Introduction

Abstract

Food, Media and Contemporary Culture: The Edible Image is an edited collection designed to interrogate the cultural fascination with food as the subject and focus of a growing number of visual texts that include film, TV and the internet. These texts reveal the deep, psychological relationship that each of us has with rituals of preparing, presenting and consuming food and images of food. Although a vital staple for life itself, food also conveys a plethora of meanings and representations that reveal cultural and political stances on race, class, gender and sexuality. At this point in time, it is vital to comprehend these depictions in relation to social parity and its representation in the media. The book brings together a body of research across various fields that reveals how the concept of food is used to express numerous facets of personal, national and global identity. Its chapter on food porn in new media allows a consideration of the changing mode and content of media texts and how they are employed to deal with the extensive rise of the public obsession with food. By exploring the relationship between food, the body and culture, it is intended to both contextualize and analyse how it is used as narrative device, conveyor of meaning and articulation of desire in film, TV and new media texts. In this, it differs from other books on the subject as it takes a critical approach that supplies a consideration of the fundamental importance of food in contemporary culture and how media images of food reach across all types of boundaries, including cultural, geographical and representational.