THE CONNECTION BETWEEN FOOD AND CINEMA

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN FOOD AND CINEMA Cinema and food interconnect between death and life Fig. 1 - Scene from movie“La Grande Bouffe”, 1973 FMST 322 Davide Spinelli Id student: 40150568 Index Final Essay …………………………………………………………………………………….2 Images………………………………………………………………………………………….10 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..11 1 Final Essay Premise: I find myself locked in my house, during this quarantine that forces everyone to deal with their thoughts and loneliness. This is the period of the crown virus (Covid-19), perhaps the beginning of the hardest historical period that my generation and those preceding mine are experiencing, and I am keen to make this premise, because my research has been strongly influenced by this new forced perspective, and after thinking hard about it, I want to insert this topic in my research in my own way. With the hope that all this will end in the best way. The study of food has a long history in anthropology, beginning in the nineteenth century with Garrick Mallery and William Robertson Smith. Food studies have illuminated broad societal processes such as political-economic value-creation, symbolic value creation, and the social construction of memory. Such studies have also proved an important arena for debating the relative merits of cultural and historical materialism vs. structuralist or symbolic explanations for human behavior, and for refining our understanding of variation in informants responses to ethnographic questions.1 The post-war political discourse on food and the Neorealist filmmakers engagement with the hardships that followed the end of World War II inspired stylistic approaches that illustrated the working classes lives and activities in detail, both as producers and consumers, offering contemporary viewers and food scholars the opportunity to peek into the material culture of that time. These representations, which should be interpreted within the social and political context in which the films were produced, distributed, and consumed, are not neutral reflections of reality but tools operating in complex dynamics of communication that extended outside the movie theaters. In depth interpretation of the film industry, spectatorship, and cultural landscapes provide a Sidney W. Mintz and Christine M. Du Bois (2002) THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF FOOD AND EATING Anthropology Department, Emeritus, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.032702.131011 1 2 deeper understanding of the aesthetic and storytelling choices of food in terms of visual and narrative approaches. Food historians can benefit from greater attention paid to the use of visual material in their research, generating a reflective and productive dialogue with disciplines such as cultural and media studies.2 The art of cinema and the art of cooking continues to influence the story, but if we think about it, cinema and food have always had a common constant that can be said on both life and in history of each of us. The first question that every time I try to respond is: “Can the culture of food be considered a basic concept of representation of life, and therefore also of cinematographic representation?” This question of mine is noticeable in various films, where moments of life and food have a symbiotic connection, but the first time I really understood was undoubtedly when watching a movie, in particular, one of the first manifest films of the declaration of intent made in 1995 by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, for the “Dogma 95” movement3, the award-winning film “Festen” ( Vinterberg, 1998 ). The plot of the film, in short, is the accusation of a son against his father during a family dinner, for an abuse that occurred years earlier, against precisely his son and sister, who disappeared, according to his brother, precisely because fault of this abuse never overcome. The plot is, therefore, one of the most complex, sad and compelling, but what really strikes me is that most of the film and the revelations are punctuated by the flow of food, in this table set for the big dinner night, with the staff of kitchen and precisely the chef, which in some way marks the actor's timing, giving a more intense light to the whole picture of the scene and the family context. In this confusion of ideas, I wasn't clear enough where I wanted to go in my academic research, but I started to get informed, and I found this first quote in the book “Dinner and a Movie” ( Baron, 2006 ), where she explicitly supported my thesis just mentioned: “Scholars have shown that food is integrated into films mise en scene and narrative design in ways that shape viewers’ perception of the characters and their interactions, the 2 Fabio Parasecoli (2015) Tasting a New Home: Food Representations in Italian Neorealist Cinema, Food and Foodways, 23:1-2, 36-56, DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2015.1011991 3 Jean-Pierre Geuens (2001) Dogma 95: A manifesto for our times, Quarterly Review of Film & Video, 18:2, 191-202, DOI: 10.1080/10509200109361523 3 social dynamics explored in a film, and the ideological perspectives conveyed by a film. Their studies of food and film viewing have revealed ways that food behaviors are components of individual negotiations with contemporary mass culture..” and still “..An increasing number of studies on