Cooking with Julia

Tonight I went to see the film Julie and Julia and my head hasn't stopping spinning since. I laughed, a lot. I cried a lot too. I relived the past 6 years of my PhD in 123 short minutes. And I thought I was just going out for a nice light evening at the movies.

Where to start? I had of course been planning to see the film: Julia Child, writing, and food all in one place! Yesterday I was having lunch with a very insightful friend who recommended – no, insisted – that I see it, so I thought I better get right on that and made plans to go with another friend who has witnessed most of my major thesis-related events over the past few years. I was thoroughly enjoying the first hour and half of the movie, all the time wondering why my friend so insisted that I see it. I don't want to give anything away for those of you who may yet see the film, so I'll just say there is a point near the end of the movie when Julie (the intrepid blogger working her way through all the recipes in Julia Child's book in 365 days) has to face the fact that Julia may not like her, and more importantly, that she may not like Julia, the woman to whom she has devoted a year of her life, who she considers her saviour, who she obsesses over to the point of nearly destroying her marriage. The light bulb went on in my head. Suddenly the thoughts came flooding in, and everything in this film seemed a metaphor of my recent past. Everything down to the fact that I am sitting at my computer, late at night, drink in hand, blogging the inner workings of my mind to an unknown audience.

A lot of things have happened to me during this existential journey sometimes referred to as a thesis. One of the big ones is the loss of a certain amount of idealism and complete disillusionment with many of the food heroes I once idealized. That disillusionment almost caused me to drop the whole thing on more than one occasion. It created a strange tension, because my ideological nature is what led me to what I am doing now, and it was a meeting with someone who I once idolized that created the space for me to do the project I'm now trying to complete. Realizing that this person is not perfect and does not represent all my values really made me question what I was doing and why. I began to question the validity of my research and almost decided not to continue. In time, I've realized that the fact that although this person may not live out certain values in the way I would like to see done, she has done an immense amount of work in a very difficult context. It's not perfect, but it is important. I've also realized that no matter what I learn about someone else, it doesn't change what I've done or what I've learned about myself. Which, incidentally, is a lot. I may be disillusioned, but I'm all the better for it. My insightful friend asked me yesterday why I used to be so blindly idealistic and regimented. I couldn't come up with an answer at the time but it came to me later: I used to live and work in a world where my ideas and values were really quite radical. I didn't have the confidence to back them up, so I clung to them and the people who publicly expressed them so that my ideas – and I – wouldn't get lost. As I created a world around me that is more supportive I no longer feel the need to cling so fervently to these ideals. I won't say I've become cynical, just that I'm comfortable questioning my own opinions. In some ways, my "idols" probably did more for me by "letting me down" than they could have done by meeting every one of my unrealistic expectations. I've become more principled than idealistic, and as a result far more relaxed, happy, and comfortable in my own skin. I also have way more fun eating, not only turning into a raging omnivore, but not worrying if something is full of cream, fat, or – god forbid – a non-organic, non-local ingredient that may not have been created exactly the way I would do it. So many great meals I missed! (There's a scene at the beginning of the movie in which Julia Child gets quite veclemt over a grilled fish. I completely understand, and was reminded of a time when I felt ready to die after eating what is quite probably the best panna cotta in all of the world at Osteria del Boccondivino in Bra, Italy.)

Once I started down this line of thinking, the parallels and metaphors just kept coming. Julia Child wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking as way to teach American women how to cook real food in an age when mixes and cans were being pushed as the way to women's liberation. This isn't far off from the original thinking that led to my current dissertation. I was horribly distressed by the fact that cookbooks for people who know how to cook were disappearing and being replaced by instruction books telling people how to combine various packaged products and calling it cooking. I saw a great loss of knowledge and skill and it frightened me, so off I went on a study of deskilling which ultimately led to my thesis on distancing. And I don't even own a copy of Julia's book. Yet.

The two stories in this film deal with so many other themes that are all too real for me. Diving headlong into something as way out of something else (as opposed to a way into where you want to be) or simply as something to do can lead to amazing new joys and insights. It can also lead to obsession and dashed hopes. Or to unexpected success. It can both strengthen and strain relationships. It can lead you into things that are easy to start but hard to finish. It can result in many, many meltdowns. My dissertation process has been all of these.

Julie, Julia, and I have all used food and cooking as a celebration of love, an escape from reality, and as a source of great joy.

And maybe most importantly, to rediscover The Joy of Butter.