By Haoran Xia
Publised on: ToroScope
July 13, 2023
In 2000, Anthony Bourdain wrote a column for The New Yorker in which he documented an entire day working at Les Halles, the French restaurant in Manhattan where he had served as head chef since 1998.
It was a Friday morning. He woke up at 5:55 a.m., thinking about the weekend menu as he washed up. Upon arriving at the restaurant, he hurriedly confirmed the day’s dishes with the pastry chef, the garde-manger, the front-of-house manager, and other staff. After nearly working intensly for nearly fifteen hours in the kitchen, Bourdain left at 12:25 a.m., got a taxi, and went to the Siberia Bar for a drink. Prior to this piece, Bourdain had written another column for The New Yorker in 1999, where he famously stated: cooking is a science of pain.
A year later, he once again proved through his own work that cuisine is born from pain and sustained by pain. This so-called pain is not limited to the body’s physiological tolerance: the extreme working hours, prolonged exposure to heat, noise, and sharp instruments, and the inevitable collisions between bodies in cramped spaces. On another level, this unbearable pain comes from anxiety submerged in heat, the enforced synchronization of teamwork, and the demand for absolute control over every dish and every guest.
The dual pressure of body and mind transforms each chef into a soldier on the battlefield: military-like execution, rigid uniformity, meticulous precision, and absolute control over time rise into doctrine, an extreme behavioral code pushed to the limit. When such a code appears on the dining table in the form of food, it is translated by the public into an aesthetic. Gradually, culinary aesthetics are regulated into convention, a convention that demands perfection, beauty, restraint, and creativity. Endorsed and celebrated by contemporary society, this aesthetic ascends from convention to standard, a standard belonging to specific groups and class, eventually crystallizing into an industry-wide symbol. Here, the metaphor of the culinary industry is ruthlessly exposed: contemporary consumerism packages this science of pain into a standard, or in other words, a sacred choice. It elevates the consumer into the supreme subject, turns food into the subject’s spoils of war, and reduces chefs, wrapped in heat, into objects to be consumed and controlled.
Bourdain’s writing strikes directly at the metaphor contemporary society projects onto the restaurant industry. He emphasizes the suffering behind it and offers a defense for every chef who works in this industry that derives pleasure from pain. The Bear does the same.
Season one of The Bear centers on Carmy’s return to Chicago, where he joins family and friends to maintain and run his late brother Mikey’s sandwich shop, The Beef. The first season presents Carmy as fragile, closed-off, emotionally volatile, inarticulate, and deeply anxious. Through multiple flashbacks, we learn of his past experiences in Michelin-starred kitchens. These metaphor-laden spaces eroded Carmy’s capacity for emotional perception as a human being, reducing him to an insensitive, instrumental chef.
If the narrative of season one constructs Carmy through his profession and industry, season two reconstructs him through relationships: intimate relationships, encompassing love and friendship, and family relationships. In season one, the sous-chef Sydney appears to be the only character capable of “normal” communication. Carmy, Richie, and Marcus, along with the other male characters, communicate primarily through profanity and shouting. When conflicts arise with customers, Richie pulls a gun to force them to accept the restaurant’s solution. When internal tensions escalate, Carmy erupts in rage, smashing plates while asserting dominance over his staff. Season one is angry, and this anger reveals how Carmy and the other men unconsciously fall into a traditionally defined masculinity, one born on ancient Roman battlefields: barbaric, violent, ruthless, and crude.
Such masculinity is, for many men, a safe and reliable choice. Throughout history, men have been disciplined to perform an outward-facing role, constructing an impenetrable defense mechanism through social doctrine, a mask that hides emotion and armors the exterior. Over time, they learn to take refuge within the system, as emotional inertia continually warns them: violence is the most effective tool. Sydney’s arrival breaks this closed loop, like fire meeting water. Her presence poses a safe yet disruptive threat to the masculine order of the kitchen. Through her daily work and communication with Carmy, he gradually awakens, recognizing the crisis inherent in traditional masculinity and making changes in the second season.
