The Image of Taste: Cinesthetic Instruction in Ratatouille
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The Image of Taste: Cinesthetic Instruction in Ratatouille COLIN RANSOM When Colin Ransom registered for a Cinema Studies minor, he did not properly read the description. Expecting a practical filmmaking program, he instead learned what a kinetoscope was and the meaning of words like ontology, hermeneutics, and phenomenology. Now, he writes serious papers about cartoon rats and likes it. 43
4 The aesthetic language of cinema has been designed in such a way that its audiovisual techniques negate the need for additional haptic, gustatory, or olfactory sensory information. Films such as Brad Bird’s Ratatouille (2007) use various formal techniques to create what Vivian Sobchack refers to as cinesthesia. This cinematic derivative of synesthesia explains the translation of visual and aural stimuli into information, which is then perceived as the other missing senses. Drawing on my own experiences of sensory immersion in cinema, combined with Sobchack’s idea of cinesthesia, I will argue that Ratatouille effectively communicates taste through its aural and visual components. The elaborate nature of this perceptual mechanism voids the need for further sensory immersion in the cinema. As a medium, cinema can translate sound and image into taste using the tools it already possesses. When I attended a screening of Anthony and Joe Russo’s Avengers: Endgame (2019), due to high demand, the only available seats were in 4DX. These seats were a new experience for me. They incorporated many “effects,” such as chair motions and vibrations, sprays of mist, fragrant scents, and even the ever-perplexing back and leg tickler. While the goal of 4DX is to provide a more immersive moviegoing experience, I noticed myself less immersed in the film and more attentive and anticipative to the various stimuli around me. I left the theatre convinced that 4DX was just a gimmick, not worth the extra money. My contrasting experience of complete immersion while watching Ratatouille on a tiny Greyhound bus TV led me to ruminate on how cinema is able to achieve its illusory effect. With these experiences in mind, I will operationalize some key terms to establish the concept of cinesthesia and how it relates to sensory immersion. To begin, synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which certain sensory modalities trigger alternative perceptual pathways normally unrelated. It is a subset of multisensory integration and has a low prevalence in the general population (Banissy et al. 1). Senses 44
THE IMAGE OF TASTE become entangled, causing experiences such as seeing sound or hearing colour. Sobchack writes that while, in a medical sense, synesthesia is rare, the “less extreme experience of ‘cross-modal-transfer’ among our senses is enough to have warranted the term’s use and the condition’s description in ordinary language” (9). The colloquial nature of this term is significant as it allows for adaptation into a cinematic context. While cinema is not synesthetic in a pathological sense, it does affect sensory modalities other than the visual and aural elements that it is composed of, a phenomenon that Sobchack calls cinesthesia. Sobchack describes this term as a combination of synesthesia and coenaesthesia; coenaesthesia describes the world of novel, overwhelming sensory information into which infants are born. For Sobchack, the period of coenaesthesia offers a “potential” that is shaped and integrated by society into a means in which the child can interact with the world (10). The sensory novelty experienced at birth represents a more intense version of the novelty experienced in cinema. The spectator in cinema learns to integrate sensory information, similar to how the infant learns to integrate sensory information as it moves through the world. Over time, popular cinema has developed a standardized language (e.g., reaction shots, shaky-handheld shots, and macro shots) in order to efficiently convey sensory information, neutralizing the sensory novelty of cinema. Ratatouille moves beyond this standardized language, re-teaching the audience how to establish an even deeper sensory immersion within the film. While cinema can easily stimulate the visual and auditory senses, in turn eliciting a corporeal reaction, other senses require more direction and precision. As a cinesthetic film, Ratatouille presents a masterclass in how to convey taste to its audience, translating taste through a combination of traditional techniques alongside formal experimentation. As a film about gourmet food, it is imperative that Ratatouille can transfer the flavours of both delicious and disagreeable foods to the audience. To accomplish this feat, Ratatouille targets all of the possible sensorium available to the cinematic medium in conveying its gustatory information. For instance, when Colette teaches the protagonist Alfredo Linguini how to tell if bread is good without tasting it, she explains that sound is the most important way to distinguish a quality loaf. As Colette cracks the bread, the film treats the audience to an ASMR-like sensation, mirrored in a reaction shot of Remy’s quasi- orgasmic physiological response. As Colette teaches Linguini to taste through sound, the audience also learns. Our identification with Linguini facilitates this learning, helping immerse us in the emotional impact of 45
