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Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture
Food is not only something we eat, it is something we use to define ourselves. Ingestion and incorporation are central to our connection with the world outside our bodies. Food's powerful social, economic, political and symbolic roles cannot be ignored - what we eat is a marker of power, cultural capital, class, ethnic and racial identity.Bite Me considers the ways in which popular culture reveals our relationship with food and our own bodies and how these have become an arena for political and ideological battles. Drawing on an extraordinary range of material - films, books, comics, songs, music videos, websites, slang, performances, advertising and mass-produced objects - Bite Me invites the reader to take a fresh look at today's products and practices to see how much food shapes our lives, perceptions and identities.
177 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2008
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About the author
Fabio Parasecoli
15 books11 followersFABIO PARASECOLI is President of the Association for the Study of Food and Society and teaches on food history, culture and the arts at the Città del Gusto School in Rome and at New York University. He is also a journalist for the food and wine magazine Gambero Rosso and author of Food Culture in Italy.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 1, 2009
Okay, honestly, with a title like "Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture" and a cover that is a bit suggestive with a close-up picture of the cleft of a peach/nectarine, I was at the very least expecting a book that was readable and fun. I was expecting something along the lines of Kitchen Confidential, Fast Food Nation, or Candyfreak--- an engaging expose on how food influences and is influenced by pop culture. I mean come on, this is a cover that got me lots of second looks as I read it on the train. Yes folks, I am reading a book, with a big naked butt on the cover.
In the end (ha), "Bite Me" was a little too academic for my taste. It read like an advanced college text book with lots of works cited and a large bibliography. Parasecoli obviously put a good deal of research into the book.
In the chapter Tasty Utopias, Parasecoli discusses food and politics in science fiction books and movies. The works he looks at include Orwell's 1984 and the movie Demolition Man. Parasecoli analyzes what food & eating means to the characters & societies in these sci-fi works.
Food has played a relevant -- even if sometimes almost invisible -- role in many sci-fi works. I believe this connection is revealing.
"Food is an important element in any society, determining many aspects of production, distribution and consumption, and providing fundamental institutions and customs. It is virtually impossible to isolate food from the social, economic, and political structures of a human group. The act of eating, located between the biological and the symbolic, allows sci-fi authors to analyze a large spectrum of phenomena, often with a certain comic impishness. Imagination is a fundamental dimension of the style and the content of science fiction, encompassing all aspects of human life. "
In other chapters Parasecoli compares breast feeding with vampirism and cannabalism, discusses the influence of food in African American culture, looks into diet culture especially the Atkins diet, and finally how tourism relates to food.
There were some interesting factoids in the book, but overall it was a bit too dense for leisure reading. While "Bite Me" might have been a bit of a heavy dish for a casual book club book it would probably be ideal fare for a cultural studies course in college.
In the end (ha), "Bite Me" was a little too academic for my taste. It read like an advanced college text book with lots of works cited and a large bibliography. Parasecoli obviously put a good deal of research into the book.
In the chapter Tasty Utopias, Parasecoli discusses food and politics in science fiction books and movies. The works he looks at include Orwell's 1984 and the movie Demolition Man. Parasecoli analyzes what food & eating means to the characters & societies in these sci-fi works.
Food has played a relevant -- even if sometimes almost invisible -- role in many sci-fi works. I believe this connection is revealing.
"Food is an important element in any society, determining many aspects of production, distribution and consumption, and providing fundamental institutions and customs. It is virtually impossible to isolate food from the social, economic, and political structures of a human group. The act of eating, located between the biological and the symbolic, allows sci-fi authors to analyze a large spectrum of phenomena, often with a certain comic impishness. Imagination is a fundamental dimension of the style and the content of science fiction, encompassing all aspects of human life. "
In other chapters Parasecoli compares breast feeding with vampirism and cannabalism, discusses the influence of food in African American culture, looks into diet culture especially the Atkins diet, and finally how tourism relates to food.
There were some interesting factoids in the book, but overall it was a bit too dense for leisure reading. While "Bite Me" might have been a bit of a heavy dish for a casual book club book it would probably be ideal fare for a cultural studies course in college.
August 2, 2023
Food and popular culture is turning out to be my own area of research focus, so I was excited to read this book.
In a (perhaps too?) brief text of six concise chapters, Parasecoli examines seminal issues such as race, gender, power, politics, and social class through elements of popular culture, including films, television, music, music videos. From South Park to science fiction films to Pimp Juice, he explores a variety of intersting topics through the lens of food. Parasecoli admits that he chose his chapter topics based in part on his personal interests, so I wasn't intrigued equally by each chapter, but my favorite chapter examined dieting, particularly the Atkins Diet.
In all fairness, it is an academic text, but visual examples would have enhanced the discussion (the book is entirely text -- and Dear Berg Publishing, It's a bit small and needs more white space!).
Overall, if supplemented with additional articles and visual examples, Bite Me would be a great text book for a course on Food in Popular Culture.
In a (perhaps too?) brief text of six concise chapters, Parasecoli examines seminal issues such as race, gender, power, politics, and social class through elements of popular culture, including films, television, music, music videos. From South Park to science fiction films to Pimp Juice, he explores a variety of intersting topics through the lens of food. Parasecoli admits that he chose his chapter topics based in part on his personal interests, so I wasn't intrigued equally by each chapter, but my favorite chapter examined dieting, particularly the Atkins Diet.
In all fairness, it is an academic text, but visual examples would have enhanced the discussion (the book is entirely text -- and Dear Berg Publishing, It's a bit small and needs more white space!).
Overall, if supplemented with additional articles and visual examples, Bite Me would be a great text book for a course on Food in Popular Culture.
July 29, 2017
Fabio mostly makes fairly conventional remarks in the book. An "unripe" attempt at subjecting food to cultural studies. His effort to apply some Derrida or Bourdieu to food simply does not gel that much
November 29, 2013
This is one of the best food studies books I've read. There is a good balance in the method of analysis, not to much theory, not to many examples. I love the way the interdisciplinary fields are mixed.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews