Ninth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

This paper is proposed as part of a panel on food and migration in cinema. This paper analyses how national identity and Othering are constructed through representations of food in French and French-language films. I focus on the French context, for if there have been a number of studies of films depicting the experiences of migrant communities in France and the confrontations between migrant communities and the “host” French communities (Sherzer, 1996; Dubois, 2016; Higbee, 2013; Berghahn, 2013; Asava, 2017), few delve into the representations of food and culinary practices in much detail. The questions raised in this paper may however be applied to other national contexts. To demonstrate how images and discourses related to cooking and eating are employed to convey specific representations of national identity and foreignness, I analyse four films made in the first decades of the twenty-first century (The Secret of the Grain, 2007, Abdellatif Kechiche; Cuire ensemble, 2014, François Pirotte and Foued Bellali; Serial (Bad) Weddings, 2014, Philippe de Chauveron; Tazzeka, 2017, Jean-Philippe Gaud). In these films food comes across as a marker of difference and/or sameness, and as a key element in the construction of national identity. The paper also investigates how these questions of food and national identity are further problematised by factors such as the migrant crisis in Europe and the existence of “postmigratory” generations (Kleppinger and Reeck, 2018) in France who consider themselves French as well as possessing multiple cultural identities.