- I googled this movie’s title to try and find a semi-permanent website to link to in lieu of IMDB but the first result was the very non-permanent Hot Docs website and the second was my own website. So… fail. (But I went with the Hot Docs website anyway.)
- I think it’s probably quite clear that I saw this movie because of the feminist rage I’ve been experiencing lately — “Lately?” said one of my coworkers when talking about this movie this morning — and on that front, I think my expectations were definitely a little off. I think I was looking for something a little more piercing and a little more deconstructionist of how we perform gender roles in the context of our daily lives. It’s much lighter than that (and very funny in places) and much more generalised. They could show this in Intro to Women’s Studies classes, no problem. I think it’s my own failure as viewer to have expected something a little more academic when clearly intense discourse and textbook theory is not necessarily part of the context of the every day lives of these women.
- The did a spectacular job of finding the douchiest men available to talk about how tragically difficult it is for women to be competent servers in high-end French restaurants. I especially loved the guy who was in charge of the main high-end restaurant who talked quite carefully about how one day there might be an opportunity for women to be servers, as if the entire caste of female servers in cheaper eateries simply did not exist. Not sure if they were trying to make him look sympathetic at the end by making him get all verklempt about never seeing his daughter on account of working late all the time, but it definitely had no effect on me whatsoever aside from making me think “Boo-fucking-hoo.”
- I think when I’m thinking of missed opportunities to delve a little deeper, it’s when we get comments like the one male server at the French restaurant who says how women can’t work late shifts because they have to get the kids to bed, keep the house clean, etc. and how men can just find someone else to do that, a.k.a. a woman or a wife. I think I just really would have liked to see those kinds of ideas explored a little bit more, things in the general area of privilege where men are able to do certain things explicitly because of the built in expectation of what a woman’s role is. I would have also liked to have seen more about the systemic wage gap in serving, where because men are working at the high-end restaurants they are getting proportionally bigger tips at the end of the night. (This is also why I get cheap hair cuts but leave larger tips.)
- It’s funny how often the word “tradition” is code for “institutionalized sexism that we don’t really care about fixing”. It also depressed me how much biological determinism there is in people’s approach to things; there were way too many “Well, women just do this kind of work better” comments.
- I want to be the person that gets to look at archival film clips for ironic insertion into modern movies. I can’t even imagine what these things would have been used for in their original contexts.
- The Japanese maid restaurant was completely creepy, holy crap. This is right up there with the vending machine panties. Is this a mainstream thing where fetishes are just right out there in the open, or is this more of an underground thing? I probably don’t actually want to know the answer.
- I’m sure I’m not the only one who was thinking of Mr. Pink’s inane diatribe on tipping waitresses in Reservoir Dogs the entire time.
Dish: Women, Waitressing & the Art of Service
Doesn’t ask a lot of tough questions, but enjoyable nonetheless.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Dish delves into Toronto’s diners, Montreal’s “sexy restos,” Paris’ haute eateries, and Tokyo’s fantasy “maid bars” in an insider’s look at gender, power, and the art of service.
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