Gaye Poole,
Reel Meals, Set Meals: Food in Film and Theatre.
Sydney: Currency Press, 1999.
ISBN 086819 578 2
280pp
A$24.95
(Review copy supplied by Currency Press)
Uploaded 1 November 2000
“If you can never eat with someone you are never really together with them. It’s a very clever strategy. All over the world, eating is the great symbol of people being together. There’s only one thing more powerful than eating together to draw a group into feeling ‘one’, and that is killing together. This is very important for the history of the world.” When sociologist Margaret Visser made the above statement in The Rituals of Dinner (1991), she was referring specifically to the conjunction that exists between the social and the culinary. In Reel Meals Set Meals, Gaye Poole takes this polemic further by analysing the social and symbolic dimensions of food as presented in film and theatre. A key tenet of Reel Meals is found in Poole’s recognition of food as a powerful medium of signification. She argues that the mediated worlds of film and theatre are particularly drawn to food because of its capacity to exist as a “polysemous signifier that can articulate in concrete terms what is very often internal, vague or abstract”(2). In recognising food preparation and consumption as integral to all human enterprise, Poole argues that food provides the perfect conduit for theatrical and cinematic expression. As a physical substance that can be passed between characters, it can exist as a powerful signifier of emotional, political and sometimes transgressive modes of behaviour.
Reel Meals is divided into three sections, with the reader’s trajectory beginning in the “outer” realms of public food presentation and consumption and then progressing into the “gut-level” realm of the human body. The opening section begins with an examination of the ways in which food is used to structure the actual design of a film or play. In thinking through the connections between food and performance, Poole argues that food exists as an effective means of providing dramatic focus. Far from being an additional prop, Poole argues that food in film and theatre exists as a language that “is capable of immediately connoting opulence, poverty, security or obsessiveness”(15). For films such as Tampopo (1986) or Babette’s Feast (1987), in which the food is arguably the main structuring device, these claims have a certain obvious resonance. However it is through Poole’s discussions of less overt filmic and theatrical moments when the significance of food is made startlingly apparent. Scenes from stage plays and films such as The Last Days of Chez-Nous (1992) and Hotel Sorrento (1994) are brought forward for analysis to demonstrate that sometimes a brie can be far more than simply a cheese.
From this structural perspective the book then progresses into an exploration of the public realm of food consumption. Portrayals of public dining, etiquette, and civility are combined with issues of class, power and territoriality. In considering questions of who eats, how they eat, and under what circumstances they eat, Poole investigates the performative and political role of food in films as diverse as Schindler’s List (1993), We of the Never Never (1982), and Muriel’s Wedding (1994). To compliment this analysis, an entire chapter is dedicated to the specific intricacies of outdoor eating and barbecues. Poole investigates the ways in which outdoor eating scenes, such as those in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) commonly display a “closer that usual connection between the eater and the eaten”.
The final and most “inner” section of this book explores the intensely subjective spheres of health, sex, and death. Of primary consideration here is food as medium that both structures and traverses bodily and social boundaries. For just as the food that we eat signifies our own social and cultural parameters, so too does it constitute our own viscera. Poole writes: “Food is in such intimate contact with the body – we take it from the outside world into our bodies -the alimentary canal is a site of receptivity for food’s flavours, smells, textures.” (213). Throughout this section Poole investigates the intensely carnal elements of food consumption. In a chapter dedicated to “women and food obsessions”, she articulates the uneasy relationship that exists between bulimics and food in plays such as Dags (1987): “such symbolic connections are often made whereby food is transmuted onto other human currencies -love, protection, bestowal of virtue, punishment, guilt.”(182). Similarly, chapter 16, which is dedicated to “Food, Taboos, Pollution and Revenge” investigates the western paranoia of transgressing food taboos through films such as Pulp Fiction (1994) and The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989) and Bad Boy Bubby (1994).
In recognising food and eating as one of the most overlooked elements of dramaturgy, Poole’s book exists as an important resource for both film studies and the emerging discipline of food studies. One of the most impressive and useful elements of this book is Poole’s comprehensive coverage of contemporary film and theatre. Approximately one hundred and thirty-five films and over forty plays are discussed in relation to their culinary connections In articulating the capacity of food to exist as a repository of cultural meanings and rituals, Poole’s book exists as an important tool for discussing the convergence of food, culture and performance.
Leanne Downing