Escape Characters

Anyone can cook

"Ratatouille" is probably my favorite movie that I didn't really like all that much. When I weigh it against the rest of the Pixar films, it always seems to fall short. The story is probably the least cogent, and probably has some of the most questionable messages in it. It tells us that ineptitude, nepotism, and kindness towards vermin will get you far in the world. I saw another film, "Willard," which didn't turn out as well. At least the end of "Willard" was fair and just, considering the protagonist was controlling rats to kill people.

Yeah, fine, the real story is about Remy the "little chef" and his struggle against cultural and familial expectations. And while I question the message put forth by the Linguini character, the story still gets points for being non-standard, and manages to pull off some challenging story elements (Remy frequently hallucinates about having conversations with his dead chef idol, and yet still remains a reliable narrator).

The reason why I still like the film is the conclusion, where the villain-y food critic finally challenges Linguini, and in turn, Remy, to impress him with a dish of Remy's own choosing. After much flourish and questionable health practices, Remy makes the critic a ratatouille dish, which, in an amazing flashback scene, brings the critic back to his childhood: being nursed by his mother over a scratched knee, and his mother baking him his favorite dish. What follows is probably the most honest part of the film, where the restaurant is shut down because it is infested with rats, and the critic writes a glowing review and treatise on art, criticism, and personal involvement and risk in standing by one's work.

When I saw the flashback scene for the first time in the theater, I was incredibly happy, probably indicated by the fact that I was cackling loudly during the entire thing. I was happy because someone had dreamed the way I dream, remembered the way I remembered, depicted it in film, and did so without saying a word. The camera-work, the timing, the music, everything is perfect, so much so that any time this movie is on TV (when I had TV) or on a demo stand at the store, I wait around to watch this part.

At this point in writing this, I want to tell you that in this draft I am writing backwards. What I really wanted to write about was the adolescence of the computer programming profession, and its constant search for trying to define itself analagously to other professions (and failing). At the very end, I said, "Hey. This sort of reminds me of Ratatouille," and then realized that writing it from this perspective (and not that of recounting paragraphs of conversations with coworkers and past computer science professors) was much more approachable. See? I'm trying to be a better writer by making this readable. Cormac McCarthy, why is this so hard for you?

Anyhow. The concept the film brings up by saying how personally involved chefs are with their cooking struck me as interesting, for the fact that computer programmers are exactly the same way. While we aren't creating art, or delicious meals, our focus and the effort we put into our projects are immense, with every decision carefully considered, every keystroke filled with artistry and design and concern.

The analogy applies pretty well:

I could stretch for a few more, but you get the idea. Failure, to a chef and to a programmer, is anything less than perfection. And though we will never have an "Iron Programmer" reality TV show, I'll argue that the drama is still there (and if I ever watched reality TV, that would be what I would watch without fail, without shame).

To further prove that I should give "Ratatouille" some slack, there's the idea chanted throughout the film that "anyone can cook." There's a weird moment at the end of the critic's review that says, basically, "not everyone can cook, but, *anyone* could be a good cook," stressing that however unlikely, talent in something can come from anywhere, but not to expect it everywhere.

This is an important and subtle distinction from when you're told throughout your childhood, "You can be anything you want to be, if you put your mind to it." I respect the realism in that statement, even if it is in effect crushing children's dreams everywhere. Sure, it isn't the grave "Everyone you know will die before you" message from "Up," but it still has necessary gravity. It says to celebrate and develop your talents, if you have the luck to discover them, and be willing to discover new ones without looming fear of dashing your hopes upon the rocks of grim reality.

I don't know how I feel the "anyone can cook" philosophy applies to programming. I'm of the opinion that anyone can program, if they really wanted to, but this is probably more just me wishing more people I knew were programmers than whether I felt that everyone could program. I know that vanishing percentages of the population choose to program for a living, the majority either hiring other programmers or only doing the bare minimum for which the job requires. I know that expertise in certain technologies puts you in an extreme minority among programmers (for example, lots of people can do web pages, very few people can write code in machine assembly). I'm probably in an extreme minority for the types of things I do, given all of the obscure and arcane technologies I've had to deal with. Which means that among programmers, I don't have a lot of people I can relate to.

This, I guess, is where the analogy between the chef and the programmer seems to fall apart. No matter how great or how specialized a chef may be, he never loses the ability to relate to people, either inside his profession or out of it. There is always an element to what he does that is inherently understood: that people love food, and moreso, love good food. It is why he cooks, and how people relate to the chef. There is no such understanding of programmers. Our toil is a thing so foreign to human thought that it defies understanding or explanation. That isn't to say that what we do is impossible to understand, just that for how foreign it seems to people on the outside, programming inspires fear and frustration, both of the action and those performing the action.

So yes, according to principals set forth in a Disney film about a foody rat, I'm part of an extremely small percentage of the population that does what I do, and thus, feel that as time goes on I have less in common with other people. Silly as it sounds, it's what I feel is true. My job is so ingrained in my lifestyle that it's hard to extricate myself at 5pm. Furthermore, as I'm getting older, the place for the geeky computer-savvy friend will become less needed in people's lives as they make room for houses, mortgages, girlfriends, boyfriends, marriage, etc., the relationships relegated to occasions for computer repair and upgrade.

I had a friend a few months back tell me, "Not everyone is like you, Josh." It's an obvious statement: sure, I'm a distinct individual among my peer group. What was devastating in that statement were the implications: that I had to be reminded of this fact, that it had some point been forgotten in my life, that I'd let myself think I was enough like others that they would enjoy what I would enjoy (and I was wrong). Were they the only person who felt that way? Their statement was in response to something silly, if I remember: me offering them cookies, or something. As you can see, it kind of set me in a strange direction of thought. Was I being ignorant or disrespectful of other people's interests and likes and dislikes on a frequent basis? Has my carefully crafted system of protocols for dealing with people gone flying off the rails? Was I offering cookies wantonly, nay, *willy-nilly*, to those that had no interest in cookies to begin with?

And now you can see how quickly my tenuous grasp on understanding relationships and people can fall apart. I don't understand people. They frustrate me. They make me anxious. In the same way that people keep a healthy distance from programming, I keep a distance away from people. Maybe that's why I don't like "Ratatouille" as much as I should: it tells us that being good at something, having a passion for something, makes you an outcast, and being bad at something means everyone loves you, and the only way to change that is a series of unlikely events. I guess the tune that plays on my insecurities isn't one I care to listen to.