Food, Media and Contemporary Culture

The Edible Image

Peri Bradley, Peri Bradley

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137463234
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Food, Media and Contemporary Culture is designed to interrogate the cultural fascination with food as the focus of a growing number of visual texts that reveal the deep, psychological relationship that each of us has with rituals of preparing, presenting and consuming food and images of food.

Part I

Food, Representation and Identity

1

More Cake Please – We’re British! Locating British Identity in Contemporary TV Food Texts, The Great British Bake Off and Come Dine With Me

Peri Bradley

Introduction

The notion of British identity in contemporary UK TV is prominent in all productions as we as a nation seek to define and differentiate ourselves and our culture in a global or transnational context. With the recent expansion of what we can call ‘Food TV’, including celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, reality TV forms encompassing the iconic game show Masterchef (1990–, BBC One & Two, Union Pictures, Union West & Shine TV) and the two case studies at the centre of this chapter The Great British Bake Off (2010–, BBC One & Two) and Come Dine With Me (2005–, Channel 4, ITV Studios & Shiver Productions), this impulse can be specifically identified as the shows express British identity not only in terms of ingredients and traditional dishes but also in terms of geographical location. These programmes engage with issues of class, race, sexuality and gender as the ordinary members of the public are seen to grapple with the complexities of multicultural Britain as they boil, bake, roast and grill their way through the set tasks and menus demanded by the entertainment industry.

Class and Representation

This chapter will engage specifically with the issue of class as represented in The Great British Bake Off and Come Dine With Me in order to reveal how the tensions and anxieties concerning national identity present in contemporary UK culture are expressed and articulated through the act of cooking and the process of consumption. This issue of class is particularly significant at this moment in time as the sociopolitical environment reveals a national anxiety over the influx of ‘foreign’ influences that are represented in the media as capable of eroding the very foundation of British society and culture. These two programmes present a specific positioning of class and class values whose relationship is deeply involved with not only the material substance of food itself, but also its capacity to convey a complex and multicultural British identity that raises questions about the protectionist agenda and ideology of current political policies in the UK. The upper/middle-class address of The Great British Bake Off presents an idyllic view of rural, upper-class Britain that links back to heritage TV texts such as Upstairs Downstairs (1971–1975, LWT) and Downtown Abbey (2010–, ITV, Carnival Films) and a national identity that upholds traditional values and a stable national economy. The concept of heritage TV draws on the notion of heritage film, which was first defined by Charles Barr in 1986, referring to films of the 1940s. Barr identifies these films as not being specifically set in the historic past but as constructing a narrative of national heritage, which often operated in this time of war and unrest as a type of ‘state-sponsored propaganda’ (Monk, 2012: 11) in order to assert a British identity that was capable of supporting the war effort. Later definitions of this concept from academics, particularly Patrick Wright and Robert Hewison, focused on critiquing the ideological imperatives of Thatcher in the 1980s that saw the National Heritage Acts of 1980 and 1983 turn the British rural landscape and its historical buildings into commodities for public consumption. The UK films produced at this time became polarised between the left and right, with films like My Beautiful Laundrette (1985, Frears) being regarded as a condemnation of Thatcher’s Britain and the films of Merchant Ivory, such as A Room With a View (1985, Ivory) as supporting a British identity that was firmly rooted in the past and notions of Empire. These ‘heritage’ films were seen to operate in relation to other strategic organisations, including the National Trust, which by,

preserving the private property of the upper classes had a hegemonic effect of constructing and maintaining a particular dominant conception of the national past – and national heritage – which, it was argued, worked to naturalise public acceptance of the values and interests of the propertied classes as national values and the national interest.

(Monk, 2012: 11)

By presenting a particularly romanticised and idyllic representation of British identity, which related to a time when class was clearly delineated and Britain was a powerful global force, these ‘heritage’ films became part of a political and ideological discourse. This discourse was designed to convince a disgruntled voting public in the 1980s that a return to the values and class structures of an earlier more affluent era would mean a return to the same prosperity and global status. This notion of a political and ideological discourse being disseminated through media mechanisms is hardly new but the highly popular, light entertainment form of The Great British Bake Off presented by the BBC can be revealed as working in the same manner as heritage films, which could otherwise be easily overlooked as both harmless and ineffectual. By analysing the programme in terms of it being a form of heritage TV, closely related to heritage film, it becomes clear how this operates in a cultural, but also sociopolitical manner.

