This chapter on food and television defines an area of study found primarily within the humanities, which focuses on the social, cultural, and political implications of food’s presence within the medium of television. A literature review offers an introduction to the theory and method of scholarship on food television, dividing the work among historiographic approaches, industry studies, and critiques of gender and class, noting the predominance of ideological analyses. The chapter encourages future research in all areas of this young subfield, especially those focused on race as well as food television audiences. The chapter ends with resources for graduate programs, funding, and archival research.
The history of food on television is as old as the history of television itself. Descending from the cookery broadcasts of the radio era, food’s enduring presence on television has been iterative yet varied, ranging from segmented on-air cooking demos and educational “how-to” programs to celebrity-infused food competitions and narrowcasted lifestyle television for the foodie niche. Building from this rich history of programming is a meteoric rise in contemporary food television. The US cable channel Food Network launched in 1993. Its purchase by E. W. Scripps Company in 1997 and subsequent rise in popularity is generally agreed upon as one catalyst – along with heightened social and political interest in food – for a renewed and concentrated investment in food programming. Although initially scattered across niche cable and broadcasting markets in the mid-to-late 1990s, an increased focus on food has been televisually pervasive in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Despite this longevity and recent proliferation of food programming, there remains a sparse body of academic research on food and television, and on food and media more broadly. Although limited in depth, the scope of research on food and television has significant breadth, housed within a vast array of disciplines, including sociology, women’s and gender studies, American studies, cultural studies, policy and urban planning, and the broad rubric of media and communications (media studies, communication studies, visual and moving image arts, and rhetoric). Studies of food and television are also occasionally present in the fields of nutrition, environmental studies, agriculture, anthropology, history, and English. This chapter summarizes the burgeoning area of food and television, assessing theoretical and methodological approaches and bridging disciplines with the thematic consistencies of a humanities-focused body of literature.
Work on food and television coalesces around a primary objective to clarify the broad social, cultural, and political implications of food’s presence within the medium of television. Research is motivated to determine how and why food is deployed discursively and formally in televisual spaces, and more specifically, how food programming is raced, classed, and gendered. Scholarship on food and television also interrogates the long-held binary of public–professional–masculine and private–domestic–feminine, as well as the ever-present culinary dichotomies of good/bad, healthy/junky, epicure/novice. Further, since television and food are both consumed, merging these consumptive practices highlights the process of what Warren Belasco and Philip Scranton call “culinary differentiation,” or, the connection between food, consumption, and identity (2002: 2). Identity and consumption are subsequently linked to class-based notions of taste hierarchies, cultural distinction, and good consumer citizenship through lifestyle-based food television.
“Food and television” necessitates some clarification at the onset of this chapter. First, this is an overview of research stemming primarily from the perspective of media studies and its place within the larger humanities tradition. Research on food and television in the social scientific fields – much of which considers the effects of food programming on children or other vulnerable populations or the implications of food-related television advertisements – falls beyond the scope of this chapter. There also exists a significant history of research on food and communication within the field of anthropology; because the vast majority of this work does not attend to media, it is also not considered here. Moreover, this overview specifically aggregates the research on food and television, although other media (i.e., radio, film, internet, and new media technologies) are alluded to throughout. Although there is nascent work on other media not included here due to the focus on television, this chapter can be read as indicative of the state of a more broadly encompassing focus on food and media. Finally, the phrase food television is used interchangeably with the more common cooking show or cooking program. Food television intends to include all programming that directly incorporates food preparation, food information, or food-related entertainment as its main focus.
Scholarship addressing food and television is at once relatively consistent and vastly interdisciplinary. Although this work spans many disciplines, as discussed above, the literature is driven by a cluster of themes informed by broad theories of gender and class. More narrowly, the theoretical backdrop includes sociological gender theory, feminist television theory, Bourdieuian theories of distinction, theories on consumer citizenship and neoliberalism, ideological debates on the meaning of binaries such as public/private and masculine/feminine, and theories considering the formal and aesthetic properties of television. The extant body of research can be loosely organized into four interconnected areas: historiography; industry, formal, and aesthetic studies; ideological–textual analyses of gender; and ideological–textual analyses of class, taste, and cultural distinction.
