FOOD FILMS
http://yumfood.net/articles/screencuisine/screencuisine-1.html
http://www.wesleyan.edu/gov/g380-jf.htm
Government 380 Politics of Food in Film Government 380 PAC 319 Wesleyan University Ext 2493
Spring 2001 jfinn@wesleyan.edu
Introduction This course
explores the connections between food and politics, as expressed through the
medium of film. Our concern is not with cinematography or the film industry,
but rather with the ways in which the use of food in film illuminates the
political. Of course, there is no lack of films that feature food. In addition
to obvious and well-known films, such as Big Night, Soul Food, and Babette's
Feast, among many others, there are a great number of more obscure films and
short documentaries that concentrate on food and food rituals. One sometimes
finds in the literature on film studies a distinction between the
formal-aesthetic dimensions of film and the sociological-ideological
dimensions. The former tends to concentrate on film as art. No great
sophistication is needed to understand that what counts as art and how one
assesses it may themselves be political, but the formal approach tends to subordinate
the study of the political by reducing it to just one consideration, of many,
in an examination of aesthetic quality. The sociological-ideological approach,
on the other hand, is less concerned with the aesthetic dimension of film and
more with the political and cultural dimensions of film. The study of film thus
has much if not everything to do with the ways in which film, as a part of
material culture, is both a medium and a mechanism of power. In this course, we
tend more toward the cultural studies approach. We are concerned chiefly with
film as a political thing and less as an expression of art as art. This
course is not, then, a course in film studies. It is instead a course that
examines the politics of food. The political nature of food may not be
immediately obvious to some folks, but a few moments' reflection should be
enough for most of us to understand at least some of the connections between
food and politics, and food as politics Among the topics we will explore
will be how and why the representation of food and the rituals that surround it
are so common in contemporary film. I suspect an answer to this question will
have two parts. First, food is such a prominent part of contemporary film
because it is universal, and thus a common reference point. Food can thus be a
powerful "polystemonous signifier that can articulate in concrete
terms" what is often vague or abstract. Second, the cinema is often
concerned with and reflects larger political and social issues. In this course,
we shall concentrate on how the use of food in film speaks to two such larger
issues. In some of the films we will see, important and contentious issues of
class, power, territoriality, and rebellion/protest are addressed through
explorations and portrayals of food and its rituals, including dining and
etiquette. In other films, food is the means to explore fundamental political
issues of personal, ethnic, gender, and national identity. Our aim is to find
out what food, as depicted in film, tells us about our communities and our
selves.
II. Papers & Projects. Each
student must write a short (2-3 pages) essay for three films. We will allocate
the essays on the first day of classes. These essays will be due on the Monday
following every film and must be photocopied or emailed to every member of the
class on the Monday following every film. We will use these essays as the basis
for class discussions. Each essay is worth 20% of your course grade. In
addition to the short essays, every student must complete a longer essay or
research paper. Students should choose a topic in consultation with the
instructor. The longer essay is worth 20% of your course grade. Student
discussion is an important element of this course. Class participation will be
worth 20% of your course grade.
III. Books &
Materials. The following books are required for this course. They are
available for purchase at Atticus. Counihan, ed. Food & Culture: A
Reader Hill, John. Film Studies: Critical Approaches Klein, Richard.
Eat Fat. Sims, Laura. The Politics of Fat.
Weekly Topics. This course is centered on six films. We will view one
film every other week—the intervening weeks will be devoted to a discussion of
the film shown in the preceding week. Because some films are difficult to
locate, we may need to rearrange the order or substitute other films.
Unfortunately, we do not have enough scheduled class time to see every film. I
will try to arrange one or two additional times to show other films.
