Mind the Gap An essay.

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.” Martin Luther King. This is a quote delivered by Julian Slowik, a bit of twisting the proverbial knife from the film ‘The Menu’ a social commentary on the large gap of income between the rich and the poor. Chef Slowik, who is played by Ralph Fiennes. he divides the dinner guests into two groups, givers, and takers. Socioeconomic culture is the different ways people move through life based on their societal standing and privileges they are or are not born with. The Menu explores the story of the divide between the one percent and the working class by using different elements of Misenscen in the film. The actors, props, and set-up along with various elements are artfully shown through the dishes served throughout the dinner with each dish revealing a piece of the concept that leads to a big reveal that would tie the concept perfectly. The original concept of the menu works only when it is perfectly executed similar to how the dishes are served each specifically made and plated for the hand-picked guests in attendance. The Menu is filmed on-location The first two dishes introduce the viewers to the characters that compliment how the dishes drive the story forward like an oar to a boat that’s slowly sinking. The people in attendance; Lillian Bloom and company, Soren, Bryce, and Dave which for the sake of efficiency and petty folly this paper will refer to as ‘the entitled’. Richard and Anne, George Diaz and his assistant Felicity, Margot Mills and Tyler are all complimented by the dishes served throughout the film. Costumes and dialogue are used early on to show the class divide in the quality of their clothing, although all are abiding in the dinner’s dress code, crisply pressed coats, and button ups in stark contrast to Margot’ s leather jacket with just a peak of her lace slip dress. The only one who shows vulnerability with her fabric of soft silk and armor of leather. This distinguishes her as different from the other diner guests. The Amuse Bouche is innocent enough with the conversation centered around it with the comments being pretentious just enough for it to introduce us to the level of wealth in the room, a mix of condescension and awe. The second course is appropriately titled ‘breadless bread plate’ the savory accompaniments with no bread. Chef Slowik referenced bread as the food for the common man and his guests are not the common man therefore deserves no bread. This is seen as a pretentious part of the posh dining experience with it being viewed as either genius or ludicrous by the dinner guests. In this course the better part of the room assume they are entitled to the bread, with the exception of Tyler who exhibits gluttony and sheer adornment of each dish that is served, and each breath Chef Slowik takes. Meanwhile it is immediately made apparent by Hawthorne and his staff that Margot does not belong at the dinner and should not be of attendance. Chef Slowik is an untouchable figure in the room full of industry giants- in his kitchen, Chef Slowik is the only figure that mattered. With an unapproachable aura it was surprising that he had taken time to get to know Margot, Anya-Taylor Joy’s character. Eager to place her in one of his categories, a giver or a taker. Margot on the other hand is taking jabs at the lack of sustenance on their table. Emphasizing the chef’s precious message not to eat but taste. And with each sliver of flavor is not an ounce of warmly loved cooked food. The dish is a shell of what it once was. Much like the chef and Hawthorne staff. All the heart has been taken out of the meal and all they left on the plate is the essence of what it once was. Silence is used to build tension in the film, specifically before Chef Slowik claps to introduce the next dish. This creates instant anxiety for Margot, this figure movement separates her from the rest of the diners who did not appear to be fazed until the violence is increased throughout the film. Slowik calls on Margot to continue assessing which group of people she belongs to. The third course appears to be deconstructed tacos with specially made tortillas, for each table and diner they receive personalized tortillas revealing the reason of their attendance at the dinner. Gluttony being the common theme in all of them. Having too much but wanting more still not showing enough appreciation for what they already have. Gluttony is physically personified in Tyler throughout the film with him even getting to make a dish for Chef Slowik. Appropriately titled ‘Tyler’s Bullshit’ it is an undercooked lamb, inedible shallot-leek, butter sauce, with utter lack of cohesion. This unplanned dish was an act of revenge by Chef Slowik for Margot, to free her the way he is freeing himself, his mother, his staff, and the diners in attendance. Chef Slowik veers off of the menu with Tyler’s dish. His way of trying to gain Margot’s trust as he has decided that she is a giver much like him and his staff. In order to show that he has fully trusted Margot. It is revealed that Margot was hired to be a companion for the evening with Tyler knowing full well that everyone in attendance would die but hired someone anyway because Hawthorne does not take reservations for just one person. Chef Slowik ultimately plays into Tyler’s idolism of him by crushing his spirit leading Tyler to commit suicide. Slowik solidifies her position as a giver with Tyler’s death, stating that she is free. The most important dish in the entire film was not originally a part of the menu. A cheeseburger. After everything is said and done at this point of the film it is very clear that everyone of attendance will die. As an act of hail Mary Margot uses ‘the clap’ to get Chef Slowik’s attention and with the line “I don’t like your food, I’d like to send it back”. This sparked Chef Slowik’s joy for cooking, and ultimately spares Margot’s life when she asks for a takeout box. This interaction between the two actors is important because their dialogue meant more than what was said. The final dish of the night is the Smore’. Tying together the gluttony concept that has been hinted at for the entire film.

