Reel Food ─ Essays on Food and Film

"Reel Food" is the first book devoted to food as a vibrant and evocative element of film, featuring original essays by major food studies scholars, among them Carole Counihan and Michael Ashkenazi. This collection reads various films through their uses of food-from major "food films" like "Babette's Feast" and "Big Night" to less obvious choices including "The Godfather" trilogy and "The Matrix." The contributors draw attention to the various ways in which food is employed to make meaning in film. In some cases, such as "Soul Food" and "Tortilla Soup," for example, food is used to represent racial and ethnic identities. In other cases, such as "Chocolat" and "Like Water for Chocolate," food plays a role in gender and sexual politics. And, of course, there is also discussion of the centrality of popcorn to the movie-going experience.
This book is a feast for scholars, "foodies," and cinema buffs. It will be of major interest to anyone working in popular culture, film studies, and food studies, at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

Anne L. Bower is Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University, Marion. She is author of Epistolary Responses: The Letter in 20th-Century American Fiction and Criticism and editor of Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories.