Big Night: When food becomes a language of identity, economy, and cultural survival

Food is often used in international films as a decorative device, a visual representation designed to entice viewers to experience tactile and gustatory gratification. But a few films go beyond this aesthetic function and incorporate food as a narrative and cultural language.

One such film is Big Night, written and directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott. Released in 1996, the film has come to be recognised not just as a food drama but as a complex tale of immigration, economic survival and cultural survival.

It follows two Italian-American brothers, Primo and Secondo (Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci), who own an unprofitable restaurant called 'Paradise' in 1950s New Jersey. The brothers' debate is structural. Primo, their chef, prioritises traditional Italian cuisine. Secondo, the businessman, prioritises meeting American tastes. This reflects an economic and cultural challenge faced by immigrants: balancing tradition with market demands.

The film's greatest innovation is the centrality of food as a 'language.'

This food is not simply for eating; it is a form of language that denotes memory, tradition, and resistance.

Primo's commitment to traditional methods of preparation is not mere culinary traditionalism, but a claim of cultural integrity. His refusal to serve altered food is a response to commodity capitalism, an issue increasingly pertinent in the global food industry.

In contrast, Secondo epitomises transformation. His style is a response to economic realities, where cultural products must be adapted to survive the market.

This tension is not limited to the restaurant industry but reflects broader structural issues in migrant-based economies, where cultural activities are often shaped by consumer demand and market forces.

The film's driving narrative plot point, the 'big night' dinner, is a culmination and a metaphor.

The fancy dinner cooked for a celebrity musician serves as a display of food work as a cultural practice. The main course, a timpano, is assembled in layers that mimic the complexity of immigrant experiences. It is time, labour, heritage, and community embodied in a piece of meat.

The dinner sequence demonstrates how food is social.

In the dining room, food offers a platform for communication, marginalises status inequality and allows for temporary hierarchical collapse.

Economically, the restaurant temporarily achieves the goals of many small enterprises: recognition, credibility, and market success. But the hoped-for result doesn't eventuate. The customer fails to turn up, thereby sabotaging the business goal.

This ending is pivotal to the film. It problematises the idea that authenticity is necessary for economic success. Rather, as the film points out, cultural capital is sometimes not convertible to financial capital.

This is representative of today's food economy, where ethnic food is often recast in a commercial context that favours scale and volume.

The movie ends with recalibration. An omelette is cooked quietly for two brothers in the closing scene. This ending is different to the grand dinner scene. It moves from a commercialised practice to a subsistence practice. Food reverts to its most essential economic and social use: subsistence and companionship.

Big Night provides an interesting opportunity to examine the socio-economic processes of food commodification.

In contemporary food systems, especially in a globalised world, traditional foods are often reimagined for commercial markets.

This may involve simplification, homogenisation and branding, which can be explored in terms of what is gained and what is lost.

The film shed light on the labour dimension of food systems. Food production is depicted as exhausting, stressful and precarious. This is in contrast to recent representations of food as lifestyle media or an entertainment product. By emphasising labour, the film brings invisible labour in the culinary industries into view.

Themes of food and culture are especially significant for emerging food economies like Bangladesh. Urgent urbanisation, dietary transformations, and the growth of processed foods markets are all changing established food cultures.

As seen in the film, cultures are increasingly caught between traditional foodways and market-driven consumption. What matters is what we eat, but also how we negotiate food identities in the face of economic forces.

In all, Big Night is a success because it places food on multiple registers, as something that expresses identity, economic need, cultural compromise and community.

It does not engage in binary accounts of success and failure, but emphasises the dynamic relationship between continuity and change.

The film is still relevant nearly 30 years after its release. It prefigures many of the concerns in recent food economics and cultural analyses: authenticating images of the past, preserving the small business, and negotiating identity in a global market.

jarinrafa20@gmai.com