These Food Network shows drive me crazy. Nothing screams “first world” more than fetishizing food for 24-hours a day. Sure, cooking can be art, but so is drawing naked people. Yet when you abandon the study of the human form and start drawing them fucking because it tickles the right part of your brain and crotch, it becomes pornography. Watching Guy Fiery eat a greasy burger while spilling melting cheese all over his shirt for the 200th time is not art; that is what my sister-in-law Sarah calls food porn. Can we really justify having an entire network dedicating 24 hours of programming to the glorification of food, not as an art form, but rather to titillate the viewer? As I’m writing this I’m realizing that I don’t recall seeing one of those commercials for feeding hungry third-world children during Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Do you think that’s on purpose? Maybe the Food Network doesn’t want to make you feel guilty while your mind jerks off to the human embodiment of a high school mascot eating chili fries… again.
And those damned cooking competitions. Jesus H. Christ. Every time I hear a suspenseful drop in music when someone’s steak is slightly overcooked I have the sudden urge to swallow a box of razors. I wonder if those editors ever feel shame. Some of them must’ve gone to film school with the hopes of working on major films, now they spend hours of their day turning a Balsamic reduction into the height of drama.
The worst offenders are those kid baking shows.
Every one of those kids are upper-middle class or higher. Don’t get me wrong, that’s no sin, just an observation. I’m also not blaming the children for participating, that’s literally the only tax bracket that can afford to let their kids cook as a hobby. Poor families don’t have that type of luxury. You think a single mom raising two kids on 30k a year can afford to risk one of them fucking up dinner? I don’t think there’s a lot of Albertos and Shaniquas making Spam Consommés for a reason, food stamps can only get you so far. I was an Alberto growing up, my mom used food stamps, I totally get it.
Maybe I should talk to a therapist because I am filled with an irrational amount of rage when I see another batch of white kids crying because they left cookies in the oven a little bit too long. I just want to grab them by their scruff and drag them to a trailer park in West Virginia and force-feed them burnt Pop Tarts until they explode. Too much? Probably too much.
And yes, I get that it’s not their fault, struggle and pain are subjective and one can only draw on their own well of experiences for perspective. If you have not known struggle, it would be really unfair to judge you for being entitled. Most of that responsibility falls on their parents (I talk about this a lot… wonder what that says about me?), parents that likely worked hard to be in the position to give their spawn a good enough childhood so that they did not need to worry about having Mayonnaise sandwiches for dinner. With enough context it becomes difficult to be enraged at an individual, after all, understanding is the path to forgiveness. But I am not that evolved yet, I still have the urge to punch someone in the face. So who should be on the receiving end? Because there’s definitely something wrong here, right? There has to be, it’s either that or I’m the problem, and well, that can’t possibly be the case.
So it’s not the children and it’s not the parents. That leaves us with the network which was the topic of whatever this is all along. The “starving kids in Africa” have become such an overused shame mechanism that it feels unoriginal. But that really is it. Isn’t it? Ultimately, that’s what is so infuriating about a network that uses so much air time to bombard you with imagery of food. Because we are well into the 21st century; we are making reusable rockets, engineering genes, and delivering limitless entertainment to the fingertips of millions of people instantaneously. Yet there is an unjustifiable amount of people starving world-wide. That is unforgivable. To take such a valuable and scarce commodity and turn it into entertainment just feels a little dirty to me.
Ok, so I got it, I’ll punch my way up the corporate ladder until I get to whoever runs Food Network and then I will be able to exact righteous justice.
But that also doesn’t feel quite right. Because I don’t know how that guy got his job. For all I know he was just a really good administrator and was given the reigns because that was just the best business decision. Isn’t that all Food Network is? A business? Its sole purpose is to maximize profits, it just so happens to do so by delivering sweet dopamine releases through our eyeholes, and in the case of Guy Fiery, my dick. So punching my way up the corporate ladder might not really satisfy my anger.
So who should I really be mad at? Myself? At the fact that I intellectually understand all these things and still choose to watch because there is something incredibly satisfying about watching people cook and eat delicious food? At the fact that I have watched enough of the Food Network shows to have issues with specific and non-obvious aspects of the programming? All the while providing an additional viewer which helps maximize their profit and therefore reinforcing the same toxic business model I so detest? About the fact that maybe people like me are exactly what the problem is because we could simply choose not to watch instead of hate-watching? … Nah, get me a guy in a suit.
Lando Writes Sometimes 