Masterchef, My Kitchen Rules and Hell’s Kitchen serve up food, competition and heat on televisions around the world, raising the stakes on how we perceive food today. Simon Wilson talked about Personas and the importance of encapturing your audience, however by raising the stakes, has flavours of personalities on shows overpowered the food, resulting in food being just a side dish?
Masterchef is all about the dish that’s served up, technicality behind food and excelling at the finest cooking ever seen, with relationships between contestants usually taking a seat back, allowing no room for personas.
My Kitchen Rules, however, was on the opposite tangent and suffered some major backlash in 2017 regarding a bullying scandal with a couple on the show, talking their conflict beyond the walls of the kitchen.
Simon talked about having knowledge about food and a persona to match, an example of this is from multi award-winning chef, Gordan Ramsey. Ramsey started on Masterchef as a judge and while his food and fine dining have definitely influenced his success, his Persona has taken food to the next level. The real reason why people stay and continue watching though is arguably his fiery and angry reactions that lead to some of the biggest food TV shows today like ‘Kitchen Nightmares’, ‘The F Word’ and ‘Hell’s Kitchen’.
The balance between knowledge and persona is very important regarding what is being served for different types of audience, because in the end when I am in the mood for watching a cooking show, I don’t want to hear about who’s serving who insults I want to hear about what is going to be served for dinner.
As a cooking-show obsessor, I completely agree with this. There has been a notable shift from food to personality in cooking shows. Qhat I find most frustrating is when the host completely suffocates the entire program. One example is Sugar Rush, on Netflix. A charismatic host is important, but if all he’s doing is constantly making wisecracks and soaking up screentime, it becomes annoying. The host has nothing to do with the preparation, the judging or the actual food itself. It’s fascinating how large a component of cooking shows this nugatory aspect is.
First all, very captivating title, I love it. Secondly as an avid Gordon Ramsey watcher I agree with your mention about the concept of persona and food, and especially on reality television where the focus of food programme all tend to ultimately shift to be a part in constructing their identity. The food that the produce are not only a dish to be consumed but more of an extension of themselves, aspects of the food such as how much spice it has and how it is presented can change the audience’s views on the contestants immediately, especially as those shows are boardcasted and no audience gets to actually taste the food prepared. In this case the co-existence of food and chef’s persona and brand are carefully balanced, and can spark conversations on how much food is representive of one’s identity.