In my early to mid ’30s, I taught introductory argumentation in college, and I studied what was being called, for a moment, rhetorics of food. My ambition was to study the ways in which food and communication traveled together through networks. I wasn’t alone. After writers like Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser and filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Morgan Spurlock released some powerful arguments, there was a fair amount of interest in argumentation related to global food systems. Popular media and journalism, as well as community activism, amplified many trends that would change the way we eat. In higher education, teachers of writing had used food writers like Calvin Trillin for years. However, in the early aughts, there was a shift in thinking. Instead of the using the work of food writers to model good writing, many scholars began arguing that food is an expressive media that moves along and intersects with writing. For example, in the book Food Is Culture (2004), Massimo Montanari argues for a connection between rhetoric and food. Montanari writes that “food acquires full expressive capacity thanks to the rhetoric that in every language is its necessary complement” (102). He continues, articulating food as one of the available means of persuasion. “Rhetoric is the adaptation of speech to the argument, to the effects one wants to arouse or create. If the discourse is food, that means the way in which it is prepared, served, and eaten” (102). Without the rhetorical trappings involved in preparation, service, and consumption, food would be slop. But so interconnected are the rhetorical aspects of food with the food itself, that even the act of unceremoniously serving gruel is laden with rhetorical significance.
Roland Barthes goes even further than Montanari. For Barthes, food is expressive not only because it is accompanied by social and cultural sign systems; food is, in and of itself, expressive. In “Toward a Psychology of Contemporary Food Consumption,” Barthes writes, “an item of food sums up and transmits a situation; it constitutes an information; it signifies. That is to say that it is not just an indicator of a set of more or less conscious motivations, but that it is a real sign, perhaps the functional unit of a system of communication” (24). For Barthes, food is language and, as such, a system. Once systematized, food cannot cease to signify. “As soon as a need is satisfied by standardized production and consumption, in short, as soon as it takes on the characteristics of an institution, its function can no longer be dissociated from the sign of that function. This is true for clothing; it is also true for food” (24). And, by the way, Barthes is not writing about only the overtly demonstrative aspects of food service, but all of it. He writes, “I mean not only the elements of display in food, such as foods involved in rites of hospitality, for all food serves as a sign among members of a given society” (24). For those who might think that food is a fundamental human need, Barthes agrees, but his point is that even our most basic needs signify through their structure. “Substances, techniques of preparation, habits, all
become part of a system of differences in signification; and as soon as this happens, we have
communication by way of food” (25).
What does it mean to communicate with, through, and alongside food? It can mean a whole universe of things that I can’t unpack here. In fact, asking what things mean is maybe the wrong approach. Maybe instead of asking what it means, we might ask what it looks like. The first example that comes to mind is the Blinky episode of “The Simpsons.” You can watch it yourself, but here’s the real quick recap: Bart catches a 3-eyed fish near the power plant. The fish draws attention and regulation to the power plant. Mr. Burns runs for governor to fight regulation. As a publicity stunt, he decides to have dinner with press coverage at The Simpsons’ house. Marge doesn’t want to vote for Burns, but Homer does. They fight. Marge says Homer silences her. “You don’t let me express myself,” she says. To this, Homer replies, “You express yourself in the home you keep and the food you serve.” Marge, grumbling, says, “Okay, Homer. Fair enough. You got it. All right. Good. That’s how I’m going to express myself. Good night.” She serves the fish to Burns. He spits it out. His publicity stunt is a failure and he loses the election. This is the quintessential example of expression through food.
There’s another example from American culture that also deals with expression through food and marital strife. As the story of the famed “Nashville Hot Chicken” goes, Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack was born when the womanizing Thornton Prince stepped out on his lady one too many times. She punished him by slathering his fried chicken with hot pepper. He liked it and started a chicken shack that would become famous because of the heat, but that’s not really the point, here. Or maybe it is. Maybe the web of narratives that surround Blinky the fish and Prince’s Hot Chicken (repeated by marketing professionals and fans alike) demonstrate the complexity of communication. All communication is complex. We don’t need to add food to the conversation to demonstrate that complexity. However, when we do add food (and art, and music, and fashion, and…) we see not just the complexities of delivery and genre and format and media choice. We also see that words and images and language (writ large) aren’t even necessary for communication and persuasion. The act of serving a dish says a lot.