Menu (2022) | Notes

“All except Margot have been carefully chosen, and all are about to become players in Slowik’s elaborate opera of humiliation, self-loathing and revenge.” (The NYT)

Directed by Mark Mylod —the lead director of Succession with 13 episodes. It’s a film about nerds and cults. The focus is food; the whole eating experience. Its genre, horror/thriller/comedy, is something that I don’t know much about. I watched this film thanks to the joy of watching Glass Onion and joking about it together with a friend. Glass Onion was an action/thriller/comedy as I understand. I thought of watching another thriller in a closed space. I saw Mark Kermode also drew a parallel between the two films.

The service class resentment is nice to see in a popular movie but it wasn’t as intricately described in the film compared to how it depicts the niche interest in food, for the super-rich. The temple, Hawthorn; and the executor, Chef Slowik. I saw a YouTube video-essayist reading the cult as an allegory of the influencer culture, pretty contemporary.

The characters are varied in terms of their relationship with this unique dinner and food. There are top-tier restaurant critics, tech bros who really like to have a bread, a food-nerd and an apostle of Slowik, his coincidental date, an uninterested movie star, and another wealthy couple who just attends the dinner as if it’s regular fine dine. The exquisite dinner is presented as an activity for the ultra-rich and it costs $1250 per person. Considering the crew, the organization, the number of the customers (12)… Not sure whether the “$1250 per person” is a high profit margin business or not, considering the accommodation costs of the whole crew, especially if they are also well-paid cooks.

What went well: the whole orchestration of the kitchen crew and their commitment to Slowik, the suicide of the sous-chef, initial introduction of the island, the daily life of the crew, inter-titles about the dishes, oh my dayum! cheeseburger scene, “more than you deserve, less than your desire” punchline…

I think the cynical people who also like Jiro: Dreams of Sushi would enjoy it. The producers probably knew and planned it from the beginning.

Some Letterboxd favourites:

“never thought i would leave a film being surprised that cannibalism wasn’t involved”, sophie

“even service workers get their own midsommar”, The Jay of Water

“She beat the menu monster by saying can I haz cheeseburger”, Megan Bitchell

“The Menu is the only film bold enough to ask the question: what if Ratatouille was directed by Ari Aster but with a half-baked execution and was neither as fun nor sharp as it thought it was?”, Hungkat

“he seemed a lot happier running that hotel, maybe should have stuck with that”, Benjamin Rosser

500 Film Directors in a Graph I (ChatGPT)

I drew a connected graph of 500 film directors based on the replies of ChatGPT. In every prompt, I asked the chatbot to recommend me five similar film directors for a certain name. I started with some well known directors but the graph got connected after some prompts. I imported the results to a graph application called Graph Commons for visualization. I was aiming to inject more data, but the free subscription of Graph Commons only accepts 500 nodes. It’s also nice, at least gave me a closure. I’ll take a look at the results, hopefully in the coming days. If you want to visit the graph and play with it, here’s the link.

Method

In all my prompts, I asked ChatGPT to give me 5 film directors similar to the one I give with the following prompt:

Forget everything we talked about. List top 5 film directors similar to Lav Diaz. Don’t add explanations.

The first sentence was just an attempt to avoid drawing circles based on the earlier responses but I found out that it probably doesn’t have any actual impact. I gathered the responses in a Google Sheet and imported back to Graph Commons.

I selected the film director names randomly but I tried to widen the graph to make it more diverse. My approach was not a systematic one but I tried to give names that are located on the child nodes to start something new or locate these names better in the graph. A practical example: I didn’t query all the Hollywood action movie directors to avoid discovering the outskirts of this genre. Instead, I focused on Japanese or Serbian directors since I’m also more interested in them, especially for discovering new films. But this leads me to the…

Limitations

Disclaimer: please take this graph as a joke or as a delirium since none of the nodes or the edges have any kind of justification. It’s just a dream of an AI chatbot that I intervened with my dreams.

That said, here are some limitations on top of my head:

  • There is no clear ending point for this graph. I just stopped at 500 since the tool I use didn’t let me to add more.
  • I started from and continued at every step with my unjustified subjective prompts. I asked the names that I know or want to learn. I attempted at positive discrimination at times. At any point, if someone else asks a different question, then the graph would be pretty different. (Just curious, how different would it have been?). Some of the missing directors include John Waters, Shōhei Imamura, Věra Chytilová, and Giuseppe Tornatore.
  • As you might have heard, ChatGPT is also a hallucinative liar. With its great rhetorical baggage, it keeps telling lies. When it doesn’t have enough info about a certain director, it just gives the name I prompted in the results. It also returns some author, actor or non-existent names time to time. I tried to fix these when I noticed, but I’m sure some of them leaked to the final graph. One example that I know of is Isabelle Huppert who is an actress, but I couldn’t remove her from the graph. Because. She’s Isabelle Huppert.
  • At first, I did some experiments like giving the same prompt for a certain director multiple times. The results share some commonalities, but it also feels pretty random. Many times, some unrelated name popped up. That’s why I tried to give a prompt for each name only once and tried not to repeat. So these are the initial thoughts of the bot. Andrej Karpathy’s walkthrough on building a proof-of-concept GPT helped me a lot to understand the probabilistic responses of the ChatGPT outputs.
  • There’s also a limitation of the time period. The data it was trained ends at 2021. For the record, the one I used was “ChatGPT Dec 15 Version” (2022). I also thought that the near past data (last 5 years) is not as good as the earlier times. But how would I know?
  • ChatGPT have a lot of biases based on the input it processed. It’s clear that it reflects those. The non-American or non-European directors have hard time to connect to the main spheres. There are only a couple of junctions, the nation-based similarity dominates the graph. Same applies to women directors. ChatGPT just match women with women most of the time.

Motivation

Why did I do this stupid thing? I’ve been thinking about it while I was writing prompts or copying the replies to a spreadsheet. For a few days, I was fully focused on this but I was also aware that it means nothing. I still don’t know, but I wanted to do it, enjoyed it, and also learned about many directors and genres I didn’t know before. I feel that we’ll talk about the subconscious of AI in the short term. Just like we discover artists, authors etc. some people will be interested in AI-generated content or LLM Cultural Studies, that’s my intuition for now.

Top 5

Based on the centrality of the nodes, the ones who have the most connections are as follows:

  1. Martin Scorsese | 27
  2. Jean-Luc Godard | 25
  3. Wong Kar-wai | 19
  4. Andrei Tarkovsky, Federico Fellini, Alain Resnais | 17
  5. Agnès Varda | 15

Agnès Varda and Wong Kar-wai are nice surprises.

Tight Junctions

This one felt like a bug at first but again maybe there’s some truth to it. Some prompts got circular responses from ChatGPT where it was finding similarities between 3 to 5 names, always mentioning those when I asked a connection. Here are some closely related directors according to ChatGPT:

on chatting | the banshees of inisherin

The dialogue below is a touching one used as the central conflict in The Banshees of Inisherin. The film had good discoveries about what chatting means for different people. I like aimless chatting.

Colm: I was too harsh yesterday.

Pádraic: Yesterday, he says. I know well you was too harsh yesterday. And today.

C: I just, uh… I just have this tremendous sense of time slippin’ away on me, Padraic. And I think I need to spend the time I have left thinking and composing. Just trying not to listen to any more of the dull things that you have to say for yourself. But I’m sorry about it. I am, like.

P: Are you dying?

C: No, I’m not dying.

P: But then you’ve loads of time.

C: For chatting?

P: Aye.

C: For aimless chatting?

P: Not for aimless chatting. For good, normal chatting.

C: So, we’ll keep aimlessly chatting and me life’ll keep dwindling. And in 12 years, I’ll die with nothin’ to show for it bar the chats I’ve had with a limited man, is that it?

P: I said, “Not aimless chatting.” I said, “Good, normal chatting.”

C: The other night, two hours you spent talking to me about the things you found in your little donkey’s shite that day. Two hours, Padraic. I timed it.

P: Well, it wasn’t me little donkey’s shite, was it? It was me pony’s shite, which shows how much you were listenin’.

C: None of it helps me, do you understand? None of it helps me.

P: We’ll just chat about somethin’ else then.

