food

The MasterChef Journey to Brain through Stomach: Food as Transnational Capital

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Diganta Bhattacharya

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Sundarvan Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal & Research Scholar, Presidency University. Email: diganta.bhat@gmail.com                

 Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.37

Abstract

The notion of ‘capital’ being fluid, it comfortably lends itself to a multiplicity of interpretive-analytical frameworks that involve anything that can be ‘cashed in’. The significance of food in its myriad manifestations and reimagining-s can barely be overstated as it not only is irreplaceable due to biological-gustatory function but also due to the way people connect with it culturally, domestically, ethnically and personally. A 1990 show created by Franc Roddam in UK was essentially resuscitated, reconceived and re-developed in Australia in 2009 and the rest, literally, is history. Masterchef has become a culinary phenomenon like no other, has got its iterations across several continents and has essentially reimagined how ‘food’ is approached as well as conceptualized. A steep competitive framework and the time-tested format of a reality show can be argued to be two of the most significant reasons of its immense success which is apparent from its extensive viewership.  This essay seeks to interrogate a format that, admittedly competitive and eclectic, has successfully found out a method of manipulating consumer choices through a sort of strategic representation. By no means a straightforward Marxist critique of capital-flows as operative in such sites that are determined by different modalities of choice-based resource-utilization in an age of unprecedented interpenetration of the public and the private life, this study also strives to be a close ‘reading’ of the reality show ‘Masterchef Australia’ and the subtle ways it has continued to impact food culture around the world including India since 2009.

Keywords: Food, MasterChef, Australia, Culture, Capital, Pluralistic Democracy, Transnational, Body, Individual, choice, Economy, Reality show, Digital Behaviour

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Food as a Major Cite for Culture and Identity: A Select Reading of Frances Mensah Williams’ Novel From Pasta To Pigfoot

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Sathiya Priya1 T & Shilaja.C.L2

1Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology. Email: sathiyapriya.english@sathyabama.ac.in

2Stella Maris college for Women

Volume 11, Number 2, July-September, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n2.04

First published July 19, 2019

Abstract

It is an unending attempt for the immigrant community to come out of the entanglement of identity issues, especially in postcolonial settings. Apparently, it appears to be more complicated for the second or third generation subjects of the settler’s family for they have zero firsthand experience of their home culture. Such issues of complicated identity are widely addressed in many of the postcolonial narratives and this paper attempts to trace similar kinds of concerns through the specific lens of food. The reason for which food is chosen as a focal point is that food stands as a striking symbol through which multiple aspects of the society like culture, ethnic identity, gender roles, politics, social order, etc., can be vastly interpreted. The novel From Pasta to Pigfoot written by Frances Mensah Williams has a greater scope on analyzing such concepts of culture and postcolonial identity through the representation of food. A deeper examination on the role of food played at various layers throughout the novel allows us to understand that the concepts revolved around the food like cooking, dining, choice of food,  eating, food manners and many other culinary aspects subject to challenge an individual’s identity at a greater level. This article also seeks to examine the ways in which this complexity of individual identity could be at least balanced if not completely resolved.

Keywords: Food, culture, identity, ethnicity, postcolonial, multiculturalism.

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The Cult of Victorianism: Eating Disorders and Graphic Medicine

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Sathyaraj Venkatesan1 & Anu Mary Peter2

1Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India–620015, sathya@nitt.edu, 0000-0003-2138-1263.

2Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India– 620015, anupeterthekk@gmail.com, 0000-0001-6740-8252.

Volume 9, Number 4, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n4.01

Received October 05, 2017; Revised November 18, 2017; Accepted November 30, 2017; Published December 09,  2017.

Abstract

Eating disorders in women can be identified as a devastating repercussion of the punitive cultural norms of feminine restrictions practiced in the Victorian era. By close reading Karrie Fransman’s graphic narrative The House That Groaned (2012), the present paper foregrounds the abiding and irrefutable presence and influence of Victorian concepts of restrictive eating in the post-millennial era. Borrowing theoretical postulates from Susan Bordo, Susie Orbach, and Deborah Lupton this article seeks to investigate the subterranean cultural connections between these two centuries. Considering eating disorders as a detrimental cultural denouement of Victorian chauvinism, the article also examines how Fransman’s adept utilization of the stylistic and structural affordances of the medium of comics vis-à-vis temporality, gesture, speech balloons, light, and color creates a verbo-visual assertion of the subjectification/ objectification of women.

Keywords: eating disorder, Victorian era, food, eating, sexuality, liberation, restriction.

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Negotiating Homelessness through Culinary Imagination: the Metaphor of Food in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

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Kalyan Chatterjee

Government General Degree College, Manbazar-II, Purulia, West Bengal

Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

This paper seeks to look at the culinary associations of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies to explore the metaphor of food as it is employed by Lahiri to delineate different shades and nuances of the lives of mostly the expatriate people, concentrating especially on how food negotiates the unease in living in an adopted land. The first section of this paper introduces the critical issues related to food and eating, and the second section moves on to the analysis of her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, relating the stories to the issues discussed in the first section of the paper.

