I’m pretty sure my parents forbade me from watching “The Joy Luck Club” when the movie first came out. But I remember watching it at an aunt’s house not too long after anyway. I can almost feel my aunt’s living room shag carpet under me as I lay sprawled out in front of the TV watching this movie.
The movie is a fuzzy cloud to me now, but of course it’s the illicit parts of the movie which have stuck in my mind. The shine of that silk robe in the darkened bedroom, the baby in the bath, that handful of condoms being flung about.
And then there’s this scene. It’s a perfect, if ridiculous, white-boy-meets-Asian-family faux pas. (Because would Rich really have done the same to his white mama’s meatloaf? If so, that’s not just clueless, it’s rude.) For some reason I’d misremembered his soy sauce dousing as a vigorous salt shaking–equally egregious. It made me think. I rarely find salt and pepper shakers on the tables of Chinese restaurants. Maybe I’ll see little pots of vinegar and soy sauce and hot chili sauce, but they’re intended as condiments, not extra seasoning for the customer to augment the chef’s choices. I take it as a statement about the chef’s authority over the customer’s eating experience. What need does the eater have for more salt and pepper at the table? The cooking is done.