CONSUMING MODERNITY: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF FOOD, CLASS AND DESIRE IN KAAKA MUTTAI (2014)

Naveen; Panbuselvan; Rahul

doi:10.29121/ShodhVichar.v2.i1.2026.83

Authors

Naveen U M. Sc. Electronic Media PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India Author
Dr. P. Panbuselvan Assistant Professor, Department of Visual Communication and Electronic Media PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India Author https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9612-1189
Rahul S Research Scholar, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29121/ShodhVichar.v2.i1.2026.83

Keywords:

Semiotics, Food Representation,, Consumer Modernity, Class Aspiration, Symbolic Capital, Tamil Cinema

Abstract

In this paper, the semiotic analysis of a Tamil film, Kaaka Muttai (2014), directed by M. Manikandan, is created to fill a crucial gap in the knowledge of Tamil cinema. Although the literature has been mostly analyzing the film through the analysis of subaltern representation, childhood deprivation, and neoliberal city critique, no systematic investigation of the formal structure of food as an order of signification has been made.

Based on classical semiotics and cultural theory Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Claude Levi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu, and Guy Debord, this paper contends that Kaaka Muttai food functions as a formal semiotic system as opposed to a thematic component. The movie develops a dualism between the branded pizza and the egg of crow, making food not a material object of sustenance but a symbolic object of marking of the class aspiration and consumer modernity.

The research shows how the biological hunger is being re-formulated into aspirational desire through an examination of mise-en-scene, spatial organization, mediated visibility, and narrative progression. The article comes to the conclusion that pizza is not a culinary object, but a mythic signifier, a part of a spectacle-driven economy of images, which uncovers the processes of how the neoliberal desire works in our dayto-day lives.

Author Biography

Rahul S, Research Scholar, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

Research Scholar
Department of Journalism and Mass Communication

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