Food, Film and Culture: A Genre Study / Edition 1

by James R. Keller

Overview

Culinary imagery, much like sexual and violent imagery, is a key cinematic device used to elicit a sensory response from an audience. In many films, culinary imagery is central enough to constitute a new subgenre, defined by films in which food production, preparation, service, and consumption play a major part in the development of character, structure, or theme.

This book defines the food film genre and analyzes the relationship between cinematic food imagery and various cultural constructs, including politics, family, identity, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and religion. Chapters examine these themes in several well-known food films, such as The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Chocolat, Babette's Feast, and Eat Drink Man Woman, and lesser-known productions, including Felicia's Journey, Kitchen Stories, Magic Kitchen, and Chinese Feast. The work includes a filmography of movies within the food genre.

Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786426164
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	10/03/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	215
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.43(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James R. Keller is a professor and chair of the English and Theatre department at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. The author or editor of numerous works about popular culture, he lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Cinematic Hunger Artists     

1: The Allegory of Intemperance: Spenser and Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover     
2: Itzam Revealed: Chocolat and the Mayan Cosmology     
3: Scotland, PA: Macbeth, McMeat and McMurder     
4: Four Little Caligulas: La Grande Bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism     
5: What’s Cooking?: Multiculturalism and Holiday Histrionics or a Banquet of Shouting     
6: Mostly Martha: Appe/type and Stereo/tite     
7: “Culinizing” the Female Form: Felicia’s Journey, Predation, and Cultural Imperialism     
8: Dreaming of the Pure Vegetable Kingdom: Ecofeminism and Agriculture in A Thousand Acres and Antonia’s Line      94
9: The Kitchen Panopticon: Indeterminacy and the Myth of Objective Surveillance     
10: Filming and Eating Italian: Big Night and Dinner Rush     
11: A Chef in Love: The Fable of a Communist and Culinary Re-Evolution     
12: The Artist in Exile: Babette’s and “Alexander’s Feast”     
13: Family Suppers and the Social Syntax of Dissimilation     
14: Food Fights: The Martial Chefs and Magical Arts of Asian Cinema     

Conclusion     
Appendix: Food Films     
Bibliography     
Index     

Editorial Reviews

recommended”—Choice; “I devoured this book...intriguing...a fine study”—Journal of Popular Culture.

From the Publisher

"I devoured this book...intriguing...a fine study"

Journal of Popular Culture

recommended

Choice