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APPETITES AND ANXIETIES: FOOD, FILM, AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Mark Bernard. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014. 334 pp.
"Films depend on food." This seemingly absurd statement, which begins the introduction to Appetites and Anxieties: Food, Film, and the Politics of Representation, by Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Mark Bernard, will be news to those who love films for the artistry of the writers, directors, actors, and cinematographers (1). The authors, however, quickly crafttheir argument, reminding the reader that "Slapstick comedies need pie-throwing scenes that escalate into brawls. To build their resolve, tough guys in western and actions films down shots of cheap liquor. Gangsters talk with their mouths full. Noir detectives drink alone. Comradeship leads soldiers and officers to share food and drink. Melodramas require disastrous, sometimes heart-warming family dinners. Romantic comedies benefit from chocolates" (1).
Chapter 1, "Foodways as an Ideological Approach," furthers this point, defining "foodways" as, quoting Yvonne Lockwood, "the entire complex of ideas and behaviors associated with food" and adding that "the concept entered academic discourse in the early 1970s when folklorist Don Yoder used the term 'foodways' in his article 'Folk Cookery'" (25). Along with the introduction, chapter 1 gives fullness to the authors' proposition, moving beyond food in an obvious context, in movies such as Big Night and Like Water for Chocolate, to contexts where "food does not nourish or heal," nor does it "establish beneficial communities or encourage supportive individual relationship"; the authors cite Soylent Green (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), and The Hunger Games (2012) as examples (108).
Unfortunately, rather than build upon this well-structured reasoning in chapter 2, the writers submit a dizzying jumble of facts and notes about film's unbridled relationship with...