In John Hughes' smash 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, five teenagers from different social cliques spend a Saturday together in detention. There is the jock, whose identity is wrapped up in athletic achievement. There is the nerd, who is book smart and socially awkward. There is the moody basket case who wears black and broods about death. There is the equally moody rebel, who smokes and swears and defies authority. And there is the princess, whose clothes are hot, whose manners are cold, and whose lunch speaks volumes about the rarified social atmosphere in which she moves. While the others bring sandwiches -- if they bring anything at all -- she brings sushi, elegantly arranged on a fragile Japanese dish. The others don't even recognize what she's eating, and when she explains what sushi is -- "rice, raw fish and seaweed" -- the rebel mocks her for her willingness to eat it.
Using food to trace the rigidly hierarchical world of American teen culture, the scene expects the audience to see sushi as fundamentally alien, exclusive and unappetizing. The Breakfast Club asserts that sushi-eating symbolizes a distasteful elitism that we all recognize, but that we do not ourselves create, maintain or like.
Such symbolism would never work today. In the short decades since Hughes' hit film, sushi has become a staple of American culture, a familiar, accessible and immensely desirable food that can be found in supermarket aisles and fast food outlets as well as high-end restaurants. Far from signaling the snobbery of those who eat it, sushi today belongs to the masses. Approximately 30 million Americans regularly eat sushi, including the Simpsons, the country's favorite animated family. And it isn't just Americans who have developed a passion for sushi. A taste for Japan's signature delicacy has also sprung up in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and China.
A refined delicacy that is fast becoming a popular menu item around the world, sushi says something important about how wealth, taste and the market interact on an international scale.
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