Food, which is a manifestation of culture and history, has been a symbol used to represent meanings in literature in an observable way. Ang Lee’s movie Drink Eat Man Woman (1994) illustrates generational, sexual, and cultural conflicts. The conflicts and the reconciliations are all carried out on a Chinese round-shape dinner table that makes food as an important element in this movie.
Lao Zhu, who is a Chinese cuisine master and a widower, is not only the father of three daughters, but also plays mother’s roll at home. This special father/mother-daughter relationship shown on “the table” pushes the story forward. Lao Zhu, who cooks food to make the dinner table scenes possible, undoubtedly, is the key of this movie.
Julia Kristeva discusses that father is not only a rigor symbolic father who represents the law, but also a semiotic father who is loving and soothing. Therefore, in this paper, I will use Kristeva’s theory to analyse Lao Zhu, as a lawful father and a loving mother at the same time, his characteristics and psychological transformations. To show how Lao Zhu interacts with other characters and functions in this movie. I will also put Lao Zhu in a larger social, historical and cultural context, which is embodied by “Chinese food”, to see how the topics – conflicts and reconciliations – in the movie are told.
2019.
2019 meeting of the New England Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Nov 1-2, 2019