Food feeds culture. Culture feeds food.

I love food. Not really just food but the cultural stories behind them. I would love to meet with The owners of Dran Restaurant in Greensboro NC to interview them in the style of a cooking show.

The owners of Dran are Montagnards but their menu consists of Vietnamese and Japanese food. I would love to ask them

Why they don't make Montagnard food?

Why they chose traditional Vietnamese and where the idea of encorporating a Japanese menu came from?

What kind of flavors/ingredients are in Montagnard food?

Do they encorporate any of these in their menu?

Where do they get their ingredients?

What are the significant differences between Vietnamese and Montagnard dishes?

Does the owner know how to cook Vietnamese and Japanese food? If so, how did they learn?

When did they come to America, and what inspired them to open this restaurant?

These are just a few samples of the questions that I have. I have recently started getting into cooking. I'm not really one for recipes, I usually just toss what I think will be good in a pot, and it keeps coming out delicious. I wonder how this could be coming from a person who couldn't stand to be in a kitchen growing up. I've finally come to the conclusion that it must be because of the culture I was raised in. My family values food. All of the women in my family and my brother are absolutely incredible cooks. Though we don't have much money, if the occasion calls for it, my parents have no problem with dropping a few hundred dollars on a meal. It was my exposure to food as such a valued part of life that made me love it so much now. True to my nature I am curious about the part that food plays in Montagnard culture. About how it came to be such an important part of the lives of the owners of Dran, and how their cultures play into. I have worked in two restaurants before and understand the enormous commitment that it takes to own one. These people must have passion and a strong story behind their food as all restaurants. I intend to find these stories. Also, I would really love to film a cooking segment if they would be that obliging.

Click here for more info on Dran Restaurant

This is my relationship to food in the Montagnard community.

Crafty People Crafted People

So the scenario goes like this: Fifteen people sitting around a long table with a pile of scripts in front of them. A person raises their hand and confronts the writer on one single word he has used in the final line of description for his film. The line reads,

"The sunlight screams over the mountain top."

Her quandary with this description is over the word screams. It seems too aggressive in comparison to the rest of the script. Did the writer mean it like that? What is going to be the design of his film? Does it compliment the choice of that word? These are not persnickety questions. In fact, they are so important that the professor opens it up to a group discussion. What do the rest of the writers think an appropriate choice would be? Other words are thrown out after the writer expresses his vision. One word is deemed too round; another too sharp. A series of words are worked through until it is decided that the writer has chosen the appropriate word.
To some, the time and thought behind this choice of a single word would seem banal and anal, but to others the feelings a single word can evoke are of the utmost importance. Frank Luntz is a master of this and his career is based off of framing. He took the term "Estate Tax" and changed it to "Death Tax". This tax had been around for ages, and no one had noticed, but with the striking image of a "Death Tax" people rallied against it for the first time. So too do we as writers feel this triumphant, vehement sunset, that is screaming over the mountain top, as opposed to (slowly) crawling or (gently) peeking. We read that it is screaming, and we see and feel it in a different way.

Also in screenwriting we learn about demographics. Our teacher told us a story of when he used to work in LA. If a story was pitched to one boss he had, he'd get all of the executives in the room and see who liked it. If everyone liked it he would trash it had no demographic. We are pitched to in the same way by advertisers. We love to think that we are different but we all fit into a category. We are pitched to in the framing of our demographic, and though the pitches are different, we are manipulated in the same exact ways.

I remember smoking Camel Number 9 Cigarettes when I was 18 because I liked the casing. Though they are basically Camel Lights, they come in a black and hot pink box, with a zipper on the front, and pink foil on the side. The camels on the cigarettes were actually pink too. The zipper framed me up for, bad, wild, mystery, while the pink was feminine and sexy... and we bought them. That packaging framed me up for perfect consumer mindset, all I needed to do was look at that pack and I had convinced myself that I wanted them. As it turns out, the special edition with the zipper was designed by an edgy clothing designer who had just won Project Runway.

So it seems that this is what consumerism has come to. No human needs cigarettes, but a need has been created by non human construct. From this example and countless others we could deduce that 99.9% of the people around me, and I are Donna Haraway's definition of a Cyborg.

"A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction... creatures… who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted...”

BUT To frame concepts is human. To create tools to make our life easier is human. So is embracing/playing into the palms of consumerism just evolving humanity, or killing it? Are we mutating into a species of addicted zombie label whores. Are zombie films actually a framed metaphor for what we have become? I know these are questions that take it, quite far. I know that whoever is reading this might be nodding in agreement by saying, "Oh sure, I know some people like that, but not me." I thought that too. I don't own a TV. I only go to the mall because it has the Post Office closest to my house. But take a look at this and see if you don't understand a little bit more just what ALL of us have become, simply by living in this time and place. Mark Crispin Miller from NYU said that "Once a culture becomes entirely advertising friendly, it cease to be a culture at all." Watch this and if you can relate to this world for one moment, ask if this is your culture. Then ask if you see any shred of culture in the world you've just recognized as your own.