food and film are analyzing cinematic representations of food and food-ways to gain insight into individual films and larger patterns of cultural interaction; current research is also suggesting that studies on food and film viewing shed light on individuals negotiations with contemporary mass culture.”4 This statement, I admit, gave me the strength to continue my analysis, but I needed more films that would support my bizarre thesis. So I started my research and I came across almost immediately in a film that will be the key to all my research because can't only describe the aspect of life, but above all that of solitude, interconnect between death and life. “La grande bouffe” ( Ferreri, 1973 ) this film touches almost all aspects of my research. This film tells of four men ( Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Philippe Noiret, Michel Piccoli ) who, tired of the boring and unfulfilling life they lead, decide to commit suicide, closing themselves in a house, in the surroundings of Paris, and cooking and eating, make love until death occurs. The correlation between food, cinema and life is inextricably linked to the end, has explored the symbolic or metaphoric role food behaviors often play in cinematic narratives, and it has substantiated the view that films’ narratives and images are a legitimate means of observing the changing structures of social interdependence and shifts in cultural identity. A film that at some point almost makes you sick. Food starts to be shit, but they keep eating it. Food becomes a hole to satisfy one's sexual and moral cravings. Leftover meat remains in the garden food for dogs. It is the demonstration of the catastrophic relationship between man/cinema/food. During an interview, at the talk show of Dick Cavett, the great actor Marlon Brando said: “I think acting is a survival mechanism .. and we act to save our lives, we do it every day”5 in short the acting is like eating, a survival mechanism act, the 4 Cynthia Baron (2006) Dinner and a Movie, Food, Culture & Society, 9:1, 93-117, DOI: 10.2752/155280106778055190 Marlon Brando - Interview (June 12, 1973)” YouTube, uploaded by Koyaanisqatsi4K, 27 Set. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uU-4wmwc2Rw&t=28s 5 4 actors simply like the chefs know how to do it better, they know how to control this natural and innate element and therefore they know how to use it. Of course, I totally agree with this reasoning, but to confirm that, I will need something that unfortunately broadens our perception of survival, and is a factor that unfortunately I never imagined and wanted it to arrive, but which supports my theory. I am talking about the COVID-19 pandemic which is, unfortunately, affecting the whole world, and which has placed in forced quarantine each one of us, some in less restrictive ways, some in more restrictive and forced ways. With the quarantine and the weight that now we have to live with a sense of death, makes us search for survival through food and proper nutrition, and this sense of estrangement unites us and makes us live like we were watching a movie and identifying ourselves with the character. We are experiencing this sense of common representation now in today's life, united by a great cataclysm. Studies on the vision of food in films claim that eating behaviors can be discussed in semiotic terms and that food is a signifier that can be understood even through extreme events like this. There is much more to write about food and film than other art forms, yet today cinema and food are intertwined with each other and indicate the right way to survive. Confined to home, with reduced or completely cancelled work activities, we risk then watching a good movie or eating good food are our only daily activities. Perhaps the ephemeral nature of television programming has made it difficult to effectively analyze food representations in television dramas and comedies. However, if you pay more attention, there is something good in the television shows, with the greater visibility of national and international cooking shows, efforts have also been made to raise the level of TV series on food. An exemplary example in this sense is definitely “Midnight Diner Tokio Stories” ( Abe, 2011 ). Taken from the Shinya Shokudō manga, Midnight Diner talks about stories that revolve around a hot table that have the particularity of being open from midnight to 7 am morning. Each episode, in some way, is linked to the diner both for the story but also for a typical oriental dish, that is prepared by the Master several times during the episode, and gives the episode its name. Sometimes food is a fundamental part of the narrative 5 process, sometimes it is only a “side dish”. The topics covered are many and make us reflect on human nature, as well as on Japanese culture. The atmosphere that reigns in this series is one of the fundamental elements, perhaps more than anything else. Starting from the theme song, a sort of warm melancholy is pervaded. A melancholy that smells, warms, but at the same time gives us negative and positive messages on the world, on life, on man. As if to remind us that happiness is an ephemeral sensation that one looks for throughout one's life and is only in flashes and man can do nothing to make things go differently. So perfect for the historical moment we are experiencing. In light of the broader aesthetic traditions, literary analysis trends may have given