Mona Lisa Probably Would Have Enjoyed Beef Wellington: Cooking Shows and Art

MasterChef judges: Grumpy, Bipolar Bloak, and Obligatory "Nice" Judge

It’s no secret that summer provides a dearth of quality material for TV and movie fans. Save some exceptions (Breaking Bad season 4 premiered; if you’re not watching this show, continue not watching it because it gives me a reason to feel superior to you), summer blows. I’ve spent time in recent posts discussing bad film, so today I want to focus a little on summer TV, TV that is generally dominated by reality programming (well, so is the fall schedule, but just go with me).

Unless you want to watch re-runs of Fat White People Doing White People Things (some people call it Mike & Molly), you’re only TV choice is reality TV. My summer vice the last 2 years has been the Gordon Ramsay vehicle, MasterChef. FOX’s lead-in for this program is another more Ramsay-centric vehicle, Hell’s Kitchen. Though I have watched Hell’s before, the act of Ramsay yelling at people became more tired and contrived each season.

In MasterChef, Ramsay is significantly more subdued. Rather than playing the tyrant archetype that he does in Hell’s, MasterChef presents coiffed-haired Ramsay as a Brit who loves food but wanted something more than bangers and mash as a child. He is often compassionate and routinely encourages eliminated contestants to continue cooking. His role on MasterChef only serves to undermine his barbaric role on Hell’s Kitchen, underscoring the idea that Ramsay does have a heart after all. Some Ramsay irritation is funny, and MasterChef usually does an exemplary job of depicting their star as helpful mentor that only ventures into pissed off Scot when a contestant deserves it or the episode has hit an extended lull. As a result, MasterChef seems more serious or legitimate than its higher-rated counterpart (According to TVbythenumbers.com, Hell’s Kitchen scored first place for the 8:00 time slot yesterday with 5.77 million viewers while MasterChef came in 2^nd in the 9:00 time slot with 5.35 million viewers, well behind America’s Got Talent. The more I watch America’s Got Talent, the more I think the show’s title should include a question mark; also, when I think of experts at evaluating talent, I think of Howie “I’m Talented Because I Used To Tell Hot Women To Open Briefcases In Prime Time” Mandel and Sharon Osbourne.).

The rise of reality food competitions has fascinated me for some time. One possibility is that my culinary expertise begins and ends with grilled cheese. Want me to use truffles with a dish? Then you’re getting piece of Lindors on a hot fudge sundae.

But the thing I find more curious with these shows is that they display a world most viewers will never realize. The contestants aren’t cooking pot roast or lasagna. Ingredients often include ingredients I’ve never heard of and I presume millions of other viewers haven’t either. And while I’ve heard of ginger, the extent of knowledge with ginger is limited to Canada Dry.

Additionally, cooking shows are more or less impossible for home viewers to judge. True, we can judge plating, but that’s only a small fraction of a dish’s importance. For food, taste is everything. Even if something doesn’t look visually appealing, it could be the most magnificent tasting dish ever created. And really, only the 3 judges will know how they taste. They can do their best to describe how “velvety” or “sensuous” a dish is, but those are simply adjectives used more to give the judges credibility than it is to relay to the audience the food’s quality. For the weak palated, velvety is a high class synonym for “good.”  

With American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, most people can infer whether the person singing or dancing did a good job. Even if you’re not a singing expert (I certainly am not), I can at least make a fairly educated decision as to who the superior performer is. With cooking shows, it’s a stab on the dark. We rely on sign posts like a judge’s facial expression, musical crescendos, and a contestant’s level of calm or confusion.

So I guess the question I’m getting at in a very roundabout way is simply…why? Why does MasterChef routinely accrue over 5 million viewers (in the black hole that is summer network TV no less)? Why is the Food Network no longer solely for lonely house wives? Why are Bobby Flay and Tom Colicchio and Gordon Ramsay not just respected chefs, but borderline A-List celebrities?

My theory is that cooking gives the audience what they perceive an ascertainable creative entry into high class art. The merits of food as art are certainly debatable, but for terms of discussion in this post, I’m on the assumption that in the proper setting, food is art. MasterChef thinks food is art. After all, part of the judging is based on the appeal of plating, and there is something to be said for the ability to create a tasty concoction on the fly. All the challenges on the show require contestants to, in usually an hour, make a dish with ingredients they may or may not have used before. It takes a specific creativity I lack.

However, cooking seems less of an innate skill than other forms of art, or at least that is an easy perception to make.  To a viewer, culinary art is nothing more than following a recipe. A little of this, and a little of that, and BAM!, you’re Wolfgang Puck. This is ignoring the fact that many great chefs go to culinary school and possess palates that can discern every ingredient in a soup. No amount of overused onomatopoeia can hide these realities. But people don’t see those realities, they only see what MasterChef presents to them, that being people heating up a bunch of ingredients in a pan and putting it on a plate.

With painting, people that are unable always scoff at the idea of painting. We’d be lucky to visit the Sistine Chapel, let alone paint God giving life to Adam on the ceiling, the visionary scope of which only a select few geniuses can even imagine.

Many feel the same way with singing (some should probably get that feeling more often) and filmmaking. For some, even coherent writing is a luxury reserved for the educated elite (especially snarky bloggers that like to poke fun at Shia LaBeouf and Diablo Cody). They are art forms whose production seems other worldly and thereby impossible to attain. And we’re ok with that. Even if I consider myself a reasonably good writer, I’m hyper-aware that guys like James Joyce and Phillip Roth are laughably more talented than me. Yet, it doesn’t bother me because those guys are in a rarified class that only a select few join.

Ok, but can he make corn beef and cabbage?

But cooking? Cooking is what our parents did every day when growing up (unless you’re Gilbert Grape). Cooking is so pervasive in our culture that all intimidation has worn off. We aren’t as impressed with Gordon Ramsay as we are with Martin Scorsese and Aretha Franklin because his art is the same thing our mom did daily, at least when we use the term “cooking” in its simplest form.

Reality cooking shows have gained popularity because they give us entry to the base level of the lifestyles of the rich, famous, and artistically talented. We might never party with Justin Timberlake, but we at least have the belief that we might be able to one day eat like him. Or if we want to accept the MasterChef allusion, maybe one day cook for him.