FoodPorn: Media and Other Pleasures

Undergraduate

In today’s digital culture, social media users often text images of fruits and vegetables — such as the peach or eggplant emoji— as playful stand-ins for words, particularly when flirting with their interlocutors. While this trend may feel modern, it reproduces a long-standing artistic tradition. Dating back to the Renaissance, artists and writers have used food and culinary imagery to depict everything from childhood nostalgia to romantic love and sexual desire. Through an analysis of films, songs, and written texts by artists such as Stromae, Francky Vincent, Barthes, and Proust, among others, we will examine how food has been used as a rich and expressive metaphor to showcase national identity as well as personal desire and memory.