Capitalism, Class Mobility, and Ratatouille

Remy, the main character in Pixar's Ratatouille is a metaphor for the literally starving, poor artist, who feels resentment towards a capitalist society whilst trying to climb its ranks and escape poverty. My mind simply shall not be changed. In the film, Remy's family exist purely to survive, and his dad has evolved to ignore Remy's love of his art - cooking - and dismiss his passions because passions are for the rich. His father only starts to care about Remy's talents when they become economically viable, and therefore beneficial to their survival as the poor. 

                    Remy, the Rat.

When you start to think of the rats as the poor, and the humans as the rich, it starts to make much more sense. Remy yearns for the human (rich) experience because they have the ability to create art and pursue their passions with no care for material expense or wasted time. This is true in our society. Whilst the rich are free to pursue passions on a whim, able to purchase expensive materials easily, the poor have to pick their passions carefully and with material cost in mind if they can even find the time amongst their worldly duties. Because Remy is a rat (poor) he has to fashion cookware from discarded objects and use low-quality ingredients - often the humans' literal trash - to fulfil his ambitions. He can settle for good, but to make something truly spectacular he needs truly quality ingredients. 

For this reason, Remy trespasses into a human home (a metaphor for rich society,) a transgression for which he is punished with the loss of his home, the loss of his family, and almost the loss of his life. Here, we see the film reinforce class boundaries by punishing Remy so transparently for blurring lines and violating society's strict views on class mobility. It's not all bad though - if Remy had never trespassed, the rats would have never left for the city (or more accurately, the sewers literally underneath it.) The fact that Remy literally lives below Paris is clearly a metaphor for his low class and poverty, especially when one considers his slow rise to ground level throughout the film. 

Now, let's think, in addition to Remy, who else has a low social status? Who else has a job revolving around trash? Who else is disrespected and dismissed by their society? Who lives in a comparatively less luxurious place? The answer is Linguini. In many ways, Linguini is a rat - or a poor person. He's forced to live in the least desirable places in a human (rich) world. I think that's why Linguini feels such empathy and allyship towards Remy because they're both rats in a human-centred industry - fine dining. Skinner is the embodiment of capitalism, and both Remy and Linguini's rivalry with him stems from their social status. Linguini is poor, and so is Remy, and Skinner's job - as a capitalist - is to keep them from his human (rich) spaces, which obviously benefits Skinner, as capitalism. 

I think the movie basically creates three types of characters: the rich, the artists, the humans; the poor, the artists, the rats; and the capitalists. Whilst Gustaeau is certainly rich, he's an artist, not a capitalist. Whilst he's certainly not in it for the money, he's using his platform as a member of the higher class to practice his art. On the other hand, Skinner is a capitalist - a destroyer of art, because he takes Gustaeu's passion for cooking and turns it into a capitalistic venture to create more money by destroying the art of cooking and commercializing his food. He only cares about what sells. Whilst Gustaeu is more than ready to take risks and bold decisions, Skinner is shrewd, arrogant, and frugal - caring only for profit, and the conservation of his wealth. 

When Linguini oversteps his job as a powerless rubbish collector to help with the soup, Skinner wants him gone, because he feels threatened. Even when Skinner finds out that the critic liked Linguini's soup, he wants to fire him. Skinner only relents when he looks around to see that his team of human chefs have bound together to help save Linguini the quasi-rat from his wrath, just to appease Colette and the rest of the kitchen staff. Linguini's attempt to transcend the class system is so offensive to Skinner because he's so used to the rigidity of class and his position of power due to his wealth. He feels that, due to Linguini's poverty, he has no claim to any rank other than a rubbish boy. 

One of the reasons I love Ratatouille so much is because of its (perhaps unintentional) portrayal of allyship of the poor, and its message to always remember where you come from, so you can elevate members of that same community from your new platform. As a woman, Colette also began her life as a rat. Because she was born into a patriarchal world that told her she'd never be able to cook as well as a man, she also had to achieve mobility within the class system. Did she too not have to overcome unfair obstacles to get where she is? I think she's reminded of this by Gustaeu's book 'Anyone Can Cook!' which shows us that despite's Gustaeu's position as a member of the eternal upper class, he is supportive of Rats transcending the rigid class system. As we've discussed, Gustaeu isn't an enforcer of the class system as he isn't a capitalist, just a rich person. In his view, the ignorance of the class system doesn't affect him as he's not looking to generate wealth or even to conserve it, just to fund his art form - a goal that Rats like Colette have helped him to achieve. 

Because Colette has been through many of the same struggles Linguini, Remy, and the other rats have gone through, she empathizes with them, and she alone comes to their aid. All outsiders, or rats, need allyship to achieve success in the rigid class system, and as Ego says, "the new needs friends." I'm guessing that Ego grew up as a rat (poor,) because he grew up in rural France and is very connected to what the film constantly states is a 'peasant disk.' At the end of the film, Remy starts his own restaurant, which we're led to believe was funded by Ego. In addition, the story creators and the film's director were aware of the allegory of poverty within Ratatouille, according to multiple interviews. So, if the film's cast and crew are aware of the connotations, why is Remy constantly punished for stealing food?

Throughout the film, Remy is punished for stealing food. It makes sense for Remy to be punished for enabling Gustaeu's to be ransacked by all the rats - because that isn't just what they require to survive. It makes sense that Remy is punished for stealing the saffron at the start of the film because that's frivolous. But in a scene where Remy hasn't eaten for days and isn't sure when his next meal might be, he makes the decision to steal a tiny wad of bread, just enough to sustain himself. But does he get to eat this bread? No, because Gustaeu tells him that would be wrong, and so the bread is abandoned. The next time Remy is able to eat is when he makes the Omelette, and does he get to eat this Omelette? No, because he stole a tiny number of herbs from the neighbours, and stealing is wrong. He only gets to eat once he's gifted food, when he's looking physically starved, literally wasting away.

In conclusion, I don't like the depiction of stealing as a choice when Remy has no other option than to starve. It paints the poor - the rats - as selfish thieves when really their only goal is self-preservation. However, I do like Ratatouille more generally as a metaphor for society, although I don't appreciate the film's odd moral and philosophical ideals. I think the message is generally a good one, but the fact that Remy's eventuality is finding a place within a system that hates him is questionable. In a utopia like a Pixar film, shouldn't our protagonist topple the oppressive system rather than comply with it? When a film's main theme is to remember where you came from so that you may help those from your new platform, why does Remy fail so much in this moral duty? Sure, he lifts his family out of poverty, but even then, they're nowhere near the status of humans, and that's not to mention that rats more broadly, globally, are still universally reviled. 

07/09/2022

by Frankie E.J. Robinson