Rub-A-Dub-Dub: Thanks for the Grub

Meals are obviously a part of our everyday lives. Because of this, just about every story, book, or movie you encounter will inhabit one. As Mr. Foster mentions, meals can be just meals, for the audience or reader’s sake of knowing that the character is indeed human and has to eat. However, since they are quite necessary to every good length story, writers usually try to fit some sort of significance into the scene.

Usually, well for me at least, when I think of scenes involving a sit-down meal, I think of less-than-ideal situations: Awkward family dinners, dining rooms filled with tension and grudges large enough to fit the overly-sized dining table, argument-stuffed conversations, yelling, evil glares and under-your-breath remarks shot to and from all sides, worry-filled eyebrows, pursed lips, sweaty palms, wandering eyes, you get the point. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t personally had very many “bad” meal experiences, but somehow, for me, most of my viewing or reading experiences of meals have not been good ones. However, in real life, my meals are usually filled with comfort. And now that Mr. Foster mentions it, they usually comprise of people who I genuinely like, besides the regular table-setting of your immediate family, but let’s face it, you can’t do much about choosing them.

 Eating is usually a time of bonding, a time of relaxation, and a time of general communion, as the title suggests. A great example of when a meal has served, no pun intended, as something more than a mere fulfilling of the homosapien need, is in the movie Hairspray. Set in the early 1960s, when segregation was still very much alive, Tracy Turnblad, the main character, makes friends with a few African- American classmates. She seems to be one of the only people in Baltimore who has no problem, and sees no danger with associating with African-Americans. Tracy’s “colored” friends invite her, Link and Penny, all Caucasian, to their neighborhood. They willingly go; after all, they are all friends. When they all arrive in what most white people of the time and area would call the “dangerous part of town,” Tracy finds that they are not only welcomed with open arms, but with full plates. The meal serves as a breaking down of a barrier set by society, making Tracy and her friends even more convinced to oppose segregation.

                Another time that a meal has served as more than food on a plate, is in the classic Disney movie, Beauty and the Beast. When the Beast first captures Belle, she locks herself in her room and refuses to emerge. When the Beast realizes that in order to break the spell placed on him he must make friends with Belle, his animated dinnerware friends advise him to invite her downstairs for dinner. She refuses at first, but eventually gives in and has dinner with him. Belle eating with the Beast seems to be the first step to bringing them closer together. Meal time actually becomes a reoccurring occasion for Belle and the Beast to bond. She even tries to teach him polite eating etiquette, and eventually succeeds. The side story of the meals spent between the two in the movie, directly follow along the couple’s path to friendship, and eventually love.