5: Big Ego

“The bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

- Anton Ego, Ratatouille (2007)

Recently, a dear friend made me aware of the fact that I could find entire instrumental movie soundtracks on YouTube, suggesting I put them on in the background whenever I had some chores or tasks to do. She also recommended one particular video that she liked to listen to sometimes. Subsequently, I spent several hours one Saturday listening to Ratatouille’s ambient music on a loop.

Oui, oui!

While it might sound odd, that particular Saturday turned out to be one of the most productive days I have enjoyed in quite some time. Indeed, if you have a list of things you desperately need to do and you haven’t been able to bring yourself to sit down and do them yet, you might want to tune into the magic of Parisian sewer music and see where that takes you.

Anyway, it turns out you can only listen to the soundtrack of Ratatouille so many times before you inevitably just decide to rewatch the movie. So I did. If it’s been a while for you since you’ve seen it, here is a short recap:

Act 1: Rat wants to be a chef.

Act 2: Despite the lack of familial support, Rat pursues his dreams to be a chef by a) discovering a knack for human ventriloquy and b) violating possibly every single food-related health & safety code ever written.

Act 3: Rat is revealed to be a bonafide psychic (please provide an alternative explanation for this if you have one?) when he correctly guesses that an important food critic’s childhood sensory memory could be triggered by a specific peasant dish. Rat wins! Anyone really can cook!

The End.

Side note: If you were going to name a kid after a pasta, would you pick Linguini? I’m probably more of an Orzo mom, myself.

Rewatching Remy’s adventures was a pleasant way to spend a couple hours that day, and the viewing experience was made all the better by the movie’s meaningful — albeit cheesy — lessons. Of course, of these lessons, the key takeaway of the movie tends to be found in its most famous line: “Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.”

Essentially, the line is a “carpe diem-esque” call to action meant to encourage the movie’s intended young audience to pursue their seemingly impossible dreams regardless of how extraordinary and unlikely such dreams might feel to both themselves and others. Be bold! Be brave! And the universe will reward you! For if even a snarky rat with an American accent can successfully become a gourmet chef in Paris, then why couldn’t you, too, achieve anything and everything you’ve ever dreamed of? It’s a familiar theme, repurposed and repackaged by many books and films throughout history, but refreshing all the same. I admit I myself still find the occasional reminder to dream impossible dreams meaningful as I navigate my twenties.

However, on this particular rewatch of Ratatouille, the “anyone can cook” rhetoric seemed to draw less of my attention than another, more complicated line delivered toward the end of the movie.

After meeting the rodent chef who successfully made his beloved childhood dish, the gloomy food columnist Anton Ego gives a moving review about the true nature — and price — of criticism. In his signature drawling, singularly authoritative voice, Ego states:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

In the context of a movie about successfully achieving the impossible (the rat literally gets his own restaurant!), I suspect we would be shortchanging ourselves to allow the role that criticism plays in all of that to go unacknowledged, particularly when Ratatouille itself delivers such a poignant reflection on the subject straight from the mouth of the movie’s supposed antagonist.

Admittedly, I join this conversation rather late. Far more prolific essayists and journalists than me have reflected on the usefulness of the nuance present in Ego’s reflection on the role of the critic and on criticism in general. Among my favorite pieces are a 2008 article written by the late Roger Ebert, in which he argues that a good critic is ultimately a teacher and a 2021 Eater article in which food journalist Ryan Sutton celebrates Ego the critic as a rare type of Disney hero.

Both these articles do a remarkable job of focusing on the character of Ego and how he contributes to Ratatouille’s themes of art, passion, food, and more. In this space, however, I would like to build on this work by directing our attention to the role Ego plays in the context of what I would argue is one of the main philosophical inquiries present in Ratatouille — that is, the complicated act of “being good.”

Broadly speaking, what does it mean to “be good?” For many, the immediate idea that comes to mind is probably something along the lines of being good at something. “Are you good at drawing? …Oh, I’m not that good at singing. …You’re really good at math!” and so forth.

In Ratatouille, a movie about food, the “being good” in question is mostly about being good at cooking — great at it, even. Remy dreams of learning how to cook. The kitchen staff of Gusteau’s mostly dreams of impressing the various critics and customers who grace their restaurant with their culinary prowess. I mean, the entire movie is even set in a delectable and deliciously immersive depiction of Paris, a city many recognize as one of the great culinary capitals of the world. Interestingly, “being good” is also highlighted in the context of being good at eating. Remy spends a significant amount of his time encouraging other rats and even Linguini to explore the sensory treasure that is the subject of food. Strawberry and cheese pairings, authentic cuisine items over frozen food selections, etc. — food is understood inherently as something valuable and vital to a well-lived life and a well-rounded individual.

In this context, then, it is no surprise nor coincidence that the character of Anton Ego is named just that. “Ego” — i.e., a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance — often can be the biggest, baddest villain of them all. When people often act as their own harshest critic, Ratatouille’s decision to name the critic of the movie “Ego” effectively personifies the Herculean trial that is conquering one’s own self-doubts throughout the movie. When Remy successfully wins Ego over with his culinary skill, he essentially proves himself, his cooking skills, and his authentic love of food to his own inner ego as well.