Jan 24: Introduction & Assignment of Short Essays Assigned: Hill, Introduction; Chapter 1, 21 Counihan,
Introduction; Chapter 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 Klein, Introduction, Part Three,
"Political Fat" Sims, Skim
Jan 31: Film Viewing: BIG NIGHT Feb 7: Film Discussion Assigned: Hill, Chapter 17, 18 Counihan, Chapter 2, 8
Feb 14: Film Viewing: EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN
Feb 21: Film Discussion Assigned: Hill, Chapter 13, 17 Counihan, Chapter 13,
14, 22
Feb 28: Film Viewing: BLACK IS, BLACK AIN'T
Mar 7: Film Discussion Assigned:
Hill, Chapter 17, 18 Counihan, Chapter 13, 20
Mar 28: Film Viewing: A FEAST AT MIDNIGHT
Apr 4: Film Discussion Assigned:
Hill, Chapter 10, 12, 23 Counihan, Chapter 12, 24, 25
Apr 11: Film Viewing: BABETTE"S FEAST
Apr 18: Film Discussion Assigned:
Hill, Chapter 18, 23 Counihan, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 12
Apr 25: Film Viewing: TAMPOPO
May 2: Film Discussion & Viewing: THE CHINESE FEAST Assigned: Klein, Part 3, "Fat Sex" Sims,
skim
Various Food Films:
From the Yanomamo Series by
Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon (study guide available) 16mm rental $65, sale
$550 video rental $35, sale $195 color, 29 minutes, rd 1970 Yanomamo feasts are ceremonial, social,
economic, and political events. They are occasions for men to adorn their
bodies with paint and feathers, to display their strength in dance and
ritualized aggression; for trading partnerships to be established or affirmed;
and for the creation or testing of alliances. In the feast filmed in 1968, the
Patanowa-teri had invited the Mahekodo-teri to their village. The two groups
had been allies until a few years before this event, when they had fought over
the abduction of a woman. They now hoped to renew their broken alliance, which
they did successfully. Soon after the filmed feast, the two villages together
raided a common enemy. A detailed discussion of this feast, and of the
significance of feasting among the Yanomamo, is found in chapter 4 of Chagnon's
Yanomamo: The Fierce People. The film's graphic representation of
reciprocity and exchange may enrich (and be enriched by) a reading of Marcel
Mauss' The Gift.
“The Feast” is a documentary about the Yanomami
Indians who live in the border area of what is now Southern Venezuela and
Northern Brazil. The film shows how an
alliance is formed between hostile Yanomami Indian villages through feasting,
trading, dancing, and chanting. Different Yanomami villages war against each
other and plunder women, but also create alliances through marriages. The feast is hosted by one village or kin
group for another village and helps maintain and create these alliances. While
there are kinship relationships between people of different villages, trade
partners also call each other by fictive kin terms. Terms like "spirit brother" and "brother in
law" are used often. Guests remain immobile in their seats (a show of
trust) as the hosts threaten them with bows and arrows. Drinking and eating
together is an instance of sharing and also shows trust that they will not be
poisoned. Allies are needed to help prevent raids and conjointly carry out
raids on other villages. The exchange
of goods, animals and food creates fictive kin ties in order to express mutual
obligations. Terms like "spirit brother" and "brother in
law" are used frequently in conversations. The purpose is to create mutual obligation. The visitors must
repay the hosts at a later date with a feast of their doing. However, these
alliances are very fragile. Shortly
after the feast the two groups mutually raided another village (for wives,
food, goods, etc).
Based on the best-selling novel by Laura Esquival, this
internationally popular romantic fable from Mexico centers on a young woman who
discovers that her cooking has magical effects. The tale's heroine, Tita, is the
youngest of three daughters in a traditional Mexican family. Bound by tradition
to remain unmarried while caring for her aging mother, Tita nevertheless falls
in love with a handsome young man named Pedro. Pedro returns her affection, but
he cannot overcome her family's disapproval, and he instead marries Tita's
elder sister. The lovestruck young woman is brutally disappointed, and her
sadness has such force that it infects her cooking: all who eat it her feel her
heartbreak with the same intensity. This newly discovered power continues to
manifest itself after the wedding, as Tita and Pedro, overcome by their denied
love, embark on a secret affair. Director Alfonso Arau, Esquival's
husband at the time, presents the acts of love and cooking with the same
glossy, sensual sheen. Indeed, despite occasional digressions into a magical
realist tone, the film often takes on the gloss of Hollywood romance. This
combination of traditional melodrama and exotic fairy tale proved extremely
popular with audiences, particularly in the United States, where it became one
of the highest grossing foreign language films at the time. — Judd Blaise
Whenever a filmmaker offers a movie with food at the
center of it, it's usually as a metaphor. The whole concept of appetite — and
of savoring the hedonistic pleasures of the flesh — is simply too rich (and too
easily grasped) a symbolism for a screenwriter to ignore.
And whenever we are presented with one of these films,
be it Like Water for Chocolate, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Big
Night, or Lasse Hallstrom's marvelous Chocolat, reviewers inevitably
haul out comparisons to the mother of all food flicks, Babette's Feast,
which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1987.
Gabriel Axel's film is styled with an obvious nod to
Ingmar Bergman, both in his ponderously gray visual representation of the dank
Danish coast and in the slow, quiet pacing of his tale. Based on a short story
by Isak Dinesen (of Out of Africa fame) that originally appeared in Ladies
Home Journal in 1950, Babette's Feast is a parable about the
importance of both spiritual and secular values.
