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Filmy Sausage
An Almost Unbearably Long, Nonsequitur Introduction Toward Saying Something About Personal Identity in the Short Fiction of Evelina Galang, With Guest Appearances By Barbie and Sandra Cisneros
The frozen food section of the grocery store has always been to the brim with miraculous modern breakthroughs. On any given day a casual consumer might stumble upon a range of items, from effulgently wrapped bland burritos, to something new from Wolf Gang Puck—that frozen food gourmet. Imagine the shock when people finally learn that Puck is the peccant progeny of none other than Mama Celeste (Now That’s Italian) and that pudgy-pasta-papa, Chef Boy Ardy. Of course, you always suspected that Wolf’s German accent was a bit off?
The Black Saab from 'Filming Sausage':
Characters such as Elena in 'Filming Sausage' or Lisa in 'Contravida,' facing their own sense of themselves due to a judgmental antagonist drive Galang’s stories. The sexism Elena deals with in 'Filming Sausage' is emotionally draining. Galang depicts this especially well as the reader must endure the pre-Dick-table male chauvinism exhibited by, none other than, Dick. Elena’s identity or self-concept is battered about as she tries to determine how much of the abuse she can withstand. Dick is an angering representation of the reality of sexual harassment, who is easy to hate throughout the course of the story. Tita, however, Lisa’s confrontational aunt in 'Contravida' delves into an entirely different identity predicament. As part of her family, culture and religious upbringing, Tita comes to represent the older generation holding onto the strict notions Filipino Identity—the Catholic component being part the moral conflict. As a single, American, independent woman, Lisa deals with all the uncertainties of what set of rules she is going to follow. Ultimately though, as with most of Galang’s unsettled protagonists, leaning to accept her own path and personal identity resounds as the moral of the story.
Not only is she now a modern American teenager, the familiarity of her native language and customs is somehow as distant as the connection on might have with a National Geographic photo.
Taking a jog after breakfast:
Throw all of this into the stir-fry and consider the processed presence of the veggie-dog, how it, as a slice of American Ingenuity, contributes to the star spangled flavor of the dish. True, this imposter is far from authenticating an indigenous meal. Rather, it is part of our peculiar modern world of plastic, as well as genuine, personalities. Just as Sandra Cisneros must create her own Virgin Guadalupe in order to tell it apart from the constrictive, colonial version, Galang (or Elena in 'Filming Sausage') must remind herself that all of these Mattel manufactured and Barbie born illusions of womanhood are part of the commercial. Advertising images, which con consumers into buying what they really don’t need or even want once the product is removed from its captivating cocoon, are part of the alluring seduction of mass marketing. Mesmerizing marketing media make you matter. After all, who would you truly be without your Nikes, Kalvin Klien Klothes, and custom sports drink.
In exposing this, Galang artfully situates Elena on the frontier of cultural signifiers. The commercial film set is fertile ground for producing identity and sublimating desire. It’s Elena’s job to communicate the American Sausage and all of the wholesome, domestic properties it represents. The hype of the brand name blurs the true value of what’s being sold, just as racial stereotypes block the genuine nature of the individual. While this is obviously more complex than such a one to one comparison, perpetuating misconceptions or idealized molds breeds the ignorance, which in turn generates conflict. Clearly, Elena faces this at the conclusion of the story, thinking, 'You are an entire race of women…Fragmented and seemingly free, you have lost your edge. Your Name. The soul that you once recognized. You’ve lost the continuity of self(180).'
Elena lives within the crucible of cultures and notions of female identity. She can begin to enjoy her own search for herself. She can feel confident that it is her own search. She’s quick to assert when told Dick, 'has a thing for Asian women,' that she is not Asian(163). ‘Say, 'Well, Filipina American, really,' and explain you’ve heard 'you are all alike, that you are exotic, that there are men in this world who are into 'Asian' women.’ She has been on the American Disneyland ride of identity and grown tired of being a passenger. Sandra Cisneros says it well, '…every woman who matters to me, I have had to search for in the rubble of history. And I have found her.' Some times this discovery is far more difficult than figuring out what’s in your hotdog; although nowadays even that’s becoming more complicated.
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Over the past few years the range of iced-down discoveries have expanded to include varieties of faux-meat products—hotdogs, burgers, chicken patties, and even breakfast burritos (always a potentially fatal option). All are made from 'carefully seasoned' veggie viable sources. These substitutions are often quite convincing and tasty without the lipo-loading fats found in their look-a-like, carnal originals. Morningstar is one of the companies that produce these veggie variations. I’ve tried their burgers, hotdogs and, yes, their breakfast burrito, and with the predictable exception of the burrito their food is good.
The other night I walked over to the fridge and whipped up some dinner. I considered dicing up some Morningstar hotdog to include in my stir-fry, when I discovered my substitutes had coated themselves with a gray film. A slimy fungus had hidden that healthy brown-meat-tube-glow that says American Hunger Satisfaction from my startled glance. For a moment, I thought about Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and all the nefarious ways of stuffing a meat-sheath with the mucilage mass of ground up offal in fashioning the beloved sausage. This grotesque notion brought my typically discursive thoughts around to Evelina Galang’s 'Filming Sausage,' a worthwhile piece from her short story anthology Her Wild American Self.
Perhaps it was the meat grinder amalgam that triggered this new line of concern regarding diverse ingredients. I began to reflect on Galang’s stories; how her characters are learning something about themselves in relation to being comfortable and even assertive about their racial and/or cultural identity.
'He’s coming home. The prodigal son. The country boy gone city(166).'
'...but what the Agency wants us to do is to send out the message that
America is sausage in the morning, sunrise at the farm, spicy pork links,
grandma, and love(159).'
Simply looking over the cover of Galang’s Her Wild American Self begins to reveal her purpose in relating all these family influenced stories. Under the triangular, palm-thatched roof of a Filipino home a family picture is taken, and for this family it represents, perhaps, nothing more than that—just an old family picture. Yet, for the American young woman in the box above them, this picture is a world eroded from her mind, a world left behind that she might visit some day. And upon that visit she might shutter, 'You mean we used to live this way.'
Burning off their sausage,this couple subscribe to Man’s and Woman’s Health. They are active and eat right. Their breakfast links included: Ingredients-Natural smoked flavors, Soy Fiber, XanthumGum, Disodium Inosinate, Red#3, EggWhiteSolids,and Blue#1.
They are excruciatingly happy and live in the good old US of A. They are thinking of the glass of real Florida Orange Juice they are going to enjoy when they get back to their lovely home.