Food for Thought

Hi Code Blu group and classmates!! I linked to the article by Luanne Roth called, “Beyond Communitas: Cinematic Food Events and the Negotiation of Power, Belonging, and Exclusion” which is the same article that I used for my summary essay. Although she discusses the similar idea of food as a defining factor in movies such as Along Came Polly and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, this article is still quite insightful I think. This article appears in the "Western Folklore" collection, but it's also available in electronic format as seen here. Roth analyzes American History X from a more thematic perspective. She elaborates on how crucial scenes in the film focus on references to food and how the mouth holds much symbolic meaning in American History X. For example, Roth introduces how the convenience store incident shows a dark-skinned cashier woman refusing unwanted sexual attention to support Roth’s belief that food is representative of the differences in race and culture in the film. The article continues discussing this point through how “three masked men hoist her screaming and struggling body onto the counter…” to present food “as a symbol of destroying the other [race]” because “the consumption of certain stinky foods is associated, however erroneously, with foreignness.” Luanne Roth’s article analyzes how scenes involving food and the mouth reflect how some people “create communitas through food…” as a result of how some people make judgments about a particular race based on the stereotypes surrounding the foods of their culture.


*** I provided the HTML link above, but when I tried accessing it, sometimes it brings me to a screen that says, “you have timed out” so I provided instructions to access the article below. I'm sorry if this confuses anybody, but please let me know if it's still hard/unable to be located, thanks! (you'll be able to view it in both HTML and PDF format).

1. go to www.uic.edu
2. click on the link to the library
3. under the quick links/shortcuts area, choose, electronic resources - alphabetical list
4. click on the letter "p" and click on "periodical abstracts"
5. it'll bring you to a search page; type in "American History X" with the parentheses
6. on the results page, Roth's article should appear as the third entry called, "Beyond Communitas: Cinematic Food Events and the Negotiation of Power, Belonging, and Exclusion”