Food is used to tell the story of the unfair gap between the one percent and working-class society, and what happens when joy is taken out of passion and crosses paths with perfection. Matt Taibbi stated “Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers” The menu exposes this idea by the way Chef Slowik divided the two groups into givers and takers, Specifically when he tells Richard that his creations turn into literal shit in their guts, food that had been caught, sliced, and tweezed to obsession perfection his creations are unappreciated and taken for granted. Making him feel like a ‘loser’ despite being accomplished and esteemed in his profession. In Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel Big Magic she talks about the difference between Tricksters and Martyrs, “We all have a bit of trickster in us, and we all have a bit of martyr in us (okay, some of us have a lot of martyr in us), but at some point in your creative journey you will have to make a decision about which camp you wish to belong to, and therefore which parts of yourself to nourish, cultivate, and bring into being. Choose carefully.” (Gilbert) The Menu was designed for its guests to perish and the motivation behind it is the death of joy in cooking. In Jeremy’s death, the mess. Chef Slowik asks him if he wanted the life that Slowik had. One who serves food to guests that does not appreciate him as a creative chef, not his creations. The Hawthorne staff sees no future in the cycle they’ve helped create and thus believing death to be a natural stopping point of the Sisyphean existance of all contributors. 

“If you get shown a problem, but have no idea how to control it, you get used to the problem.” – Squeeze.

Non-spoiler review: "It's an episode of Black Mirror, but you can feel it in your skin because you're living in it."

Spoiler review: The film centers around Cassius Green, who lives in his uncle's garage, struggling to make ends meet. Out of desperation, he gets a job at a call center selling magazine subscriptions, where he starts every cold call with a "sorry to bother you." On his first day, he meets a coworker, Squeeze, who invites him to join a union to fight the unfair working conditions, to which he reluctantly agrees. After a while, he learns how to do a "white voice," masking his normal speaking voice with a more confident, upbeat tone (or so it was described). While all this is happening, Squeeze and the rest of his colleagues are arranging a walk-out, shutting down phone lines during the company’s busiest hours, demanding fair wages and better working conditions, to which Cassius again reluctantly agrees.

Cassius starts doing really well at the job and is promoted to a power caller, which is the same job but earns more money and screws over more people. The 'white voice' is off-putting to his girlfriend and friends, which he initially treats like a party trick, but over time, he uses it like a second language. Throughout the film, we are introduced to a rebel group called The Left Eye, which his girlfriend Detroit is a part of. It is a dramatized (or so Boots Riley thought at the time) version of the far-left Democratic Party that protests the normalization of modern-day slavery.

It’s later revealed that the company Cassius works for is called WorryFree, a company that hires people to live and work at WorryFree facilities, advertised as easy money-earning jobs. The Left Eye protests their unethical labor practices because you essentially sign your life away working for them. Cassius is caught between a rock and a hard place, faced with choosing between morals and money.

