From early cinematic depictions of food as a symbol of ethnic and cultural identity to more complex contemporary portrayals, movies have demonstrated how our ideas about food are always changing. On the big and small screens, representations of addiction, starvation, and even food as fetish reinforce how important food is in our lives and in our culture.
In Food on Film: Bringing Something New to the Table, Tom Hertweck brings together innovative viewpoints about a popular, yet understudied, subject in cinema. This collection explores the pervasiveness of food in film, from movies in which meals play a starring role to those that feature food and eating in supporting or cameo appearances. The volume asks provocative questions about food and its relationship with work, urban life, sexual orientation, the family, race, morality, and a wide range of “appetites.”
The fourteen essays by international, interdisciplinary scholars offer a wide range of perspectives on such films and television shows as The Color Purple, Do the Right Thing, Ratatouille, The Road, Sex and the City, Twin Peaks, and even Jaws. From first course to last, Food on Film will be of interest to scholars of film and television, sociology, anthropology, and cultural history.
From early cinematic depictions of food as a symbol of ethnic and cultural identity to more complex contemporary portrayals, movies have demonstrated how our ideas about food are always changing. On the big and small screens, representations of addiction, starvation, and even food as fetish reinforce how important food is in our lives and in our culture.
In Food on Film: Bringing Something New to the Table, Tom Hertweck brings together innovative viewpoints about a popular, yet understudied, subject in cinema. This collection explores the pervasiveness of food in film, from movies in which meals play a starring role to those that feature food and eating in supporting or cameo appearances. The volume asks provocative questions about food and its relationship with work, urban life, sexual orientation, the family, race, morality, and a wide range of “appetites.”
The fourteen essays by international, interdisciplinary scholars offer a wide range of perspectives on such films and television shows as The Color Purple, Do the Right Thing, Ratatouille, The Road, Sex and the City, Twin Peaks, and even Jaws. From first course to last, Food on Film will be of interest to scholars of film and television, sociology, anthropology, and cultural history.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Bringing Something New to the Table
Tom Hertweck
Part I: First Courses: Opening Up New Directions in Food and
Film
1. “The Average Piece of Junk Is Probably More Meaningful Than Our
Criticism Designating It So”: Reading (Rhetorically) the Restaurant
Review in Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille
Elisabeth H. Buck
2. Table Talk: Queer Revelations through Meals in Filipino Gay-Male
Films
Mark DeStephano, S.J.
3. “A Nice Cup of Tea”: Tea Culture in 1930s and 1940s British
Documentary Film
Lynn Hilditch
Part II: Food and African American Film
4. Eat the Right Thing: The Urban Food Desert of Spike Lee’s
Bed-Stuy
Deborah Adelman
5. “So Good Make You Wanna Slap Yo Mama”: Race, Gender, and Eating
in the Comedy Film ’Hood
Jessica Fanaselle and Joshua Culpepper
6. From Disgust to Gustatory Pleasure: The Evolution of Alimentary
and Moral Repulsion in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple
Lynn R. Johnson
Part III: Feeding the Family: New Directions in Food and
Non-American Film
7. Taste, Honor, and Tradition in Il Mafioso
Memory Holloway
8. Food, Family, and History in Japanese Postwar Film: Four Cases
and a Few Comparisons
Charles W. Hayford
9. Appetite and Aroma: Visual Imagery and the Perception of Taste
and Smell in Contemporary Korean Film
Dotty Hamilton
Part IV: Small Screens, Big Appetites: Food and Television
10. Dale Cooper and the Mouth-Feel of Twin Peaks
Andrew Hageman
11. Food and Conversation in Sex and the City: Fashion Consumed,
Sex Digested
Glenda Sacks
Part V: Eating Humans: New Ideas on the Oldest Taboo
12. “Little Shakin’, Little Tenderizin’, and Down You Go”: Jaws and
Humanity’s Fear of Finding Itself on the Menu
Mark R. Bousquet
13. Sacrament to Sacrilege: Human Flesh as Sustenance in Alive and
The Road
Jennifer Dawes Adkison
14. New Zealand Lamb Is People: Bad Taste, Black Sheep, and
Farming
Christian B. Long
Index
About the Editor and Contributors
Tom Hertweck teaches courses on film, adaptation, the poetics of food, and various topics in American literature and cultural history at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Pleasure layering takes center stage in Tom Hertweck’s Food on
Film. The author explores depictions of food from the earliest days
of movies up to the present.
*Campus Circle*
True to the collection's title, the contributors to this volume use
food as a trope to engage in novel analyses of a number of films
and television programs already well worn by conventional
interpretations. Hertweck organized the book into five parts, the
first of which, 'First Courses,' comprises essays meant to
demonstrate the new directions through which food might be used in
film analysis and criticism. The remaining four parts focus
specifically on African American film, non-American film,
television, and films broaching the subject of cannibalism. The
contributors use film to connect to larger social and cultural
issues—for example, the authority of the male and the commensurate
impotence of the female in black culture, national and personal
identity, and the impact of globalization and genetic engineering
on societies generally. . . .[A]t its best, the collection is
creative, provocative, and epistemic. It can be read in conjunction
with Reel Food, ed. by Anne Bower, and James Keller’s Food, Film
and Culture. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates
through faculty and professionals.
*CHOICE*
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