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Child Not Childs

It might surprise blog readers to learn that I have long been a fan of Julia Child. I have never made a meal from one of her recipes but I have read seemingly all of her biographies and some of her published letters. I have always found her remarkable journey from working in the OSS during WWII to assembling the nearly insurmountable volume of recipes for her book to pan-flipping her way into the American culture such a great story. I also liked the way that she almost completely disregarded the celebrity aspect of her life, always answering questions about herself, her recipes or work in a matter of fact fashion. I saw some late in life "living history" program not long ago with J Child and the interviewer asked her, as an introduction, to talk about her early life. She gave a momentary rolled eye expression and said, simply, "I am Julia Child" and inferred, let's get on with this, sonny.

So I saw the movie (this is four films I have seen in their entirety in two weeks for those of you keeping count). I liked it, but could have done with exactly zero of the modern day Julia who cooks from Julia's cookbook part. The modern day story was so empty, and seemingly contrived even if it wasn't contrived. The case could certainly be made, with substantial evidence from this film, about the vacuousness of modern life versus a life in post-war France. Would Julia Child have Twitter'd? I doubt it.

Today, writing--poorly--about someone else is one way, seemingly, to become famous in America. I guess that's not news though is it, or new.

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