Week 8

This week provided the opportunity for more interpersonal insight than any other week I have spent at Evergreen. I have been analyzing the subtleties of every-day life symbols that are pushed through my subconscious without my conscious awareness, and it has been shocking.

Concepts Learned This Week:

I have not had the opportunity to watch Netflix in a few quarters at Evergreen and after an incredibly stressful week I thought I would try a Netflix original. I soon realized how text-heavy the symbolism was underlying the images of the show.

The Santa Clarita Diet

Watch Episode 7 of The Santa Clarita Diet

Quick description of storyline: A stereotypical suburbia household consisting of the high school romance that stalled into a marriage of two Real Estate Agents with one daughter. The mother catches an infection and becomes undead and has a new hunger to eat people (live animals will not work). This rejuvenates the marriage because the wife has a never-before-experienced sex drive that, in the husband’s eyes, offsets the baggage of being undead because he still “loves” her. As her life comically spirals out of control due to her uncontrollable consumption, her neighbors also start to act crazier without knowing her secret. Before this episode, there has been a theme of gender stereotypes where the wife comforts the husband because his ego is suffering from not doing the killing  (while ignoring the fact his wife is undead and gets a rush from killing). The show also mentions she gets incredibly turned on when she kills. The show may even be using foreshadowing in the form of the husband trying to restore the wife “back to normal “by researching for a cure, and the wife guiltily wanting to maintain her empowered, energized, sexual killing state.

Starting at 1:02 – 2:05: A scene that contrasts the tameness of a trivial housewife conversation with the realities of killing and consuming other people

2:05 – 2:25 (background: Dan is their neighbor cop that found out the married couple killed someone and then blackmailed the husband to kill criminals Dan couldn’t convict)

This scene shows a change in behavior after normalizing killing – “It just happened!” (in regard to killing Dan)

2:25 – 2:58

The wife appeals to the male ego and the perceived need to “defend” his wife, even though she’s an undead killing machine and he’s still a suburban dad who smokes weed. She then points out how previously in the show he attacked her for being impulsive, and when she points out his hypocrisy, he stops her with “honey” and she returns to pointing out how “sweet” and “gallant” his killing was.

2:58 – 3:31

The mention of Dan’s body leaving a stain on the floor particularly caught my attention when reviewing this section because of the symbolism that follows :

“And knowing Dan, he’s going to want to leave a stain.”

The wife potentially suggests the not-okayness of her treat.

Randomly, as the husband lifts up the torso of Dan he stops and appreciates the smell of coffee.

Husband: “I love coffee. Think about it. It’s a bean that you drink.”

Wife: “Are you high?”

Husband: “No. I’m just feeling very grateful about coffee.”

Wife: “Now?”

Then the husband drops the head of Dan on the floor and immediately goes into an action plan on how he’s going to get rid of the body. How can I not be reminded of the first coffee houses in the context of consuming the other and mindless killing, especially through the voice of a married white male in suburbia?

3:32 – 3:56

The couple discusses the lack of room from material consumption to store the dead body and the metonymic association of mindless killing and mindless consumption becomes present (best represented in the sarcastic quote by the wife at 5:21: “Yes, I’m sorry. There’s no room for the dead guy you came home with.”). The wife points out the absurdity of the timing of his accusations toward her and he blankly owns up to it and walks off while she makes a face to the camera.

4:21 – 4:50

The husband asks if it would be weird if he robbed the dead body, and as the wife makes a face, the dead body farts in response. This transitions to her saying the last body did the same (all bodies do it) and that a female body would never do that. The husband struggles to believe that she’s going to eat the dead body and she points out how he does the same even after watching a slaughterhouse documentary. He defensively says he cut out veel and limited bacon to the weekends because “that’s all I can do”.

4:50 – 7:12

Their other neighbor, a black cop, knocks at the door as they are transporting the body. The husband tries shifting blame to the wife because the neighbor knew they were home since their cars were parked on the street.

I perceived the intention of having an African-American actor as the other cop in this scene as a way to represent perceived white scrutiny from the African-American perspective because of the scene’s given power dynamic and choice of camera angle at 6:04. After hearing the wife’s desire to “hear what he knows” and seeing this camera angle, I thought of the concept of white people seeing themselves, or their actions, through the voice/mouth of the other because it clearly shows the wife appealing to male importance by getting water for them, the white husband’s facial expression showing dismay, the black cop’s confusion, and the dead white cop leaned out of sight.

Throughout this whole conversation, the black cop was portrayed as being curious about the sex move that made them fight despite the fact he’s telling them their neighbor is missing. The black cop tells the white husband that he found  information regarding the potential whereabouts of a person with the “cure” for his wife’s newfound hunger (he was lied to and doesn’t actually know what it is for), but moves his hand back when the white husband impulsively reaches for the paper and asks to know the sex move that lead to them fighting. The white husband replies “You can’t handle the move” and takes the paper anyway and the cop leaves.
This section shows two men appealing to one another’s manhood while exchanging information regarding the status quo of women within the house. The inclusion of the wife using the last resort of kissing the neighbor to avoid getting caught adds to the discomfort of the scene because not only was the exchange present in front of the wife, but the white man in the conversation was changed by the information while the black man was under the impression he was doing a favor for a friend.

The episode until this point shows the subconscious sense of entitlement of the white man, the male hypocrisy that tends to come with that, the absorption of blame by the wife, the tolerance of the wife dealing with emotional male projection, the tactful understanding and utilization of male ignorance, the unawareness of meat being a dead body, and the seemingly oddly timed mention of coffee in the context of several different forms of oppressive symbolism regarding historical and present hierarchical power dynamics.

I am curious to hear other people’s thoughts on this show and some of the symbolism I did not catch and if my perceived symbolism wasn’t congruent with yours. After these scenes I was ready to turn off the show, but skipped ahead a few minutes to see if it was like this throughout. After storing the dead body in the tub upstairs, a deputy sheriff played by an African-American woman is invited into the house to discuss Dan’s disappearance in the kitchen at the dinner table. I don’t know the dialogue of this scene, but the show seems to target middle class or upper-middle class white women and the setting of this scene reminds me of the cultural tension between white women and women of color discussed in “Eating the Other”.

Internship – This week at Fertile Ground was spent preparing the garden space. I helped Gail removed metal fencing from a garden bed facing the west on the south side of the property. Afterwards I weeded the entire bed and then got to take off my shoes and hop into the garden bed to comb through feet of soft soil for morning glory vines. I know there will be morning glories coming up in that bed, but I removed several incredibly long vines. After weeding and sifting through the soil I put the fencing back against the wall of the EcoHouse and at the back of the garden bed. At this point I tied down the fencing and showed the other interns how to trellace plants with the proper knot and what to look out for when tying up the plants. Once that was done, I traded places with Karen and let her rake this garden bed while I shoveled awful muddy dirt while the other interns boxed in a garden bed with 2 x 4s.