THE BEAR: A DELICATE ECOSYSTEM

Season one of The Bear premiered on June 23, 2022, but has hardly reached as many voices as it deserves. It deals with human, common, everyday issues. The events are not always exciting but merely stressful. The characters are not dark and twisted beyond recognition, but very much relatable and human. Despite the lack of gloss, and because of its human heart, I believe The Bear can find an audience in anyone, but you must give it your full attention.

Life (Un)Interrupted by Grief

What you see most of the time on screen looks a lot like a real-life sandwich shop in Chicago called Mr. Beef. The creator of the show pays homage to one of his favourite food spots in Chicago, a place owned by his friend’s father. This plays into the show’s most prominent motif of family and friends.

We are observing life unfold for a group of people intimately connected by blood and friendship through work, passion, and shared grief.

Michael Berzatti ends his life and leaves his shop The Beef to his younger brother Carmine. After fighting his way to the top of New York’s best chef lists, Carmine abandons that throne and comes back home to run The Beef, unearthing a lot of unresolved conflicts, trauma, and financial stress. He hires Sydney, a young and talented cook, who despite being overqualified for The Beef, seeks employment there because of her father’s love for the restaurant. The veteran staff, most notably Tina, Richard and Marcus, struggle to adapt to a new leader and a younger but intimidating co-worker. Carmine and Sydney in turn fight to establish their voice in the new environment, repeatedly disturbing what happens to be a “very delicate ecosystem” as Richard repeats in protest. But ecosystems are not constant loops in a vacuum.

Grief had already disrupted The Beef’s system. It takes each character a different length of time and different coping mechanisms to finally realise that things cannot go back to normal, and that a new system of functioning is needed.

Realism and Expressionism

Carmine: Is there a name for that thing where… you’re afraid of something good happening, ‘cause you think something bad’s gonna happen?

Richard: I don’t know… life?

Life goes on, whatever happens and whatever happens is life. That seems to be The Bear’s mantra as it tries to show this particular slice of life. It includes the good, the bad and the ugly, on repeat.

The actors are all incredibly talented but still relatively unknown faces. The show’s dialogues are not comprised of ridiculous Hollywood one liners or dramatic pauses but are conversations that could just as well come from real life. It’s not stuffed with unnecessary sarcasm and wit, it doesn’t force romantic plotlines and it doesn’t caricature hard times or people’s flaws. Nobody’s perfect, but most of us are not monsters either. We apologise, we forgive, we try to act better.

The show feels real because it’s relevant, but it rarely throws it into your face. The COVID-19 pandemic is mentioned merely in passing, in the context of frustration and stress of the restaurant losing patrons. This allusion blends into the background and adds to the idea of the delicate ecosystem. Our society and ways of living were changed irrevocably during the pandemic. The Earth’s ecosystem is massively disrupted. These are relevant topics, yet they can be packaged into the evergreen setting of a restaurant, a workplace. Just like they are topics relevant to absolutely everyone, this show seems relevant to all of life.

The realism works together with an expressionistic approach to showing emotion. The chaotic and anxiety-inducing scenes use fast-paced editing, layers of sounds stacked on top of each other, the characters talking over one another, intense close-ups, unsteady hand-held camera shots… very much resembling the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems. The show relies on expressionism when showing Carmine’s mystical dreams and thus introduces the symbol of the bear, Carmine’s nickname, a play on his surname Berzatti, symbolising his inner struggles, and ultimately the new name and vision for the restaurant.

We are often given short but striking collaged shots of Chicago, its shops, its streets, the metro, close-ups of food cooking, food storage cabinets, kitchen utensils. It is showing us the ordinary and asking us to pay attention to it. There is magic to be found in our daily surroundings, our town, our habits, what we eat. While we are weathering challenges and striving for improvement, we can ground ourselves in the pleasures of the home and the pleasures of food.

We need to start paying attention to life. And you need to check out this show.

From ABBA’s reunion to the resurgence of vinyl, the 21st century is starting to feel a bit retro. 80s trends became popular in the 2010s with the indie aesthetic taking over and in 2023, Y2K inspired fashion is inescapable. It is hard not to wonder why trends tend to go backwards.

In terms of music, nostalgia could be a contributing factor. Many people now who grew up with parents born in the 70’s and 80’s will have grown up with the vintage tracks their parents loved, with many parents sharing songs of their youth with their children. As a result, many young people now feel a sense of nostalgia when listening to older tracks. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling that can bring comfort and a sense of joy, which could be why classics are still popular today. This has had a knock-on effect with musicians now finding inspiration in older music and creating songs inspired by retro. This explains why a lot of modern music now has a retro feel, with indie particularly taking influence from the 80s.

In terms of fashion, it is a different case. Fashion more so than music relies on trends because what is not trendy is not as accessible to buy in shops and online. This means older generations cannot really be blamed for vintage fashions resurgence. With fashion there is a strange unexplainable cycle of trends reappearing after a decade or so. This could be due to the common drive to be unique; people could be leaning towards vintage fashion because to them it is something a bit different from what is modern. However, when everyone starts doing the same, it becomes a trend. This could be one of the reasons why fashion seems to go back in time.

In 2023, the rise in vintage fashion could be blamed on our current social and economic state. In the last few years there has been a pandemic, mass redundancies, a cost-of-living crisis, and an ongoing environmental crisis. Because of these issues many people have been turning to thrifting, charity shopping and vintage fairs as they tend to be more affordable as well as sustainable. Because more people have been shopping second hand, there naturally has been a rise in older vintage clothes being seen. Vintage shopping has also become a trend, with many sharing their shopping trips on social media.

Even if it cannot be exactly pinpointed why vintage has made a comeback, it is a fun way of self-expression through music and fashion that can even show a love that has been passed on through generations.