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Black and White Breakfast
Race, Class, Sexuality, and Corn Flakes
in Alan Parker's The Road to Wellville
page 1, 2
Granola, Corn Flakes and Other "Civilized" Foods
Encouraging wealthy, middle and upper-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants to "Better themselves in Battle Creek," Kellogg conveys the notion that good health and fitness are the result of diet, exercise, correct posture, fresh air and proper rest. However, like the modern-day country club, only the "right" patients are admitted to the San. There, they are placed on strenuous physical and dietary regimes, all in the effort to improve their bodies and the affluent members of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant "race." Patients, such as Eleanor's husband Will Lightbody (Matthew Broderick), perform morning calisthenics at 7 am, followed by laughing "exercises," and gymnastic classes. Will endures all kinds of humorous mechanical massages (poundings with chest beaters, pummelings with trunk rollers), and is required to sit on Kellogg's patented "vibrating chair" to stimulate his internal organs. All of the patients bathe endlessly, both inside and out, with salt baths, steam baths, showers, douches, and a high-powered enema machine, with the belief that cleansing the body would somehow cleanse the race. Taking the words of Genesis literally — "Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed...to you it shall be meat" — Kellogg also includes a low-calorie vegetarian diet in the San's purification plan. Kellogg's diet, which consists of Bulgarian yogurt, granola, nuts, fruits, and Kellogg's own creation, Corn Flakes, which he believes will discipline all human urges, serves as a parody of modern "fad" diets, as well as a source of racial commentary throughout the film.30
 "Life is death postponed"  |
To strengthen his arguments against meat, Kellogg conflates carnivorism with the "animal-like behavior" of the "darker races."31 In Road to Wellville, Kellogg informs his patients that over-stimulation through meat and caffeine-laden foods such as coffee, tea, and chocolate, can lead to grave vices such as moral degeneration and savagery. In this context, these "caffeine-laden foods," suddenly become racist symbols; his patients comment on the "dark" origins of these foods (they were exported to the United States from Africa, South America, and India) as well as the "dark" color of these foods. Kellogg's numerous racist allusions are solidified when he refers to the native peoples who consume these foods as "uncivilized beasts of the wild who indulge in these substances and other carnal pleasures." As Kellogg elaborates in Plain Facts: "We call these lowly brothers of the human race ‘noble animals,' but they are only noble brutes at best. The wild savage that hunts and devours his prey like a wild beast...is immeasurably inferior. In his highest development, man – civilized, cultivated, learned, generous, pious [i.e., white] – certainly stands at the head of all created things."32
By encoding the racist arguments in this scene through the metaphor
of "dark and stimulating" foods, Parker illustrates the absurdity of
such discourses without directly addressing, or reifying, race delineations.
The child of a prostitute and "blackened" in race and class, George
becomes the vehicle through which Parker parodies Kellogg's racist "food-oriented"
beliefs. Throughout the film, George frequents the poor, jungle-esque,
working-class neighborhoods surrounding Battle Creek, where "meat speakeasies"
like the Red Onion, discreetly serve beer, onions and steak. There,
George indulges in all the foods prohibited by his father, making animal-like
noises as he eats. Swallowing his food almost whole, George intentionally
ridicules his father's belief in "Fletcherism" — a teaching of
the "celebrity masticator" Horace Fletcher who maintained that food
should be chewed until it magically disappeared from the mouth. While
Kellogg notes that "savage cannibals [like George] always bolt their
missionary," it is the accusatory Kellogg who is the ultimate beast.
When he discovers that some of his patients have been joining George
at the Red Onion, he becomes enraged, screaming in his office and throwing
objects across the room. After this scene, the audience is left to ponder
who is the true savage in Road to Wellville.
Those Animals!: Meat, Sex, and Masturbation at Kellogg's Sanitarium
The racist associations between people of color and jungle animals that occur in the "Red Onion" scene are prevalent throughout Kellogg's writings and Road to Wellville. In Plain Facts, Kellogg states that there is an inverse relationship between intelligence and savagery: "As the intellect is developed, the animal passions are brought into subjection...the animal passions seem to survive when all higher intelligence is lost."33 He believed that those who lived like savages, i.e., "non-white" peoples who had not been "Christianized," were unintelligent, and therefore beastly in behavior. He cites various examples of savagery in his works, such as the infanticidal "Jaggers of Guinea, who devour their own children," and "the uncouth Negro who haunts the jungles of Southern Africa."34 In Road to Wellville, Parker lampoons Kellogg's bizarre racist assumptions through George's humorous animal-like expressions and behavior. Not only does George eat like a pig, but he also inhabits a pig sty. At one point in the film, George fills his father's cereal boxes with human excrement, and throws them at the guests, jumping up and down in an almost simian fashion. In another scene, George overhears a conversation about the origins of Kellogg's enema: "I heard the doctor got the idea for the enema in India...no, no, I believe Africa...India, Africa, what's the difference, they are both the same...Apes eat and defecate simultaneously. They don't suffer from the same ailments as the civilized bowel...we are far too house-trained." The conflation of Indians and Africans not only illustrates the extent to which these individuals were interchangeable and expendable in American society, but it also conveys the extent to which many Americans associated, and still associate, peoples of color with "incivility," savagery, sub-humanity, and bestial behavior.