Emotionally, season two is gentler. After conflicts with Sydney, Carmy forces himself to pat his chest as a gesture of apology. In his interactions with his sister Natalie, he slowly opens up, sharing his struggles and expressing gratitude for everything she has done for the restaurant. Even with the staff, Carmy repeatedly offers thanks.
Among the many reconfigured relationships, the most striking is Carmy’s romance with Claire. In a flashback in episode six of season two, we learn that Claire has long been Carmy’s crush. After a encounter, they reconnect, yet within this intensely intimate relationship, Carmy falls into another trap of traditional masculinity: avoidance.
Romantic relationships are like sharp blades, capable of striking at one’s most vulnerable core. At the beginning, Carmy deliberately gives Claire the wrong phone number. When the relationship deepens, he actively retreats. These avoidant emotional choices reveal Carmy’s unease with intimacy, an unease rooted in his internal rejection of closeness. Traditional values of avoidance and contemporary values of emotional affirmation form an invisible battlefield, and Carmy stands precariously on this emotional scale, weighing his choices. In the season finale, on the night of the restaurant’s soft opening, Carmy is trapped in the walk-in freezer. Near despair, he mutters to himself: “I don’t need to receive joy, and I don’t deserve to give joy to others. I’m fine like this.” Unbeknownst to him, Claire overhears from outside the door. She turns away, leaving Carmy alone in the freezer.
Thus, Carmy chooses work over love, abandoning, in other words, his right to emotional pleasure and reaffirming his unwavering faith in the suffering of the kitchen. This choice returns us to a classical binary: order versus chaos. In Carmy’s eyes, the kitchen represents Apollonian values: order and restraint. A world where love and kitchen coexist embodies Dionysian values: chaos and madness. Within this Dionysian framework, Carmy loses his center of gravity, as regret and anxiety resurface. Overwhelmed by emotional instability and a loss of order, he returns to Apollo, to the familiar, purgatorial world of the kitchen. Within traditional masculinity and the infernal kitchen, love exists as an anomaly. The courage, warmth, sacrifice, and wholehearted devotion love demands become the kitchen’s natural enemies. These emotional elements can serve either love or the kitchen, but cannot coexist in both worlds.
This binary once again elevates the image of the chef to a supreme position, one mythologized by contemporary culture. In today’s cultural imagination, chefs, like directors or professors, are absorbed into modern mythology. These professions, often fetishized in pornography, extend metaphors of power, dominance, and militarized authority into gender and sexual relations. The mythologized chef is severed from emotional thinking and placed within a purely rational value system, where every choice, action, and goal must serve the kitchen. Avoidance thus becomes their autonomous response to intimacy. This avoidance stems not only from the armor demanded by masculinity, but from the merciless requirements of the social image itself. Though they desire love like anyone else, the right to love is quietly stripped away the moment they become chefs. Perhaps Carmy is struggling within the second trap of masculinity, beyond which a destructive force emanating from the socially constrained chef archetype is devouring him. Here, masculinity ceases to be the core issue, and the binary debate surrounding the chef figure becomes the new question.
The chef has long been a dazzling presence in contemporary film and television. Shortly after The Bear premiered, Western online culture quickly labeled Carmy a “hot chef.” In Netflix’s Emily in Paris, another chef, Gabriel, sparked global infatuation.
Indeed, within contemporary culture, the chef has become a symbol of power and dominance, a symbol derived from absolute professional competence: high execution and high control. When professional execution and control align with sexual desirability, they are translated into qualities bordering on sadism. The chef thus ascends from cultural symbol to sexual symbol, a new cultural species born solely of adrenaline and power relations. The mythologization of the chef continues unabated, revealing contemporary fantasies of being controlled, arranged, and deriving pleasure from suffering in a Sadean sense.
