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“Eat, Pray, Love:” What’s wrong with this picture?
By Sandip Roy
New America Media, Commentary
Aug 13, 2010
For the longest time, I
thought the 2006 bestseller “Eat, Pray, Love” was a sequel to the 2004
bestseller about punctuation “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.”
Now I am enlightened. One is about the search for the meaning of life.
The other is about the meaning of a comma.
I confess I never read Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller except for
browsing through a few pages in a copy sitting by a friend’s bedside. I
enjoyed the writing. The story of picking yourself up after losing your
way has universal appeal even if we all can’t afford to recharge under
the Tuscan sun.
It’s not Gilbert’s fault, but as someone who comes from India, I have an
instinctive reflex reaction to books about white people discovering
themselves in brown places. I want to gag, shoot and leave.
The story is so self-involved, its movie version should’ve been called,
“Watch Me Eat, Pray and Love.” In a way I almost prefer the old
colonials in their pith helmets trampling over the Empire’s far-flung
outposts. At least they were somewhat honest in their dealings. They
wanted the gold, the cotton, and laborers for their sugar plantations.
And they wanted to bring Western civilization, afternoon tea and
anti-sodomy laws to godforsaken places riddled with malaria and
Beriberi.
The new breed is more sensitive, less overt. They want to spend a year
in a faraway place on a “journey.” But the journey is all about what
they can get. Not gold, cotton or spices anymore. They want to eat,
shoot films (or write books), emote and leave. They want the food, the
spirituality, the romance.
Now, I don’t want to deny Gilbert her “journey.” She is herself honest,
edifying and moving. I don’t want to deny her Italian carbs, her Indian
Om’s or her Bali Hai beach romance. We all need that sabbatical from the
rut of our lives.
But as her character complained that she had “no passion, no spark, no
faith” and needed to go away for one year, I couldn’t help wondering
where do people in Indonesia and India go away to when they lose their
passion, spark and faith? I don’t think they come to Manhattan. Usually
third-worlders come to America to find education, jobs and to save
enough money to send for their families to join them, not work out their
kinks.
This is not to say “Eat, Pray, Love”– now a major movie in a theater
near you - just exists in a self-centered air-conditioned meditation
cave and has no heart. But it requires more than the normal suspension
of disbelief when Julia Roberts announces she will eat that whole pizza
and buy the “big girl jeans.” We see her trying to squeeze her Julia
Roberts body into her jeans, struggling with the zipper and we know this
is a fine, brave actor at work.
She tries not to be the foreign tourist but she does spend an awful lot
of time with the expats whether it’s the Swede in Italy, the Texan in
India or the Brazilian in Bali. The natives mostly have clearly assigned
roles. Language teacher. Hangover healer. Dispenser of
fortune-cookie-style wisdom. Knowledge, it seems, is never so meaningful
as when it comes in broken English, served up with puckish grins, and an
idyllic backdrop. The expats have messy histories, but the natives’
lives, other than that teenaged arranged marriage in India, are not very
complicated. They are there as the means to her self discovery. After
that is done, it’s time to book the next flight.
But all through the film this is what I was wondering. Why was she drawn
to those three countries? Why Italy, India and Indonesia?
Is it because they all start with I?
I, I, and I.
Not inappropriate for a film that is ultimately about Me, Myself, and I.
I travel therefore I am.
Nothing drove that home better than what happened after the screening
ended. I went down in an elevator crammed with radiant women, all
discussing when they teared up during the film, and how much they
related to it, and its message of opening yourself up to the world.
There was one woman in a wheelchair in the elevator. After we reached
the lobby, the women, still chattering, marched out into the chilly San
Francisco night. The woman in the wheelchair remained stranded behind
the heavy doors.
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