting, Mr. Goldberg's points are more than a little valid, and the tone of his tome is relaxed, intelligent, and much less in-your-face caustic than, say, Ann Coulter. He's readable plus you don't feel like you're in the middle of a screaming match like with so much political pundit writing.

And man, is he insightful! While reading the book, I kept going, "Yes! Yes, that's exactly how I felt in my master's program!" In fact, I wrote similar things while in my program here.

This particular quote caught my eye:

[O]ne of the main reasons I've written this book [is] to puncture the smug self-confidence that simply by virtue of being liberal one is also virtuous. At the same time, I need to repeat that I am not playing the movie backward. Today's liberals aren't the authors of past generations' mistakes any more than I'm responsible for the callousness of some conservative who championed states' rights for the wrong reason well before I was born. No, the problems with liberalism today reside in liberalism today. The relevance of the past is that unlike the conservative who has wrestled with his history to make sure he does not repeat it, liberals see no need to do anything of the sort. And so, armed with complete confidence in their own good intentions, they happily go marching past boundaries we would stay well clear of. They reinvent ideological constructs we've seen before in earlier times, unaware of their pitfalls, blithely confident that the good guys could never say or do anything "fascist" because fascism is by definition anything not desirable. And liberalism is nothing if not the organized pursuit of the desirable.

I concur. There are few things in this world as bizarre as listening to a liberal tell you how horrible and close-minded and disgusting conservatives and Republicans are and then, in the same breath, tell you how much the said liberal hates various groups. (And no, I'm not exaggerating.)

When in my master's program, I would refer to this attitude--"whatever I say is tolerant no matter how intolerant it sounds because what I'm saying is de facto tolerant"--as Calvinism although maybe that's unfair to Calvinists. Still, the approaches bear a similarity: rather than behaving a certain way, one adopts certain attitudes or positions. If I gain a conviction that I am saved, I must be saved.

And this attitude, oddly enough, dovetails into a completely different subject I've been thinking about lately: the belittlement of the science-fiction and fantasy genre by "sophisticated" writers.

I used to read articles by Orson Scott Card and Stephen King about so-called sophisticated writers belittling genre literature, and I'd get all worked up about it, but in my heart of hearts, I didn't believe it was that big a problem. However, in just the past few years, I've had similar experiences whereby I encountered "sophisticated" writers declaring that fantasy and science-fiction pieces are just soooo childish--not real and reputable and profound and sophisticated like the stuff they write and read.

I have found these experiences bewildering, to say the least, since the attitude doesn't seem to be based on anything remotely intelligent. I always thought "sophistication" meant a knowledge of the world which, unless one ignores most of history and World Literature, includes fantasy and science-fiction (the first English novel was a fantasy: Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney, and you could argue that The Tale of Genji is fantasy although in a somewhat different vein).

Knowledge, by the way, doesn't entail liking. I have no trouble with someone who doesn't care for fantasy, who prefers, for example, Henry V to Midsummer Night's Dream, but there is little to no point in saying, "Midsummer Night's Dream would be so much better if it wasn't for the fantastical element." What, the lovers are supposed to take a road trip across America and find themselves instead? I'm sure Shakespeare could have written that sort of thing if he'd known about it, but it would kind of ruin the play. (And despite assumptions to the contrary, it wouldn't automatically make it more insightful.)

I've decided that Calvinism and what Goldberg defines as "smug self-confidence" is at work here. Rather than formulate intelligent, sophisticated arguments about the immaturity or non-insightful nature of fantasy and science-fiction, supposedly sophisticated critics and writers have simply decided to define fantasy and science-fiction by those terms. (This is marked by the fact that when they do decide to like a piece of fantasy, they redefine it as "magical realism.")

But why, I've asked myself, create the definition in the first place? It is hardly necessary for someone who likes contemporary, "realistic" (see this post for my discussion of what constitutes "realism"), finding-ourselves-in-suburbia fiction to even have an opinion about fantasy and science-fiction writing.

I've decided (and this brings us back to Mr. Goldberg's criticisms of modern-day liberalism) that humans have an intense fear of not-being-cool.

Yes, yes, I know, we all of think of that fear as an adolescent trait, but I believe the fear of not-being-cool is simply more vocalized, more honestly admitted to, in the teenage years. The hold of "the cool" never really leaves us. It is the fear that somehow one will fall out of favor with others of one's tribe if one supports that which is not tasteful, profound, appropriate, sensitive.

Now, "cool" isn't the same as "acceptable." We are not talking about murder or theft or even breaking a religious commandment here. In other words, we are not talking about actual crimes or deeds that result in ostracism, a literal outcasting. (For good or bad, all functional societies practice a form of social ostracism: it is a much more powerful force than legal punishment.) Rather, breaking the rule of "cool" results not in ostracism but in a lack of empathy. Dissonance occurs. You are no longer "one" with the group.

This happened to me in high school on several occasions. On one occasion, I was reading Izzy Willy Nilly by Cynthia Voigt. The cover of my edition was "teen friendly," a made-up girl sitting in a chair, and the cover blurbs were, for lack of a better word, "teen-fantastic." In other words, the book didn't look even vaguely sophisticated. All the "sophisticated" people I hung out with then were reading Thoreau. One of them picked up Izzy Willy Nilly and said, "Oh, what are you reading?" in a "this is just toooo pathetically teeny-bopperish" tone.

I wasn't being ostracized, but I was being informed of the "right" tastes of the group. However, another student spoke up and said, "It's a good book," and the incident passed. It wouldn't have worked on me anyway. I was as susceptible to peer pressure as the next teenager, but it never occurred to me not to read exactly what I wanted. (I got "uncooled" again when I read Gone With the Wind, which to be honest, was rather a waste of time. I never did read Thoreau.)

But I still wonder, Why the need to "uncool" people? To not just say, "I think you should believe this, and if you don't, you're wrong," but to say, "If you don't believe this, you aren't a neat, sophisticated, with-it person like us"?

From an anthropological standpoint, the need for people to hold certain tastes in common could bind the group together; still, you'd think the need to eat and not die would have a slightly stronger hold. I suppose people are more likely to find food together and not die if they hold ideas in common, but an excess of common ideas could also stagnant the group.

And I think, too, such "cool" agreement (as opposed to blatant ostracism) is largely superficial as a binding mechanism. I have remarked elsewhere that I found the supposedly uniform culture of Brigham Young University (a church-run university) more conducive to open discussion than other more liberal institutions I've attended (hey, BYU had protesters of the Gulf War and protesters of the protesters!). A society that holds fundamentals in common seems to be more ready and more tolerant of dissent than societies that don't.

So, while I haven't solved the purpose of "uncooling," maybe it explains why fantasy/science-fiction writers seem to be more open to different types of writing than "sophisticated" writers. Like conservatives, fantasy and science-fiction writers are forced to defend their beliefs so often, they learn what they believe. Rather than being grounded in a "I say I'm saved, so I am saved" mentality, they are grounded in something tangible. Which is a much healthier place to be than "I'm so tolerant, everyone fall down and worship my tolerance!"

BOOKS