The Camera Eats First
I like to consider myself a movie enthusiast. I love sitting down with a nice bowl of popcorn with a film accompanying my favored snack. I must also add that my friends are also avid movie enthusiasts. A friend of mine told me about a movie called The Menu featuring Anya Taylor-Joy that came out in 2022. Of course I watched it when it first came out, but truth be told I didn’t know what exactly to make of it. It was very grotesque and left me feeling profoundly uncomfortable. Nonetheless, it just so happened to show up on my recommended section (for what reason I don’t know) and so I watched it again.
It still left me feeling unsettled and disturbed, which of course is in part due to the dark, fatalistic tones, but in another part, it was what was lurking beneath all of that, which is worth unpacking. On the surface it does appear to be a scathing satire directed at wealth, exclusivity, and such encapsulating cultures. However, the more I sat with it, a much different image began to take shape. I propose that this is also a cutting reflection on media culture, and its effects on how we experience the world.
The most prevalent representation of this would have to be Tyler, Margot’s boyfriend. He is obsessed with the food. Not in the classical sense of enjoyment, but in the way he intensely studies it, documents it, and performs his knowledge of it. The enjoyment is purely external, rather than internal. Even when the waitress specifically asks customers not to take pictures of the food, Tyler does anyway, constantly. This is not to remember the experience, but to prove that he was there, to prove that he belongs in this type of setting. If this feels familiar “the camera eats first”, it should. Within media culture, we are trained to recognize what is “good” and “post worthy”, and we often try to cheat algorithms for one reason or another. The question is not “Am I actually enjoying what I’m doing?” but “Will people interact with this?”. Tyler, at least in this reading, is a clear representative of this shift.
Hawthorne appears as a forced product of this system. Notice it is on an island, isolated, highly curated, specialized, and exclusive. In my opinion, this never allowed for authentic human interaction. Everyone there was playing some type of role. They all had something to prove. This is what makes Margot so unique. She doesn’t have a role to play, she doesn’t take pictures, and she definitely doesn’t try to understand anything about the food. She fundamentally disrupts this system.
I’d feel it’s too mild to say that she asked for a hamburger, but rather demanded it. This was not curated, intended for an audience, or overly intellectualized. It was authentic, and it was real. This brings me to one of the main points, at least in this interpretation of it. At some fundamental, like Margot craves that hamburger, we all crave authentic, unfiltered, genuine human interaction. The question is not whether this desire exists. It’s how many of us live in a way that demands it.