According to Kellogg, sexual intercourse was also harmful to the human
body because, like carnivorism, it invokes uncontrollable animal-like
urges. As we learn in the Road to Wellville, "Sexual stimulation
can be fatal. Loss of fluids upsets the body's balance... sex for anything
but reproduction is sexual excess."35
Consequently, sexual restraint, which, to Kellogg, implied the highest
form of civility, is a dominating aspect of life at the San. Upon their
arrival, the Lightbodies are separated into different quarters, for
sharing a room "Just wouldn't do." Men and women bathe and eat separately,
and monitors scope the hallways like modern-day security cameras, secretly
observing patients in a form of surveillance designed to discipline
bodies and eliminate sexual behavior. Although Will is placed on a strict
diet that will calm his "sensitive stomach," (i.e., constipation), from
time to time he sneaks down to the Red Onion with George for a piece
of steak. Engaging in "lower-class, non-white" behavior, he suddenly
takes on George's racialized sexual characteristics: he begins to display
his sexual appetite by visualizing his nurse, Irene Graves (Traci Lind),
and the sickly Ida Muntz, nude. Since he is physically separated from
his wife, Will's visions, as well as his hot paraffin and soap enemas,
serve as a replacement for sexual intercourse, resulting in erections,
stimulation, and erratic behavior.36
Will becomes so overwrought that he loses all control. Like a savage
animal, he publicly-engages in sexual activity with Ida, which simultaneously
renders him an adulterer. In one scene, he crawls under Ida's electric
blanket during an outdoor "breathing session," and to the sound of a
nurse's voice shouting "in and out, in and out" through a megaphone,
consummates their affair. In another scene, Will enters Ida's room during
her therapy hour, removes his clothing, and, leaving the door conspicuously
open, shamelessly engages in what Kellogg would have called uncivilized
"bestial vice."
Not only is sexual activity prohibited at the San, but auto-erotic activity, namely masturbation, is also seen as a source of depravity. According to Kellogg's famous professor, nineteenth century psychologist and eugenicist G. Stanley Hall, the "impulse of wildness is embodied in the uncivilized man and is expressed as a moral struggle over bodily pleasure" (i.e. masturbation).37 Consequently, in Plain Facts, Kellogg portrays masturbation as representative of "unmanly" impulsive behavior, and the conclusive sign of one's unsuitability for membership in civilized society: "Masturbation is common among African boys at age nine or ten, which illustrates their savagery and incivility. Masturbation is the destroying element of society, gradually undermining the health of a nation...leading to driveling idiocy and complete imbecility."38 Believing masturbation to be the greatest human evil possible, Kellogg devoted 97 of Plain Facts' 644 pages to "Solitary Vice or Self-Abuse." In fact, he spent his wedding night listing the thirty-nine major "symptoms and results" of masturbation — a list comprehensive enough to indict practically every living human being.39 Such "symptoms" included sleeplessness, love of solitude, bashfulness, unnatural boldness, confusion of ideas, capricious appetite, tobacco use, and acne.
Aware of Kellogg's obsession with masturbation, Parker exaggerates the act as "the silent killer of the night" by portraying all the racialized characters in Road to Wellville as masturbators. George is frequently shown fumbling around in the dark; when the lights are turned on, his pants are always down around his ankles. During their first encounter at dinner, Ida asks Will: "Do you masticate?" While in the context of the dining hall this might have been a reference to Fletcherism, the word "masticate" is a double-entendre, sounding a great deal like the word "masturbate." Will's stunned reaction to Ida's question, and the fact that he suffers from constipation, which Kellogg believes is caused by masturbation, reinforce the reference. Kellogg himself warns Will that "masturbation is a vile pollution...the act of a lustful animal" and that "an erection is a flagpole on your grave." In another scene, Will discovers Dr. Lionel Badger (Colm Meany), whose questionable publications on female sexuality render him "lower-class," as he is masturbating in the woods. Will also confronts his wife Eleanor as she is engaging in "womb manipulation" with the "foreign" Dr. Spitzvogel.
Female Illness, Racism, and Sexism at the San...
