Tasting Displacement: Couscous and Culinary Citizenship in Maghrebi-French Diasporic Cinema

Abstract

Ethnically coded as Maghrebi and experienced as a familiar comfort food, couscous consistently ranks as a favorite dish of the French. Following a short history of this migrating dish, I discuss representations of couscous as ethnic body in popular culture and analyze how couscous scenes shape tastes of homes both within and across six films about the Maghrebi diaspora in France produced from 1999 to 2007 whose plots span roughly five decades from 1961 to 2006. Surprisingly rare, these scenes complement the spotty historical archive on immigrants’ foodways and dramatize the immigrants’ assimilation into consumer society, from consumed others into consuming citizens, as couscous takes on a number of meanings. I argue that films depicting the Maghrebi diaspora resort timidly to couscous because they face constraints to retain ethnic credibility and show characters in an appealing manner, without serving them up on a platter or alienating majority viewers. Ultimately, my analysis shows that although food creates a sense of place, home, and continuity, cinematic couscous provides a sensory prism that embodies intimate stories of displacement and provides the means to foster new cosmopolitan affiliations through cultural and gustatory reconfigurations of home.

Notes

¹Published in October 2011, the most recent TNS Sofres poll on the “Favorite dishes of the French,” lists couscous in third place, behind magret de canard (duck breasts) and moules-frites (mussels with French fries): http://www.tns-sofres.com/points-de-vue/79A4BE8A098F4BBFA11B939A135302CA.aspx

²For a discussion of the terms “North African” and “Maghrebi,” see Durmelat and Swamy (18).

³Babès coins this term based on Marcel Mauss’ concept of “total social fact,” that is an activity that has implications at all levels of a society.

⁴The most well known, ras el hanout, is ideally composed of 27 ingredients.

⁵Fellag's book, How to pull off a delicious little couscous, as well as his 2012 stage performance “Little Shocks of Civilizations,” use the genres of the cookbook and of the cooking show for political satire. The “little” in his title reflects the affectionate, yet belittling, connection the French have developed with couscous.

⁶On the use of halal meat during the campaign, see Beardsley and Le Bars.

⁷For example, although immigrants typically had large families, fiction films usually portray smaller Maghrebi families that fit the aspirational model of the French nuclear family.

⁸The Front de Libération Nationale is the nationalist party that won Algeria's independence from France in 1962. Financial contributions from the immigrant community in France made up to 80% of the FLN budget during the war.

⁹Samia is a feature film based on Soraya Nini, Philippe Faucon's sister in law's autobiographical novel, which focuses on young Samia's coming of age and her struggles within her Algerian immigrant family, as well as with the school system.

¹⁰The repetition of the circular motion used to roll couscous constitutes what Marcel Mauss calls a “technique of the body.” This collective endeavor and its repetition bring the women together and tighten the social fabric of the community. However, in the film, rolling couscous grains conveys a sense of circular imprisonment rather than the warmth of a female circle. Although a repetitive chore, rolling couscous can also be a festive occasion for women across generations (Morsy 27). Wearing their jewels, they sit down with wide, round dishes wedged between their legs. Their whole body is involved in this task, the mere physicality of which expresses—and contains—sensuality as women exchange sexual jokes and innuendos. This form of sensuality is denied in the film where rolling couscous is performed by the mother-in-law as a lonely chore, equated with coercion and control.

¹¹A moderately successful art house film, Change-moi ma vie featured award-winning Fanny Ardant and Moroccan-born Roschdy Zem,

¹²Kechiche asked Hafsia Herzi to put on weight to play Rym, in part to fit the voluptuous image of the Oriental dancer.