Seven Notes On Ratatouille by Charles Tonderai Mudede

As reprinted from a journal called Arcade (“Architecture and Design in the Northwest”), a copy of which I happened upon yesterday:

The entire meaning of the struggle between humans and rats is this: we produce and store food, and they, the rats, want to eat the food we produce and store.

1. The Rat and Human Problem
Remove the food, and you end the struggle. As the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze pointed out in his book, What Is Philosophy, life no matter what form it takes, is determined by a problem: the bird form has the problem of worms the giraffe from has the problem of leaves, the bee has the problem of flowers, the cow has the problem of grass. These are their problems. Because the rat’s problem happens to be our food, rats themselves present us with a problem. There is no other reason why rats live in our cities, race onto our ships, raid our garbage cans and, worst of all, invade our homes—they are working on their problem, which is our food.

2. A Rat in the Kitchen
The lyrics of a popular song by the British reggae band UB40:

There’s a rat in me kitchen/what am I gonna do?
There’s a rat in me kitchen/what am I gonna do?
I’m gonna fix that rat that/what I’m gonna do…
I’m gonna fix that rat
You invade my space
Make me feel disgraced
And you just don’t give a damn
If I had my way…
I’d like to see you hang…

3. Clean God
For humans, cleanliness is next to Godliness, and the furthest thing from cleanliness, as far as we are concerned, is a rat. Therefore, a rat is the furthest thing from what humans aspire to be: God.

4. The Greatness of Ratatouille
We know that rats have nothing else on their mind than getting at our food. We know they are filthy little creatures. If we see a dead squirrel, we first feel consternation and then concern; a dead bird, even a raven, makes us sad. But a dead rat makes us happy. The only kind of rat we like to see is a dead one. The worst kind of rat we can ever see is one in our kitchen. A rat in the kitchen represents, in the immemorial struggle between humans and rats, the frontline—the final area of combat. This is why Ratatouille is such a great movie. It is nothing less than bold to make a comedy about a rat in a kitchen, a rat in the space that defines the long war between the natural enemies.

5. The Story of Ratatouille
The story is about a tribe of rats that is forced to flee a country home and settle in the city of Paris. One rat in this tribe, Remy, has a strange passion, a dangerous passion, a mad passion, a passion for fine foods. He not only likes to eat good cheeses, rare mushrooms, spices from islands in the Indian Ocean, he also loves to cook. And, to make matters more bizarre, he has a knack for cooking. Remy the rat has a gift for preparing human foods. He doesn’t want to steal food from a kitchen; he wants to cook and serve it to humans. Impossible! Yet the film works. It not only works, it also makes us laugh like there’s no tomorrow. A rat that wants to cook fine foods! Because there is nothing more ridiculous than that idea, that image (a rat stirring a stew), there is nothing more hilarious than Ratatouille.

6. Remy The Great Self-hater
Because Remy the rat loves humans, loves their religion of cleanliness, their sensitivity to beauty, their ability to prepare exquisite dishes—because he loves the things that humans most love about themselves, he hates what he is, a rat. And because he hates rates, he hates himself. What he wants to be is what hates him the most: a human being. And a rat that loves humans (the lover’s of God’s cleanliness) is a rat that hates itself in the most radical way. This is the movie’s dark conclusion: Remy is only lovable because he does not love himself.

7. Passing a building near the corner of Commercial Drive and Main in Vancouver, BC
My lover: See across the street. Two good restaurants right next to each other.
Me: But look what is above them?
My lover: Yes, apartments.
Me: I would hate to live in those apartments.
My lover: Why?
Me: Rats! The place has to be infested with rats. All of the food in storage, in the garbage in the back. The rats can’t help it. They must get inside, get to the food.