Free Lunch?

The Lunch Date was a very entertaining short film, and additionally lends itself to some deeper examination. The time period is obviously set somewhere in the mid 1900's, and there are still racial biases present in the population. This is readily apparent in the main character's reaction to the black man trying to help her pick up the things she dropped in Grand Central Station.

This all leads to a very interesting situation though. The woman buys a salad, realizes she is missing a fork, and after getting one, she returns to find that a working class black man has begun to eat her food. Or so she thinks. After some futile attempts to reclaim the salad, she brazenly begins eating from the same plate that he is.

The end result of this is, of course, comedic. She eventually figures out that she was eating his salad all along, and hers has gone untouched. The ending is, to me, hilarious. Simple humor, but great. I think that there's something attached to the reading from Buechner to be seen here though. To an extent, the comedy is derived from the ridiculousness, the absurdity, and the more somber backdrop to the story.