book lists by chatgpt I

Cultural Studies
Book Title Author Year Description
The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture Theodor W. Adorno 1981 a collection of essays that offers a influential critique of mass culture and its effects on society.
The Uses of Literacy Richard Hoggart 1957 an influential analysis of the role of culture and communication in shaping society and personal identity.
Orientalism Edward Said 1978 an influential critique of the way that Western cultures have represented and appropriated the cultures of the East.
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Erving Goffman 1959 an influential analysis of the role of social performance and impression management in shaping personal identity and social interactions.
The Production of Space Henri Lefebvre 1974 an influential analysis of the way that space and spatial relationships shape society and culture.
Culture and Imperialism Edward Said 1993 an influential critique of the way that imperialism has shaped and been shaped by culture.
The Condition of Postmodernity David Harvey 1989 an influential analysis of the nature of postmodernity and its impact on society and culture.
The Visual Culture Reader edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff 1998 a collection of essays that explores the role of visual media and representation in shaping culture and identity.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs 1961 an influential critique of urban planning and the impact of the built environment on culture and community.
The Location of Culture Homi K. Bhabha 1994 an influential analysis of the role of culture in shaping identity and power relations.
Media Studies
Book Title Author Year Description
The Media Effect: How the News Influences Politics and Government David D. Perlmutter 2010 a comprehensive analysis of the role of the media in shaping political discourse and decision-making.
The Cultivation Theory: How the Media Affects Our Perception of Reality George Gerbner and Larry Gross 1976 an influential theory of the way that media consumption shapes individuals’ perceptions of the world around them.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Neil Postman 1985 an influential critique of the impact of entertainment values on public discourse and the erosion of serious intellectual content.
The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas Robert W. McChesney 2008 a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between media and power, and the ways in which media industries are shaped by economic and political forces.
The Media Monopoly Ben H. Bagdikian 1983 an influential critique of the concentration of media ownership and the impact on the diversity of viewpoints and information available to the public.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky 1988 an influential analysis of the way that media serve as a propaganda system for the powerful and the ways in which media content is shaped by corporate and political interests.
The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion, Our Social Skin Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann 1984 an influential theory of the way that individuals’ perceptions of social norms and expectations shape their willingness to express their opinions publicly.
The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age Astra Taylor 2014 an influential critique of the concentration of power in the tech industry and the impact on culture and democracy.
Media, Culture, and Society: An Introduction David Gauntlett 2011 a comprehensive introduction to media studies, covering a wide range of topics including media representation, media effects, and the political economy of media.
The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society David Garland 2001 an influential analysis of the role of media and other cultural practices in shaping society’s understanding of crime and justice.
Film Theory
Book Title Author Year Description
Film Art: An Introduction David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson 1979 a classic introduction to film theory and analysis, covering a wide range of topics and offering a detailed analysis of the formal elements of film.
Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark 1993 an influential analysis of the representation of masculinities in Hollywood cinema and the cultural significance of these representations.
The Cinematic Apparatus Jean-Louis Baudry 1970 an influential theory of the way that cinema shapes our perception of reality and the ideological implications of this process.
The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception Michel Foucault 1963 an influential analysis of the way that film and other visual media have shaped our understanding of the body and medicine.
The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston 1981 a classic work on the history and techniques of animation, offering a detailed analysis of the art and craft of Disney animation in particular.
The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments edited by Marc Furstenau 2010 a collection of classic and contemporary essays on film theory, covering a wide range of topics and providing a comprehensive overview of the field.
The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory Patricia Pisters 2003 an influential analysis of the way that film and other visual media shape our understanding of reality and the nature of experience.
The Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies edited by Catherine Grant 2016 a collection of essays that explore the potential of the videographic essay as a form of film and media criticism and analysis.
Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema Christian Metz 1974 a classic work of film theory that offers a comprehensive analysis of the way that cinema communicates meaning through its formal elements.
Film, Form, and Culture Robert Phillip Kolker 2006 a comprehensive introduction to film theory and analysis, covering a wide range of topics and offering a detailed analysis of the formal elements of film.
Literary Criticism
Book Title Author Year Description
Literary Theory: An Introduction Terry Eagleton 1983 a classic introduction to literary theory, covering a wide range of approaches and offering a detailed analysis of the key concepts and ideas of each.
The Death of the Author Roland Barthes 1967 an influential critique of the concept of the author and the role of the reader in the interpretation of texts.
Structuralism and Semiotics Terence Hawkes 1977 a classic introduction to structuralism and semiotics, covering the key ideas and concepts of these approaches and their application to literature and other cultural forms.
The Practice of Everyday Life Michel de Certeau 1980 an influential analysis of the way that individuals appropriate and resist cultural forms and practices in their everyday lives.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor Thomas C. Foster 2003 an accessible introduction to literary analysis, covering a wide range of topics and offering practical tips for interpreting and understanding literature.
The Psychoanalytic Theory of Greek Tragedy C. Fred Alford 1989 an influential analysis of the way that psychoanalytic theory can be used to interpret classical literature and the psychological themes it explores.
The Ideology of the Aesthetic Terry Eagleton 1990 an influential critique of the idea of the aesthetic and the ways in which it has been used to obscure political and social issues.
Ideology
Book Title Author Year Description
Ideology: A Very Short Introduction Michael Freeden 2011 a concise introduction to the concept of ideology, covering its history, key ideas, and its role in shaping political thought and action.
The Ideology of the Aesthetic Terry Eagleton 1990 an influential critique of the idea of the aesthetic and the ways in which it has been used to obscure political and social issues.
Ideology and Utopia Karl Mannheim 1936 a classic work of ideology theory that explores the ways in which ideas and beliefs shape social and political action.
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Louis Althusser 1970 an influential theory of the way that ideology shapes social and political structures and the ways in which individuals are subject to it.
The Ideology of the Text Jonathan Culpeper 2000 an influential analysis of the way that language and text can be used to express and obscure ideology.
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution Bernard Bailyn 1967 an influential analysis of the way that ideology shaped the American Revolution and the formation of the United States.
The Ideological Animal: The Nature of Beliefs and the Beliefs in Nature David L. Hull 1998 an influential analysis of the relationship between ideology and scientific belief, and the ways in which ideology shapes scientific understanding.