Beef and Food Poisoning

The only time I got food poisoning was when I was solo-traveling for the first time in my early 30’s. It was supposed to be this grand adventure, something I had been told was going to be life-changing and empowering. I have been married for over a decade, and I have only ever traveled with my family, friends, or husband. Therefore, I imagined this trip to be a leap of independent feminism, or at least a step in that direction. I booked myself a 3 week expedition from our home in Finland to Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden before heading back to Finland. I found it to be exhausting. Everything was beautiful and amazing and terribly lonely.

When I landed in Munich, I stopped by the Birkenstock store to find delightfully affordable shoes, but it was pouring rain, and I still had a suitcase that was bursting at the seams. I regretfully didn’t buy anything but trudged my stuff to the hostel, still a few streets down. I split my travel accommodations between private flats and hostels as 3 weeks alone felt too isolating. Munich turned out to be one place I should have gotten a private flat because nobody wants food poisoning while sleeping on a top bunk in a room full of other dusty travellers. I wish I could say I got the food poisoning from a fancy restaurant, but no, it was a small hole in the wall Vietnamese place because all my freezing bones wanted was noodles in hot soup, my ultimate comfort food. The meal was good until it wasn’t. It hit me like a ton of bricks or should I say a boiling hot water balloon. Yes, it was terrible.

Watching “Beef” reminded me of this exact moment in my life. The new viral sensation on Netflix, studded with Asian-Americans, is both painful and cathartic, hopeless and brutally honest. First generation Asian-Americans are climbing up the ladder, from operating liquor stores and dry-cleaners to becoming doctors and lawyers, and now writers, directors and actors. Isn’t that the Tina Fey joke? “The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes." We are the so-called model minority. However, the relentless pursuit of stability, achievement, and growth have left us erudite but conscious of the gaping chasm between hope and reality. Like filling up on a buffet as a starving person, only to realise after that the food was rotten and the restaurant carpet disgusting, “Beef” looks back at the desperation driving so many immigrants to success and the trauma caused in the name of achievement. Success comes to those who work hard; you will get what you deserve. It is the American dream every immigrant kid hears on repeat until the sound starts to come from within like tinnitus, but the “get” is always monetary. For people with precarious citizenship status, limited or no access to benefits, no family to rely on, and language barriers, money is the only way to secure the most basic of human rights like food and shelter. However, the trauma that spurs rapid achievement is the main theme among several of the latest award-winning productions.

“Everything, Everywhere, All at Once”, the film that dominated the 2023 Oscar’s, explored the despondency of putting one’s hope in success as the protagonist struggled with a lifetime of mediocrity, the bitter disappointment of lost potential, meritocracy’s favourite word. Set in a multi-dimensional science-fiction action film, “Everything” challenged the notion that meritocracy was the blueprint for human happiness, that value and significance derived from winning. Similarly, but set in a completely different cultural context, “Banshees of Inisherin” told the story of a man who struggled with insignificance and mediocrity until it drove him to acts of madness, mutilation and isolation.

These stories question why we define our value by our success, and study the darkness that often accompanies success stories.

This new generation of storytellers are looking at the damage caused by a lifetime dedicated to pursuing getting what you deserve, working hard to succeed, climbing the ladder for more, believing in capitalism’s competitive premise. These stories explore what happens to people if they do not value Maslow’s non-monetised basic needs, such as love, encouragement, friendship, identity.

Asian immigrant kids often refer to these needs as weaknesses and white people stuff. White people softness or Asian strength is a common binary found throughout “Beef” as it reflects on the resilience required to survive as the poor and precarious. Yet, the show does not hold up resilience as a moral character virtue like a profound story of gumption and hard work. Rather, “Beef” looks at the complexity behind success, at the jagged, violent edge of resilience, while “Banshees” observes the psychological damage ambition can do, and “Everything” traces the loneliness of always wanting more. The characters are tough, realistic, damaged and twisted by resilience, struggling to maximise their potential, to be everything they think they can be. However, the bitter pill of meritocracy’s “you get what you deserve” ideology, is that even when it’s a success story, winning is never enough to sustain human beings. It leaves people desperate for more because despite capitalism’s reality forming hold, people are not machines of productivity and maximal efficiency. These stories became viral sensations because they are executed perfectly, but they also hit a nerve, the nerve that struggles against the constraint that says every moment of our lives are only worth our productivity, therefore strive. These stories are about people realising the futility of a life dedicated to pursuing success and achievement, with the characters evolving into humans who realise other humans are what give life meaning.

Beef was sold for millions to Netflix. We could say they have made it. Yet, it is marked by despair, an awareness that few will notice beyond the apparent glitter and red carpet of success to actually hear them shout into the black hole, that a life dedicated to the “get” will never be enough. Despite capitalism’s promise that meritocracy is life-changing and empowering, that winning is fulfilling, putting your hope in it will leave you wondering why you believed the hype in the first place.