Given the racial subtext of the film, the medical diagnoses of the female characters in Road to Wellville are also very poignant social metaphors. Ida is diagnosed with "green sickness," or Chlorosis, as it was known in the nineteenth-century medical community. According to Kellogg, Chlorosis, or what twentieth-century physicians would call anemia, "is very often caused by menstrual irregularity and by the unholy practice in consideration [i.e., masturbation]."40 By associating Chlorosis with masturbation and menstruation, Kellogg simultaneously constructs the disease as both "perverse" and distinctly female in nature. In the film, Ida is "sicker than anyone else," most likely because she suffers from "female" ailments as well as sexual vice. Although Will is her partner in adultery, as a woman, Ida bears the symbolic burden of shame. In modern film, the consequence of such shame is always death, which finds Ida just as she is beginning to gain the strength to act independently.
Since, as Kellogg notes, it is "uncivilized to die," not all those
who commit moral transgressions are killed off in Road to Wellville.
While Kellogg's gluttonous and overweight assistant dies of a heart
attack, and the Russian patient, who sexually-stimulates himself with
electricity, is killed during an experiment, Will's savagery is "surgically
removed." The bowels, which, as Kellogg states, "are the source of nine-tenths
of all human illness," are the source of Will's constipation and sexual
excesses. The "darkness of Will's bowels" therefore serves as a racialized
metaphor for the "darkness of the jungle," where Kellogg also believed
"nine-tenths of the world's degenerates can be found." When the diseased
portion of Will's bowels is removed through surgery, he is instantly
cured: his civility is restored, and he no longer engages in activities
Kellogg associates with lower-class "non-whites," such as masturbation,
adultery and the consumption of meat.
Upon her arrival, Will's wife, Eleanor, is diagnosed as having "an acute case of autointoxication and neurasthenia, brought on by the loss of a child." One year prior to their stay at the San, the Lightbodies became the parents of a baby girl. While the film does not disclose the reason for the infant's death, it does convey the fact that at the time of the baby's birth, Will was an alcoholic, who was also addicted to the "juice of the poppy" [i.e., opium]. Kellogg informs the couple that Will's vices led to degeneracy and the child's health: "If sterility does not result from vice, the children of degenerates are liable to be delicate, puny, and decrepit...Sometimes, the unfortunate result is the death of degenerate offspring." To save society from another George Kellogg, maintain the "racial purity" of the San, and illustrate the vengefulness of Kellogg's ideology, the Lightbody's child must be killed in the film. As Eleanor states, "By the time you sobered up Will, our child was dead. Now we have nothing left."
Eleanor's diagnosis of neurasthenia is of particular significance, for implicit in the disease was an antagonism between race, class, gender, and civilization. According to George M. Beard, the physician credited with first identifying the illness in 1881, and incidentally, one of Kellogg's close associates, neurasthenia refers to "nervousness" in the highly evolved (i.e. white, middle and upper-class) person. Beard writes, "The chief and primary cause of the development and very rapid increase of nervousness is modern civilization. Civilization is the one constant factor...under which...nervousness, in its many varieties, must inevitably arise."41 Although neurasthenia was a white middle and upper-class disease, the uncontrolled bodies of primitive individuals (i.e., peoples of color) were often compared to the bodies of female neurasthenics and contrasted with the rigidly-disciplined bodies of civilized individuals (i.e. white men). While, according to Kellogg, both categories of individuals (peoples of color and women) are clearly united in their propensities toward excess (of wildness and control respectively), as Parker illustrates, it is always racialized and gendered subjects who undergo medical scrutiny and classification.
Virginia Cranehill (Camryn
Manheim), like Eleanor Lightbody, is also diagnosed with neurasthenia,
however, for different reasons. Virginia's husband is suffering from
erectile dysfunction, or impotency, which in the film is encoded as
"marital dysfunction." Virginia, who states that she "no longer has
any use for her husband," is sent to the San by her spouse to be cured
(he believes that Virginia's "nervous condition" is the source of his
problem). Based on her dialogue with Eleanor, it is evident that Virginia
is a well-educated woman who has been influenced by the late-nineteenth
century women's movement, which Parker uses to satirize modern feminism.
Under the guise of humor, she directly confronts Victorian notions about
female asexuality: "The notion that sex is harmful or dangerous is an
idea dreamt up by men. What is dangerous is when women don't get enough
of it, or don't enjoy it when they do." She also disparages the "sacred"
institution of marriage, explaining to Eleanor that "marriage is legalized
prostitution" — an idea held by some second-wave feminists, as
well as nineteenth-century free-love advocates, such as Victoria Woodhull,
whose name, perhaps not so coincidentally, resembles Virginia Cranehill.