scholars greater freedom and opportunity for textual analysis of food and food pathways in literature. Food critic and winemaker Daniel Rogov would argue that there is another reason why scholars have not written more extensively about food and film, namely that food has rarely received adequate treatment in cinema. In an essay on food as a film metaphor6, Rogov underlines why “Babette's Feast” ( Axel, 1991 ) represents a contrast to most of the representations of food in the movie. As he points out, not only is the film one of the first films to pay homage to the world of the culinary arts, it has also contrasted the conventional use of cooking and catering in films to represent the grossness and hypocrisy of human appetites. Noting that films rarely place food and cooking in their proper social and historical perspective. In “Big Night” ( Tucci, 1996 ), Anne L. Bower explains how cooking and food can be represented and treated with the respect they deserve. He also explains that food studies in films are largely limited in number because food films are an emerging genre that may or may not be maintained through variation and invention. By identifying the main narrative characteristics, Bower notes that food films they constantly represent characters who deal with issues of identity, power, culture, class, spirituality or relationship through food. Describing the crucial aspects of the iconography of the genre, Bower emphasizes that food films Hosking, Richard. Authenticity in the Kitchen: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery (Authenticity and Gastronomic Films). Oxford Symposium, 2005. https://play.google.com/books/reader? id=HflTVd898PAC&hl=it&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT74 6 6 provide constant visual attention to the preparation and presentation of food and that proposes the narrative elements and classic iconographies of genres and gender.7 An example, in this case, is evident in “La última Cena” ( Gutiérrez Alea, 1976 ) that tells the story of a pious Count, eighteenth-century Havana plantation owner, who proselytizes to twelve of his slaves during the Holy Week, inviting them to a reenactment of the biblical Last Supper, during which he uses religious analogies to convince his guests that “perfect happiness” is possible through slavery. If the production of food and the creation of meals represent a declaration of humanity and an expression of freedom, the act of consumption represents a tacit confirmation of others. Hence, in inviting his slaves to sit at the table and partake of the feast that had almost certainly been prepared by one of their own, the Count is inadvertently encouraging a ritual of commensality that trumps his religious metaphor. In turning to the film sequence I would like to cite Jane Ferry, whose illuminating book, “Food in Film” ( Ferry, 2003 ), gives insight into the importance of food scenes in the movies. She writes: Although depicted as a seemingly natural function, food scenes in the film not only signify social class, identity, and nationality but also provide insight into the complex ways in which food and eating are entangled with other aspects of social/cultural development. A close observation of food scenes within the narrative framework of the film reveals its powerful, coded, cultural meanings that structure the arrangements of social life. . . . Eating scenes articulate conflict or cooperation, inform an individual's or group's place in society, and express personal identity.”8 There is a telling moment early in the scene which serves as a microcosm of the supper. Prior to gathering the slaves, the Count feeds his caged bird, saying, “Now that I've fed you, you must sign for your master,” which, in essence, is what he expects from his caged slaves. But his intentions are inadvertently undone by the priest who sets the tone for the dinner with another reference to food Hosking, Richard. Authenticity in the Kitchen: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery (Authenticity and Gastronomic Films). Oxford Symposium, 2005. https://play.google.com/books/reader? id=HflTVd898PAC&hl=it&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT74 7 8 Ferry, Jane. Food in Film: A Culinary Performance of Communication. Jerome Nadelhaf, University of Maine, 2003. 7 preparation and consumption: “To be in Heaven,” he says, “is to be in the dining room, not the kitchen. To be at the same table as the Lord, that is what it means to be in Heaven.” No wonder, then, that the actual meal itself, meant as an indoctrination into the arcane rites of Catholicism, is a series of misinterpretations and miscommunications between master and slaves, and indeed, it is hardly surprising. Even what can be called the meal's structural elements are observed unevenly, if at all. As Roland Barthes notes, “Food is a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations and behavior”9. Despite Rogov's, Bower's and Ferry's various notes, we can say that they share the view that “the semiotic uses of food are even more multivalent and powerful than a concentration on ‘food films’ alone would allow us to understand”10. This understanding is key to the study of food in films since many of the “classic” moments of cinema are moments of food. The science, culture, business, and art of eating (the subtitle of the anthology edited by Herbert Meiselman11) contribute to film studies that see cinema as a practice that