Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Please Do Eat the Daisies
The two main characters in Daisies are constantly eating or at least playing with food. They have lavish dinners at restaurants, bathe in milk and playfully slice bananas and sausage. This trend culminates in the scene in which they sneak into a feast, indulge their palattes, and engage in a food fight. What is the point of all this food, glorious food? Can you make sense of the use of food in at least some of these scenes?
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I think that the main characters' strange obsession with food is somehow strongly intertwined with two of their other characteristics: their desire to "collect" men and their preoccupation with whether they exist. Therefore, I think it would be interesting to discuss these three things together, since the food obsession is only part of what is going on.
ReplyDeleteNear the middle of the film, the two girls realize that many people simply do not see them and therefore begin to question their own existence. Perhaps,their obsession with food is a subconscious urge to prove to themselves that they indeed exist: after all, by demonstrating their ability to consume food the girls prove that they are living physical entities. This theory can also explain their preoccupation with leading on men and abandoning them: the more men that can attest to having spent time with and been hurt by the two girls, the more proof the girls have that they exist.
The main characters in Daisies may have such an approach to food to complement their separation from reality. They are obviously not financially stable as their source of food comes from tricking older men into feeding them, but they never seem to run out or even have a need for moderation. They waste food with no regard to the possibility of a shortage. Meanwhile, other people are unable to provide for their families and would salvage any food they could, under similar economic restraints. While others suffer in general, they wander around whimsically, living life with no sense of purpose whatsoever. Reality (including their own existence) is a big joke to the Daisies. They transcend their would-be problems by disregarding them, and disregarding what is normally perceived as right and wrong plays a large role. Food, and their surprising abundance of it, is the most symbolic indicator of this. Because we see food as something that must be acquired and consumed for our own survival, we attribute inherent value to it. Seeing food abused, tossed around, and otherwise misused generated reactions of wonder as to why characters who should really be more conservative about managing their live-source were treating it the way they were. The food scene was screened right before lunch, and the nearly unanimous response was “no, don't do that, eat the food, why would you do that,” from the class, myself included.
ReplyDeleteWhile I just wrote a paper linking this feast to repressed sexuality exploding, I would like to take an alternate view on it right now. Building off of what John and Maya have said, I believe that it shows the complete opposite of reality and emphasizes the individual and then to take it a step farther, the selfishness of people. Daisies is a satirical take on the rigid society and by emphasizing the selfishness of the Maries it shows how ridiculous that behavior is. The feast completely disgusted people in class and its bound to have that effect on others as well. it was basically 15 minutes of food flinging. by showing how the common person is disgusted by that waste of food, it basically proves that no one will be willing to fall into such a food frenzy
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