| Sumario: | Although cannibal films may exist on the fringes of the "food film" genre, foodways methodology offers a productive lens through which to analyze how these films negotiate issues of class and power. A foodways analysis of key films in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series reveals how issues of class and power are linked to food behaviors. More specifically, a food studies approach illuminates how the image of the American cannibal changes throughout these films. The cannibal begins as a starving member of the working class who eats humans only to survive. In later films, the cannibal transforms into a member of the middle class, and cannibalism becomes an expression and endorsement of unfettered capitalism. The cannibal eventually comes to embody a class warrior as the last film in the series implies that one must be a cannibal to be a good soldier.
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