Beyond intimate relationships, family relationships are portrayed in their rawest form in season two. Episode six returns to Christmas, a hundred weeks before the restaurant opens. Carmy’s mother Donna, his brother Mikey, and extended family appear. The camera darts between kitchen, living room, timers, and Donna’s screaming. Through jump cuts and coarse language, the warmth of Christmas is annihilated, leaving only anxiety, anger, and resentment.
From a psychological perspective, the creators return to a classical, Freudian framework. At a critical moment, they reveal Carmy’s family of origin, reconstructing the primal blueprint that shaped his personality. We come to fully understand the source of Carmy’s anxiety, insecurity, and self-effacement: his mother. If building a collective in the real-world kitchen has always been the show’s overt narrative, then familial conflict and the fractured self born from it form its covert thread. Carmy often speaks of his brother as someone who “lit up the room,” revealing that he lived in his brother’s shadow. Donna’s appearance confirms this underlying narrative.
In the season finale, Natalie waits desperately for her mother to attend the restaurant’s opening. At the last moment, her husband Pete finds Donna outside, smoking nervously, unable to enter. When Pete urges her repeatedly to come inside, Donna replies, “I can’t ruin this for them when things are finally good. They’re amazing. I don’t deserve to see this.”
In the parent-child relationship, Donna abandons herself and avoids rebuilding ties with her children. In her eyes, her very existence is the root of their suffering. She actively negates the role of “mother” within the family. In the binary between self and family, Donna chooses the self. Returning to Carmy, we see that his emotional choice mirrors his mother’s: both believe they are undeserving of joy. If the mythologized chef archetype invisibly demands this sacrifice from Carmy, then the intimate influence of his mother becomes his deepest fear. The mother figure and the chef figure rise like two mountains before him, plunging him into renewed suffering.
Combined with jump-cut editing, handheld cinematography, and overlapping focal lengths, The Bear, though categorized as a comedy, reveals its tragic core. Against a backdrop of anxiety and tension, the story follows a chef torn between personal cognition and social identity. Symbols of suffering abound inside and outside the kitchen. Every day before opening, and opening day itself, becomes a new battlefield. On this battlefield, emotions, relationships, values, and identities are constantly tested, dismantled, and reassembled. After each reconstruction, new suffering emerges. The only constant is Carmy and the kitchen staff’s relentless confrontation with pain.
In another sense, this confrontation is a form of worship. This worship is no longer abstract, religious, or mythological devotion to a deity, but a concrete devotion rooted in specific environments - the real kitchen, and specific figures - the chef. They remain calm in heat, forge order from chaos, and infuse reason with emotion. They are not Sisyphus, yet they surpass him. They take suffering as their destination, and on the ascent, they construct a second home through relationships, a place Bourdain once called a “home for the soul.” Only when we abandon the metaphor of the restaurant industry as a “sacred choice” and remember that it is, in truth, a synonym for suffering and pain, can the reality of the culinary world finally be spoken.