Come Dine With Me, on the other hand, offers a more gritty portrayal of the British character more closely allied with the notion of the ‘kitchen-sink drama’ of the New Wave of the 1950s and 60s, which interrogates the location of class and, in keeping with reality TV texts, brings the notion into an arena of confrontation and combat. The concept of social realism employed by the kitchen-sink drama is highly relevant to the construction of Come Dine With Me and is described as ‘the need to extend the range of British social experience – particularly class experience’ (Lacey, 1995: 70). This is achieved in the programme by deliberately bringing the hierarchy of classes together thereby revealing and also testing the limits and boundaries of each. Also the location of each programme is significant to its representation of class and identity and Come Dine With Me firmly places its action in the domestic space, particularly the kitchen. As Lacey notes,

Social realism was … largely domestic in its orientation, situated within the ‘private’ as opposed to the ‘public’ domain; even when plays were not set in the lower-class interiors, the action often utilised the semi-public settings of the street and immediate locality.

(Lacey, 1995: 68–69)

This further illustrates the relationship between Come Dine With Me and social realism, particularly as a reality TV text, that creates a link with the everyday and the audience, which is illustrated in the programme by its cityscapes and documentary mode of realism. In this way, the notion of social extension that Lacey identifies as being capable of reaching all social strata of society and expressing a working class ‘voice’ and experience not normally available in the media, can be clearly seen in operation in the programme. It could be argued that this is not done with the same intention as the social realist texts of the New Wave, but rather in the name of entertainment as the clash of classes is often set up in the programme to provide confrontation and conflict. However, as Lacey also points out, the action of social realism is usually staged in the domestic space in order to convey themes of social confinement. He states that,

One of the themes that runs through … post-war social realism is the way that social forces determine and shape the possibilities for change and growth […] environmental determinism was not only a theme but was made concrete in the stage space itself, which ceased to be simply a location for the action, and became a tangible representation of the oppressive force of a constraining social and natural order.

(Lacey, 1995: 69)

As a reality TV text, Come Dine With Me creates the actual domestic space as a ‘stage’, which still manages to convey ‘the “stage as room”: the room soaking into the lives of the persons as their lives had soaked into it’ (Williams, 1977: 64 cited in Lacey, 1995: 69), thereby clearly illustrating the restrictive differences in class through the hierarchy of domestic spaces presented throughout the series. Although clearly different in form and address, both shows allow a space where issues of class can be closely explored within the context of geographical and ideological location and the expression of British identity through specific foods.

The centrality of food to so many contemporary media texts indicates the shift in its perception as merely a source of nourishment and ‘fuel’, to our choices of produce, preparation, cooking method and presentation, being capable of differentiating us from others (in terms of nationality, gender, sexuality and class) and expressing a very personal and unique identity. Food has in fact become a form of communication that reaches across all forms of media, and with the rapid technological advancements over the last 30 years it features not only in film and TV but has also become an internet phenomenon on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. As a core preoccupation of contemporary life in the Western world Belasco points out that ‘Food is the first of the essentials of life, our biggest industry, our most frequently indulged pleasure, and perhaps the greatest cause of disease and death’ (Belasco, 2008: 1), thereby emphasising its significance in all aspects of everyday life, but also in a wider social and institutional context. These differing contexts have implications for the regard of food as something more essential than merely sustenance and reveal that the choices we make about the food we purchase, prepare and consume are actually the result of a complex negotiation among three competing considerations: the consumer’s social and personal identity; convenience (including price, skill and availability); and a sense of responsibility, which is really about an awareness of the consequences of what we eat (Belasco, 2008: 7). As Roland Barthes says of food, ‘It is a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations and behaviour’ (1979: 166–173). The aspect of food central to the chapter is its ability to express and convey identity and class. Therefore it must be recognized that food serves not only a social purpose that brings us together in a situation which allows communication but also allows us to communicate our identity on a personal level and also as part of a ‘group’ or even community, through the plethora of choices we have to make every day about food at each stage. We use food to ‘speak’ to each other, ranging from the display of food in our supermarket trolley to posting pictures of beautifully presented food on Instagram. Apart from its visual aesthetic, food and its consumption is also employed to establish and reaffirm rules of behaviour or social protocols that are associated with class and its construction.

