Various forms of Korean culture, including K-pop and K-drama, have recently been introduced to the world and are having their moment. On YouTube, a Korean show called “Mukbang”, which is basically an eating show, is also trending. In each episode, the “Mukbanger” shares their food in many different ways. They choose some popular or trendy menu item and describe the taste and smell; they even share the chewing sound. Audiences feel a sort of satisfaction watching binge eating or listening to the sound (Jackson). This kind of food show was already popular before the Mukbang craze went viral because Koreans are so sincere about food that they even care about what someone else is eating. Koreans have a passion for food.
Not knowing this attitude, common Korean greetings that contain questions such as, “Did you have a meal? What did you have?” might be somewhat bothersome. This misunderstanding is represented in the attitude of Ray, the main character of the play, “Aubergine” (2017). The play explores the cultural disconnection between Ray and his father--the result of Ray growing up in the United States without having a strong emotional attachment to his father. Ray’s struggles peak readers’ and viewers’ curiosity about the story. The fact that the main character has a background as a child of a Korean immigrant and grew up in America renders clues to understand why food is so important to him and why this play focuses on a Korean-American family.
The play opens by focusing on a common subject, yet one no one lives to write about: death. To link death to life, the author uses food as the intermediary because someone’s death leaves memories of them and food is one of the most powerful triggers of memories. Memory is of the past. But it can be recalled and lived in the present. Memory allows us to travel not just to the past but also to the future. Memory brings up the picture of the past scenes and vision for the future, too. This play shows the power of memory in forming an individual’s character and in constructing a relationship. Food here plays a role like a time machine to bring an individual to those moments so they can watch their life unfold again, as if in a mirror.
Julia Cho, the playwright, said in her interview with American Theater that she “believe[s] plays are journeys, and they should take you somewhere you’ve never been whether it’s a new thought, a new place or a new way to look at something familiar” (Rno 49). In the play, Ray, a Korean-American chef transforms from a “little kid without any tools” (Cho 275) into a grown-up who knows how to love himself. While he has gone through a long tunnel of uncomfortable love-and-hate relationships, Ray overcomes his misunderstanding and finally reaches the phase of peaceful acceptance. Following Ray’s journey of finding the meaning of life and love, audiences witness his growth and they have a chance to ruminate on their own memorable moments.
In this essay, I will discuss how the meaning of food, eating, and feeding others, and the memories of those experiences, affect Ray’s life. In the analysis that follows I will describe his internal conflict, unhealthy relationship with his father, and how he overcomes his struggles. I will also discuss how the structure of this play supports Ray’s journey.
RAY RISING
The first half of the play shows longstanding conflict with his father starting from Ray’s present where he has to take care of his father who is dying of cirrhosis. In the story, the conflict between the two has arisen from Ray and his father’s different attitudes toward food. For his father, food is just a source of energy, rather than something enjoyable. Possibly, it is because he is an immigrant, who had a hard time surviving in a foreign country. However, for Ray, though he was raised by a mother who hated cooking, and a father who did not have an appreciation of other aspects of eating, he feels that food is joy and is a container of his memory. Because of this difference, Ray has been experiencing conflict that seems to be almost impossible to resolve. Therefore, his father has become “no one” to Ray. Throughout his life, Ray has memories of being refused and unacknowledged by his father and those experiences remain in him as a grievance against his father. Maybe, as Ray says, even his passion to be a chef had arisen from his grudge held against his father because the kitchen was “the one place [his father] never went” (Cho 315), or as Cornelia, Ray’s ex-girlfriend, says, he hoped to make food that “[his late] mom would have [appreciated]” (Cho 316). But it seems that the real reason for him to have wanted to be a chef is to quench his thirst for being fed, recognized, and loved.