 Keywords: Food, Diaspora, Indian American Diaspora, Jhuma Lahiri Keep Reading

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Narratives of Diaspora and Exile in Arabic and Palestinian Poetry

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Saddik M. Gohar, United Arab Emirates University

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Abstract

This paper underlines the attitudes of Palestinian / Arab poets toward the issues of exile and identity integral to their traumatic experience of Diaspora and displacement. From a historical context  and within the parameters of colonial / postcolonial theory , the paper  advocates a new critical perspective exploring the dialectics of exile and identity in Palestinian / Arabic poetry in order to argue that  exile , in contemporary world literature ,  becomes  a signifier  not only  of living  outside  one’s homeland but also of  the  condition caused by such physical absence. Aiming to reach a state of reconciliation rather than conflict, the poetic voices, analyzed in the paper, reflect a sense of nostalgia and emotional attachment toward their homeland. The paper  argues that Palestine, for  the Palestinian poets, is not  a paradise or an idealistic utopia that only exists in  their  poetry and  imagination but  a geographical reality caught up in national and religious limbos  and rooted in the trajectories of colonial history and diabolical  power  politics. Keep Reading

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Memory: The ‘Spiral’ in the Poetry of Joy Harjo

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Susmita Paul, Independent Scholar

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Abstract

Memory as a narrative is a vindicated thesis in academia. In the article, the author focuses on the nature and the function of ‘memory’ in the poetry of Joy Harjo, an indigenous American poet with tribal affiliations. Instead of using only Eurocentric discourses of performance studies and theoretical studies on memory, the author attempts to assess the distillation of Harjo’s independent ideas on memory in her creative oeuvre – written and performed poetry. Further, the author probes how Harjo’s ‘theory’ of memory connects the past, the present and the future. Keep Reading

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A Science Fiction in a Gothic Scaffold: a Reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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Zinia Mitra, Nakshalbari College, Darjeeling, India

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Abstract

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is a unique blend of two genres: Gothic and science fiction. While it follows the gothic convention of tale within tales, its epistolary framework and keeps intact its unrestrained lengthy articulations, it explores at the same time the innovative marvels of modern science. The fire that Prometheus stole form Zeus to help mankind is ingeniously   replaced in the novel by the spark of electricity. The novel also puts to question some traditional social assumptions. Keep Reading

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The Function of Scientific Metaphor in Thoreau’s Walden

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Robert Tindol, Shantou University

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Abstract

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden has often been lauded for its philosophical advice “to simplify” and for its energetic response to the question of how human beings fit into the natural world. In terms of language, the very manner in which the author describes and metaphorizes nature in the microcosm of Walden Pond furthers the theme of simplification, and further contributes a novel approach to the very concept of seeing and understanding. Walden is not simply about reducing life to the barest common denominator of existence, but also about understanding how to debride just enough of the superfluities to provide insights into how amalgamating nature with human language can lead to a new humanistic vision of renewal. Thus, the employment of scientific metaphor in Walden is linked to the humanistic quest for guidance in the conduct of life. Keep Reading

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“Murdering the Innocents”: The Dystopian City and the Circus as Corollary in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus

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Stacey Balkan, Bergen Community College, New Jersey

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Abstract

There is perhaps no novel that offers a more scathing commentary on nineteenth century conceptions of leisure and industry than Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. Dickens’ description of Coketown, nay Preston, is a caricature of utilitarian uniformity and the commodification of workers in post-industrial England. Ostensibly Marxist in its depictions of those men of “facts and calculations”—clearly Jeremy Bentham and Adam Smith—Dickens offers a community of “hands” covered in soot toiling under the vulgar Bounderby.  Counterpoised against these laborers is the whimsical cast of Mr. Sleary’s circus. Using the circus as a corollary to the dystopian city, he anticipates Angela Carter’s Neovictorian romp through London, St. Petersberg, and Siberia wherein the characters of Nights at the Circus likewise offer an antidote to similarly oppressive prescriptions for economic prosperity. Keep Reading

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Ontological Concerns in Charles Dickens’s “The Ivy Green” and Odysseus Elytis’ “The Mad Pomegranate Tree”: A Comparison

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Bibhudutt Dash, SCS College, Puri, Orissa

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Abstract

This paper compares the existential problems addressed in Charles Dickens’ poem “The Ivy Green” and the Greek poet Odysseus Elytis’ poem “The Mad Pomegranate Tree.” While it highlights Dickens’ portrayal of the theme of death, contrasted with Elytis’ rapture at the variegated functions and the youthfulness of the tree, it also underlines how the lithesome movement of the Ivy green upon the dead awakens in us an understanding of the inevitable. Keep Reading

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