Summary and The Godfather

Chapter 14 describes how food is used to show relationships and the importance of people's culture. Food represents so many different feelings or events in a movie to help increase the importance of the scene and to help move the movie along farther into plot. Food scenes help lead into violent scenes. Ultimately during meals people come together and important conversations happen over the table while eating a meal.

One of the most important sentences in this chapter tells how throughout Pulp Fiction the food is represented, " all the manners in which food is presented throughout the film: culturally, spatially, temporally, and sexually" (Epstein p. 196). This sentence greatly relates to the movie The Godfather especially in the culture aspect. The first scene of the movie is Connie's wedding. This is a huge wedding with great amounts of food. This helps to show how the Italians like to stick with their traditions. The families are always eating together over a table helping to spatially show the importance of their Italian background. During the wedding Micheal and his American girlfriend are eating lasagna a clearly Italian food and this shows how Micheal still lives to his Italian way of life and is giving his girlfriend an insight into his family's real business. This scene is like in Chapter 14 how important discussions happen over a meal.

Another scene where food shows relationships is when a member of the Corleone's mafia has gone bad and they take him out of town to shoot him. One of the member states "Leave the gun; take the cannoli". This represents the man's feelings towards his wife and how she asked him to bring cannoli's home. He is respectful of his wife which also shows how the Italian's value the importance of family and traditions shown through the usage of food. Another example of how this chapter relates to the movie we watched is right before Micheal goes to kill the two men at the diner the other members of the mafia are eating Chinese and at the front of the table Sonny is shown in charge. This shows how they are out of their culture and talking over business during their meal. This scene also helps lead into a scene shortly after where Sonny is killed. These are all examples of how The Godfather relates to Chapter 14's ideas of food representation in violent movies.