This blog post examines whether interpreting surrealist works through a realist analytical framework is a valid approach, using the film Food as an example.

Before we begin

Analyzing surrealist works using the same methods as traditional realist works is a flawed approach. It is more terrible than forcing a child who has already grown as tall as an adult to wear children’s clothes simply because they are still considered a child. This interpretive method risks suffocating the very essence of surrealist art. Surrealist works are not corpses laid out in a laboratory for dissection. These works are, from the outset, the product of an effort to break free from the shackles of reason and express the irrational or unreal worlds hidden in the unconscious. Yet, attempting to analyze surrealist works from a logical and practical perspective is akin to diminishing or annihilating the inherent delight they possess. Simply put, surrealist works are akin to dreams. When recounting a dream, one doesn’t say, “Describe it based on the 5Ws and 1H principle, following cause and effect.” In dreams, the sea can become a mountain, and a person can run faster than a car. This is possible because dreams are not reality. Precisely because dreams transcend reality, they offer a delight that stories grounded in reality cannot provide. Drawn by this delight, we want to hear dream stories. Surrealist works similarly exist for appreciation rather than analysis. They contain neither excessive moral lessons nor plots based on causality. Instead, they unfold the pleasure of witnessing reality and unreality coexist, revealing the unconscious world freed from logical and rational thought. This expression method is called automatic writing. However, one must not overlook that surrealist works are not merely nonsensical. Just as dreams transcend reality yet remain connected to it, they are closely intertwined with reality. Instincts suppressed by the censorship of reason in waking life are revealed unfiltered in dreams. Freud’s attempts to interpret dreams likely stemmed from this same context. Similarly, surrealist works are rooted in reality. Therefore, surrealist art did not reject or ignore reality; rather, it sought to reach an absolute reality where reality and dreams merge. Thus, I believe the method for analyzing surrealist works involves understanding how reality is reflected in the unconscious and examining how this is expressed within the work.

Work Analysis

Director Jan Švankmajer’s Food is a trilogy divided into Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. The everyday words and actions we commonly encounter—breakfast, lunch, dinner—transform into something entirely new when they meet surrealism. Breakfast depicts the irony of the process of supplying and consuming food; Lunch portrays the appetite of the privileged amidst famine; Dinner shows people using their own bodies as cooking tools. These three episodes carry a strong satirical nature and are expressed through shocking and explicit imagery. It feels as if they aim to expose the hidden meanings lurking beneath familiar daily routines, overturning the everyday.
Before analyzing these works individually, it is necessary to briefly understand the ‘Prague Spring’ in Czechoslovakia. Director Jan Švankmajer’s work is closely linked to the Czech Surrealist art movement, and Czech Surrealism is deeply connected to the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Prague Spring. Czechoslovakia was a political, economic, and cultural hub in Eastern Europe before World War II, but was forcibly communized by the Soviet Union after the war. As liberalization progressed from the mid-1950s, Czech intellectuals demanded the establishment of a democratic regime, but the Novotný regime refused. An anti-regime movement arose, and eventually the reformist Dubček seized power. The Czech reformists advocated for “socialism with a human face,” aiming to abolish prior censorship, establish a democratic electoral system, and guarantee freedoms of the press, publication, assembly, and association. These policies differed significantly from the one-party dictatorship advocated by Stalin. The Czech reforms led to the establishment of numerous social organizations, and society began shifting from communism toward democracy. This period is known as the “Prague Spring of 1968.” Fearing these changes would spread to other countries, the Soviet Union mobilized the armies of Eastern European nations to invade Czechoslovakia. During this invasion, many Czechoslovak citizens resisting the Soviet forces were killed or fled into exile abroad, and a communist dictatorship was reestablished in Czechoslovakia.
These historical facts significantly influenced Czech Surrealism, giving it a critical and subversive nature directed against contradictory and oppressive societies. This influence is clearly evident in the work of Jan Švankmajer. The scathing critique of reality presented in this work can also be seen as an extension of the Czech Surrealist character. The historical event known as the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and the reality of Eastern Europe at that time are crucial keys to understanding this work. Following the Prague Spring, both the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe faced difficulties due to economic stagnation. The prioritization of heavy industry in economic policy led to severe shortages of consumer goods, and Eastern Europe began to become a burden for the Soviet Union. The failure of economic policy made political reform inevitable in several Eastern Bloc countries. In Czechoslovakia, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 sparked large-scale protests. The dissident organization, the Civic Forum, was formed and brought down the communist regime. Dubček was also reinstated, leading to rapid democratization. However, domestic ethnic issues prevented the political situation from stabilizing.
This work was produced in 1992. From the late 1980s, the Czech Republic underwent a transitional period, and within this unstable situation, the possibility of resolving the economic crisis was almost nonexistent. Amidst the economic hardship, everything was in short supply, and the desire to fill that scarcity was intense. Particularly, the obsession with food likely reached its peak more than ever before. Amidst this period, as the Western capitalist system gradually entered the country riding the wave of liberalization, the work Food can be said to be a surrealist exploration of how this excessive desire for food, intertwined with the capitalist system, resulted in a distorted form. So, let’s examine how these elements manifest in each episode.

