Culture and Communication Expressed In ‘Tortilla Soup’

Culture and Communication Expressed In ‘Tortilla Soup’

Film

Tortilla Soup is a film

that shows how people use food to communicate. How people are drawn together by

food or pulled apart by food. It is showing us how food is intergenerational

and how it changes in agreement with culture. This movie centers on a tourist exploration

agenda of experiencing cultures outside the white Middle-Class American. The

film target both white and Latino audiences by presenting the film characters

being racial typecasts some are beyond ethnic restrictions and other characters

as being assimilated

The movie is about a

Taiwanese widower and a former chef who lives with his three grown-up

daughters. Culturally the film speaks about the culture by majoring on the

challenges of assimilation that the daughters are facing as they try to

assimilate into American culture as first-generation Mexica-Americans. It also

communicates the existing pressure for ethnic immigrant communities to absorb

in the American mainstream culture.

The film demonstrates how the ethnic

“others” can become part of the American dream. The use of fusion cuisine over

traditional cuisine expresses how Mexican -American and the Latinos power and

voice neutralized through the appropriation of borderlines foods.

At the onset of the

movie, the audience gets invited to the dinner table where the lead character,

Martín argues with his daughters. The family disagrees over how the daughter

mixes Spanish words in their English. This act communicates to the audience on

the tensions existing between a direct Mexican-American immigrant and his blended

in daughters. This scene also shows the struggle of creating a balance between

the Mexican culture and the presumably considered superior American popular

culture.

The desire of the father

for his daughters to achieve greater success than he did communicates the

American immigrant experience of struggle to fit in the American culture and

middle class. The American culture is seen as superior to the Mexican culture.

The argument also shows

his high regard for his Mexican tradition when he argues on the use of serrano

chili seeds in the preparation of a traditional mash blossom potage. The three

daughters, however, do not hold as similar high esteem of culture preservation,

and they hold contrary opinions concerning how Mexican families should

communicate. They lean towards acting more American. The movie fulfills

the ethnographic function of the white American audience.

Mexican culture is

presented in traditional Mexican foods, while the struggle for cultural balance

is seen in the use of fusion cuisine over the traditional cuisine. The use of fusion

cuisine represents the blending of the two cultures with the American popular culture

being superior over Mexican culture

The Kitchen of Martin

shows a picture of middle-class families existing in the Mexican American

context. The images of the kitchen carry the Mexican exotics and sensuality.

There are Mexican cooking utensils and ingredients, while on the other hand,

the kitchen design and furniture create an ambiance of an American middle-class

home.