Browsing by Subject "Film"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Food and men in cinema : an exploration of gender in blockbuster movies
(2009) Parasecoli, Fabio; Bellows, Anne
The goal of this dissertation is to examine how popular movies, often called ?blockbusters? when referring to their international success at the box office, portray masculinity and men?s interactions around food and eating. The common and mundane objects, attitudes, and practices that revolve around food play an important role in men's personal development and social interactions. More specifically, the research is aimed at investigating how food representations in film embrace, naturalize, or question cultural assumptions about masculinity and gender relations. On the base of the relevant literature in masculinity studies, food studies, and film studies, I developed two hypotheses: 1. Food-related scenes provide an apparently neutral and natural space for representations of masculinity to be conveyed. For this reasons these scenes tend to be overlooked by viewers, despite their frequency. 2. The analysis of food-related scenes can help us identify a set of recurrent traits that outline diverse masculinity models offered to audiences around the world. In order to test my hypotheses, I identified a sample constituted by of all the movies (excluding cartoons) that earned more than 250 million US dollars outside the United States between 1990 and 2007. I applied content analysis - a methodology often used in media and communication studies ? to this sample, pinpointing and quantifying all the food-related scenes I observed in each movie. Furthermore, by coding these scenes according to recurrent categories based on theme and content, I was able to gauge their statistical frequency in order to determine the most recurring ones, which can also be considered the most relevant in the cultural perceptions of masculinity. The analysis of the sample, which consists of 58 movies, originated a taxonomy of 151 coding categories (?situational scripts?) that cover 940 food-specific scenes (?occurrences?) involving men and food. The analysis also allowed me to identify 5 broad narrative arcs (?interpretive types?) describing the development (or lack thereof) of the male protagonists in the 58 movies. The examination of the function of the scenes within the different story lines indicates that most food-related occurrences, due to their secondary role, are perceived as natural and normal, thus becoming virtually invisible to the viewers. Their apparent ordinariness and familiarity offers an apt environment for the representation of values, attitudes and behaviors that reflect widely accepted and culturally sanctioned templates of what a man should be like and act like. Most food scenes offer images of strong, determined, and powerful males, ready to assert themselves over other men and over women. White, adult, middle or working class masculinities are equated with mainstream, acceptable, hegemonic masculinities. The absence of scenes featuring women around food without men confirms the role of food as a tool for control and negotiation among genders and their established social roles. The data also show that food is often featured in scenes where men share and celebrate, underlining its social significance and its function as a cultural marker to identify groups and to exclude outsiders. However, the emotional and more intimate values connected to food and ingestion are not totally erased, revealing aspects of masculinity less connected to power and social performance but still relevant for the males? personal lives. It is also intriguing that many scenes refer to the fear of being ingested, showing deeply ingrained insecurities. In sum, food related scenes involving men in the movie sample on one side reiterate well-established models of masculinity, while on the other they reveal aspects of fragility and anxiety that otherwise would not be traceable in other kinds of scenes, especially in action movies.