First, Breakfast

Man A enters a cramped room, removes his hat, and sits in a chair. A reads the instructions on the food machine B in front of him, takes out money, inserts it into B’s mouth, then activates it by forcefully hitting its head and poking its eyes. When sausages, bread, and beer emerge from B’s chest, A strikes B’s jaw and begins eating the food using a fork and knife that emerge from B’s ear. After devouring the food voraciously, A hits B’s foot to obtain a napkin and wipes his mouth. A transforms back into a human, while B becomes a food machine again. B hangs the instruction sign around food machine A’s neck, draws a line on the room’s wall, and exits. Newly arrived man C follows the instructions hanging around A’s neck and eats the food. After wiping with the napkin, C also transforms into a food machine, and A reverts to human form. A draws a line on the room’s wall, opens the door, and exits. Beyond the open door, a long, winding queue stretches out.
The imagination of a person becoming a food machine and then reverting back to human form is the most crucial framework of this episode, vividly showcasing surrealism. Such imagination cannot emerge under the control of reason; it is drawn from the unconscious. It is also filled with witty expressions, such as forks and knives emerging from the ears when the chin is struck. So, what do these expressions aim to show? The most crucial point here lies in the shifting dynamics of supply and demand. The person wanting to eat represents demand, while the food machine providing the food is the supply. This supply and demand constantly changes. It’s a unique setup where a person becomes a food machine after eating, and then reverts back to a person after providing food.
Initially, A pays money to B and eats sausage and bread. Then A receives money from C and provides sausage and bread. Ultimately, A remains unchanged when entering and exiting the small room. The money A paid B to eat the sausage and bread is received back from C. And A provides the sausage and bread received from B to C. Consequently, nothing changes, but A will mistakenly believe they ate food. Thus, the most crucial element in the shifting demand and supply is money. People insert money into the food machine to eat, obtaining food through money. Demand and supply keep changing, but no actual food is produced. Only disposable cups, plates, forks, and knives pile up in the cramped room. Goods merely circulate; nothing is created. Only trash remains. This episode can be seen as illustrating the contradictions of the capitalist economic system by linking them to human appetite.

