Tasting Culture

ABOUT

Los Angeles is statistically one of the most culturally diverse cities, yet elitism, racial injustice, and socioeconomic exclusion are still highly prevalent.

As fusion food trucks lead the Los Angeles food scene, could these mobile businesses be an experience for Angelenos to learn about different cultures through food, and provoke open conversations regarding race and culture?

MY ROLE

This was my final thesis for my M.F.A. in Media Arts + Practice, at the University of Southern California. I combined my interests in food and culture, and my skills as a director, editor, designer, and developer to create “Tasting Culture”.

Tasting Culture is an interactive installation that highlights the different fusion trucks in the city as a case study to voice the thoughts of the community, and to encourage the audience to respond to the project beyond the dimensions of the installation. Although the project recognizes that these food trucks provide a valuable platform and opportunity to learn about different cultures, cultural acceptance ultimately is each consumer’s choice and responsibility.

PROCESS: RESEARCHING THE PROBLEM

For my research, I looked at how humans relate to food, how humans relate with each other, and how fusion food reopens the conversation about race and culture.

Food Studies: Humans’ relationship with food

In the book, Food and Identity: Food Studies, Cultural, and Personal Identity, Gina M. Almerico argues that unlike animals, humans do not just feed, but eat. We eat for the purpose of nutritional and emotional satisfaction (4).  The food provides the nutrition while society determines our emotional satisfaction. Studies have shown that people would even eat something distasteful to be socially accepted (McComber and Postel 4) . This suggests that people's opinions about food can be easily manipulated.

Norm and Other: Analyzing how the norm relates to the other better explains how fusion cuisine became mainstream

One argument stands that fusion cuisine emerged simply because a trend was needed to keep profits high and reinforce the elite. Bell Hooks, the author of Eating the Other: Desire and Resistant, argues that "from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that the desires… about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occurs in a manner that… maintains the status quo" (367). This statement seems harsh, even inappropriate to mention in the current culture. But Ashley Bob, the author of Food and Cultural Studies, helps Hooks to drive the same argument within today’s social context. She explains that because "the world seems to be in support of diversity… the whites have to find a new way of being on top. In order to not become a historical irrelevance, [the] ruling power must respond both to new circumstances and to the changing desires of those it rules" (18). Media marketing greatly plays into this idea as well. By elevating fusion cuisine, media has created a whole new market that targets and taunts the lower class."Join us in eating high priced, fusion cuisine to avoid social rejection." By creating a desire for the masses that is difficult to fulfill, elitism is reinforced.

Another argument could be that people enjoy eating cultural cuisine to embark a new dream-like experience. They partake in an alternative reality as "non-racists, who choose to transgress racial boundaries… not to dominate the Other, but rather so that they can be acted upon [and] changed utterly" (Bell 368). The same explanation given for why movie theaters exist. Many people like watching movies at a theater because they could temporarily escape reality and embark in a different experience at the comfort of the seat. However by design movies theaters also encourage indifference, which negatively affects how people empathize and relate to one another. And so in many ways people eat cultural foods without wanting to learn about its origin. They experience pleasure without taking cultural responsibility. Hence, misunderstanding will continue to ensue if we seek knowledge but not empathy.

In one study, students were shown pictures of sets of two people who were nearly physically identical. But because one was labelled "good eater" and the other "bad eater", students claimed that the "good eater" had better physical features. The "good eater" was skinnier, more attractive, more active, more likeable. Ultimately the students are not judging the eater based off of his physical appearance but rather what is socially valued at the time. For example, traditionally white bread marks wealth (Almerico 5). But because there is now an emphasis on healthy living, whole wheat and multigrain bread are now preferred. The same concept can be used to explain our likings to cultural foods. Granted, there are certain cuisines that will naturally align better to one's palette, but how society views a certain culture will greatly feed into whether one considers the food cheap or expensive, trash or valued, good or bad, healthy or dangerous.

Who Has Right?: Who Can be Credited for Fusion Food

For this study, fusion cuisine is defined as the integration of a foreign culture with the mainstream American cuisine. This integration brings on new concerns like is fusion food benefitting the cultures that are being introduced? Who has the right to market this new cuisine?

Many have critiqued Rick Bayless, an American chef, for making a restaurant empire from selling high-end Mexican food. Some argue that he is exploiting the stories that Mexicans tell and share through their cuisine, while others critique the food’s authenticity. But Chee and Choi, the chefs of Momofuku and Kogi BBQ Taco Truck, would both argue that the food is not authentic to the culture, but rather the city. As chefs, they act as translators. But Brooklyn Delhi’s Agrawal addresses the larger question, do “these cuisines need to be translated [?]”. Would people want to learn and try different cultural foods without the help of fusion cuisine chefs or media?

But Briahna Joy Gray, a writer of Current Affairs, would argue that the problem is not on who has ownership rather who is more “capable” to profit from the food. I quote, “the problem is not that a TV chef like Rick Bayless makes Mexican food, it’s that Rick Bayless makes millions of dollars making Mexican food while Mexican people bus tables in his restaurants. Public prejudice and an unequal economy make Bayless disproportionately more able to capitalize on Mexican cuisine than a working-class Mexican immigrant would be” (Gray).

Understanding better the problem, my hope was that fusion food trucks could lead and engage open conversations in learning about different cultures through food. Unlike restaurants, food trucks are mobile, and can move beyond Los Angeles’ lines. But as I interviewed more and more people, I realized that wasn’t the case. Most of the customers didn’t care; they just want good food. For the food truck owners, they were more concerned with making money then sharing what their culture has to offer. 

THE FINAL INSTALLATION

So I decided to change the narrative of my story. The final installation tells the story about a friendship of mine. And how because of it, we now have a love and new understanding for each other’s culture.

The fight against cultural appropriation is more than just understanding or partaking in a different taste, it's about each one intentionally learning about the people and their stories behind the dish.

In addition to the video, I also included a life size food truck, an audio piece, and augmented reality stickers for my final installation. I built a life size food truck, to encourage people to interact with it. 

The audio piece was a compilation of interviews I had gathered during the few months, and meant to echo my journey creating this project. 

The augmented reality stickers were placed around the truck. You could hover on the stickers with a tablet or phone, and a video would pop up. Each video highlighted a different culture that I learned through this project.

RESULTS

In May, the installation was on display at the School of Cinematic Arts.