Thanksgiving
is an odd American holiday. A nation composed of immigrants
from around the world expects to sit down to a dinner table
with an extended family to consume a strange combination of
relatively bland foods -- roast turkey and dressing with sweet
and mashed potatoes -- made palatable by the addition of tangy
cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. In What’s Cooking?,
directed by Gurinder Chadha, we laugh uproariously at the
consequences of the yearly custom by viewing short cuts of
four families who live south of Hollywood (near Pico & Fairfax)—the
Avilas (Mexican), the Nguyens (Vietnamese), the Seeligs (German
Jews), and the Williamses (African Americans). Clearly, the
Seeligs have lived longest in the neighborhood, perhaps fifty
years, but they have never met their most recent neighbors,
who live on opposite corners of Genesee Avenue. Of the forty
of so characters in the film, perhaps the best known are Joan
Chen, Julianna Margulies, A Martinez, Mercedes Ruehl, Kyra
Segwick, and Alfre Woodard. Mrs. Avila is a schoolteacher.
The Nguyens run a multilingual video store. The Seeligs are
retirees, and Mr. Seelig’s favorite pastime is a 105º hot
tub. Mr. Williams is an aide to the reactionary Republican
governor; his wife is an attorney. We first view someone throwing
paint over the California governor to protest his anti-immigrant,
anti-minority policies. Next, we become acquainted with the
guests invited by the families, which span four generations.
The Mexicans provide a place at the table for a good-looking
Vietnamese boyfriend of one of the daughters, the estranged
husband of the family, and the new macho boyfriend of the
wife. The Nguyens invite no guests but shut the door to three
high school friends of the youngest son because he has hidden
a gun under his bed. Mr. Seelig invite his old-fashioned parents,
and their daughter and Lesbian lover fly into town from San
Francisco. The Williamses receive the husband’s fussy mother,
who arrives from out of town, and a white couple (business
associates of his) and their politically correct daughter;
their rebellious son shows up later. In short, What’s
Cooking is not just food but a host of family problems.
In short, ethnicity is not the only aspect of diversity, as
two families cope with adultery, one with same-sex attraction,
and children in the remaining family do not dare to tell their
parents that their son and daughter have befriended a girlfriend
and a boyfriend who are not of their ethnic background. As
the film’s tagline well describes the plot, "Thanksgiving
-- A celebration of food, tradition and relative insanity."
We observe that the turkey is placed at the center of the
meal, but the ethnic (and nouvelle) cuisines contribute most
of the side dishes; the exception is that the Nguyens, unaccustomed
to oven cooking, burn the turkey while providing two tubs
of KFC chicken for the younger generation. When Anthony Avila
invites his father, who left home after having an affair with
a cousin Rosa, to the party, not knowing that his mother planned
to introduce her new boyfriend to the family. When the boyfriend
arrives, the father has a showdown with the mother, who in
turn tells him to leave. The Nguyens discover a condom in
their daughter’s clothing and have a fit, not realizing that
schools give out condoms to everyone, and the daughter is
humiliated. A similar fit ensues when the daughter discovers
that her brother has a gun under his bed; although he claims
that he is keeping the gun for someone else, he fails to make
his parents understand that school tensions may require him
to join a gang and to keep firearms ready just in case. The
Seeligs are overtly sensible about their Lesbian daughter
while privately upset, unlike the grandparents; but they lose
their cool temporarily when their daughter announces that
she is pregnant, at least until she admits that the sperm
donor is their gay son. The arrival of the Williams’s son
uncorks the family’s dirty linen—the father had an affair
with a coworker, the son has dropped out of college in part
because he believes that his father is a hypocrite in working
for a "racist" governor. Indeed, the son was the one who threw
paint at the governor. Although the Williams family appears
to hold together despite the tensions at the dinner table,
there is a "For Sale" sign in front of the house, indicating
that all is not well. All of a sudden the sound of a shot
breaks the continuity, and members of all four families pour
into the street. The youngest Nguyen, believing that the gun
was a toy, shot a bullet through a window. When everyone realizes
that nothing serious has occurred, they return to the Thanksgiving
parties, and the film ends. What the film says is that Los
Angeles is a melting pot in many ways for the youngest generations,
while the older generations are having some difficulty, as
the latter hardly know their neighbors, while the children
meet diverse people at school. In short, there is hope for
Los Angeles after the urban riot of 1994, provided that everyone
stops to look at the laugh-a-minute humor in all the adjustments
and problems that quickly come to the fore on Thanksgiving
as the generations become reacquainted with one another, the
older ones shocked as usual by the younger. When I left the
cinema at a location not far from the venue for the film,
I overheard one 70ish New York Jewish accented woman say to
another, "I saw nothing funny in the movie: They all had problems."
However, I personally have not laughed so much during a film
since my latest screening of one of the Marx Brothers classics.
Ethnic humor has been raised to new heights in What’s
Cooking? MH
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