Unfortunately, Ray’s hunger was so overwhelming that he forgot that a chef must embrace a mission of feeding, serving, and loving. Therefore, Ray’s passion to become a chef did not help his relationship with his father at all. While pursuing his dream, his identity lay on the knife. Like samurais, the knife was his “livelihood”, “the one tool” (Cho 282). However, not accepting his own son’s passion, Ray’s father treated his dream as a “ten-dollar knife” (Cho 282). Even Ray’s eighteen-course tasting menu with “every scrap of knowledge [he’d] accumulated” (Cho 319) could not get his father’s approval because, Ray believed, he failed to be “what [his father] wanted [him] to be” (Cho 320). For older Koreans, a kitchen is a place where men shouldn’t be (Kim “Grandpas”). In addition to his frustration, the anger against his father has arisen in Ray because of his father’s disapproval of Ray’s food and the father’s denying of his son’s identity. Unfortunately, Ray did not know about his father’s general attitude toward food. Though it was apparent that his unhealthy relationship and the conflict with his father were actually foreseeable when Ray wanted to be a cook. Tragically, both did not know how to accept each other as they are. Ray has been focusing on his father’s approval because of the lack of affection from his father but he did not know that he should have focused on himself, appreciated his own achievement, and embraced his love of serving.
RECONCILIATION
All the struggles and unsolved problems are laid out in Part One of the play, while the other half of the play mostly shows Ray’s, Cornelia’s, and the father’s memories in the form of flashbacks or monologue. Through this structure, the viewers are given more context that helps them understand the relationships between characters. The very first scene of Part Two is Cornelia’s monologue where she talks about her mother and Koreans’ obsession with feeding. Cornelia’s mother’s endless feeding style left Cornelia frustrated with eating. This scene parallels to two early scenes in Part One: in one scene, the father’s first line is him saying “Bap mo-goh-soh?”(Cho 262), which means “Did you eat?”; in another scene we get the uncle’s story about how his mother prepared the perfect food to keep his brother from leaving for America (Cho 295-298). Within the context, the importance of bap, which means a rice bowl or meal, cannot be underestimated. For Koreans, bap “stands for all human activities associated with securing food, and, by extension, all our economic life” (Kim 706). Through their emphasis on food, Cornelia’s mother, Ray’s father and Ray’s grandmother expressed “a deep concern for [their children's’] well-being” (Kim 706). However, for the children, the overwhelming attention to feeding or obsession with food of their parents was recognized as control over them, not “any declarations of love” (Cho 300). This mismatching causes misunderstanding and conflict with their parents and others, and furthermore, sours their attitude toward food or feeding.
The magical moment of resolving the tension comes when certain memories cross their minds. At the end of Part One, the chance for Ray to compromise with his father comes when his uncle tells Ray and Cornelia about his memory of his mother and his brother. John S. Allen, author of the book The Omnivorous Mind (2012), explains the anatomical reason for the linkage between food and memory: “food is a trigger of deeper memories of feelings and emotions, internal states of the mind and body” (“Food and Memory”). This last scene of Part One unleashes a cascade of deeper memories and Ray's willingness for reconciliation. However, it takes time for Ray to understand, swallow the bitterness of the memory, and digest and accept it as a part of him.
The tension in the play reaches a climax when Ray’s father turns his face away when Ray tries to feed him a spoon of soup (Cho 310-311). The longstanding conflict has been built by Ray and his father but as we approach the father’s last moment, it is only Ray who has all the responsibility to untie the knot of the conflict. Therefore, even though Ray opens his mind and moves toward his father after listening to his uncle’s story, the conflict is still sitting there because the father could not help. This tension could have not been solved even until the father’s death. If it remained unresolved, that could have been such a frustrating memory and haunting experience for Ray. Thankfully, Cho does not give up on Ray and gives him one more chance to reconcile with his father by letting him reconstitute his memory for the future, which is cooking for others, accepting himself as he is, rather than trying to be acknowledged by his father and getting to know more about his father from memories. For that, in Part Two, Cho weaves short scenes of memories. The flow of scenes seems a bit choppy because each of the scenes is not on a continuum but, rather, they seem to follow Ray’s stream of consciousness. Our memories do not cross our minds like a history book, which follows a chronological order; they pop up in a certain context or in presence of a trigger that might not be realized as a trigger.
