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Bored Bunnies and Giada's Tatas
It’s the end of the week, and you know what that means: It’s time for two talking rabbits to ogle Food Network personality Giada De Laurentiis.
In the very special YouTube presentation “Giada De Laurentiis … Nice Carrots!” Buns and Chou Chou are hanging around watching some telly. But there’s not much on:
CHOU CHOU: No Top Model!BUNS: Well, there’s nothing good on!
CHOU CHOU: We could watch a cooking show.
BUNS: That sucks.
[shot of carrots being chopped]
BUNS: At least it’s about carrots.[pan up to Giada using a box grater on the carrots; the clip slows down, cue the sexy piano music]
Though seemingly innocuous, Buns and Chou Chou mount a serious doctrinal challenge to the rise of a pernicious paradigm that threatens to transform Food Network into a 24/7 outlet for the dispensing of ill-concealed … exploitation television … well …
Eh, stuff it. It’s rabbits talking about cleavage. Happy weekend, everybody!
Posted by | Friday, September 28, 2007 at 4:15pm | 26 comments
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Since you brought up the subject, I have to share what is quite possibly the most explicit thing I've seen on Food Network... Nigella Lawson making brownies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpbLXi...
Oh JK -- I couldn't agree more. Why do you think Ms. Lawson herself coined the word "gastroporn"!
I think posting this is in bad taste.
Whereas Giada and Sandra Lee and Ingrid Hoffman cooking with four inches of cleavage showing is in impeccable taste....
At least it hasn't happened with Ina Garten....yet
sfmiller, you've hit it on the head.
I TIRE of the cleavage (although I'm not the audience they're trying to capture).
Nigella Lawson's a greaseball.
Giada got old after a while.
Rachael- oy, enough already.
Ingrid doesn't want to be a slave to her kitchen (which of course is why she was hired to do a cooking show).
Somebody should shoot Sandra Lee and put her out of our misery
Paula's still usually entertaining as hell, but the food on her show has gone down the tubes.
Give me big old Mario Batali explaining his way through a food and culture he knows intimately any day. I'll take all 400 pounds of him, cleavage and all. :-)
Let the firing begin on Sandra Dee; how is it that she has become a "star"?
Nigella Lawson's show doesn't get any points in my book, her recipes are uninspired. As far as Rachael Ray is concerned, she doesn't deserve the time we are spending complaining about her.
Essence of Emeril never used to appeal to me, but I watch it now to get my fix of an actual cooking show. Sara Moulton would do also, but she seems to have been left to repeats at odd times.
Maybe someone could figure out a way to bring Julia Child back from the grave?
crunyon, she's so busy spinning in her grave at the turn of Things Food on TV she'll never come back until things get any better, I fear.
Sandra Lee has become a "star" by virtue of her publicist, who probably never dreamed that Lee would be any kind of "cash cow" and wants to keep the money rolling in as long as possible. So they keep sending out press releases saying Lee is a "star" as well as some kind of a "cook". I'm willing to be that either nepotism or sexual favors are involved somewhere there.
I don't normally publicly trash people, but FN brought this and several others on themselves. And you know who they are.
the connection between food and sex has been well recognized for at least 2500 years, probably more. nothing new there. i am more interested in why the food network continues to feature programs which appeal to women (and men) who clearly don't like to cook, and who may not like to eat, or care what they eat, either. so much of what is featured by the "cooks" is repeatedly noted as "easy" or "quick" and is food completely without personality or style. thank goodness for alton brown, and on another network, jacques pepin. they don't insult either the food or audience. rks
Agreed. The cleavage flaunting is way too obvious. I loved FN for a couple years, and now it's getting old. Same old same old. Alton Brown is the best they've got.
I love Alton Brown. Mostly because he's weird and I can't resist a quasi-scientific explanation of why food works the way it does.
That, and I love Feasting on Asphalt.
"I love Alton Brown. Mostly because he's weird and I can't resist a quasi-scientific explanation of why food works the way it does.
That, and I love Feasting on Asphalt. "
I love AB, too, and hope he goes on to collaborate with the heavy-hitters, wherever they end up on TV. Especially now that Batali's leaving or gone.
How could you not love Nigella Lawson tip-toeing downstairs at midnight and raiding the fridge? Now that's a woman!
After watching this season's Feasting on Asphalt I'm thinking they're trying to get Alton in on the cleavage showing bandwagon. ;)
Here's an excellent article, right on point, published last year in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006...
If you have trouble with the link, the article is titled "TV Dinners: The Rise of Food Television," by Bill Buford, from the October 2, 2006 Notes of a Gastronome column. It's worth the search.
thanks, cmoore618! i teach a food politics course, and missed buford's piece. it will be very helpful!
Where do you teach rkscher? Food politics sounds right up my alley!
Hey I love to watch Mario, both AB's and have learned from them,but watching Nigella make those brownies...ohhhhh baby!,yeah whisk those eggs mama!...oh ,and I must say the cleavage is never offending!
thanks again, cmoore618! department of political science, university of florida, gainesville. the course is incredibly popular, and gratifyingly so. it is a pleasure to teach it, not work. rks
I would love to hear what books you assign for your course--any suggested reading?
You hit on it precisely, rkscher: the race to the bottom epitomized by the Food Network channel continues to surprise me. Why do they suspect that people willing to watch an entire network devoted to cooking food don't actually like to cook? Having read the New Yorker article (thanks for the link, cmoore), we may have the answer, i.e., it's about eating, not cooking. It's a shame...
Did any of you catch a recent show where Paula Deen showed significant, and embarassing, cleavage? Talk about Sherman's "March to the Sea!" Lawdy, Lawdy!
thanks for your interest, cmoore! for you and others, here are the required books in my food politics class:
• Leon Rappaport – HOW WE EAT
• Brian Wansink – MINDLESS EATING
• Eric Schlosser – CHEW ON THIS
• Martin Teitel – GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOOD
• Mark Ruhlman – THE REACH OF A CHEF
there are also major readings in the form of handouts and internet sites from marion nestle and many, many others. lots of current reading in the class, the internet and online magazines (salon.com for example, slate.com as well) have tons of stuff. the students really like the class. we also have movies, like "eat drink man woman," "like water for chocolate," "babette's feast" and a number of others.
Looks like a great class; thanks for the list! I read THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF MEAT: A FEMINIST-VEGETARIAN CRITICAL THEORY by Carol J. Adams during a brief flirtation with veganism when I was in college (although I'm a born & raised vegetarian). I credit it with tuning me into food politics early on.
last year the students read a couple of chapters from adams' book, it was a bit rich for some of their blood (we are in the south, after all). this year i will probably give a lecture on her, as well as michael pollan and some others, during the "ethics of food and eating" section of the course, which occurs later in the semester. thanks again for your interest!