“The cultural politics of food in selected Egyptian films”

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of food as a cultural/political marker in selected Egyptian films. The study argues that food is intertwined with power relations and socio-economic political transformations; hence, food studies can constitute a cultural, historical document that unravels personal and collective, political history. The paper examines food discourse in the post-2011 period as depicted in two award-winning films that represented Egypt in a number of international film festivals, mainly, the 2013 documentary film “OM Amira” by Nagi Ismail (1983-) , and the 2016 feature film “Nawara” by Hala Khalil (1967-) . As food for thought, the selected films depict the plight of Egyptian working class women as representative of a whole downtrodden social class. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the study raises a number of questions to which it attempts to provide answers. What is the role of food in films? How do both films represent the relation between food and classes? What is the relation between the food scenes and characterization? How far are the films similar or different in their representation of food and the working class predicament? How do the films represent food as a cultural/political marker that unravels the history of a country in flux, exposing its power structures and contradictions on the one hand, and the struggles, aspirations and frustrations of its lower classes, on the other?

Keywords:

• 2011 Revolution
• food studies
• Egyptian films
• power relations
• classes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On the sharp disparity between classes as a theme, Hala Khalil states that

“the highborn are surrounding themselves with high walls and with towering gates. Not everyone could get past those gates, it’s either you belong to this class or the working class that serves them. So I started wondering about how the working class, the ones who cross the gates every day to work in the compound, see the life behind those gates. How they perceived the people who lived there, the expenditure, the prosperity and how they compare it…with their own lives in their milieu that lacks any sense of the essential means of life. This was especially after a revolution with that powerful of an impact, which generated dreams for everyone” (Khalil, 2016).

2 Highlighting his point of view, Nagi Ismail states: “it’s not always men sitting around demanding that their women work to feed them and their children; even when that happens there’s a sense of helplessness for a man who is unable to provide for his family” (Alsayes).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pervine Elrefaei

Pervine Elrefaei is a Professor of Cultural Studies at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. She participated in many international conferences and has a number of publications on film studies, gender studies, feminism, border studies and postcolonial literature. Amongst her publications are “Egypt’s Borders and the Crisis of Identity in the Literature of Nubia and Sinai,” “Egypt and the Prison as a Dual Space of Repression and Resistance: The Dialectics of Power Relations in Literature and Film,” “Egyptian Women in the Cartoons and Graffiti of the January 2011 Revolution: A Janus –faced Discourse,” “Memory, Identity and Resistance in Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin,” “Intellectuals and Activists Writing under the Sign of Hope: Radwa Ashour and Ahdaf Soueif’s Manifestos of the 2011 Revolution,” “Cultural Trauma and Scheherazade’s Gastro-national/Transnational Discourse in Tamara al-Refai’s Writings.” Women, Voice and Identity: Muslim Women’s Writing from across the Middle East, edited by Feroza Jussawala and Doaa Omran, Routledge, 2021,” “The Egyptian Nubian Archival Discourse: Identity Politics in Selected Works by Yehia Mokhtar” (Forthcoming), and “Deconstructing Borders: Arab American Immigrants and Body Politics in Mohja Kahf’s the girl in the tangerine scarf”(Forthcoming).