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New Generations and Axiologies of Food in Cinema and New Media

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Food for Thought

Part of the book series: Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ((NAHP,volume 19))

Abstract

Until recently the foodsphere was an exclusive domain of the adult world. Except in rare cases, parents’ or caretakers’ beliefs largely determined children’s and adolescents’ nutrition. It was with the Millennials, and later with the so-called Generation Z, that the theme of food first gained prominence in the media, with the multiplication of texts on the subject, and with progressive attention being paid to environmental crises, began to involve young people. Today, food is one of the favourite amusements of younger generations, who enjoy cooking, shopping, watching movies, documentaries, online videos where the most disparate value systems are articulated, framing food inside a discourse regarding its nutritional and ethical value, and on the systems of production that underlie it. Food is now far from being mere nutrition for young people, but more and more a linguistic element (think of the metaphor of “binge watching”), an identity, a community, something aesthetic (in various senses), valuable, semiotic. The aim of this paper is to investigate this vast territory, trying to map and shape the main axiologies (or value assets) in the postmodern foodsphere of and for the new generations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The expression seems to be accepted today in the context of semiotic disciplines, and is a derivative of the broader concept of semiosphere (Lotman 1984). Cf. (Stano 2018a: 167).

  2. 2.

    It is possible to distinguish between two plans of action in human experience. The first, characterized by what Cirese (1989) calls “fabrility”, has to do with everything we do for our physical subsistence. The second, that of “signicity”, has to do with our symbolic experience of the world. The thesis is therefore that food, even though it is something we need to survive, is actually approached in our experience above all in terms of signs, semiotically.

  3. 3.

    The first is characterized as being a profound value, powerful and universal, capable of justifying the start of an engine of the narration and the action of the subject. In front of this value, the use value is characterized as having an instrumental and limited character” (García 2017: 123).

  4. 4.

    The Floch model, created and developed to analyse advertising texts and function as a marketing tool, is actually useful for much wider purposes, regarding our way of enhancing the world starting from the macro-distinction between base and use values.

  5. 5.

    In Türcke (2002) emphasis is placed on the fundamental role of “sensation” in modern societies, from a perspective which we consider akin to that which we posit here.

  6. 6.

    In Surace (2018), for example, there is a reflection on the contrastive polarisation of the speeches of vegans and omnivores in the Italian mediasphere.

  7. 7.

    Cf., for example, Wilkins (2000) or, for a more general approach, Wilkins and Nadeau 2015.

  8. 8.

    A very impactful representation of this macro-episode can be found in the movie Satyricon by Federico Fellini (1969).

  9. 9.

    Cf. Fieldhouse (2017).

  10. 10.

    Cf. Kumar Dixit (2019).

  11. 11.

    Generation Z seems to place the food issue as a priority in many respects. For example, about sustainability, cf. Kamenidou et al. (2019).

  12. 12.

    Cf. also Steinberg et al. (2009).

  13. 13.

    Verses 11–14, my translation of the original text: “Si dice, che risusciti, quando sei buona i morti; / Ma oh detto degno d’uomini invero poco accorti! / Or dunque esser bisogna morti per goder poi / Di questi beneficj, che sol si dicon tuoi?”.

  14. 14.

    On food and cinema see Bower (2004), Zimmerman and Weiss (2010). More in general on food and popular culture cf. Lebesco and Naccarato (2018).

  15. 15.

    Cf. Shary (2002).

  16. 16.

    The virality metaphor is introduced in the human sciences starting from Dawkins’ memetic theories (1976), which are rather controversial today because of their reductionist approach, but have paved the way for a long series of studies. A significant compendium in terms of methodologies and approaches can be found in in Marino and Thibault (2016).

  17. 17.

    Cf. Stano (2018b).

  18. 18.

    Cf. Surace (2019).

  19. 19.

    On the ASMR phenomenon cf. Poerio (2016).

  20. 20.

    On orthorexia nervosa cf. Brytek-Matera et al. (2016).

  21. 21.

    https://www.milliondollarvegan.com/pope-francis-responds-to-12-year-old-activist/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Bruno Surace

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  1. Bruno Surace
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Correspondence to Bruno Surace .

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  1. University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Simona Stano

  2. New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Amy Bentley

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Surace, B. (2022). New Generations and Axiologies of Food in Cinema and New Media. In: Stano, S., Bentley, A. (eds) Food for Thought. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81115-0_10

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