includes film festivals, film and media conferences, films that challenge the assumptions of commercial cinema, and actions by executives that secure and increase corporations’ control of the culture industry. For both fields, the study of food and film viewing should clarify ways that food has been used by corporations to distinguish the film viewing experience from other theatrical, entertainment, and leisure experiences. The work should also increase our understanding of how individuals integrate food into activities that provide meaning and significance. Thus cinema becomes the space in which cravings and desires materialize, thus the first cinema restaurants are born where the union between food and seventh art is totally immersive. Berlin, Chicago and Milan, a cinema-restaurant, or a cinema-restaurant, without armchairs and waiters in the dining room, but a real room to eat sitting at the table. The use of cinema, therefore of an expressive form seasonally opposite to food, prevents 9 Barthes, Roland. La chamber claire. Hill and Wang, 1980. 10 Cynthia Baron (2006) Dinner and a Movie, Food, Culture & Society, 9:1, 93-117, DOI: 10.2752/155280106778055190 11 Meiselman, Herbert L. Dimensions of the Meal: Science, Culture, Business, Art. Kindle Edition, 2000 8 the creation of a bridge of rationality capable of uniting the two worlds, the only communication channel we can say is given by our self. Cinegustology, therefore, allows this dialogue, deepening the spiritual essence of both a perfume and a taste. We use cinema precisely because it contains all the other arts. In addition, cinema is a complex and multi-sensory form of expression, so much so that we often say that a romantic comedy is sweet or tender, or a dramatic film is bitter or harder. Associating a film with a plate or a wine is a more authentic way to tell the emotions induced by that type of work of art.12 The director as the chef is in a world apart, they live and work far from the rest of the men to offer them something that will amuse with the eyes or with the taste buds. The eye of many filmmakers has been able to grasp the aspects of the kitchen that can be called without reserve, metaphorical, social and "spiritual". Food as a social metaphor manifests itself, according to Claude Fischler13, as an alchemical, magical process, in which the potential danger of food: food is something that is introduced through our mouth into our body. It is a foreign body, potentially dangerous, contaminating: this is how he explains the symbolic constructions around food, it's myths and rites. It is possible to establish that there is no film in which there is no scene where you eat or drink since that of eating and drinking is a daily act, absolutely necessary. Like all culturally defined material substances used in the creation and maintaining social relationships, food and cinema both serve to consolidate group membership and to distinguish groups. How to breathe, how to live and die, the cinema like food amplify our memory and make unique and eternal moments of life that otherwise would be lost. Embedded in the sensory memory, the total exclusion is in fact out of date and it is precisely this, albeit trivial, the reason that provides an immediate explanation of why cinema and food are so connected to each other. Lombardi, Marco. Cinegustologia. Ovvero come descrivere i vini con le sequenze della settima arte. Il leone verde Edizioni, 2009. 12 13 Claude Fischler (1988) Food, Self and Identity, Social Science Information 27(2):275-292 DOI: 10.1177/053901888027002005 9 Images Fig. 2 - Scene from movie“Festen”, 1998 Fig. 3 - Scene from TVseries“Midnight Diner Tokio Stories”, 2011 Fig. 5- Scene from movie“La grande bouffe”, 1973 Fig. 6- Scene from movie“Big Night”, 1996 Fig. 7- Scene from movie“Babette's Feast”, 1991 10 Fig.8- Scene from movie“La última Cena, 1976 Bibliography Book: - Hosking, Richard. Authenticity in the Kitchen: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery (Authenticity and Gastronomic Films). Oxford Symposium, 2005 - Ferry, Jane. Food in Film: A Culinary Performance of Communication. University of Maine, 2003. - Barthes, Roland. La chamber claire. Hill and Wang, 1980. - Meiselman, Herbert L. Dimensions of the Meal: Science, Culture, Business, Art. Kindle Edition, 2000 - Lombardi, Marco. Cinegustologia. Ovvero come descrivere i vini con le sequenze della settima arte. Il leone verde Edizioni, 2009. Article: - Sidney W. Mintz and Christine M. Du Bois (2002) THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF FOOD AND EATING, Anthropology Department, Emeritus, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland doi: 10.1146/ annurev.anthro.32.032702.131011 - Fabio Parasecoli (2015) Tasting a New Home: Food Representations in Italian Neorealist Cinema, Food and Foodways, 23:1-2, 36-56, DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2015.1011991 - Jean-Pierre Geuens (2001) Dogma 95: A manifesto for our times, Quarterly Review of Film & Video, 18:2, 191-202, DOI: 10.1080/10509200109361523 - Cynthia Baron (2006) Dinner and a Movie, Food, Culture & Society, 9:1, 93-117, DOI: 10.2752/155280106778055190 - Claude Fischler (1988) Food, Self and Identity, Social Science Information, 27(2):275-292 DOI: 10.1177/053901888027002005 - Marlon Brando - Interview (June 12, 1973)” YouTube, uploaded by Koyaanisqatsi4K, 27 Set. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU-4wmwc2Rw&t=28 11