作者：夏浩然
发表于：陀螺电影
二零二三 七月十三日
2000年，安东尼·博尔顿为《纽约客》撰写了一篇专栏。在这篇专栏里，他记录了他在Les Halles（博尔顿于1998年起在纽约曼哈顿的法式餐厅Les Halles担任主厨）餐厅工作一天的全过程：这是一个星期五的早上，他5点55分起床，他一边洗漱一边思考着周末的菜单；抵达餐厅后，他急急忙忙地与甜品师、冷餐师、前台经理等其他工作人员确认今天的菜单。在厨房高强度工作接近15小时后，博尔顿于凌晨12点25分离开，他上了一辆出租车，前往Siberia酒吧喝酒。在撰写这篇文章之前，博尔顿曾于1999年为《纽约客》撰写了另一篇专栏，他在这篇专栏里写道：美食是关于疼痛的科学。
一年后，他再次通过自己的工作记录证明：美食诞生于疼痛并因疼痛而持续。这所谓的疼痛感不仅仅来自于生理机制对于疼痛的忍耐力：超长小时的工作、长时间被高温、噪音、利器所包围以及在狭小空间里，身体与身体之间难以避免的激烈冲撞；在另一层面，这难以忍受的疼痛感来自于被高温淹没的焦虑情绪，团队合作的强制性默契和对每一道菜和每一位客人的完全把握。
生理与心理的双重压力将每一位厨师转化为战场上的士兵：他们拥有军事般的执行能力和整齐划一，他们的一丝不苟和对时间的绝对掌控上升为一种准则，一种极端的、处于极限的行为准则，而当这种准则以美食的形式出现在餐桌上时，它被大众翻译为一种美学。渐渐地，餐饮的美学被规划为一种常规，即一种要求完全的、美丽的、甚至是克制但富有创意的常规美学。这种美学被当代社会认可并推崇，它从常规的美学上升为一种标准，一种属于特定人群和特定阶级的标准，最终，这种标准成为了一个行业性符号。就此，餐饮行业的隐喻被无情地揭露开来：盛行于当代的消费主义将餐饮这门疼痛的科学包装为一个标准，换而言之，一个神圣的选择，它让客人/消费者成为了至高无上的主体，让美食成为了主体的战利品，让被高温包裹的厨师沦为被消费、被控制的客体。
博尔顿的文章直击了当代社会对餐饮行业的隐喻，他强调餐饮行业背后的苦难经历，并为每一位加入这个以疼痛为快感的行业的厨师进行辩护。
《熊家餐馆》同样如此。
《熊家餐馆》第一季聚焦于卡米回到芝加哥，与家人和朋友一起维护并经营哥哥麦克的三明治餐厅——‘The Beef’的故事。在第一季里，剧集向我们展示了一个脆弱、封闭、情绪化严重、表达能力弱、极度焦虑的卡米。在第一季的多处闪回镜头中，我们了解到卡米过去在米其林餐厅的高压经历，存活在隐喻中的米其林餐厅磨灭了卡米作为人的种种情绪感知能力，而促使他沦为一个毫不敏感的工具厨师。
如果第一季的故事线是从职业或行业的角度对卡米进行构造，那么第二季则是以“关系”对卡米进行再构造：一方面是亲密（爱情与友情）关系，另一方面是家庭关系。
在第一季里，副主厨悉尼似乎是唯一拥有“正常”沟通能力的角色，卡米、里奇、马库斯等其他男性角色的沟通方式分别是咒骂与吼叫。在与顾客发生冲突时，里奇会用手枪威胁顾客，强迫他们接受餐厅的解决方案；而当内部生发矛盾时，卡米则会破口大骂，砸碎器皿，宣泄他的愤怒的同时镇压其他副主厨。第一季的《熊家餐馆》是愤怒的，这一愤怒的表现揭示了卡米等其他男性角色不自觉地落入了传统定义上的男性气质，即一种诞生于古罗马战场的男性气质：野蛮、暴力、无情、粗鲁。