Notably, most characters in the film are far more interested in being perceived as good at cooking than genuinely developing the skill. Skinner, Gusteau’s successor, aims to capitalize on the successful reputation of the restaurant and its original owner to sell frozen food selections with little to no respect for cooking as a craft. Linguini can barely boil water and makes very little effort to remedy this. Indeed, the moment he discovers a way to be perceived as good at cooking without working on the skill at all, he jumps on the opportunity. Generally, perception is a central motif of the film, as the entire movie is entrenched in acts of lies and deceit: Linguini and Remy lie to everyone. Skinner lies about Linguini’s true identity. Rats — both literal and metaphorical — just sort of run amok throughout the movie.

This theme of perception arguably brings us to the next interpretation of “being good” — that is, the moral and ethical dimension of the phrase. What does it mean to “be good,” full stop?

Ratatouille as a film is surprisingly preoccupied with this moral and ethical dimension of “being good.” For Remy, our lovable rodent hero, questions about his moral and ethical being seem to haunt him from the very beginning of his tale, as he voices his concerns to his dad about the lifestyle of their rat community and its instinct to steal from human beings, eat rotten food scraps, and more. The climax of the conflict between Remy and Linguini also revisits this moral and ethical dimension of “being good” in a more intense fashion later in the film when Remy sneaks his entire rat community into the kitchen of Gusteau’s to steal food after Linguini hurts his feelings.

Interestingly, the audience is not invited to process all “bad actions” seen in the film with the same, universal sense of judgment or criticism. In other words, while the bad actions seen in the scenes like the ones mentioned in the paragraph above are understood in the logic of the film to be immoral or unethical, not all such “bad” actions are held to the same standard. For example, Linguini and Remy actively lie to everyone with their little arrangement, and the audience is largely expected to root for them. Additionally, that same rat community that was bad for breaking into the kitchen at all practically becomes a bonafide rat army the night of Ego’s visit to the restaurant when they need to lock up Skinner to prevent him from ratting them out — and the audience is expected to laugh along with them. Admittedly, it is funny.

So…. why is something “bad” versus “good?” Is it “good” to do a “bad thing” if you are doing that bad thing to a bad person? What about vice versa? And what does any of this even have to do with Anton Ego?

Well, the truth is that I think Ego is largely right: the work of a critic is easy. Whether it be a more malicious instance of projection operating as a defense mechanism or a classic case of negativity bias — noticing the tedious, the incorrect, the mundane, the unfortunate, and the mistaken is often far easier for people to do than noticing the good. Indeed, there are so many ways to fail, it is amazing that anyone ever succeeds at all.

Yet as Ego himself states, “the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”

While this quote is mainly meant to address the outward experience of criticism — meaning the experience of criticizing someone or something else separate to our own self — its wisdom might also apply to the criticism we subject ourselves to in our own minds.

There is a little chef and big ego inside all of us. Maybe you aren’t like Remy. Maybe “the dream” isn’t cooking. Maybe it’s singing or dancing or acting or writing. Maybe it’s something more specific, like a new personal best mile run time or crocheting a new sweater. Maybe it’s something professional, like getting a promotion. Or maybe it’s something more personal: motherhood, fatherhood, speeding up the process of growing out your impulse bangs. I don’t know. Whatever that dream might be, it is important to be cognizant and aware of the ways that little chef and big ego of yours are talking to you in your head. Don’t be like Linguini in the face of a random rodent, okay? Control them before they control you.

In society, popular rhetoric around ego understands the ego as something that should be managed appropriately and prevented from getting too big. I agree — but perhaps not exactly the way you might initially think. In the case of Ratatouille, Ego’s voice is valuable to Remy for a reason. Approval from Ego would help legitimize Remy’s status as a chef and striving for that approval naturally encourages Remy to be more thoughtful, precise, and skillful in his cooking. Yet at a certain point, allowing Ego’s opinion of Remy’s cooking to become too important to Remy almost threatens Remy’s relationship with the art form in general to the detriment of his internal desire to become a chef according to his own standards.

Like Ratatouille, self-criticism has diminishing returns in reality. It can only make you better in appropriate, measured doses. You can let ego inform you and your work, but you can’t let it get louder than the dream itself. In the context of the first definition of “being good,” recognizing the presence of the ego inside all of us can help us make better choices about winning our own egos over and can help sustain us on the rather difficult road of staying committed to the pursuit of one’s dream.

And in the context of the second definition of “being good,” recognizing the role of Ego might even be pretty revolutionary. Something I’ve always admired about the movie Ratatouille, which stood out to me once again on this particular rewatch, is how admirable it is that Ego allows himself to be moved. In the face of new stimuli on the subject of food, Ego takes a careful and considered look at the way his relationship to food and to Parisian culinary culture had evolved over time, reflects if he likes his current approach, and revises his view accordingly. The audience celebrates this shift — we know his newfound openness to new culinary experiences is a good development.

When it comes to the moral and ethical dimension of being good, take a bite out of Ego’s meal: Reflect. Recover. Revise. It can be good and right and just for you to investigate internally the person you are shaping up to be. And when it comes to changing one’s perspective in the fact of new data, the choice to allow yourself to be moved is not an automatic admission of weakness. It might even be evidence of an admirable strength of character.

Interpret this however you’d like: take care of your ego. Because guess what? That voice is talking to you all the time… whether you acknowledge it or not.

Have a great day.