Week 9 - Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored and Soul Food

These two films definitely show how food transmits culture and how it constitutes ethnic identity. Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored shows the virtues of African American culture through the food that the characters are eating throughout the film. Another interesting thing to point out is that the African American culture in Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored was something that I never really understood at first, but it became more clear that food was a very important part of the lives of the characters. The racial segregation was another thing that unfortunately did not surprise me at all. During the time of this movie, segregation was a very big issue and it unfortunately was a pretty important theme throughout the film. The article by Robin Balthrope mentioned how cooking can be done out of love. I think that this is another main theme that was shown in these two movies, Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored andSoul Food. In both films, when the characters were cooking they were usually doing it for their families and having gatherings of people over to their homes to enjoy the meals that they had prepared. In Soul Food, Big Mama really represents all the mothers who make their child’s favorite foods to show them how much they love them. In Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, food is used to show the way that communication is facilitated between family, friends, and the community itself. It is also not a secret that in sharing food and having good conversation, people can often become more connected. We’ve seen this in so many of the other movies we have watched throughout this semester. In Mostly Martha and Tortilla Soup, there was always good food and conversation and because of that the characters became more connected with one another.