When a Meal is Communion and a Movie is a Meal

 When I’m dealing with a word in unfamiliar context I find it necessary to have the textbook definition handy. (see below)

Communion- n. the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level

     I have several ideas about this topic, ranging from personal comparisons to literary ones. I will begin with personal, because frankly, it’s easier and I’m tired.

    My personal experience with actual Catholic communion was short, disappointing and ultimately not spiritual or intimate. I attended mass with my Catholic friend, when the cups and bread were passed around I was not allowed to partake of the fruit so to speak, because I lack confirmation. Thinking of this makes me realize how strange it is that, according to Christian mythology, consumption of food brought downfall of humanity, and now there is a ritual of consuming food in an attempt to get closer to God.

    I am a very food-centered person, and I appreciate the literary definition that Thomas C. Foster has brought up. The application of a spiritual experience to every-day activity is one of my favorite things. I believe in reveling in the ordinary. In a world where it is fashionable to be unique it is refreshing to focus on the things we share, things that keep us alive and human. Things like food.  Most planned activities with my friends involve food. It is common ground*; a meal is a catalyst for interaction. A conversation begins over food, but momentum from it can carry a conversation long after the meal is consumed. The commuters sedated by full bellies chat merrily into the night.

*The primary example Foster gives for the common ground meal scenario is Raymond Carver’s Cathedral, a story which I absolutely adore and first heard on NPR’s Selected Shorts. I found the irony of eating dinner with a blind man helping the main character overcome his own blindness, quite satisfying.

    Thinking about this got me wondering about activities that have the same effect. Among my favorite* non-nutritious examples is film; the viewing of a movie with another person. It is consumption of a story together. The ability to share in silence and ride the flow of a movie together can be very intimate. Emotional reactions to the film are synchronized without any other communication, this is a very powerful kind of communion, laugh together, cry (in varying degrees) together, silence together. After a movie people now have two hours of information to digest and converse about.

*I am bad at favorites, I chose movies because I thought it would be the most widely relatable idea. My other favorites are listening to music, and reading the same book.

   
      When I acquire new information that is applicable to literature, I automatically start evaluating the book I am currently reading. Right now I am reading George Orwell’s 1984 , there are two perfect examples of more than a meal in chapter one. Section V of chapter one on page 48, of my copy of 1984 begins a lengthy meal sequence that ends on page 63. This is a very dismal meal, where the main character, Winston, eats a thoroughly unappetizing meal with people that he does not like. Both the company and cuisine in this passage reinforce to the reader that Winston’s community is unnatural and in need of repair. The from the time Winston begins his meal with a pinkish lumpy stew and ends it with an anorexic cigarette, my brain was screaming for him to get out of the canteen. Meals are supposed to be comfortable or at the very least tolerable. But the hostile environment Orwell creates is worse than any cafeteria dynamic I have ever experienced. Winston’s lunch companion is a Party member who is bent on systematically removing everything good about language. Orwell portrays the rest of the cafeteria as a buzzing mass, like a colony of identical mindless insects. This meal serves as a small scale representation of 1984’s London; a fear inspiring, unstable, underfed mindless mass of faceless people, with those who want to change it scared into silence.

    Foster brings up the Sigmund Freud anecdote at the very beginning of the chapter. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a meal is just a meal, but when a meal is communion it can be, an epiphany, an equalizer, sex, war, death, life, or an empire, among many, many other things.

Bon appetit,
Francesca C. Bartos

As a visual arts student I thought it appropriate to use an applicable self-portrait

Strawberries

digital image