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Benidorm and the ‘All You Can Eat’ Buffet: Food, Bodily Functions and the Carnivalesque

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Food, Media and Contemporary Culture
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Abstract

In an opening sequence of the comedy drama series Benidorm (ITV, 2007-present, UK)1 set in the imaginary hotel of The Solana in Benidorm, Spain, the character of Janey Yorke, a lower-class English manager, tells her subordinate Spanish worker, Matteo Castellanos, in an aside, regards cleaning duties for the day: ‘by the way that’s not a Mars bar in the shower cubicle’. Offering an allusion, which makes connections between lower-class confectionery and faecal matter, a comedic scenario is presented where food and excrement are coded as a single entity, framing this within class-based, and diverse ethnic/national identity settings.

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© 2016 Christopher Pullen

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Pullen, C. (2016). Benidorm and the ‘All You Can Eat’ Buffet: Food, Bodily Functions and the Carnivalesque. In: Bradley, P. (eds) Food, Media and Contemporary Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463234_4

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