When his father does not even taste the soup his brother made for him, Ray’s frustration and feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness overwhelm him and he experiences a little breakdown and finally speaks his inner voice out that he does “not want him to go” (Cho 316). This confession encourages him to tell his father a story about him, a memory that he has hidden in his mind for a long time. Holtzman defines memory as “the notion of experience or meaning in reference to the past … including events that subjects recall or emotionally re-experience, the unconscious (perhaps embodied) memories of subjects, …nostalgia for a real or imagined past” (363). Memory is not just a recollection of the past but it lets an individual experience past events and one’s emotions of the moment once again, and that re-experiencing gives a chance to look back and move on to the future. When Ray finishes telling his father his story, he sees his father’s smile, which might have been his imagination, and says “I’m here. To pick it up” (Cho 320). It was a handshake of reconciliation between Ray and his father and between Ray and himself at the very moment of his father's death.
After the father passes away, Cho tells the viewers more memories of each character. The first memory is about the father’s best meal. It was not any lavish meal but it was a very simple one that he had with his friends when they were on a day trip (Cho 322). Before the funeral, when Ray serves Lucien, the hospice worker who took care of his father, a dish with vegetables, that reminds Lucien of an old forgotten taste that he has been longing for (Cho 326-327). In the scene of Ray’s visiting Korea to bury his father’s ashes, he receives a call on his father’s phone from a dental office and he hears how his father is remembered by others (Cho 337). Ray notices that his father, whom he thought blunt and brutal to get along with, had been loved and respected by others.Lastly, Ray talks about the best meal of his, which he had with his parents. It was greasy cold fried chicken but he enjoyed the moment when he could laugh with them (Cho 338). Throughout several scenes, Cho elaborately presents to viewers that it is not the food itself that is already great but it is the memory of the moment that makes the food great and memorable. Finally, Ray compromises with his father and his memory that he has been denied. He realizes that what really matters is not his father’s approval of his food but realizing that he is already valuable as he is. Ray’s self-recognition here is paralleled and foreshadowed in the earlier scene. Lucien calls an eggplant “Aubergine” and he appreciates “the beauty of the thing itself” by calling it the name (Cho 278). Furthermore, his better self-esteem lets Ray retrieve the joy of serving and loving. The dish of aubergines that Ray treats Lucien is the completion of his mission to feed and love; thus, Ray can show his real smile (Cho 326). Finally, he becomes fulfilled, and that satisfies his craving for being loved.
CONCLUSION
In her play, Cho takes viewers to an important moment of Ray’s life where he faces his father’s death and where he struggles with the relationship with his father and friends and eventually overcomes the conflict by self-reconciliation. In his journey of reconciliation, his memories about his father and mother daunt him and push him away from his father, and because of this, he pushes others away as well. However, his deep affection for his father is recollected with help from the people around him such as Cornelia, Lucien, and his uncle. In the end, Ray becomes someone who accepts himself and opens his mind to others.
Interestingly, following his journey, the viewers can also have a separate experience getting to know the characters’ past through their monologues and flashbacks in the second part of the play. Because of what I would call the “feeding back structure”--laying out a series of more disconnected events in the first half of the play and connecting them in the second half of the play--the viewers may experience some disconnection and may wonder in the beginning but those gaps are eventually filled by the flashbacks. This structure of the play is similar to our mental activities as events happen before we can understand and appreciate them. What we do is try to understand and accept what happened to us by looking back and reflecting on the memory. In this two-act play, that is the journey Cho wants to take us on.
Works Cited
Cho, Julia. “Aubergine.” The Language Archive. Theatre Communications Group, 2019, pp. 245-342.
“Food and Memory.” Harvard University Press, 18 May 2021, harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2012/05/food-and-memory-john-allen.html.
Holtzman, Jon D. “Food and Memory.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 35, 2006, pp. 361-378.
Jackson, Katie. “What is 'Mukbang'? Inside the viral Korean food YouTube trend.” Today, 23 Feb 2018. https://www.today.com/food/what-mukbang-inside-viral-korean-food-phenomenon-t123251
Kim, Ji-Myung. “Grandpas in Kitchen.” The Korea Times, 13 Dec 2019, www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2021/11/355_280246.html.
Kim, Won-Chung. “A World in a Rice Bowl: Chiha Kim and an Emerging Korean Food Ethic.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 19, no.4, 2021, pp. 706-718.
Rno, Sung. “Julia Cho Desert Memories: Landscape--and a Sense of Place--Loom Large in the Work of a Rising Young Playwright.” American Theatre, vol. 22, no 4, 2005, pp. 46-49.
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