Screen Sustenance: Representations of Food and Drink in Film and Media

This ten-minute video essay will blend together a range of clips from classic and contemporary films (documentary and fiction), as well as television, social media and computer gaming, to consider how food and drink is represented on screen. From early subliminal messaging in movie theatres to “drink Coca Cola” (a practice now illegal) to the modern social status of the ‘viral’ energy/hydration drink, Prime, promoted by YouTubers, food and drink has had a significant relationship upon a range of screen media. In computer gaming it is often synonymous with restoring an avatar's health, while in film and popular programming it can offer a gustatory sensation to viewers through a process of synaesthesia as taste is conveyed through sound and vision. The video essay will consider all of these angles, showcasing the palatable as well as the unsavoury through a range of examples which includes films such as Peter Strickland's Flux Gourmet (2022), Morgan Spurlock's Super-Size Me (2004) and Andrea Arnold's Cow (2021).Fusing a range of gaming, television and social media ingredients together, the video essay is served to help think about the role food and drinks has, and continues to play, within film and screen culture.