User:10000BL/H2-Film & Food: How food is use to convey a message

I never realised that the use of food in films was such embedded that it is a study on itself or I never watched films in such a way that I was paying attention to a point that I would make notes when food was present in a film and where it stance for/actually conveyed. When I started with my project Nr. 39 with Rice it was initially not my intention to work with moving image. Only in a later stage I realised that the inclusion of my father, whom is a chef from origin would be an interesting yet logical choice to make. When I started my journey to learn more about how food is depicted in films, how it is presented in films or where it actually stands for, I was looking for films that were culturally close to me. Films like Tampopo (Itami, 1985), Eat Drink Man Woman (Lee, 1994) and Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Gelg, 2011), which is technically a documentary are striking examples of Asian culture in many facets. In my private DVD collection I posses already for many years Kebab Connection (Saul, 2004), a film which tells the story about a Turkish young man Ibo, grown up in Germany out of a traditional turkish family, that is in love with German girl Titzi, whom are awaiting their first child. The upcoming birth of the child puts things on the edge (spanning) in the traditional Turkish family of Ibo. The unfolding of this cultural clash together with the fight between a Greek and Turkish restaurant holder about who has the best eatery of Hamburg with lots of scenes were food is key is a film when looking back falls into the genre of films about food. One of the first movies I watched for my current research was The Ramen Girl (Ackerman, 2008). This film, which story is somehow similar to that of the Karate kid (Avildsen, 1984), tells the story about Abby who moves to Tokyo to be with her boyfriend. This relationship ends at an early stage in the film and as a consequence she starts to build a love(?) for Ramen noodles and insists sensei Maezumi to learn her to cook Ramen. The story unfolds that in order to make good Ramen you have to cook with the heart.

There are many good films about food or where food plays a key role. Since my interest is pointed to a specific cultural context, I left out films like Stanley Tucci's Big Night and Hallström's Chocolat for my research. Two films that became important for my research are Tampopo and Eat Drink Man Woman. Films that fall in the genre of Food come generally speaking in two forms, first where the main character is a chef and second where food plays a symbolic role. Often filmmakers turn to food to communicate important aspects of character's emotions, personal and cultural identity (Bower). The Hours (Daldry, 2002) is a good example where the presentation of food stance for the character's emotion. In a particular scene Laura, played by Julianne Moore, wants to make a cake for the birthday of her husband. This is important for her because it is the way to show her love for him, yet as a viewer of the film you notice easily that the love has dissapeared from here site a very long time ago. The cake then, not suprisingly, is a failure. The love that had to be conveyed by the cake is false. Her second atempt only succeeds when she finds out she has feelings for the visting neighbours. The perfect cake as a result can be seen as a product of her regained love for someone (the hours min...). Another scene from The Hours shows how food can stand for someone lose or sorrow. Clarrisa, played by Meryl Streep, throws away plates of expensive food as a methaphor for losing her former lover Richard, played by Ed Harris, by suicide. Both cherish love for each other, that somehow never became real. The food that Clarrisa throws in the trash bin is a methaphor for the lossing that what she actually treasured the most. Eventhough the film is not about food, food in itself plays an important role in coveying feelings both negatively and positively emotions. Bower explains that it was because of Terasa de Lauretis(check) twenty years ago that we understand the power of cinema in when it comes to production and reproduction of meanings, values and ideology. And food is a conveyer(drager) that can be used in many ways and could stand for many emotions, both implicit and explicit. Food, amongst others, in films is a way to tell us who we are, what we stands for and what we treasure. It can speak easily about love, loss, identity and friendship, power, culture, class, relationship. Part of the real, according to Bower, we grasp is in food imagery. How food is coded, whether it plays a major or minor role, it is often a major ingedient in how we perceive the film.

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there are many films i could watch for my research like ... ...., however i choose these films because the have a link with my culture of are closely related to my personal family relationship.