What's Eating You?

Divided into four thematic sections <i>What's Eating You?</i> explores the deeper significance of food on screen-the ways in which they reflect (or challenge) our deepest fears about consuming and being consumed. Among the questions it asks are: How do these films mock our taboos and unsettle our notions about the human condition? How do they critique our increasing focus on consumption? In what ways do they hold a mirror to our taken-for-granteds about food and humanity asking if what we eat truly matters?<br/><br/>Horror narratives routinely grasp those questions and spin them into nightmares. Monstrous others+? dine on forbidden fare; the tables of consumption are turned and the consumer becomes the consumed. Overindulgence as <i>Le Grande Bouffe</i> (1973) and <i>Street Trash </i>(1987) warn can kill us and occasionally as films like <i>The Stuff</i> (1985) and <i>Poultrygeist </i>(2006) illustrate our food fights back. From <i>Blood Feast </i>(1963) to <i>Sweeney Todd </i>(2007) motion pictures have reminded us that it is an eat or be eaten+? world.