In the last post, I created three categories in which to apportion all TV Food shows: Exotica, Dumb Gluttony, and Celebrity Chef. But the boundaries between these categories can shift and blur. Many TV food personalities and shows fit more than one category at a time, and sometimes shows move from one category to another as they evolve.
Emeril Lagasse is an example of someone who moved through at least two categories, and maybe all three of them. Nowadays, it’s difficult to think of Lagasse as anything but a full fledged Celebrity Chef. In 2000, he even had his own network sitcom, a fiasco entitled Emeril that was canceled after only eleven episodes. But if you go back and watch his early appearances on FoodTV from nearly twenty years ago, you might be surprised to see just how understated and even uncomfortable he was in front of the camera. This is not yet the vivacious, dramatic Emeril with an in-house band, annoying tag lines (Bam!), his own line of mediocre, pre-packed sauces, and a doe-eyed audience of unquestioning adulators who would give Rush Limbaugh’s “Ditto Heads” a run for their money.
Lagasse first appeared on FoodTV as a guest during several specials about the cuisine of New Orleans, where the Massachusetts native had a restaurant. The nature of the program placed him in the Exotica realm; in the early 1990s, Cajun and creole food was still a bit of a head scratcher to most people. Rewarded with his own show shortly thereafter, Lagasse soon began cultivating his persona, deftly building a warm, everyman approach that would help make him a celebrity. He also pushed an element of Dumb Gluttony as he reveled in indulgent recipes that featured gobs of fat and heaps of salt.
As Lagasse’s ratings grew, so did his personality. His success would eventually balloon to the point that highly paid NBC executives thought it a good idea to give him a sitcom. But while Lagasse’s dalliance with prime time comedy was an embarrassing disaster, his path to stardom revolutionized the upstart FoodTV channel. His show put the small cable channel on the map with ratings that had been unheard of for a food show. Latching onto that success, the network quickly embraced the Celebrity Chef model, de-emphasizing food in favor of people with star appeal. And Lagasse himself made out like a bandit, using the show as the platform to craft an empire of restaurant chains, pre-packaged foods, and endorsements that by 2005 were estimated to be grossing $150,000,000 a year.
There are plenty of other boundary-crossers out there. Anthony Bourdain mixes faux tough-guy bullshit (Ooooh, he has tattoos and used to do heroin) and a prestigious New York restaurant lineage to straddle the Exotica and Celebrity Chef categories. Similarly, Guy Fieri’s already impressive Dumb Gluttony credentials became absolutely bona fide when he starred in a ubiquitous series of commercials for the repulsive restaurant chain TGI Friday’s, an act which also threatened to earn him Celebrity Chef status, something his god awful haircut couldn’t do on its own. And England’s Nigella Lawson has traded on her sexuality to attain trans-Atlantic celebrity status while specializing in over the top desserts that range dangerously close into Dumb Gluttony territory at the same time she uses her distinguished lineage (father was a Baron and member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, mother a wealthy heiress and socialite) to develop an air of Exotica that is more about her persona than her food. Of course here in America, where she’s now expanding her media presence, all she really needs is the accent.
Obviously there’s plenty of room for debate about which of the countless TV food shows out there go into which category. And one may challenge the nature these particular three categories, seeking to refine them, broaden them, or even come up with different ones altogether. And that’s perfectly fine. But details aside, what seems a bit beyond contention at this point is that these many shows do in fact conform to broad categories.
Why? Because in the same way that earlier generations of entrepreneurs turned games into professional sports, songs into chart-topping hits, and sex into pornography, TV producers over the last twenty years or so hav
e figured out how to use mass media to successfully commodify food into spectator entertainment. And once something is successfully commodified through the mass media, purveyors will develop tropes that investors so dearly crave because among other things they signal a proven track record of success. If one show becomes a hit by emphasizing the exotic nature of food, others will follow. The same for shows that harvest big ratings from a charismatic host, whether that charisma is based on looks, personality, or an ability to eat a 6 lb. sandwich in Anchorage, Alaska.
But just as sports announcers prattle on about organized athletic competition “building character,” adoring critics and DJs flush with payola compare The Beatles to Beethoven, and pornographers attempt to hide behind tripe about “empowering women,” the shiny veneer that accompanies the commodification of food can also lead to silly reflections.
People who excel at sports, music, and “film making” can be fairly admired for their talent, skills, and even artistry. And the same is true of course for people who are wizards in the kitchen. But it would be ludicrous to assume that running a hundred meter dash in 10 seconds automatically builds character, that writing a catchy pop song verifies artistic genius, or that appearing in a pornographic film is likely to “empower” a woman, regardless of whatever Sasha Gray says from behind her glassy-eyed, thousand-yard stare.
Likewise, plating up some tremendously tasty food does not automatically endow someone with daring style, intellectual prowess, or superior ethics; and swallowing a heart attack’s worth of it in a single sitting certainly doesn’t make you more of a man. Well, literally it will, I suppose, but anyway . . .
Bon appetit.