For International Education Week, I attended a showing of A Touch of Spice, a Greek film about a family of Greek-Turks from Istanbul who are deported back to Athens in 1964 due to Turkish policy. The main character, Fanis, is born to a family of Greeks who have lived in Istanbul for several generations. His grandfather, Vissilis, owns a spice shop, and is a figure of inspiration for Fanis’ love for cooking and his grounding connection to Turkey after the family is deported. In Greece, the family faces a universal experience of ethnic peoples returning to the judgement of their motherlands for their differences. For example, they are criticized for speaking the Turkish dialect of Greek and repeatedly confront the idea of being too Greek for Turks and too Turkish for Greeks. The film weaves the unifying importance of food across the two cultures, whose relations are saturated by historical tension and violence, ultimately pushing Fanis to return to Istanbul after his grandfather falls into a coma.
This movie explored a lot of different themes that I found personally relatable as a product of diaspora. As a several-generation Asian-American, I frequently feel rejected by the larger Asian-American community, a child of immigrants who speaks the native tongue fluently and grew up in a community of said immigrant group. However, I am not necessarily accepted by larger America, as Asians are viewed as perpetual foreigners. I completely identified with the struggles that Fanis and his family faced both in Turkey and Greece, not being accepted fully on either side.
This movie subtly pushed conversation about the significance of ethnicity and what it means to truly “be” of one culture. This tied to Sorels’ discussion of the varied definitions of culture in the context of different academic fields. Humans commonly and incorrectly view culture as fixed and never changing. While it can be difficult to change the norms of culture, they have and will continue to throughout history. Subcultures, like the Greek-Turkish identity explored in the movie, are created as a result of migration, diaspora, or expulsion. Overall, I found A Touch of Spice to be very thought-provoking and educating about a region of the world I do not have much exposure to.