Set in a village on the wild, rugged coast of Jutland
in the 19th century, it could just as easily be the 17th. The people are kind
but puritanical; they live in simple, modest cottages; their favorite
recreation is singing devotional songs. By the time we get to the meat of the
story, there are almost no young people left in the village. Go figure.
The first half of the film reveals the details of the
past: Philippa and Martina (Bodil Kjer, Brigitte Federspiel), are the
good-hearted, beautiful daughters of the village's revered minister. Each
sister is wooed by an outsider — the first by a soldier, taken by her beauty;
the second by an Parisian opera singer, taken by her exquisite voice. But they
reject their suitors, opting instead for lives of duty and charity, serving
their father's flock in their tiny town.
Many years later, a Frenchwoman named Babette
(Stephane Audran) arrives on the aging sister's doorstep, sent to them by the
opera singer. Babette is fleeing Paris, where her husband and son have been
killed during the French uprising of 1871. She offers to work for them as a
cook, and for fourteen years quietly tends to the sister's needs, cooking simply
awful daily meals of reconstituted dried fish and a gruel made from bread and
ale. Then, one day, she receives a letter from France. Babette has won 10,000
francs in the lottery, and asks for the sister's permission to cook a
"real French dinner" to honor their deceased father's 100th birthday.
They reluctantly agree.
When they see the ingredients start to arrive —
quails, a huge turtle, a calf's head, and many bottles of wine — Martine and
Filippa are struck with terror that the meal is a virtual "witches'
Sabbath" and fearfully alert the rest of the disciples to the presence of
evil in their midst. All agree that they will attend the dinner with their
minds on higher things, as if they had no sense of taste — they will say
nothing at all about the food or drink. Of course, everything changes once they
start eating Babette's food.
For anyone who has recently seen the 2000 film Chocolat,
this will all be familiar territory. But while Hallstrom's film parodies
religious piety, portraying the self-righteous townfolk as ignorant, intolerant
and mean-spirited (although chocolate naturally fixes all that),
Axel's/Dinesen's parochial Danish folk are good-hearted people who have lost
something vital through their rejection of all but their devotion to God. We
see that the disciples' moral uprightness has become small-minded pettiness as
they bicker amongst themselves. Their close community has become so insular as
to have even ended procreation — practically everyone in town is elderly. In
the context of the film, the two suitors represent something young, vital and
alive offered by the secular world, and they, too, see elements of the
spiritual that they wish to embrace. But they are rebuffed, and go on to lives
in which they realize that something important is missing, suggesting that when
the secular and the sacred are estranged, neither achieves fullness.
Enter Babette, who fulfills the role of symbolic
Christ-figure, teaching through example. First, her sacrifice: she spends all
of her lottery money on the feast, meaning she will now have to spend the rest
of her days in this desolate village. What she creates is a Last Supper, and
when the soldier-suitor — now a general — arrives there are twelve at the table
(with Babette in the kitchen preparing the food, they are thirteen).
Food is one of the great Christian symbols, and
Babette's feast brings the disgruntled villagers together to literally break
bread and drink wine, which "turns them from enemies into friends."
As they eat and drink, color comes to their cheeks for the first time. A
husband and wife, guilty for years over their youthful betrayal of her former
husband, kiss one another in reconciled love. Wine flows freely and food
overwhelms in its abundance. And the general offers: "We have all of us been
told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness
and shortsightedness, we imagine divine grace to be finite. But the moment
comes when our eyes are opened and we see and realize that grace is infinite.
Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we await it with confidence
and acknowledge it in gratitude." When the guests finally leave the table
they are created anew, spontaneously dancing in the moonlit village square in
the wake of the realization that if God has graced us with the ability to enjoy
earthly delights, then the gratification of our earthly senses is holy, too.
MGM's DVD edition of Babette's Feast is
presented in its theatrical release format of 1.66:1 with Dolby 2.0 Surround
audio in Danish, French and Spanish, and Dolby 2.0 mono in English. The color
is fine, considering that the film is washed-out by deliberate design, and
there is little noticeable artifacting. The sound is fine, if unexceptional.
The American theatrical trailer is included.
EATING
1990 110 min. The title of Henry
Jaglom's stream-of-consciousness Eating says it all. Three women (Lisa
Blake Richards, Mary Crosby and Marlena Giovi), each
celebrating a "milestone" birthday, decide to throw a joint party. Attending
the revelries is French documentary filmmaker Martine Nely Alard, who
becomes fascinated when none of the guests will touch the meticulously prepared
birthday cake. As Martine begins interviewing the partygoers, she discovers the
importance that food holds in each of their lives. One of the most revelatory
improvisational monologues is delivered by a matriarch portrayed by Frances
Bergen, the real-life widow of Edgar Bergen and the mother of Candice.
