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ABSTRACT
The article blends the philosophy of food with the study of food films, suggesting an interpretation of Marco Ferreri’s La grande abbuffata (1973). The movie is read through the lens of the conceptualizations of food advanced, respectively, by Plato, the Cynics, Epicurus and Lucretius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Arthur Schopenhauer. Each thinker defined the symbolical and practical relevance of food in human existence while indicating a path toward balance, self-awareness, and wisdom, also in reference to sexuality, mortality, and art that are widely dealt with in Ferreri’s movie. I contend that the film’s action, dialogue and visual imagery represent a systematic transgression and subversion of such philosophical teachings. I further argue that this interpretation, while being more fine-grained, integrates rather than replacing the commonplace reading of La grande abbuffata as a social allegory.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. I reference the Italian version of the movie. All English translations of movie quotes are mine.
2. Other Western thinkers who offered intriguing discussions or conceptualizations of food, (but not of a kind completely relevant to the discussion at stake, or not as systematic and comprehensive as the ones focused upon here) include Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) (see Onfray Citation1989; Scade Citation2015).
3. The movie may also be read theologically: the way in which its protagonists produce, consume (or waste) food corresponds to the ways in which the capital sin of gluttony is conceptualized by Thomas Aquinas (Citation1947) (Part 2–2, Question 148, Article 4). For a fine-grained discussion of how gluttony was redefined over time, see Miller (Citation1997).
4. Michael Brooke reconstructs how La grande abbuffata was rated in different countries (Brooke Citation2015). See also the 2015 special edition DVD booklet for an anthology of reactions in the press.
5. In the novelization it is a “famous Israeli general,” i.e. Moshe Dayan (1915–1981) (p. 56).
6. Alcohol is remarkably marginal in the movie. Notably, Kant drew a distinction between stupefaction brought about by overconsumption of food and the one caused by alcohol intoxication, pointing out that the former, differently from the latter, does not stimulate imagination (Kant Citation1797, 6:427; cf. also Kant Citation1798, §§ 26–29).
7. Similarly, sarcastic seems to be Ugo’s remark about decorating the “Cathedral” with eggs because “according to the Jews, they are a symbol of death.”
8. Literary references in the film include Virgil, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), Raymond Roussel (1877–1933), and Dorothy Frances Gurney (1858–1932), one of whose poems is engraved on the bench on which Philippe dies. The critic Grisolia sees an analogy between the meat left on the trees at the end of the movie and Dante’s (1265–1321) imagined punishment in hell for those who committed suicide: being morphed into trees from whose branches hang the sinners’ corpses (Grisolia Citation2005, 73).
9. Unknown or fictional.
10. Significantly, also the schoolchildren, after being shown the linden tree, start being “lectured” on the Bugatti by Marcello and on food by Ugo, marking a total replacement of Andréa as teacher. Interestingly, she is called “the woman” by the men, while the prostitutes are called “girls.” And ironically, the etymology of her name is related to masculinity.
11. For Plato the lower abdomen was twisted so that food could not escape quickly and that humans would not be distracted from philosophy and art by physical needs (Timaeus 73a).
12. Perhaps the origin of the term is the mere fact that the first cynic, Antisthenes (ca. 436–366 BCE), used to teach close to a place called Cynosarges, but he was also nicknamed “the pure dog” (Diog. Laert., Life of Antisthenes, 13). Diogenes of Sinope is reported to have called himself “a dog” (Diog. Laert., Life of Diogenes of Sinope, 33, 56, 60, 61), he behaved provocatively like a dog (Ibid., 46), and a dog sculpted in marble was put on his grave (Ibid. 78).
13. “Quips and witticisms always signify more than what appears on the surface. Cynical philosophy is possessed of a resolute way to say no, to flush out the conformism of customary behaviour” (Onfray Citation1989, 15 – Onfray is here rejecting Hegel’s opinion of there not being much to say about the Cynics due to the anecdotal nature of their tradition).
14. On the surface, Michel’s solitary ballet exercise may remind us of the fact that Diogenes considered physical exercise instrumental in reaching spiritual health and virtue (Diog. Laert., Life of Diogenes of Sinope, 70), if it were not for the context in which such exercise is practiced in the movie.
15. Antisthenes is credited with an obscene joke cracked during a banquet; asked to sing, he retorted: “if you play me the flute” – Diog. Laert., Life of Antisthenes, 6); this resonates with a joke made by Michel who asks the prostitutes what they should do to have fun: “play Pan’s flute?”.