COLIN RANSOM the animated food, even though we cannot actually taste it. Ratatouille goes beyond this basic form of sensory representation, using formally experimental techniques to create the cinesthetic experience of taste. Notably, in the middle of the film, the audience aligns with Emile as his brother Remy instructs him how to taste food. Remy describes various flavours, visually expressing the sensations through his bodily movements. The background fades to black and the camera dollies in on Emile as he chews, heightening the experience of taste. These aesthetics leave us with no distractions, focusing our attention on the visual and aural information necessary to interpret the flavours. The film also includes dancing orbs as a visual representation of taste. These orbs move in distinct ways to imitate different flavours and textures. Flowing movements guide our perception to creamy and silky textures, whereas sharp bouncy movements convey tart, sour flavours. Through colour and movement, the shapes shift to represent each flavour described by Remy, adding more depth to our sensory perception. Here, the film understands that the audience cannot directly experience the foods through the screen and, therefore, must take action to maximize the visual information which will convey the taste instead. The combination of sensory information allows our mind to process and reintegrate them as flavours, turning the visual and aural into taste, texture, and smell. These central components of cinesthesia contribute to our immersion in cinema. Yet this cinesthetic experience relies on what we already know. If we have never encountered good bread, we cannot as easily associate the crack of bread with gustatory pleasure. But what about when a film needs to convey an experience that the audience is unfamiliar with? Ratatouille overcomes this dilemma by skipping right to the emotional impact of the experience instead of dwelling on its sensory perception. The substitution of sensory stimuli with emotion is most apparent in the climactic scene where the venerable food critic, Anton Ego, eats Remy’s ratatouille. Many viewers, myself included, have never tasted ratatouille before, yet through a flashback to Ego’s childhood we are able to identify exactly how it tastes. The flashback sequence shows Ego’s mom feeding him a version of that same dish after a bad day, revealing ratatouille’s connotations of nostalgia and familial comfort for Ego. While we might not know what ratatouille tastes like, we do not need to; the film skips the flavours and cuts right to the emotional impact of the food. Food has the capacity to remind people of their youth and conjure up feelings of deep nostalgia. The film recognizes this connection and uses nostalgia to its own benefit. Through this flashback, we can now infer exactly what 46
THE IMAGE OF TASTE ratatouille tastes like: childhood. Ratatouille delivers an exceptional cinesthetic experience through formal experimentation, using colour, movement, and evocations of nostalgia to transform image and sound into taste. Cinema has developed a distinct aesthetic to convey sensations beyond the auditory and visual. For this reason, further attempts at sensory immersion are unnecessary, serving to detract from the experience rather than adding to it. When explaining flavour, Chef Gusteau echoes the approach Ratatouille takes in evoking cross-modal sensation through synesthesia/cinesthesia: “Good food is like music you can taste, colour you can smell. There is excellence all around you. You only need to be aware to stop and savour it.” Ratatouille takes up the cinesthetic challenge, creating sensory immersion while respecting the fundamental mechanics of cinema as a medium. 47
COLIN RANSOM Works Cited Banissy, Michael J. et al. “Synesthesia: an introduction.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 5, 2014, pp. 1-3. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01414. Sobchack, Vivian. “What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh.” Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, University of California Press, 2004, pp. 53-84. Filmography Bird, Brad. Ratatouille. Walt Disney Pictures, 2007. Russo, Anthony and Joe. Avengers: Endgame. Walt Disney Motion Pictures, 2019. 48
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