Section A14: Rituals of Dinner
Margaret Visser suggests in her book The Rituals of Dinner that table manners originated to curb our instinct to use our knives on our fellow diners rather than on our dinner. Regardless of their origins, the rituals of dinner certainly have become symbolic means for representing and even mediating controversies--both within a culture and between different cultures. Thus, literature and art from the Bible to Babette's Feast have used the setting of meals to represent social conflicts or tensions between the sexes, between old and young, competing philosophies and religious perspectives, rich and poor, the Orient and the West, and so on.
Drawing upon theories from anthropology, religious studies and psychology for "deciphering" the language of meals and their rituals--we will interpret some ancient literary and contemporary cinematic accounts of banquets. We will examine ancient texts, such as Genesis, Song of Songs, and Luke's Gospel from the Bible, the Jewish Passover Seder, and Plato's Symposium, and contemporary films, such as The Dining Room, Babette's Feast, Tampopo, Like Water for Chocolate and My Dinner With André. Particular attention will be paid to the spiritual significance of meals-their role in shaping one's personal identity, group solidarity and relationships with transcendent or supernatural reality.