MovieChat Forums > The Joy Luck Club (1993) Discussion > Hates ice cream? What's wrong with that...

Hates ice cream? What's wrong with that bitch?!


I'm all for differing opinions, but geez! Ice cream is one of those universal things... she hates ICE CREAM? Are you kidding me?! How am I supposed to relate to this character on any level whatsoever when she hates ICE CREAM?! Is she outside her damn mind?! Of course your husband doesn't understand you, YOU HATE ICE CREAM. Nobody will understand you, ever!

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

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Tony Montana would totally think she's a freak. I mean for real. What chick wouldn't like ice cream?

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If you read the book, she was a belemic in college. She binged on it, threw up, and passed out. Since the traumatizing experience, she chose to never eat it again.

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[deleted]

Lactose intolerant.

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Even though the movie doesn't explain the bulemia connection, they do still say she hasn't eaten it ever since she got sick after eating it.
I once ate a Whopper and got food poisoning. I haven't eaten one since. I ate a Twinkie when I had early stages of Strep. I got super sick a few hours later and associated Twinkies with feeling like crap. I haven't eaten those either. Humans are strange. We associate tastes and sounds and smells with feelings. Some people smell roses and remember something happy like a first boyfriend or an anniversary. Some people smell roses and associate the smell with death and decay. Some people associate soup with cold winter nights and being warm and comfy, while others associate it with being sick and unhappy.
Lena associated ice cream with an eating disorder and being sick. The eating disorder also related to another unhappy event from her past when she convinced herself that she was in some way responsible for the death (cancer I believe) of a former classmate. So, she doesn't like ice cream.

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I'm actually in the middle of reading the book (again!!!) and the reason why she doesn't like it is because she didn't like a classmate and began leaving food in her bowls so he would "get leprosy, move to Africa and die". Five years later, she had forgotten about the kid, but remained anorexic because it was "fashionable". SHe then found out the that the boy had died at age seventeen and blamed herself. She took a half-gallon of strawberry ice cream from the freezer and forced herself to eat spoonfuls of it until she had finished it all. She then threw it up for several hours and wondered "why it was that eating something good could make you feel so terrible, while vomitiing something terrible could make you feel so good."

Just because you're hung like a moose doesn't mean you have to be a porn star!

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Good intelligent reply.
*Hand in the air for a high-five*

'cool movie type trivia stuff worked cleverly in to a signature'

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I got gastro from eating ice cream when I was 8, which had probably been thawed and refrozen - made me sick for hours and hours.

Anyone who has had a reaction to even a 'loved' food will understand this! As an adult, I had a bad oyster - I loved them once - but will never go there again - you sound a little angry! - maybe you have never had a bad reaction to food.

This scene really resonated to me and made perfect sense!

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Personally, I don't think ANYTHING will EVER make me hate ice cream, but I can understand why she ended up hating it. One night we ordered out, and my dad got really sick that night (it wasn't what he ate, it was a bug). Then, when we ordered out from the same place two months later he ordered the same thing because he liked it, but as soon as he started to eat it he started feeling uneasy and couldn't finish more than a few bites. It's sort of a defense mechanism. When a person gets sick after eating something, whether that's what made us sick or not, our body tells us to avoid that food. It's a natural way of protecting yourself against real or perceived poisons.

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A little off topic but I can't eat Lemon flavored candy or this weird orange mixture drink anymore because I was sick and took these nasty lemon flavor pills with the juice, then promptly threw up all over my Christmas presents.

I love ice cream but I stand with Lena on this one.

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"Of course your husband doesn't understand you, YOU HATE ICE CREAM. Nobody will understand you, ever!"

Then, do you think maybe that's the whole purpose of the
character trait?

And, please. Drink some warm milk and take a nap. You are
just awfully cranky.

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the only reason she hates ice cream is because Lena had thought that if she stopped eating, she would not have to marry a boy named Arnold who picked on her.
(there are a lot more details in the book about this.)
so Lena hears later on that Arnold dies and blames herself because Lena was anorexic at the time. So that night, Lena ate an entire tub of ice cream and spent the rest of the night throwing it up.

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I studied this in my Psychology class, it's called a taste aversion. You can eat something and if you become ill you think it was the foods fault (when it could have been a virus, stomach flu, etc) and you get sick just thinking about that food. I have a taste aversion to several things, I will never eat them again. LoL. I loathe cream of mushroom soup, fishsticks, pot pies, and over easy eggs, to name a few. =)

"It's wrong to mess with a Master of Quack Fu!!"

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[deleted]

I used to hate ice-cream as a toddler, but have made up for it by my absolute obsession with ice-cream ever since. :)

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This post made me laugh. It reminds me of a line in Posh Nosh ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0352091/ ) "I love dogs. People that don't like dogs should be shot".

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[deleted]

[deleted]

You too!! I can't eat ice cream without taking about a dozen Lactaid first. Even then sometimes that doesn't do it.

I won't eat cherry syrup or cherry candy of any kind because of this *beep!* so-called cherry flavored medicine I had to take when I was real little. But fresh cherries are fine, because they don't taste like "cherry flavor" at all!

Darnit, I just caught the last half hour.

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