这样的男性气质对于普遍的男性而言是安全可靠的选择：古往今来，男性始终被规训扮演一个“向外”的角色，他们因社会性教条建立一个无懈可击的防护机制，即一种掩藏情绪，武装外表的社会性面具，久而久之他们习惯于躲藏在机制里，他们的情绪惯性也不断地对他们提出警戒：暴力是最好的工具。悉尼的出现打破了这个闭环——如同火遇见了水——她的存在对餐厅中的男性气质构成了一种安全的威胁，在她与卡米的日常工作与交流中，卡米最终逐渐清醒，意识到传统男性气质所构成的危机，在第二季做出了改变。
情绪调度上，第二季的《熊家餐馆》更为温和：卡米在与悉尼发生矛盾后，会要求自己拍打心脏的部位表示道歉；在与姐姐娜塔丽的相处中，卡米逐渐敞开心扉，对姐姐诉说自己的苦恼，感谢她为餐厅所做的一切；甚至在与餐厅员工的合作中，卡米多次向他们表示感谢。
或许在种种关系的重新融合中，最引人注目的是卡米与克莱尔的爱情。在第二季第六集的闪回中我们得知，克莱尔是卡米一直以来的暗恋对象。一次偶遇后，卡米与克莱尔重新联系，不过在这段无比亲密的爱情关系中，卡米再次落入了另一个传统男性气质的陷阱：逃避。
爱情关系犹如一把利剑，具有直击人最软弱部位的能力。在与克莱尔相识之初，卡米故意给了错误的电话号码；在关系进入亲密阶段时，卡米选择主动性回避。这些逃避性的情感选择代表了卡米在爱情关系上的不安，而这种不安来自于他内心深处对于亲密关系的不认可——传统价值意义上的逃避与当代价值意义上的认同构筑了一个无形的战场，卡米站在这个难以保持平衡的情感天平上，左右思忖着他的选择。第二季结尾，餐厅试营日当晚，卡米被困在冷冻室里，几近绝望的他对自己喃喃自语道：“我不需要获得快乐，我也不配给予别人快乐，我就这样挺好的”；这段话不巧被站在门外的克莱尔旁听，随之克莱尔转头离开，留下卡米独自一人坐在冷冻室里。
就此，卡米在工作与爱情之间抛弃了爱情，换而言之，他抛弃获得感性愉悦的权利，而对厨房中的苦难表示坚定不移的信念。这样的情感选择回到古典的二元性讨论中——秩序与混乱——在卡米眼中，厨房世界象征着太阳神的价值：秩序与节制；爱情与厨房都存在的世界象征着酒神的价值：混乱与疯狂；在酒神的价值体系里，卡米失去了地心引力，悔恨和焦虑再次浮现，他被自己在情感上的不稳定与秩序上的失衡所淹没，从而选择回到太阳神身边，即他熟悉的，炼狱般的厨房世界。在传统男性气质和炼狱般的厨房世界里，爱情好比一个异类般的存在，爱情所需要的勇气、温暖、牺牲和全心全意成为了厨房世界的天敌，这些情感元素只能侍奉爱情或者厨房，不能共存于两个世界之间。
该二元性讨论再次将主厨形象放置于一个至高的位置——一个被当代文化神化的地位，在当代文化语境里，主厨如同导演、教授等其他职业（这些现代职业往往在色情作品中得到异象的刻画）被归纳进现代神话，在性别关系和性爱关系上延展出另一层隐喻：强势、权力、属于军队气质的绝对威严。被神化的主厨形象切断了与感性思维的所有联系，他们被放置在一个完全理智的价值体系里，在该价值体系里产生的选择、行为、行动和目标纷纷只能服侍厨房，所以逃避成为了他们面对情感的自主选择。此时的逃避不仅仅来自于男性气质所需求的武装，更来自于社会性形象的无情要求，他们虽然和所有人一样渴望爱，可从他们成为主厨的第一天，爱这份权利已经被悄无声息地剥夺。或许卡米拼命挣扎于男性气质的第二个圈套，在这圈套之后，一股来自于被社会束缚的主厨形象的毁灭性力量正吞噬着他。至此，男性气质的困扰不再是核心，主厨形象的二元性辩论成为新的课题。
主厨形象在当代影视作品中一直是耀眼的存在。《熊家餐馆》开播不久，西方互联网纷纷对卡米贴上“hot chef”（性感主厨）的标签；而在近几年热播的Netflix网剧《艾米丽在巴黎》中，另外一位主厨——加布里埃尔也掀起了全球性痴恋。
