Food porn?

 

After Esther becomes sick with food poisoning, throws up and pukes her brains out, and wakes up from forced sleep, Doreen offers Esther some broth to help her feel better. Esther is surprised because Esther sees Doreen as the troublemaker, smoker, lawbreaker girl and not the type to care for people. Esther claims after she drinks/ate the broth she feels purged and pure and ready for a new life. I find it ironic that the broth that was given to her that made her feel pure and rejuvenated was received as a gift from a girl who breaks rules and partakes in illicit activities. Esther has also felt that she wanted to be more like Doreen and partake in these illicit activities and break the rules as well.

It is interesting because if you use the broth as a metaphor for sexuality. Esther feels that by doing something like Doreen and having sex with Dr. Irwin, she will feel a sort of awakening. Doreen is giving her the broth can be seen as Doreen giving her a part of herself, making Esther feel like she would be able to be liberated by being able to be open to thinking about sexual topics and it frees her mind and clears her up. When Esther is finally ready to lose her virginity, she feels like she will have her sexual awakening and become free from everything that she feels that is weighing on her and while you could argue she has opened a major psychological hurdle in actually proceeding with the act of sex, her pain, blood, and experience stopped anything else from happening. Instead of being revealing and eye-opening, it was damaging to her.

One valid point would be because for Esther, even though she has made it very clear that she is not lesbian, she is able to feel able to be open sexually with women because men have oppressed her for so long. Marco who attempted to rape her and her aversion to Buddy after finding out about his scandalous past. So, when Doreen gives her the “broth” she is open to accepting it instead of second-guessing any of her intentions.

Just my thoughts on that moment

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The White Pickett Fence in Ragtime

When I was reading ragtime, one of the first things I noticed was that the family lived in a "white picket fence house" the quintessential sort of theme in the American dream. People's goals were generally to work their way up through capitalism and live a suburban lifestyle with a family and their son or daughter. In my mind while this is usually seen as the end goal, I seem to not be able to think about the white Picket fence as a sort of dystopia. It just seems so unnatural for that sort of lifestyle where nothing goes wrong and it's just a repeat of everyday where the stereotypical father goes to work and the stereotypical mother stays home and takes care of the house while the generic son or daughter goes to school. It reminded me of a video I watched with a stereotypical suburban family goes through basically the same day. https://youtu.be/mVLrBJYGxk4 . In my eyes, each member of the family was living through this kind of dystopia except for Father. They each...
Read more

Holden, Ancient Egyptians and the Catcher and the Rye

As Mr. Spencer is talking to Holden about his grades and his flunking, He brings up the essay Holden wrote about the Ancient Egyptians. While the two of them know the essay is bad, (Holden even includes a note saying he’ll understand if he fails) Mr. Spencer is trying to use this as humiliation into making Holden want to exert himself in the future. Holden naturally feels embarrassed, he does not enjoy listening to the unsatisfactory work that he knew he put out. It’s interesting that Mr. Spencer says Holden did not absorb anything that he taught throughout the course of his class, but in the Museum of Art Holden teaches two young boys about the mummies in the Ancient Egyptian exhibit, clearly showing he knows at least a little about the course.  One reason Holden could be fascinated by the Ancient Egyptian empire is that the empire has an effect of being stuck in time. The mummies wrapped in cloths and minerals have an effect of never aging. The Pyramids, the sphinx, remain foreve...
Read more

The New Talking Android

I feel like the new influx of people imitating dances for popularity on social media platforms such as Instagram and Tiktok represents a widespread movement of Talking Androids.  When I think of this, my mind goes to the renegade dance that was highly popularized online by Tiktok. The original dance was made by a fourteen-year-old black girl named Jalaiah Harmon but the version that most people are recording, and sharing is the over simplified or watered-down version of the dance that can be shared. It almost seems like the talking Android to me because I felt the purpose of the talking android is to take away from the impact of the movement of Jes Grew in the story and that's what I feel a lot of people on social media do without realizing it. They “disguise” themselves as people who are going along with the movement or action but end up undermining it. The only key differences are that these people aren’t actively trying to harm the movement and they aren’t black as well.  ...
Read more