Though Eating is not for everyone's taste, for those in tune with the
fiercely independent Jaglom, the film is a cinematic smorgasbord. — Hal
Erickson
Tampopo is an off-beat,
critically-acclaimed episodic Japanese comedy all about food. The film concerns
a truck driver who teaches a young widow named Tampopo how to improve her
noodle restaurant. Over the course of the film, the story drifts around, not
only following the stories of Tampopo, her son and the truck driver, but also a
number of customers who come through the diner. Taking his structure from
spaghetti westerns, Japanese yakuza movies, and the films of Luis Bunuel,
director Juzo Itami has created an inventive comedy that draws equally
on satire, screwball comedy, and witty verbal jokes. — Stephen Thomas
Erlewine
A gleeful thumb in the eye of Japan's money-mad 1980s culture, Juzo
Itami's masterpiece subverts all that is right and proper with food and
sex. Dubbed the first "noodle western," the film concerns a
craggy-faced Shane-like stranger (he drives a semi instead of a horse)
who aids a young widow named Tampopo as she struggles to make the best bowl of
ramen noodles in town. On one level, the film works as an odd metaphor for
Japan's newfound affluence, built on avid borrowings from other cultures. Each
of the figures who gathers around to help Tampopo has a distinct national
signifier: the belligerent, often drunk Piskin (not a common Japanese name)
evokes Russia, the itinerant Noodle Master who sports a beret and speaks
wistfully about French cuisine indicates France, and, of course, the cowboy
hat-sporting Goro recalls the United States. Yet the film's loose structure,
organized around seemingly unrelated vignettes, gives it a wider cultural
resonance. From the scene in which the Man in the White Suit and his moll
perform an unnatural act with raw egg to the corporate neophyte who upstages
his boss with his expert knowledge of gourmet cuisine to the old woman who
molests fruit in a grocery store, everyone in Tampopo is obsessed with
food and uses it to stage their own quiet, often perverse protests against
Japan's rigid hierarchical society. Like films from the French New Wave, Tampopo
is a dizzying, kaleidoscopic inside joke. Itami includes references from
the aforementioned Shane (1953) to Breathless (1960) to the later
works of Luis Buñuel and Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice
(1971) (complete with a soundtrack drawn from Gustav Mahler's First and
Third Symphonies). Tampopo is a wildly inventive, fantastically
entertaining movie by a film master at the peak of his powers. — Jonathan
Crow
Director Ang Lee's follow-up to his surprise box-office hit The
Wedding Banquet is another look at ethnic and sexual conflicts in a Chinese
family, with meals as a centerpiece of the film. Master chef Chu (Sihung
Lung) is a long-time widower who lovingly cooks large Sunday dinners for
his three daughters, who view the meals as too traditional. Secretly, however,
successful airline executive Jia-Chien (Chien-Lien Wu) loves traditional
cooking and would like to be a chef like her father, if women were permitted to
do so. Her older sister Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei Yang) is unmarried and cynical
about men, but she becomes attracted to a volleyball coach and eventually
pursues him vigorously. The youngest daughter, Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang),
is a college student who becomes pregnant from her frequent sexual escapades.
As the film progresses, the personal relationships between the daughters and
their significant others change unexpectedly. — Michael Betzold
His follow-up to his breakthrough success The Wedding Banquet
(1993), Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) is another wise
comedy-drama of manners about life, love, and the Taiwanese generation gap.
