I'm riding the last wave of a very long semester. If I were a waitress and if I worked in a pie diner, I'd be baking a pie out of mincemeat and cheddar cheese, topped with sour cream, and I'd call it "I-don't-wanna-grade-no-more-papers pie."
Actually, the end of the semester proper went very well. For the final paper, my classes are required to watch one of three films that I have selected and write a movie review on the film that they have chosen. Amongst their choices was Adrienne Shelley's Waitress, an absolute favorite of mine. Watching it and discussing makes me feel like I'm in our very small kitchen with the oven on high.
The most satisfying part of discussing that movie is asking them the question, "Why pie?" They look at me confused, "Why not?" Then, I go on, "Why doesn't Jenna bowl? Or collect quarters? Or blog? Why does she bake?" I exaggerate often, to drive home a point. Then, we talk about domesticity, at how Jenna is confined in so many ways - by her marriage in particular, by the baby she doesn't really want. And we discuss how baking - a premier domestic art - should also be a method of confinement but how she makes it subversive, relegating it to an art rather than a mundane domestic chore. They like that interpretation. And they like the New York Times movie review that we read which deems Waitress "a feminist fairytale" (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/10/04/1191091279319.html). You can tell that some of them want to live in a feminist fairytale. I know I do.
Turn up the oven.
Keep sweeping, Martha
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