ARTS The first thing I noticed was her voice, so sticky, sweet and southern it poured out of her like syrup. “Smear it, baby,” she cooed to the woman with her. “Just smear it.”
It was early on a Sunday afternoon. I had turned on the television without knowing where I was going and found myself facing two women who seemed to have only one thing on their minds.
They were holding it in between them. Long and cylindrical, it was a loaf of bread – big enough for a peasant family sitting down to dinner – that they proceeded to slice in half so they could gleefully smear the insides with gobs of garlic butter.
I got my bearings. I realised I was watching the Food Network. But it wasn’t the Food Network that I had grown to know and love since the late 1990s, when I turned to its earnest chefs as a relief from cultural sludge that dominates so much of US television.
This was the Food Network gone wild. The programme I was watching was called “Paula’s Best Dishes” and the woman giving the orders, Paula Deen, was cooking with a guest, Cheryl Day, proprietor of a Savannah, Georgia, bakery called Back in the Day that is known for its way with butter cream.
“We bring out the worst in each other,” Paula told Cheryl as they played with their buttery loaf. “Or the best.”
I think Paula had it right the first time. Unwilling to live by garlic bread alone, she reached for a tray of lasagna that had apparently been made earlier in the show, cut off two ample mounds of the baked pasta and inserted them between slices of the garlic bread.
Splitting the entire loaf between them, she and Cheryl raised their massive lasagna sandwiches to their mouths and dug in, squealing in delight until Paula brought the festivities to an end by saying they would return after a commercial break – to sample Cheryl’s cupcakes.
At this point, I think I should say something about myself. When it comes to other people’s pleasures, I have long tried to live up to the words of Jesus: Judge not, lest ye be judged.
But the sight of those women diving into all those calories left me unable to hold my tongue. It struck me as obscene – an incitement to obesity in a country where so many people are eating themselves to death. I would call it “food porn”.
I use the term advisedly. The armchair deconstructionist in me can’t help but note the formal similarities between food shows and traditional cinematic presentations of sexual activities. In both genres, the viewer is offered a titillating peek into a traditionally domestic sphere – in one case, the bedroom; in the other, the kitchen. The stars do lots of oohing and aahing, and the camera work alternates between a fixed wide shot and close-ups of selected objects of desire.
What makes something obscene in either area will always be a matter for debate. But I think we can agree that there is material that does harm and material that doesn’t. In the sexual realm, people try to get at this difference by distinguishing pornography from erotica, and I think we make similar distinctions when it comes to cooking on television.
For an example of food “erotica”, we need look no further than domestic goddess Nigella Lawson, the star of “Nigella Bites”, a UK cooking programme known on both sides of the Atlantic (and shown on the Food Network). The show clearly appeals to the senses, but it ultimately presents food and its star in a healthy light. Her food helps Nigella connect with other people. She is shown cooking for friends and family and passing on the culinary wisdom of her elders.
By contrast, the subject of Paula’s Best Dishes seems to be the pleasures of overeating, as opposed to the pleasures of eating. The two women are depicted as losing themselves in food – their faces obscured by the enormity of their lasagna sandwiches. The image ultimately desensitises its audience.
This show is by no means the only one of its kind with The Food Network seeming to serving up ever greater portions of high-calorie programming. When I started watching a decade ago, I remember seeing all the food groups – particularly on shows such as “Iron Chef,” a Japanese cooking competition that required the contestants to quickly prepare several dishes based on a single ingredient and became a cult classic in the process.
Today the network still has a wide variety of shows including A Cooks Tour in which Tony Bourdain travels the world to find exotic foods and Healthy Appetite that focuses on lighter recipes and is presented by Ellie Krieger. But these appear to be in a minority. A perusal of a recent Saturday night Food Network schedule revealed it to be more focused on fat and sugar, featuring programmes devoted to such subjects as fast-food drive-ins, colas, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, potato chips, movie snacks and vending machines.
It isn’t hard to guess what the Food Network is trying to do. Networks of all stripes are threatened by relentless audience fragmentation as the number of entertainment options grows. One common response is to lock in a niche audience – and Food Network seems be targeting people who spend Saturday nights thinking about colas, doughnuts, potato chips and movie snacks.
I would submit that these people are also likely to be spending Saturday nights consuming colas, doughnuts, potato chips, and movie snacks, and I can’t see how the Food Network is doing them much good by presenting paean after paean to foods that could kill them.
One would think that a television network would want to keep its audience alive as long as possible – if only for business reasons. But the rise of food porn is reminder that corporate television executives aren’t paid to think that far ahead.