My favorite bit: It was a raw performance piece by Detroit (played by Tessa Thompson), where she protests the cobalt mining happening in the Congo by reciting, "You're nothing but a misguided midget asshole with dreams of ruling the world," from a 1985 film titled The Last Dragon. She starts on stage in a leather crop top and underwear designed to look like a raised middle finger. Then, she instructs the audience to throw phone batteries at her (presumably because our phones are one of the tools the tech industry uses against us) and balloons filled with sheep’s blood (likely a Biblical reference to a sacrificial lamb, but I haven’t puzzled this out quite yet), while she recites a poem throughout the assault. We watch as her body flinches and her voice falters, then straightens and rallies, while the batteries hit and the stage bleeds red from the balloons. Cass soon yells for the show to stop. She tells him to leave before returning to the stage and putting on a police helmet to shield her head from the upcoming attacks. (Black Girl Nerds)

It was jarring to watch because it’s the same cause I’m just now learning more about, but this performance fell flat for me because it didn’t inform the audience why it’s important to learn about Congo. This piece reads more as a normalization of violence against women, which is the exact thing we want to see less of, especially in Congo, where women are brutalized and unlike Detroit, it isn't seen. Maybe that was the point, but the execution didn’t convey that well. This seemed more like a behavioral experiment on what the human mind is capable of doing to another person once violence is deemed acceptable in society, which made me think of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson instead.

This scene also highlights her hypocrisy by using her own "white voice" while mingling with rich people to get them to buy her art. I think the "white voice" is just a variation of the customer service voice— a well-known tone you use in a customer service job or any professional setting, along with "corporate speak." It’s off-putting and creepy, but I do know that it's better to put up with that than to be broke. Although Boots Riley did take the concept of selling your soul to the devil in a whole other direction in his 2018 film Sorry to Bother You.

I read the short story and not the graphic novel although that might've been just as harrowing.

The short story takes place in a rural place rooted in tradition and rigid beliefs, Jackson sets the scene of a pleasant morning in June with the townspeople routinely attending a meeting and a meticulous roll call of the villagers in town with the children stuffing stones in their pockets. This meeting seems like any other with the adults including their children in the activity. The lottery is conducted as such, Mr. Summers, the person conducting the ritual, calls on the person to confirm their attendance to assure that each proper participant of the ritual is present. Each head of the household draws for a piece of paper and the head of the household are all traditionally men, and it is especially indicated that it is taboo for women to be the head of their household. And whoever picks the piece of paper with a mark on it has to draw again with their entire family, not even the children are spared.  In the process of picking pieces of papers to be called, Mrs. Hutchinson prompts Bill, her husband to participate in the lottery and the crowd laughs because of the delay, likened to a comfortable inside joke among the ton. The lottery is conducted swiftly, and the Hutchinson family then has to have a second lottery draw to pick out their own pieces of papers, and whoever has the paper with the mark in it is picked. Each member of Hutchinson's paper reveals their paper is blank and it leaves Tessie who is refusing to believe her fate, her husband Bill then reveals it to the room. This reveal brings us towards the end of the short story and clarity to the purpose of the lottery.

Each person in the room then throws a stone at Tessie, until she bleeds to death. This ritual serves as a ‘small’ sacrifice for a bountiful season so that the town is enriched and each person throwing a stone will have their bellies full. A tradition built on a ‘better you than me’ attitude. Serving as a cautionary tail on what it is like to live in a small town with small minds.

