The Rāmen Festival, or Jūzō Itami’s Multisensual Feast
Abstract
Loska presents the analysis and interpretation of the movie Tanpopo (1985) by Jüzö Itami, situating his reflections in the area of the so-called food studies. He notes, that by choosing food as a subject of his film, Jüzö Itami decided to face the cult of “Japaneseness”, and expose the illusion of homogeneous culture by drawing attention to elements that do not fit into this simplified and one-dimensional image of Japan. He wanted to show that every meal - just like a nation - is composed of ingredients of various origins, and that there is no whole without individual parts. The analysis of various contexts of this film, its digressive and multithreaded structure, relations between characters and the culinary metaphors con- tained in the film lead the author to the conclusion that the culinary threads serve the director as a critical tool, because they allow him to expose remnants of feudal order, absurdity of social life rituals, and above all, the unjustified sense of superiority of the Japanese over other nations.
Keywords:
Jūzō Itami, food studies, JapanReferences
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Authors
Krzysztof Loskakwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Profesor Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, dyrektor Instytutu Sztuk Audiowizualnych tamże, wiceprezes Polskiego Towarzystwa Badań nad Filmem i Mediami, redaktor naczelny „TransMissions: Journal of Film & Media Studies”. Zajmuje się kulturą japońską i historią filmu. Autor stu kilkudziesięciu publikacji naukowych, w tym dwunastu książek, m.in. Dziedzictwo McLuhana - między nowoczesnością a ponowoczesnością (2001), Hitchcock: autor wśród gatunków (2002), David Cronenberg: rozpad ciała, rozpad gatunku (2003, wspólnie z A. Pitrusem), Tożsamość i media. O filmach Atoma Egoyana (2006), Poetyka filmu japońskiego (2009), Kenji Mizoguchi i wyobraźnia melodramatyczna (2012), Nowy film japoński (2013), Mistrzowie kina japońskiego (2015), Postkolonialna Europa: etnoobrazy współczesnego kina (2016).
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