I wrote down a plethora of ideas on paper on what I could do. Learning from the last project, I know now to narrow down my ideas into one solid concept with a clear message in order to stay on-track during the production process and have a strong film at the end. I found from the past that complex philosophical concepts like existentialism are difficult to capture and contextualize, especially when thinking about my identity, so my objective was to also find a concept that still has meaning but is not too abstract and wide.
What I’ve landed on is Garlic.
I like how silly and mundane the idea is upfront, and garlic is something simple that bears a lot of meaning to me personally.
The idea came to me one evening as I called my father in Thailand while I was sitting in the kitchen of his childhood home, asking him for ideas on what I could make for dinner. I listed out the ingredients I had in my fridge, including garlic, which prompted him to suggest me a simple pasta dish before recalling old memories of how he used to cook this dish for his siblings who he now barely talks to, even remembering the way they’d bicker over the table. It fascinated me how garlic and food in general can carry vivid memories not with the taste, but simply just the idea of it.
That prompted me to unpack my relationship with my family, especially my parents. I had a good childhood and still have a good relationship with them now, though things get more complicated as I look back and identify the instances that have impacted me to this day, and all the times I felt upset with them. Could this be seen as resentment? Could I love them as much as I resent them?
During my research, I found the poem Poplar Street by the poet Chen Chen, which included the quote:
I like jelly beans. I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid
of farting, even around people I love. Do you think your motherloves you when you fart? Does your mother love you
Poplar Street by Chen Chen
all the time? Have you ever doubted?
The phrase “Does your mother love you all the time? Have you ever doubted?” made me look at my life through a different lens. I believe that what I felt was resentment to some degree. The way the past few years had kept me at home had led my family being overwhelmed by each other which only brewed more conflict, with my mother oftentimes cutting an argument short by saying “Let’s eat first.”
I think garlic reflects this sentiment well. Its strong taste meant that too much of it could overpower the taste of any other ingredient in a dish; garlic can be frustrating to prepare and clean up with all the layers of skin that gets everywhere; the smell of garlic would stick to your fingers for days no matter how much you try to scrub it off. Eating too much garlic at once can also give you acid reflux. Garlic could easily be overwhelming.
On the other hand, as I moved to London by myself, all the sounds I had found so annoying suddenly disappeared and each hour of the day often felt quiet. It was easy to feel so far from home (5,000 miles to be exact) and staticky phone calls sometimes couldn’t ease how hollow I felt. I packed sauces and seasonings from Thailand, though I used them with the dread that eventually I’d run out. I could get three bulbs of garlic for 90p, however, and as I peeled each clove in the quiet kitchen by myself, my anxiety eased like my mind could sense the bustling yet comforting atmosphere of the kitchen at home. Even the taste itself was close to the taste of home, and everything I had resented before felt like it was just enough.
I created a mindmap on a Padlet board in order to save links to external sites as well as to have everything in one place that I can refer to when I need to.
Here, I also explored the portrayal of food in art from a variety of sources such as Ghibli’s comforting food scenes, The Simpsons and how cartoon food didn’t need to be realistic to appear appetizing due to nostalgia, Hans Peter-Feldmann bread photographs, and Bake-off’s illustrator Tom Hovey’s outlook in treating the bakes as art.
The tutors’ feedback to my initial idea gave me a lot of reassurance and eased a lot of my initial worries of the topic of garlic being too simple/not serious enough, or that I wasn’t explorative enough in my choice to create a 2D hand-drawn flat-screen animation.