Fast food and the semiotics of gastronomy

I. FOOD AND POPULAR CULTURE Subordination is a matter not just of coercion but also of consent. Cultural Studies has commonly understood popular culture to be the ground on which this consent is won or lost. As a way of grasping the interplay of power and consent, two related concepts were repeatedly deployed in cultural studies' earlier texts, though they are less prevalent these days – namely, ideology and hegemony (Barker, 2000; pp. 10). Ideology has different meanings that claim universal truths to understand it historically. Time now has changed. The class divisions of social formations and the constructed character of nationality are shown by television news now-a-days. Popular culture has become a privileged topic of research since the late 1960s in American Studies. At that time popular culture in the form of TV and advertisement was more important in representing the cultural images and both became culturally hegemonic force. The impact of political and aesthetic ramifications of post modernity on popular culture is more visible with the success of cultural studies. Many scholars have conceptualized the analysis of popular culture and they defied popular culture in diverse way. Four common uses of the term " popular " are identified by Raymond Williams. These are: which is well linked by common people, which is deemed unworthy or inferior, work deliberately seeking to win favour with people and forms of culture made by people for themselves. Popular culture is constantly changing within an arena of large heterogeneous groups of people. It prevails on money economy and possesses more numerous individual relationships. As a hallmark this trend is cropped up frequently in newspapers and conversations. The popular culture is spreading due to urbanization, industrialization, increase in leisure time and rise of formal education. The popular culture of food is changing very fast. The political interplay of cuisines and mutating tastes not only influenced the popular culture of food but also the collective experiences in contemporary times. Food is associated with tradition as well as personal and collective livings. The first one gives us the notions of health, diseases, nutrition or it represent as cultural marker of status, taste and cultivation. The later one reflects the milestones and trauma. While talking about food in the context of popular culture it refers to a taste for distinction. Food consumption and food ethics both are demonstrated within the medium of popular culture. Both the notions are preconceived systems. In simpler way food ethics is an outcome of social awareness and it talks about the impacts on personal consumption that has on the environment and farmers. Within the domain of food ethics, self-respecting concerns about nutrition and personal health also fall. In consuming food, distinction is an alternative outlook which may or may not contain ethical outlook. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984) by Pierre Bourdieu, the term " distinction " denoted class distinction, and much of his text was devoted to identifying the differentiating elements between social classes. Cultural representation was the primary concern of Bourdieu. How the social classes preserve their privilege inter-generationally is emphasized in his work. The popular notion of equal opportunity for social mobility was denied by Bourdieu. He assumes that in the recognition of circumstances Abstract: Food is a cultural construction. As a part of popular culture the trend of eating has been changing with the time. Since 1960s popular culture has become an area of research. In representing cultural images the eating trend is representing in different popular culture like advertisement, cinema and newspaper. The popular culture is a key media that has affected the eating trend of people. The popular culture of food is changing very fast. The ethical issues can be understood how different cultural environments may influence, for this cross cultural perspective is necessary. Media plays an important role to spread the foodways across the world. Visual media i.e. film and different materials of advertisement are creation of efficient consumers. This study focuses on how food as popular culture implements their international marketing strategies in different markets of various countries and how the specific national culture affects. This paper is focusing on the eating trend of people and the influences of media among the people.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FOOD AND NUTRITIONAL SCIENCES, 2022

Food functions as more than a source of nourishment; it is a profound social symbol that reflects cultural values, social hierarchies, and collective identities. This paper explores the cultural and symbolic role of food from the perspective of the sociology of food, emphasizing its capacity to signify identity, demarcate social boundaries, and foster communal ties. Through a critical analysis of traditional cuisines, festive rituals, and everyday consumption practices, the research investigates how food embodies and perpetuates cultural narratives. The study further examines the impact of globalization on food symbolism, highlighting phenomena such as the fusion of cuisines, the commodification of ethnic foods, and the rise of digital food culture. Drawing on theoretical frameworks like Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital and Mary Douglas' work on cultural codes, the research illustrates how food choices and practices reinforce societal norms and hierarchies. The findings underscore food's dynamic role in shaping cultural expressions and social interactions, while addressing contemporary challenges, including food inequality and cultural appropriation. By situating food as a central element of social and cultural life, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of its multifaceted significance in a rapidly evolving world.

2016

Ever since Roland Barthes began to analyze food as a language, a symbol of culture and ideology, semiotics also began to study food in its connotative value or as a form of social identity and as a new “lifestyle.” As a matter of fact this approach is evident because our contemporary postmodern society can be defined as an orthorexic society, in which everybody, everywhere is constantly speaking about food. This phenomenon is called foodism, a practice particularly emphasized in the new media. In this article a specific type of foodism is analyzed: the practice of food–photography. This includes both an individual practice meant to be a self-expression, known by the famous name “food porn,” a sort of food “selfie” and also photography as an artistic expression, a new art form, a practice which can be seen at food photography exhibitions. Different from other forms of foodism, this particular form of food practice is emphasized by the viral use of photography through social networks. Nowadays, new media is the place in where social and individual identity originates therefore semiotics and sociosemiotics must study these new forms of communication to interpret the value of food in contemporary society and the sense of this phenomenon.

Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of …, 2004

Western culture has a schizophrenic (conflicted) relationship with food – we cannot decide whether it delights or disgusts us, whether it is sacred or abject, magical or biological, so we treat it as all of these and more. An attempt to explain these schizophrenic attitudes towards the act of eating in western culture, this project examines representations of eating in five works of contemporary French literature by Amélie Nothomb, Muriel Barbery, and Joy Sorman. It specifically examines the individual’s experience of the act of eating within these works: ‘how’ do we conceptualize the function this act fulfills in our singular being, in our own subjectivity? And furthermore, ‘why’ do we conceptualize eating in this way – that is, schizophrenically? The ‘how’ is addressed by demonstrating the abundance of conflicting sentiments present in these authors’ representations of eating. The ‘why’ is treated through recourse to the philosophical underpinnings of western thought, demonstrating how these ideas actually structure our discussion of and attitude towards food and embodied subjectivity – how we understand ourselves as eating subjects. In short, this is an attempt at a conceptual architecture of the act of eating in western culture. The argument consists in demonstrating how conflicting theories of materiality in the western philosophical tradition undergird our understanding of eating. On the one hand, the legacy of philosophers like Plato, Plotinus and religious belief systems like Christianity, advance a notion of transcendence, where we distance ourselves from materiality and corporeality and aspire towards a superior immaterial dimension. On the contrary, philosophies of material immanence reflecting the ideas of modern science teach us that we are wholly material beings, prompting us to embrace materiality and corporeality. This project concludes that in contemporary discussions of eating, we are forced to grapple with both of these conflicting philosophical frameworks at once – we must reconcile our simultaneous impulse to transcend materiality with our impulse to locate ourselves within it. We resolve this conflict by synthesizing a new framework – immanent transcendence – where we relocate transcendence to matter itself. Food matter thus becomes mystified, endowed with creative powers and divine qualities.

Understanding the procurement, preparation, and consumption of food as a form of communication, critical/cultural scholars approach food and food related activities as texts, asking questions about power, identity, political economy, and culture. The emergent field of critical food studies represents a growing interdisciplinary interest in taking food seriously. Approaching cultural practices as the site of resistance to and incorporation into hegemonic social structures, cultural studies orients us towards questions regarding the politics of food practices with an eye towards social justice. Framed by an awareness of the performativity of cultural practices, both food studies and critical cultural studies engage questions of subjectivity, symbolic meaning, institutional power, identity, and consumption. Broadly speaking, critical cultural studies scholars examine foodways—the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the production and consumption of food—as (a) symbolic repertoires for the production of social identity; (b) a site of cultural performance; and (c) a metaphor for race, class, gender, and sexuality within popular culture. These areas overlap, reinforce, and problematize each other, and are not intended to provide an exhaustive account of the approaches critical cultural scholars take when integrating food studies into their research. As symbolic repertoires, food, foodways, and cuisine are often understood as integral to articulating identity around nationhood, race and ethnicity, class, and gender. Food, foodways, and cuisine provide potent examples of how symbols construct knowledge and meaning. As a site of cultural performance, foodways are understood as part of a cultural system embedded within a matrix of rituals, values, and practices that comprise the rhythm of daily life. Paying attention to food as performance reveals the intricacies of our understandings of and negotiations between self and community; nostalgia and the present moment; home and away; family and individual. Finally, cultural studies deconstructs the metonymic functions of food as presented in media texts. Methodologically, this research provides a textual analysis of how particular foodstuffs function rhetorically within media texts. Theoretically, it provides an important addition to our understanding of the workings of hegemony within the context of food as a metaphor for race, ethnicity, and gender, particularly on cable networks, reality TV, and in film.

American Journal of Human Biology, 1999

Food consumption and eating behaviors are variably affected by a whole range of factors and strongly influenced by environmental and social contexts. According to different studies, the highly use of food images in media and publicity, and brand placements in movies and fashion could explain reinforcing new eating behaviors and lifestyle patterns. The aim of this review is 1) to highlight the adoption of the visual discourse of food in media, advertisements, movies and fashion to promote new consumption norms; and 2) to suggest a collaborative effort to build smart food policies with inputs from food, fashion and film industries. Food endorsed by celebrities and brand logo in advertising are undoubtedly the most visible forms of food marketing communications. Besides, social media and mobile technologies provide novel opportunities to support food marketing and advertising techniques. Food brand placement is another marketing strategy highly used during the last decades by the advertising and food industries to reach consumers. Food brand placement is present in all types of movies, which present in their imagery a world and food that are always patently made by economic and cultural power. Food and fashion industries are strongly connected and use similar worldviews with same economic logic and marketing strategies including; merchandising, brand placement and social media. Public health efforts to promote healthy food patterns and lifestyles must compete with pervasive food marketing for unhealthy products. Public-private partnership is crucial to regulate food marketing strategies and enhance public health efforts. Social networks sites could be also used as potential means to increase the reach and efficiency of public health nutrition activities, such as visual communication for healthy food marketing and nutrition education. This review considers the great challenges related to food and health and suggests a framework illustrating the effect of the visual food discourse on health. This framework is the most comprehensive path for meeting the grand challenges in visual food marketing by setting focus and priority areas for food policies. Research and practical implications are also suggested with the goal of better understanding the visual discourse of food and improving public health. Finally, this review supports the concerns of nutrition experts and policy regulators about the bourgeoning practice of placing nutritionally poor food and beverages in popular entertainment formats such as media, fashion and movies.

International Journal of Multicultural and Multireligious Understanding, 2021

This study was a qualitative study. It combined semiotic theory to analyze the data. This article focuses on how images of food in Instagram represent economic and social values. In addition, this study reveals how photography has message and connotative meaning. This study shows that the use of aesthetic components in food photography aims to promote food product embraced by foodies in Instagram. The image of food can be a communicative language which shows economic value where all the photo embed marketing strategies. The color of food, the property used when photograph the food, somehow, attract followers to consume the food (appetizing the viewers.). Moreover, the kind of food they choose and where to dine out can communicate the social status where they belong.