During the Media seminar on Global media and the (re)formatting of
culture we primarily discussed TV-formats in an economic context. Apart
from this understanding of formats as commodities/trade goods, we briefly
discussed the relation between formats and geopolitics, with the Eurovision Song
Contest as a leading example. Because of our affiliation with the cooking show format we decided to
elaborate on Tasha Oren’s article (2013) on cooking shows and formats as
television conventions, which “[…] adapt and reform with changing cultural
values.”[1] Using our own examples, we
will discuss Oren’s text and relate it to the aforementioned cultural values:
what changes, and how?
As Oren extensively
discusses in her article, assessing the cooking show format cannot be done
without first considering its history: from radio broadcast cook-along to
instructional television for a predominantly female, domestic audience, and
from ‘foodie porn’ to cooking competition programs. These developments and
their context are too big to discuss in a blog post like this, which is why we
will merely focus on the shift from an audience of cooking enthusiasts, to an
audience that loves to eat. Oren describes this as follows:
“[…] a shift concurrent
with a new cultural ubiquity of so-called ‘gastro-porn’ and a general hunger to
look at, document and describe food (particularly, much like porn, to look and
read about the kind of food one is unlikely to actually make, or eat).”[2]
This shift was very visible, as the
production value of cooking shows increased – slow-motion sequences, close-ups
of glistening oily food, and almost exaggerated sounds of crunching bites – and
with the arrival of “younger, attractive presenters for whom food preparation
was not only a leisure activity but an explicitly sensual bodily pleasure.”[3] Both of these quotes of
Oren hint at the relationship between (camera) conventions in porn and in the
cooking show format. This is apparently not a strange comparison to make, as
cookbook author Nigella Lawson, who Oren uses to exemplify this shift towards a
sensual and social understanding of food and cooking, is being ridiculed for
that exact reason in the following video:
Similar videos have been made of
Gordon Ramsay and Jamey Oliver, and although the joke is quite obvious, it is
not that far sought. As an example we would like to refer to a show which is
currently being broadcasted on Dutch television: Everyday Gourmet with Justine Schofield. The show’s host,
Schofield, was a Masterchef Australia contestant who now has her own cooking
show, which, at first sight, seems to be directed at an audience of home cooks.
However, whereas Oren’s
argumentation of the cooking show format’s history seems to be quite linear, or
one-dimensional, shows like Everyday
Gourmet take the original skeleton of the cooking show format, but the
so-called flesh is made up out of various differentiations on the format. Both ‘competition’
and ‘instruction’ are present, as Schofield invites guests, hereby taking on
roles as both chef and as apprentice. Furthermore, the food close-ups and her
glance, which is directly aimed at the camera, even while talking to her
co-host, confirm the sexual implications that seem to have become a big part of
today’s cooking show formats.
The importance of
studying these developments in characteristics of such TV formats is not so
much related to politics, as it is to changes in cultural values. Either way,
as Katherine Meizel concludes in her article on American Idol (2010), “what superficially appears to be a form of
light entertainment is, in fact, doing serious cultural work, and is a powerful
tool in the process of deciding, and selling, who we are.”[4] This could also be applied
to the format of cooking shows, as it is a similar sort of superficial
entertainment (looking, without cooking or eating) that has to be assessed
critically. Confirmation of (stereotypical) gender roles in television culture
is but one of the many ‘tools’ through which such formats can have an impact on
its audience.
[1]
Tasha Oren (2013), 'On the Line: Format, Cooking and Competition as Television
Values’, in: Critical Studies in Television 8 (2). P. 21.
[2] Oren. (2013): p. 24.
[3] Oren. (2013): p. 24.
[4] Katherine Meizel (2010), ‘The United
Nations of Pop: Global Franchise and Geopolitics’, in: Idolized: Music, Media, and Identity in American Idol.
Bloomington:
Indiana University Press. P. 218.
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