REPRESENTATIONS OF OBESITY IN CINEMA: THE ‘FAT BOURGEOIS’ IN EISENSTEIN’S STRIKE (1925)

Abstract

This essay analyzes Sergei Eisenstein’s film ‘Strike’ (1925) as the primary source for a history of representations of obesity in Cinema. As a method, it used discursive analysis of the enunciation from a Foucauldian perspective. After watching the movie, four passages were considered relevant and two enunciations were established: (1) the bourgeois are corpulent and fat; and 2) the fat bourgeois are irascible. Regarding the characteristics attributed to obesity in terms of socioeconomics groups, both statements indicate a situation that is opposite to today’s. The results reinforce the view that there was politicization of corporeity in the historical process of inversion of values of the denominated condition – at that time, corpulence. As a conclusion, cinema may have been an ideological propaganda tool to spread the new values, which can be found in the contemporaneity.