Representing the Nation: How Food Documentaries Link Food with National Identity A Comparative Study of Two Netflix’ Food Documentaries

The recent study on nationalism under modernist scholars highlights the practice of nationalism by ordinary people in the daily routine. Michael Billig (1995) and Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (2017) formulate theories on banal nationalism and everyday nationalism which highlights the role of ordinary people and their experience with nationalism in daily life. An example of the routine activities that everyone does is eating. The act of eating and consuming a certain dish can bring nostalgic feelings and sense of belonging to a nation. For this reason, food is interwoven with nation-building and national identity. The point of departure of this study is the representation of the food as a symbol of a nation displayed by the media: how the narrative is constructed, which angle is displayed, and who is being represented. The center of analysis will be the representation of food as part of national identity in two Netflix Originals’ food documentaries: Ugly Delicious (Capotosto et al., 2018 - present) and Street Food (Fried et al., 2019 - present). Multimodal Discourse Analysis helps the researcher grasp the meaning in the construction of food as part of national identity by looking at the textual and visual discourse represented in the food documentaries. The representation of food in documentaries has two layers. First, the competing representation of food as a cultural product considers how food documentaries construct food as part of national identity and food as mobile that moves from one national context to another. This point relates to the theory of banal nationalism and everyday nationalism and how food documentaries construct the movement of food is perceived as a consequence of globalization and can be associated with the theory of nationalism. Secondly, the food documentaries present the contemporary factors affecting food as a significant part of national identity. Different factors such as state intervention, modernization and globalization, and politics will be explained to understand the current changes in food as part of the nation.