Tue,
05/24/2022 – 09:35am | By: David Tisdale
USM Media and Leisure Arts (MEA) college students within the Faculty of Communication spent
the final 12 months in a collaboration with college students at Thammasat College in Bangkok,
Thailand, for his or her manufacturing of the brief movie “The Meals That Binds: Constructing Cultural
Relationships Throughout the Desk” specializing in how the preparation and delight of meals
could be the widespread denominators that bridges a number of variations between individuals round
the world.
Variations in language, tradition, political and non secular beliefs could current boundaries
to establishing relationships between, say, a Hattiesburg resident and a citizen of
Bangkok, Thailand.
However a brief documentary produced by college students in The College of Southern Mississippi
(USM) Faculty of Communications’ Media and Leisure Arts (MEA) program, in collaboration
with counterparts at a college in Thailand, intends to indicate its audiences that
regardless of the variations amongst individuals world wide, coming collectively over a scrumptious
meal can bridge these chasms.
The “Breaking Bread Movie Mission,” a collaboration between Breakthrough Now Media
and The Innovation Station on the U.S. Division of State, brings movie and media
creators from worldwide and U.S. Gulf Coast areas to work on new short-form
content material impressed by their shared experiences and concepts. By this collaborative,
creators from 5 U.S. states and 5 international locations are paired and tasked with conceptualizing
and creating a brief movie or different challenge addressing the intersection between meals
insecurity, traditions, and innovation. This system culminates in a showcase of the
collaborative initiatives.
Mississippi/USM is partnered with Thammasat College in Bangkok, Thailand, for his or her
manufacturing “The Meals That Binds: Constructing Cultural Relationships Throughout the Desk”
to be screened in July on the Capital Screening Collection in Washington, D.C., on the
United Nations, and at consulates and companion stakeholders within the U.S. and within the
companion Asian nation’s college and consulates. It should even be screened on the
Catalyst Pageant in Duluth, Minnesota in September.
Representatives of Breaking Bread related with Dr. Mary Lou Sheffer, professor in
the USM Faculty of Communication and senior college member in its MEA program, about
participation from her college students for the challenge. They embody Zack Eddy of Petal,
Mississippi; Mia Slone of Alexandria, Virginia; Eli Goff of Gautier, Mississippi;
and Alisia Powell of Picayune, Mississippi.
With advisement from Dr. Sheffer and her MEA college colleague Jared Hollingsworth,
these college students centered their analysis on the communal side of meals, analyzing the
dynamics of preparation and interplay at mealtime by the enter of restauranters,
cooks and different culinary specialists, in addition to ‘foodies’ from throughout the Magnolia State
who love sharing meals with household, pals, and even strangers.
Eddy famous how each cultures use most of the similar staple meals – rice, fish, and a
number of greens, as examples – in producing time-honored recipes, utilizing distinct
forms of seasoning and preparation kinds, within the farm-to-kitchen-to-table course of
distinctive to the communities profiled within the documentary.
“What we need to present with this movie is the commonality between individuals, revealed by
the enjoyment of making ready and consuming scrumptious meals, regardless of the place they’re ready
or with whom they’re shared with,” he mentioned.
Goff mentioned he didn’t anticipate the challenge to be as expansive as he initially assumed.
“I’m extra of an ‘eat-to-live’ form of individual versus the ‘live-to-eat’ individuals
who’re enthusiastic about meals in methods I couldn’t perceive,” he continued. “It wasn’t
till we began actually listening to different individuals’s views on meals tradition –
in Mississippi in addition to different locations on the planet – that I spotted meals performs a
vital function in not solely individuals’s private lives, however in constructing group as
nicely. Actually, it’s made me perceive my family extra, as I feel again to all
the occasions my household would come collectively and bond over cooking.”
He mentioned this idea was cemented in his thoughts because the crew reached out to native cooks
and restaurant house owners and noticed how excited they have been to inform them about what they cook dinner
and why it issues to them.
“Cooking is just not solely an exercise to bond over, however it’s the foundation for constructing relationships
in Mississippi in addition to Thailand,” Goff continued. “All of us need to eat. Why not
do it collectively?”
Slone concurred. “Whenever you sit down on the desk for a meal, you come to see that
you’re not as totally different from individuals from different cultures, different locations, as you assume,”
she mentioned. “It exhibits we’re extra alike than not.
“You set some good meals in entrance of me on the desk with different individuals, and I could be
pals with anybody.”
For Powell, the challenge underscored for her what she already understood about how
true this dynamic is in her native South. “Being ‘Southern’ means shut bonds, and
after we get collectively for a meal, it doesn’t matter about race, ethnicity, gender,
or politics, as a result of we’re all household in the long run.”
Teamwork and endurance have been useful traits exercised by the crew in working with
one other group of scholars at one other college midway world wide, solely a pair
of whom can converse English. “It’s been a studying expertise for all of us,” Dr. Sheffer
additional famous.
Dr. Edgar Simpson, director of the USM Faculty of Communication, praised Dr. Sheffer
for facilitating a challenge for her college students with such prominence in profile and attain.
“Our college are at all times in search of alternatives to supply our college students with new and
distinctive alternatives,” Dr. Simpson continued. “This challenge is an instance of how know-how,
similar to sound and video, transcends conventional boundaries.”
Goff hopes when audiences see the crew’s documentary, they arrive to grasp meals
is “a love language spanning tradition.”
“Despite the fact that Mississippi and Thailand are worlds away from one another, and regardless of
how totally different individuals appear across the globe, everybody comes collectively once they’re consuming,”
he mentioned.
For details about the USM Faculty of Communication, go to https://www.usm.edu/communication/index.php.