诚然，主厨形象在当代文化语境中已成为权力和强势的符号，该符号的形成来自于主厨在工作上的绝对胜任：高执行力与高掌控力，而当职业上的执行力与掌控力与性爱上的性感相匹配时，执行力与掌控力则被翻译为一种接近于“施虐狂”的特征，因此，主厨从一个文化符号上升为一种性爱符号，一种仅仅诞生于肾上腺素和权力关系的新文化物种。主厨的神化仍肆虐地进行，这种对权力和控制的神化又无疑揭露了当代人对于被控制、被安排以及萨德氏的，在苦难中寻欢作乐的精神幻想。
亲密关系之外，家庭关系在第二季中得到了原始性的展示。在第二季第六集里，故事回到餐厅开业前的第一百周：卡米家的圣诞聚会。卡米的母亲唐娜，哥哥麦克以及他们家的亲戚纷纷出镜。镜头快速地穿越在厨房、客厅、定时器和唐娜的咆哮之间，在跳剪和粗鄙的言语之间，圣诞节原有的温情气氛被彻底泯灭，我们唯一能感受到的是焦虑、愤怒和埋怨。
从心理学的角度分析，主创回到古典的、弗洛伊德式的理论据点上：他们在剧集的必要时刻展现卡米原生家庭的初始状态，为我们还原了构造卡米性格的原始图案，至此，我们彻底理解造成卡米焦虑、卑微、不安的原因——他的母亲。如果经营餐厅，在现实的厨房世界构筑一个群体是《熊家餐馆》一直以来的主线，那么原生家庭的矛盾以及因原生家庭而起的破碎形象则是剧集的暗线。在剧集里，我们时常从卡米的对话中得知“哥哥是一个光彩夺目的人”，换而言之，他一直活在哥哥的阴影下，如今唐娜形象的出现则证实了这一暗线的发展。
第二季结尾，娜塔丽翘首以盼母亲能够出席餐厅的开业晚餐，直到最后时刻，娜塔丽的丈夫皮特在餐厅门外发现了唐娜，她踌躇不前，在门外紧张地抽烟。当皮特三番五次地劝唐娜进餐厅时，唐娜却说：“我不能在他们最好的时候把这一切给毁了。他们很优秀，是我不配看到这一切”；
在亲子关系中，唐娜选择摒弃自我，逃避与子女重建的选择，在她眼中，她的存在是造成子女悲惨的根本原因，即她自主性地否定“母亲”在家庭关系中的角色，所以在自我与家庭的二元性辩论里，唐娜选择了自我；回到上文，卡米的情感选择与唐娜的选择一致，他们纷纷认为他们不配拥有情感上的愉悦，那么如果主厨形象的神化无形中要求卡米做出这样的抉择，原生家庭中来自母亲最亲密的影响则是卡米内心最大的恐惧。母亲形象与主厨形象延展为两座大山，它们赫赫矗立在卡米面前，让卡米再次陷入一个新的苦难。
搭配上跳剪的剪辑风格、手持摄影以及近焦远焦相互重叠的影视风格，作为喜剧的《熊家餐馆》，它的悲剧色彩不言而喻：以焦虑和紧张为底色的故事伴随一位挣扎于个体认知和社会形象的主厨展开。苦难的象征在厨房和厨房外的世界比比皆是，餐厅开业前的每一天以及开业当天都是全新的战场，在这战场之上，情绪、关系、价值和身份不断被测试、考验、拆解并重组，在这重组之后，新的苦难再次生发，唯一反复不变的是卡米和厨房里所有人对于苦难的挑战。
在另一种语境下，这种挑战实则是一种崇拜，这种崇拜不再是宗教上或神话意义上抽象的，对于某一神明的盲目崇拜，而是存在于具体环境（现实厨房）和具体形象（主厨形象）中的具体崇拜。他们在高温中保持冷静，在混乱中制造秩序，在理智中添置感性；他们不是西西弗斯但胜似西西弗斯；他们以苦难为终点，在登顶途中通过关系构筑第二个家，一个博尔顿称之为“灵魂归属地”的地方。而当我们忘却餐饮行业作为“神圣的选择”这一隐喻，时刻牢记它其实是苦难和疼痛的代言词时，餐饮行业的真相才得以诉说。