Abstract

Drawing on the philosopher Simone Weil’s analogy between looking and eating, this essay links modes of cinematic looking with the practice of veganism. In a range of film examples in which looking and eating are thematically and formally intertwined, I illustrate the workings of a vegan cinematic sensibility that “lets be” the objects of sight. Vegan cinema, then, does not pertain to films about or in favour of veganism. Rather, it indicates cinema’s acknowledging of the reality and parity of beings and things, beyond the voracious observer’s devouring gaze. Nonviolent looking, in the realm of art, reflects the practice of veganism in the culinary realm. Both embody an impossible but politically valiant attempt to engage with the world without consuming it.