Second, Lunch

Inside the restaurant, a rich man and a poor man sit facing each other. When the rich man meticulously cleans his plate, fork, and knife, the poor man mimics him. The waiter bustles past them, seemingly too busy to notice. The two try to hail him, but to no avail. The poor man’s stomach growls loudly. The rich man neatly arranges the flowers in the vase on the table. The poor man tries to imitate him but ends up scattering the flowers. The poor man attempts to eat the fallen flowers, but under the rich man’s contemptuous gaze, he pulls the flower from his mouth and pins it to his own clothes. Seeing this, the rich man places the flowers from the vase onto his plate and eats them with relish. The poor man also eats the flower pinned to his clothes. The rich man drinks the water from the vase, and the poor man eats the entire vase. The rich man eats the napkin clean, and the poor man eats a dirty handkerchief. A waiter hurriedly passes by them. The rich man eats his shoes, and the poor man follows suit. The rich man eats his suspenders, trousers, jacket, dress shirt, tie, and underwear, and the poor man eats his belt, trousers, jacket, T-shirt, and underwear. The rich man eats the plate, the tablecloth, the table, and the chair, and the poor man follows suit. After devouring everything, the rich man puts a fork and knife in his mouth, but with a sneer, he pulls them out again and lunges to eat the poor man.
As in the first episode, the setting where human appetite consumes everything, including clothes and the table itself, vividly demonstrates surrealist imagination. However, this work does not limit its meaning solely to human appetite. It is crucial to examine the differences between the three characters appearing here. In this episode, the rich man can be seen as representing the haves, dressed in an expensive suit, while the poor man, clad in shabby clothes, represents the have-nots. Both are placed in the same situation: a famine where food is scarce. They consume everything within reach. The key point here is that the haves possess priority. Just as the privileged always have priority in capitalist society, the rich man in this episode always eats first. The poor man, who happened to find a fallen flower, tried to eat it but abandoned the idea under the rich man’s contemptuous gaze, instead pinning it to his clothes. This seems to sharply criticize capitalism, which always favors the haves. Alongside this, the character not to be overlooked is the waiter. The waiter’s duty is to take orders and serve food, yet he fails to perform this basic task. He is portrayed as an incompetent government tasked with solving societal problems. In a situation where everything has been eaten and nothing remains, the rich man even tries to eat the poor man. Lunch starkly reveals the greed of the wealthy, who desire to possess ever more.

Third, Dinner

A man sits at the table, decorating his food with various spices, sauces, and salad. The sauces and vegetables piled high on the table obscure the food he painstakingly decorates. Once finished, he hammers a nail into his prosthetic arm to secure a fork. After fixing the fork to his prosthetic, he begins eating the food he decorated. That food is his own hand. Elsewhere, a soccer player attempts to eat a leg decorated as food, while in another scene, a woman tries to eat her decorated breast. In yet another, a man attempts to eat his decorated genitals, then covers them with his hand and gestures for the viewer to leave.
The concept of deliciously decorating and eating one’s own body is grotesque yet surreal. People whose gluttony reaches such extremes that they consume their own bodies. Living to pursue momentary pleasures leads to placing even the most important things casually on the table. Hands, feet, breasts, genitals—these are no longer human bodies but have been reduced to mere food ingredients. Kant’s admonition, “Never use humanity except as an end in itself,” has been rendered meaningless. In capitalist society, the body exists not as the end of being human, but as the means of being food. This work starkly reveals the grotesque form of human gluttony in a society that has reduced the body to a mere means.
It presents a fresh interpretation of the food we commonly encounter. The act of eating, so familiar to us, feels strangely unfamiliar in this work. This strangeness compels us to reconsider the act of eating. Yet, this reflection extends beyond mere eating, leading to insights about society itself. This stems from the director’s intent to convey more than just the act of eating. The director sought to depict society and civilization itself through the act of eating. Particularly, this work aimed to reveal the contradictions of capitalist society, and these traces are evident throughout the film. Therefore, it does not merely end with the depiction of the act of eating food; it shows capitalism as viewed from the realm of the unconscious.

In Conclusion

The film Food is a surrealist work that uses strong satire and scathing criticism to depict how human appetite degenerates into gluttony within capitalist society, leading to grotesque deformities. This work demonstrates that surrealism does not ignore or reject reality; rather, it actively reflects it. Dreams are reflections of reality stripped of rational censorship. Therefore, to understand a dream, one must know the reality experienced by the dreamer. Similarly, surrealist works can be seen as projections of reality, unfiltered by rational censorship and directly reflecting the unconscious. Thus, examining reality is fundamental to understanding surrealist art. Through the unconscious, one can discover new meanings or facts that were overlooked in reality due to the censorship of reason. Surrealist works contain precisely these elements. I believe the most surrealist analysis is one that reveals these new discoveries through the unconscious and, in doing so, provides enjoyment to the audience.