Implicit in Virginia's liberal thinking, however, is also a subtle hint of racist ideology. From the 1860s onward, various sexual radicals used the goal of "better breeding" as a justification for the sexual education and emancipation of women. In the United States, Victoria Woodhull repeatedly employed eugenic concepts to encourage the "scientific propagation" of the human race. Moreover, she preached free love, however, within racial and class boundaries. Consequently, the "bicycle scene" in Road to Wellville can be interpreted in terms of its racial sub-content. In this scene, Virginia explains to Eleanor that her greatest joy at the San is cycling while wearing her bloomers, which she claims has "changed her life." As Virginia confesses: "There is nothing like the pleasure of a leather bicycle seat in between one's thighs...a long ride once a week usually does the trick for me...you know what I mean...bicycle smile." In this case, the "bicycle seat," which resembles the male phallus, serves as a substitute for her husband's impotent phallus. The fact that the seat is made of dark brown leather might suggest a secret desire for the sexually-taboo black man, which correlates with Fanon's statement that in white society "the Negro is a penis." The "bicycle smile," which is a metaphor for sexual climax, is Virginia's way of fulfilling her desires without the shame of social transgression. Virginia's encoded conversation with Eleanor is finally decoded at the end of the scene when she tells her cycling companion to "Go on ahead...I feel a smile coming on."
While Parker's use of parody, blackface, role-playing, and race/class-encoding
might be perceived as a means of evading a realistic treatment of social
issues, Road to Wellville is anything but a crude attempt to
avoid the representation of enormously-difficult subject matter. Rather,
it is a sophisticated blend of humor and documented historical material
that seeks to question the various forms that race and class have assumed
in twentieth-century American society. Consequently, the characters
in Road to Wellville are not simply constructed for comedic purposes;
each has a specific role in the dialogue of the film, whether it be
to illustrate the absurdity of turn-of-the-century racial ideology,
or to criticize modern social trends. What Parker accomplishes in this
film is more than a sum of its parts; one cannot merely look at an isolated
scene to understand his anti-racist and anti-elitist commentary, for
the fact that problematic social issues are often disguised is
part of Parker's message. Road to Wellville is a statement to
the world that in spite of our alleged social advances, not enough has
changed with respect to race and class since the turn-of-the-century;
many of the racist and classist assumptions in the film are, like Corn
Flakes, still thriving today. While these prejudices might be more subtly
expressed in today's world, they are still as ubiquitous as they were
back at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
Notes
30. Kellogg had many "ingenious" uses for Corn Flakes. He prescribed Corn Flake enemas for those suffering from constipation, and believed that bathing in Corn Flakes would improve the skin. Carson, 134.
31. Interesting to note is that the term "race" was created by the West in the sixteenth century. Scholars such as Fernando Ortiz and Raymond Williams claim it was borrowed from zoological terminology.
32. Kellogg, 330–1.
33. Ibid., 216.
34. Ibid., 486; 508.
35. This theory has its origins in ancient Greek medical thought. Up until the twentieth century, it was believed that the body had four major humors, or fluids - blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile - which, when kept in balance, ensured perfect health. By the nineteenth century, other fluids, such as saliva and sperm, also entered this equation. As a result, any loss of sperm, in Kellogg's opinion, would disrupt the body's fragile balance of humors, resulting in ill health, or if fluids were loss in excess, death.
36. Although Kellogg married nursing student Ella Eaton in 1879, their marriage was never consummated, and they lived in separate apartments during their marriage. While Kellogg maintained that his celibate life should be taken as an outstanding example of the benefits of "biological living," those who have researched Kellogg's life, such as Gerald Carson, maintain that mumps as a child, and not his convictions, precluded him from engaging in sexual activity. Scholars have also linked Kellogg's obsession with enemas to an alternative form of sexual stimulation, which is interesting to note given Will's reaction to the procedure. Every morning, after breakfast, Kellogg requested an enema, which was administered by one of the nurses at the San. While this daily routine might have been for hygienic and health reasons, according to Kellogg's own dietary rules, it was unnecessary. Thus it might have been symptomatic of klismaphilia, a condition in which an enema substitutes for regular sexual intercourse. For the klismaphile, placing the penis in the vagina is difficult, dangerous and repulsive, which corresponded with Kellogg's own view of sexual relations. For more information on this topic, please see Carson, pp. 187–188.
37. Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 105.
38. Kellogg, 234 - 5.
39. Carson, 156.
40. Kellogg, 259.
41. Bederman, 86.
November 2002 | Issue 38
Copyright © 2002 by Tanfer Emin-Tunc
Tanfer Emin-Tunc received her BA and MA in History, and a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies, from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Her latest article, "Freaks and Geeks: Coney Island Sideshow Performers and Long Island Eugenicists, 1910-1935," can be found in The Long Island Historical Journal, Volume 14, Numbers 1/2 (Fall 2001/Spring 2002). She is in the process of writing her PhD dissertation, which deals with the history of medical technology.
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