16. Other symbolic correspondences between the film and Cynicism are subtler. Diogenes is said to have challenged Plato’s definition of a human being as a “featherless biped” by showing a plucked rooster (Diog. Laert., Life of Diogenes of Sinope, 40). A plucked and stuffed chicken is thrown by Philippe, angry because of the distraction caused by the prostitutes, into an aquarium, where one of the girls spots it just to be told by him that it is a “fish-chicken.” If we accept the symbolic overlap of the plucked chicken with a human being, its landing on the bottom of an aquarium without being eaten symbolizes the dejection and dissipation of the human condition as it is instantiated by the four protagonists.
17. Bonnet’s interpretation of Rousseau is challenged by Spencer K. Wertz, who sees Rousseau’s references to food as mirroring those of the philosopher’s times rather than being fictional and aimed at conveying a philosophical system (cf. Wertz Citation2016, 59, 71, n. 32), yet he agrees on their philosophical significance. Bonnet’s analysis of Emile that he first published in a 1975 article is further developed by Aubrey Rosenberg (Citation1995).
18. Wertz calls Rousseau “the precursor of the organic food movement and of aspects of the slow food movement” (66).
19. Onfray also points out notable weak points in Rousseau’s philosophy, such as the idea that milk is a vegetable product or that “national characters” depend on nourishment. Other tensions and contradictions are underscored by Wertz (Citation2016, 68).
20. The audio is unclear: the reference may also be forêt de la Coubre. However, the novelization reads “Couves” (p. 24) – Iwas unable to locate this.
21. Rousseau was highly critical of French gastronomy. He states: “it is only the French who don’t know how to eat, since so special an art is required to make dishes edible for them” (Emile, quoted in Onfray Citation1989, 28). Ferreri’s film is, especially in this scene, particularly insistent on the French character of the dishes prepared and consumed. Not coincidentally, François Chalais on Europe 1 commented that, with the screening of La grande abbuffata, France suffered a “sinister humiliation” (Habib Citation2001).
22. The diplomat presents Philippe with a gift, the statuette of a character from The Legend of the Red Lantern, one of the plays permitted under the Cultural Revolution that conveyed a political teaching. Philippe declines his offer with a Virgilian quote (timeo Danaos et dona ferentis – “I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts,” what the high priest Laocoön stated upon seeing the Trojan Horse, Aeneid II, 49). A pedagogical work like the Red Lantern symbolizes simultaneously “Asian wisdom,” platonically acceptable art (his general criticism of art notwithstanding, Plato did approve of music insofar as it was used as an educational tool, cf. Republic 401e-402a), and Communism. All of them are rejected by Philippe with a display of standard erudition, the same way he previously silences his nanny with a Latin juridical phrase (Virgil can be regarded as quintessentially obsolete, Western, and ideologically imperialistic).
23. L’homme machine (1748) is a work by Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1709–1751), who according to tradition died from the consequences of devouring a large quantity of pâté de faisan aux truffes.
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Notes on contributors
Stefano Bigliardi
Since August 2016 Stefano Bigliardi is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Englishspeaking, public, and Liberal-Arts oriented Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI), Morocco, where he has been teaching two undergraduate courses on food and philosophy (Fall 2018). Stefano completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy (2004) in Bologna, with a thesis about the Kantian elements in the philosophy of language of R. B. Brandom, written under the guidance of prof. E. Picardi. Later on, he obtained a PhD in Philosophy of Science (2008) at the University of Bologna in a joint supervision with the University of Konstanz (Germany), with a thesis about the concept of belief, written under the guidance of prof. M. C. Galavotti and prof. W. Spohn. His main postdoctoral research complements a Western/analytical philosophical outlook with the study of Islam. His project was initially supported by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Konstanz (Excellence Cluster EXC16 “The Cultural Foundations of Integration”), where he also worked as a language teacher for five years at the Language Institute (SLI). Prior to serving at AUI Stefano joined the faculty of the Center for Middle eastern Studies (CMES) at Lund University, Sweden, where he served as a researcher and a lecturer (2011–2013). He taught Philosophy and Critical Thinking at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Santa Fe, Mexico City (2013–2015). He was a fellow of the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue (FIIRD) University of Geneva (2015–2016).