Class and National Identity

The class structure of the UK has been gradually eroded by the process of post-modernism over time, which elides boundaries and the high-art/low-art divide, but a further consideration of this structure reveals that it can still be seen at work in contemporary culture, but operating more covertly than before, as the case studies demonstrate. The construction of class in contemporary Britain is part of the process of nation-building that involves creating an imagined community. As Benedict Anderson notes the necessity of ‘imagining’ a nation as, ‘the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (Anderson, 2006: 6). The media reinforces this imagined community through representation and repetition, presenting Britain with what appears to be a cohesive and unified national identity. This national identity is based upon how we choose to distinguish ourselves from other nations and, as Michael Higgins considers, ‘consists of both horizontal and vertical relations’ (Higgins, 2010: 15). Higgins identifies horizontal relations as notions of ‘national belonging’ which are ideally based on a sense of equality, whereas vertical relations are based on representational qualities, such as class, which usually have their foundation in inequality. He goes on to note that ‘If a nation is to remain cohesive, horizontal relations must always work to control the potential disruptive effect of vertical relations’ (Higgins, 2010: 15). This emphasizes the ideological drive behind the sociopolitical agenda to reinforce our sense of self being directly associated with the larger, overall perception of nationhood.

Class and Hegemony

In the UK, this ideology has been successfully employed by each class being clearly defined and upheld through the hegemonic process of everyone ‘knowing their place’ and that process being regarded as natural. The traditional upper class were an hereditary elite whose wealth and position were based on property and title which ensured they remained in power and meant they maintained an ideology which emphasized difference between the classes. This class structure has traditionally been maintained through the process of hegemony, which sees the dominant group, or class, preserve their position through coercion and compliance from the lower strata of society. This involves the dominant group, or upper class, presenting its own specific interests as being central and even vital to the welfare of all classes and therefore the nation itself. This process is continual and ongoing and works to convince those in the lower classes that inequality is necessary to maintain the national interest. The media is one of the principal components of the mechanisms of hegemony, which works through the ‘circulation of meanings that reinforce dominance and subordination by seeking to fix the meaning of social relations and national belonging’ (Higgins, 2010: 16). This is largely achieved through the representation and signifying practices embedded in the media that works in a hegemonic sense to present a view of the world, and more specifically the nation, that supports prevailing structures of power. However, hegemony ‘does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has to be continually renewed, recreated, defended and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged’ (Williams cited i, 2010: 16). This tension between consent and challenge from the subordinate classes can be seen in operation in both The Great British Bake Off and Come Dine With Me, not exactly in opposition to each other, but certainly the former acting more in the services of hegemony and the latter acting more as a challenge to it.

As part of the system of hegemony the shoring up of class differences operates in the smallest detail of everyday living, including the establishment of a hierarchy of food and dining rituals that was, and still can be, exclusive of those who were not trained in its intricacies. Founded at the highest level of the upper class, education and training in fine dining and etiquette was essential and acted to identify and exclude those who were not versed in its ways. However, over time this has been eroded as the more subordinate classes have gained access to this knowledge, mostly through its dissemination by the media.

The assimilation of this knowledge and understanding by the middle class is just part of a process of social mobility that allows an elision of class boundaries. The definition of the middle class itself is complex as it tends to revolve around differences in employment situations but can be seen to rely on professional education, training and independence. However, the middle class bastion has also been scaled by the working class being able to access a university education and therefore gain access to these professions and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Food, Representation and Identity
• Part II: Food, Consumption and Audience
• Part III: Food, Sex and Pleasure
• Index