Blog Entry #5

Dr. McNichols, during her guest lecture on Like Water for Chocolate, discusses the  history of Mexico and Spain as it relates to traditions depicted in the book. During the film, two characters fall in love with each other, but their love creates a conflict between their families. Dr. McNichols helped explain where these traditions came from, and why they played such an important role in the story.  

This movie Like Water for Chocolate by Alfonso Arau is set in a Mexico Village, where two young characters fall in love. Unfortunately, their family traditions are blocking their love. Tita is the main character who is a young woman that has a unique talent for cooking. Pedro is a young man who has wealth and falls in love with Tita, the youngest daughter in the family. One day Pedro visits Tita’s house to speak to her mother about marrying Tita. The mother offers  Pedro the older sister to marry because Tita is the youngest daughter and by tradition she needs to stay home to work as a caretaker. The mother does not want her daughter to break the tradition. 

 During her presentation on Like Water for Chocolate, Dr. McNicholas talks about Mexican food, culture and traditions. She presented the history of Mexico and Spain related to food and the film. She talked about the past experiences of women and how their choices in life were limited to home tasks like cooking. Dr. McNichols talked about the history of women in society and how we didn’t realize that women could be good at things like writing novels, going to school and doing other jobs. They were able to cook and to write food recipes in the house. 

During WWII, everything changed because men went to war and many women took over their jobs. Dr. McNichols also discussed the main points of the film: culture, gender, and class. In particular, she discussed colonial heritage, cultural change, and life on the border. Political climate at that time helped shape the culture and the role of gender, which influenced what was cooked. At the end of her slides, she had a summary of magical realism: allowing the narrative to expose a crack and weakness in reality. This is shown through her emotions being expressed in her cooking. During this story, we are able to see the weaknesses of these traditions because they kept Pedro and Tita away from love.