Food is culturally significant and ultimately reflective of the relationships (social and economic) we have with other people. For example, I have to prevent a destructive relationship when finding out someone is a picky eater (not eating when something looks weird to them), or when they say that they dislike food from a particular region (“Oh, I don’t like Asian food- like from the East”). When making broad statements like the latter, I find it to be somewhat problematic to be placing thousands of years of spice and cooking under one kind of taste. In this way, we can relate how people treat immigrants. Often natives force the latter group to reinvent themselves to be acknowledged and accepted by the community. We can see a result of this process maybe through the naming of the Tex-Mexs and the Asian Fusions in the MaddAddam Trilogy. At the end of this process, natives force these groups to become tasteless and completely different versions of themselves to be appealing.
Food appropriators tend to take a certain culture’s food and change it to make it appealing to certain groups. Basically, they bastardize the original cuisine. Look at Taco Bell, Curry-in-a-Hurry, even Chipotle (oh please, it’s Tex-Mex-Cajun). They have an image of being ethnic but send out food that the respective, typical cooks from the culture would not send out (the women, the mothers, the wives). [My mom has a lewd phrase for people who make terrible chai, she told me that that stuff is what you clean your butt with. If there was an equivalent for crap imitation food I would use it here.]
I think this is strongly related to how PoC are put together in the series. Tex-Mex exists for natives. Asian Fusion is probably a group made of people from different ethnicities, but it was probably easier to combine everyone into group, and have one name. If these groups chose their names for themselves, they are internalizing how they are being seen by society and are thus making themselves digestable and acceptable for others. People in the series are there to be consumed- sometimes literally, since it is rumored human carbon is used in burgers. Even for characters who are “needed”, they are treated as objects. Companies literally bid on high school graduates, and buy them to work. Even if Crake is bought by the most prestigious corporation, he was still objectified. MaddAddamites were weaponized.
In the books, we don’t even have distinct characteristic for any PoC group mentioned, which sheds light on how useless it is to categorize them are. The only thing we know about the Asian Fusions is that they are vicious, which we would assume that all the gangs are like. The Tex-Mex migrate. These names are meaningless when they are used by others in society.
I recently read an article going over how people don’t really love ethnic food. They love what is specifically prepared for them. The over-spiciness of “Indian” food, which for them, is the distinct (and only) characteristic of that kind of cuisine. This is usually prepared by Indian men here who don’t understand the nuances of cooking those dishes, and then package it for natives specifically (fattier and spicier than normal). The sweetened pad thai dish. People think they love these ethnic foods, but they’ll only eat it when it’s not an authentic dish, and most of the time, they’ve only had a few of these dishes. I can literally list the Indian and Thai dishes most people typically have, on one hand: chicken tikki masala, paneer, naan (Indian); pad thai, drunken noodles (thai). I typically feel incredulous when people say they love a certain culture’s food with little experience, and feel more strongly this way when people say they dislike it.
A particular culture’s cuisine has an array of dishes. This is not to say there may not be an underlying connection, but it is a little messed up to dislike a whole region’s food based on a dish or two. If anything, a lot of frequented “ethnic” places serve trash food, as do fusions. I had biriyani from an Indian place on W4th for my friend to try, and it was bland (somehow it was popular, though??). I went to Japan this past winter, and they seriously bastardize French culture and food. Most of their appropriated food, called yoshoku, is terrible. If any of you go there, don’t try “american dogs”.
Often, immigrants package their food here in a way to be accepted my natives, much like they do with their behavior and character. It’s assimilation, instead of integration.