At first I didn't believe such a tradition existed until I heard about a small island in Germany called Borkum. “The Klaasohm festival on Borkum, the westernmost of a string of German islands, takes place on Dec. 5 ahead of St Nicholas’ Day. A report by ARD public television aired late last month showed women being stopped by costumed men and hit on the buttocks with a cow’s horn at the 2023 festival, and anonymous witnesses discussing aggressive behavior at the event.” (AP News) “It's always two small men, two medium sized men and two large men. Who gets the honors to go around as Klaasohm is decided by the "Club of young lads of Borkum" and is kept secret up until the last minute. After that they begin scouring the island. They are armed with bullhorns they use to slap womens butts, and because they cant see much, every Klaasohm has several helpers to help them find the women to slap and catch them. Every woman that get's slapped by a Klaasohm gets a honeycake tho. That cake is called "Moppe". Klaasohms ignore kids and the elderly tho.”  (Impactsuspect of Reddit) Although it is noted that it is not only to beat women’s bottoms but batter them until the men are satisfied, often resulting in women not being able to function for days. Boys at an early age roleplay this ritual towards girls their age thereby indoctrinating them at a young age. Articles after the recent outrage of the world prompted Borkum to say that it had already been in the process of being out of practice. “The island’s mayor, Jürgen Akkermann, said that the violence had developed from “a tradition of a kind of chastisement” of people who approach the “Klaasohms” — men dressed up in masks, sheepskin and feathers — without permission. He said that, following earlier incidents, a rethinking had already started over the past decade, but the matter hadn’t been pursued emphatically enough until now, German news agency dpa reported.” (AP News) which sounds a lot like sorry we got caught, guess we’ll keep it quiet for a while until the news cycle washes this out. the women of Borkum may never be free of the horrors this idiocratic society has created for them. But women are speaking up even with the threat of being ostracized in their town and that is what I think it means to say girls will be girls, girls are brave, and loud even when the whole world is telling them they’re better to be seen and not heard. 

In the film Sunset Blvd., when Norma Desmond visits Paramount to talk to her old connections, she is still remembered by the set and tech crew for her talent as a silent film actress in her prime. She is still known and adored by many, but she is no longer able to act and transition into the ‘talkies’. As the film industry transitioned from silent films to the talkies, some actors struggled to fit into the new roles that required dialogue, and the dialogue did not seem to translate as well as it had in the silent films. The acting in the talkies appeared cheesy, as silent films required exaggerated movements, similar to those used in theatre. However, with the camera capturing every micro-movement, it looked funny rather than passionate.

Norma recreates scenes from silent films and showcases her talents. Through her movements, the audience can understand why she was revered during her era of fame. Her talent was perfect for its time, but with her performance and the way the director described it, it did not fit the type of films that the studio was trying to produce. This is also seen in Singin' in the Rain, in a scene where Lina Lamont is adjusting to the ‘talkies’ era of film. Her exaggerated movements and dialogue seem far too cheesy for the new era of picture films.

Norma Desmond represents a more vain side of old Hollywood and the resistance to change. Just by looking at her mansion, which, much like herself, is stuck in the past, I don’t believe this resistance is a ‘pampered’ trait of old Hollywood. Instead, I see it as a natural fear of failure from someone who was at the top of her game and put all her eggs in one basket. When that dream failed, her new dream became Joe. I do think her perception of the world is greatly clouded by her stature in life, and that contributes to the out-of-touch relationship between the famous and the non-famous.

Fleabag is grieving someone we only know as Boo, she died while trying to get run over by bikes to have a ‘small accident’ for her boyfriend to visit her in the hospital that ended up killing her. Fleabag uses hyper sexuality and dry humor to cope with this grief. In this series she falls in love with an unattainable man. A priest who is running away from a fox. There's a lot of theories of what the fox represents but in its simplest form I think the fox is a physical representation of what the priest is running from. No one in Fleabag has an actual name except for Claire, and Klair. Claire is Fleabag’s sister who we see her interact with the most. 

Fleabag was originally a screenplay that Phoebe performed on-stage that then was adapted into a series. In my opinion, the screenplay is a much more raw experience of 'fleabag' although her breaking the fourth wall like we're exchanging knowing looks from across the room feels a bit more intimate but also as if everything she says or does reads as performative.

Sabi is a person who has so much love and compassion, Watching Sabi gain more compassion for themself made me believe I could love myself too. Sabi at the start of the series-is a nanny and a bartender. People in their life point out that they are wasting their potential and is just bot where they ‘should’ be for their age. But despite it all-Sabi learns to be okay with their life not meeting anyone’s standard but their own. I graduated High school at 19, most of my classmates were 18 or younger. I often feel like a failure. The thing is though, it was never my fault I had to stop school becuase my dad punched a 55-year old with dementia. I was just collateral damage. Now I’m just damaged. Sabi often