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Who Was Ninny Threadgoode In Fried Green Tomatoes
Who Was Ninny Threadgood In Fried Green Tomatoes

1-Page Summary of Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe Overall Summary. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a 1987 novel by American author and actress Fanny Flagg. The narrative contains two interconnected stories that unfold several decades apart. DU Home » Latest Threads » Forums & Groups » Main » The DU Lounge (Forum) » Was Ninny Threadgood real. Fri Jun 28, 2013, 04:36 PM warrior1 (12,317 posts).

Fried Green Tomatoes
Excuse me, did we see the same movie?

by Lu Vickers

from Jump Cut, no. 39, June 1994, pp. 25-30
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1994, 2006

In a culture that tends to line up for movies starring muscle bound men named Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES has turned out to he the little movie that could. The movie grossed $25.4 million by its second month of release, not had for a film that cost $11 million to produce (Fox). Critics have praised FRIED GREEN TOMATOES' sepia colored depiction of life in the rural south, and surprisingly in a town that favors babes, bangs and blood, the film copped an award from the Writer's Guild for best screenplay based on material from another medium (Weinraub C21).

Based on Fanny Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, the film is a story within a story of Southern female friendship and love. The movie opens when Evelyn Couch, an unhappy housewife, meets tip with Ninny Threadgoode, a resident of a nursing home. Ninny begins telling the story of Idgie and Ruth, two Depression-era women who love each other, raise a child together, befriend African Americans and run the Whistle Stop Cafe. Not your typical blockbuster.

But the film managed to attract mainstream audiences despite the absence of testosterone-driven action. The National Review's movie critic called FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

'a modest American film that can be enjoyed by adults and children, natives and foreigners, feminists and male chauvinists, Southerners and even Yankees who never so much as saw let alone ate, less than a rubicund tomato' (45).

Ironically, for someone who sees the world in terms of black and white, the reviewer left out two fairly conspicuous pairs — African Americans and whites, and straights and gays. Maybe that's because rather than dealing with race and relationships honestly, the film attempts to appeal to whites' attitudes about blacks and to straight peoples' attitudes about same sex partnerships.

As for the racial issue, Flagg said when she adapted the book for film, she intended to show a

'different side of the South, because most literature and film about the South are either about poor white trash or faded Southern aristocracy' (Keough E3).

Obviously, she was only interested in correcting the negative stereotypes of whites, for the film carries out Hollywood's tradition of depicting blacks as good Negroes, loyal, devoted and harmless (Roffman and Simpson 15).

Correcting the erroneous stereotypes of Southerners wasn't Flagg's only intention though; she also planned to show the affection that existed between blacks and whites. 'People don't realize how much love there was — and still is between the races,' she added, remembering her grandmother's stories about how blacks and whites pulled together during the Depression (Clendenin 14). But the film fails at this attempt as well. The Black perspective of these friendships is missing, although not surprisingly so. As William Alexander Percy, a Mississippi planter, wrote in his 1941 autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee,

'It is true in the South that whites and blacks live side by side, exchange affection liberally, and believe they have an innate and miraculous understanding of one another. But the sober fact is we understand one another not at all' (Goldfield 4).

What Percy is describing is the result of racial etiquette that produced a

'stage Negro [which] inured whites to the suffering of Southern Blacks' (4).

Although whites were able to express their familiarity with Blacks, Blacks were required to refer to Whites as 'sir' or 'maam,' positioning themselves in a humble manner that

'would make a white comfortable in believing that this deferential mien was not only right, but the way things ought to be' (3).

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES recreates this comfort zone. Blacks are deferential to whites, but we never find out the reasons why. The two main African American characters, Big George and Sipsey, are clearly devoted to Idgie, their boss — Big George to doglike proportions. As Ninny says, 'He watched over [Idgie] night and day.' At first it seems as though he is mute; in several scenes, he stands passively waiting for Idgie. It's not until she's grown and running the Cafe that he finally speaks. When Idgie is challenged by a Klan member for serving Blacks outside her restaurant, Big George utters his first words, 'You gonna get yourself in a whole heap of trouble.' We never learn how this threat affects him; we never learn how he feels about barbecuing all those ribs his friends and family can't even go inside to eat; his only concern is what will happen to Idgie.

Sipsey's response to this same incident is to smile and say, 'Grady won't sit next to a colored child, but he eats eggs that shoot out of a chicken's ass.' As with Big George, we never know how Sipsey feels about frying all those eggs for someone she knows is racist. The film would have us believe she thinks it's funny.

Later, when the Klan captures Big George and beats him brutally with a whip, he gets his second line in the movie. Idgie runs to his aid and Big George mumbles, 'Don't, Miss Idgie. You gon get yourself in a whole heap of trouble.' One gets the feeling that either Big George suffers from echolalia, or he exists, as Ninny said, purely to watch over Idgie.

Sipsey does her share of watching over this family too; in fact, she is the true heroine of this film. She risks her life to save Ruth's baby from the evil ex-husband, Frank Bennett, when he comes to kidnap the child. Then, in spite of being injured, she manages to kill him. But for all her heroism, the next time we see her in the restaurant, she is shuffling across the floor in loose shoes, a grin on her face, obviously happy to be at the service of these white folks.

Surely, Blacks did behave this way in the 1

Who Was Ninny Threadgood In Fried Green Tomatoes