Description
Book SynopsisFrom 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 sh
Trade ReviewPleasure 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 *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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
