<![CDATA[This study investigates how food is represented as symbolic capital and as an ideological instrument of class domination through food-related dialogues in Mark Mylod’s The Menu (2022). Departing from conventional film analyses that prioritize visual and cinematic aesthetics, this research focuses strictly on verbal dialogue as textual data to examine how culinary speech reproduces social hierarchy. The study is grounded in Karl Marx’s foundational theory of class relations, with Louis Althusser’s Neo-Marxist concepts of ideology, Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA), and interpellation serving as the principal analytical framework, complemented by Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic capital and distinction. Employing a descriptive qualitative method with textual analysis, twenty key food-related dialogue excerpts were purposively selected from the verified film transcript. The findings reveal two primary discursive mechanisms. First, food-related dialogues establish food as symbolic capital through a rhetoric of culinary exclusivity, characterized by technical jargon, narratives of rarity, aesthetic legitimacy, and institutionalized gatekeeping that signal elite distinction. Second, these dialogues function as an ideological mechanism that interpellates diners into performative class positions, normalizing economic inequality and the commodification of service labor. This study concludes that in The Menu, food dialogue transcends its narrative function, serving as a critical site where legitimate taste is contested and the ideological contradictions of late-stage capitalism are exposed.]]>