With food as the sensory analogue to familial relationships, Lee's
attention to detail deftly mines the varied emotions as well as the humor in
master chef Mr. Chu's attempts to deal with his adult daughters' different
stabs at independence (and his own burgeoning romance) as he loses his sense of
taste. The superb opening scene of Mr. Chu's bravura preparation of the
customary, and resented, Sunday family feast not only reveals the affection for
his daughters that he cannot articulate, but also is guaranteed to inspire
cravings for gourmet Chinese food. Praised for its charm and skill, Eat
Drink Man Woman became another genial art house hit for Lee and
earned him his second Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. — Lucia
Bozzola
Eating Raoul
Eating Raoul was celebrated at
the time of its release as the perfect marriage between mainstream moviemaking
and the so-called "underground" cinema. Cult-film icons Mary
Woronov and Paul Bartel (both of whom directed) play a married
couple who decide to cash in on the sexual perversions of others. Posing as a
hooker, Woronov lures the "johns" in and indulges their every
kinky whim, whereupon Bartel kills the unwary client, steals the
valuables, and sells the corpse for dog food. Though they see nothing wrong in
what they're doing, they react in prudish disgust at the sexual
preferences of their victims. Eventually, Raoul (Robert Beltran), the
fellow who transports the corpses to the dog food concern, proves
expendable—and extremely edible. Eating Raoul features a high-powered
comic supporting cast, among them Buck Henry, Ed Begley Jr., Richard
Paul, Hamilton Camp, and Edie McClurg. — Hal Erickson Paul
Bartel's black comedy about a middle-class couple who want to open a
restaurant has become a cult classic. Bartel and Mary Woronov
play a staid couple who formulate a plan to murder and rob "swingers"
to finance their dream of opening a gourmet restaurant. Bartel, who
dealt in black comedy long before it became fashionable, has created an oddly
affectionate satire of this Moral Majority couple, whose righteousness is
concealed behind anonymous polyester surfaces, and are literally dubbed the
Blands. Although they believe that the "swingers", i.e. anyone single
who is having sex, deserve to die for their terrible transgressions, they're so
humane toward their victims that they evoke especially unctuous undertakers. Mary
Woronov, a fixture of Warhol's Factory in the '60s, and someone
whose mien always suggested the unspeakable, is a witty choice as the homicidal
wife, and Bartel adopts the role of tract-house suburbanite with eerie
aplomb. — Michael Costello
301, 302
This Korean horror movie offers a feminist twist in that it centers on
two female protagonists living next door to each other in a high rise
apartment. The title refers to their respective apartment numbers. The story
opens as one of the women, a compulsive cook, is being questioned about the
mysterious disappearance of her neighbor, the other woman, a traumatized writer
suffering from anorexia nervosa. The two meet when the friendly cook tries to
give the writer some of her newest creation. The writer later throws the food
away. Still a friendship is born and as they converse, the tragic reasons for
the writer's condition come to light. Dark secrets from the cook's past are also
revealed. It is she who offers up the grisly final solution to the writer's
guilt and continual pain. — Sandra Brennan
It is best not to suggest to the 500-pound, plaid-suited,
humanoid alien Murray the Creature that he eat Italian for dinner because he is
sure to take you literally as can soon be seen in this sci-fi parody. Before
the film is through, Murray the meat-eater will have consumed 35 Italian
residents of New York's little Italy. Investigating their bizarre
disappearances is an Irish cop, who discovers their awful fate while waiting
for a pizza in an Italian restaurant. Later he tries to get his superiors to
believe his story, but of course they don't and the cop is left with no
alternative but to try and dispatch Murray by himself. — Sandra Brennan
In this incredibly bizarre and very black comedy set in 1950s suburbia,
Michael Laemle (Bryan Madorsky) comes to suspect that his conventional
parents (Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt) have a little secret
which they have kept from him. Nothing too major - - just that they happen to
be cannibals. It seems that Dad has been bringing home some extra meat from his
place of work, a mortuary. As the lad grows ever more hysterical, he confesses
his suspicions to the school psychologist (Sandy Dennis). She ridicules
his notions and even comes to the house to show him how foolish he's being.
Instead, she becomes an entree in the next family dinner, as Michael's parents
attempt to indoctrinate him into their odd lifestyle. —
(courtesy of KL)
The Baker's Wife
Boulangerie born and bread.
Big Night
Brotherly love and the pursuit of the
perfect meal.
Chocolat
Chocolate, romance and reconciliation.
The Cook, the
Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
Sex, lust, food, gluttony, murder and revenge
set in an allegorical restaurant.
Diner
Male bonding in a Baltimore diner.
Eat Drink Man Woman
Food and family, Chinese style.
Fried Green
Tomatoes
Food, friendship, loyalty, love,
independence, and lots of laughs!
God of Cookery
Hilarious! Imagine the Iron Chef going
head-to-head with the Drunken Master.
Like Water for
Chocolate
A woman's repressed passion is expressed
through the preparation of food.
Mystic Pizza
The mysteries of pizza and young love.
Soul Food
African-American family vignettes from
their traditional Sunday dinners.
Tampopo
Love and the perfect noodle.
Tortilla Soup
'Eat, Drink, Man, Woman' with a Latino
spin.
Vatel
A lavish banquet and political intrigue in
Medieval France.
A Walk In the
Clouds
Sweet romance set in a Napa Valley
vineyard.
What's Cooking?
Traditional Thanksgiving feasts set in four
very different American homes.
Who Is Killing the
Great Chefs of Europe?
Part romantic comedy, part murder mystery,
totally delicious!
Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory
Morality play set in a fantastical candy
factory.