A few truncated histories serve as suitable introductions to the literature. These surveys are not analytically driven; however, their broad overviews map the course of food and television and provide informal content analyses (Kackman, 2004; Lurie, 1999). Several scholars offer more in-depth chronologies of food programming on US television, whether via a peripheral focus of a more narrow thesis (Polan, 2011), as a portion of a more diverse collection (Ashley et al., 2004), or as the primary objective of the research (Collins, 2009). This historical work – and most research on food and television to date – has focused nearly exclusively on the traditional domestic instructional format of the stand-and-stir televised cooking show. The when and where of cooking shows (i.e., as educational programming on Public Broadcasting Service versus commercial broadcasting on network television), as well as the who (e.g., hosts like Julia Child and James Beard) dominate the food and television landscape.
A limited few delve into discussions of the television and media industries as they pertain to food programming. Literature in this area is diffuse and explores a variety of theses, including: How early food television was produced and the broadcast networks that participated (Collins, 2009; Williams, 1999); the practice of time slotting in the construction of programming schedules (primarily in Britain) (Brunsdon, 2003; Brunsdon et al., 2001); the formal and aesthetic properties of food as televised entertainment, education, or eroticization (Bell, 2010; Ray, 2007; Ketchum, 2005; Chan, 2003; Miller, 2002; De Solier, 2000; Finkelstein, 1999); the consideration of food television and the genres of “how-to,” hobbyist, and lifestyle (Brunsdon, 2003; Ketchum, 2007, 2005); and the industrial and ideological problematics of repackaging non-Western food television for US audiences (Gallagher, 2004). Notably, most of this work focuses on US or British food television.
A significant portion of the scholarship on food and television is concerned with gender. Like the cookery radio broadcasts made famous by on-air personalities like Betty Crocker, television often perpetuates the relationship among women, domestic expertise, and food while reifying men’s professional alignment with food in public spaces. However, contemporary scholarship convincingly argues that television complicates these gendered binaries by blurring public and private spaces and shifting men’s and women’s associations with food (Sanders, 2009; Hollows, 2007, 2003a, 2003b; Andrews, 2003). This research most often focuses on the television chef or host, as they are the on-screen focal point of food programming; thus, their presence as anchors of food television mediates and is mediated by the gendered spaces of televisual kitchens.
Although men and women have long shared the duty of hosting, there are studies that highlight the invisibility of women’s roles as hosts and producers of popular food television shows (Marks, 2007; Bullaro, 2006; Chao, 1998). Most scholarship in this area, however, is more interested in critiquing food television’s dependence on normative notions of domestic femininity and debating its subversive potential for women. These studies often consider the relationship between women hosts and their audiences (Shapiro, 2005), women hosts who hate to cook or have little experience in the kitchen (Williams, 1999), or women who operate outside the conventions of feminine performativity (Williams, 1999; Polan, 2011; Hollows, 2007).
One of the more well-developed strands of research on food television critiques cooking programs that feature women as overtly sensual, eroticized, and/or hyper feminine hosts. This, for some scholars, occurs through women’s prominent relationship with food – the exhibition of “carnivalesque feasting” – as well as through “sexual double entendre in the titles, a sensual visual style, and sexual verbal references” (Andrews, 2003: 189–95; Chan, 2003). Other scholarship is more explicitly concerned with the place of feminism in female-hosted food programming. Some writers exercise caution, concerned that popular discursive definitions of postfeminism – the notion that we have progressed beyond “a particular moment of feminist activity and a particular set of feminist concerns” – are reductively linked to women’s presence on food television (Gill, 2007: 251). For these writers, the eroticized host is a dangerously postfeminist performance of contemporary female consumption and consequently becomes the “single trope through which feminism is most often invoked in popular culture” (Brunsdon, 2005: 113; Gill, 2007).
Conversely, other scholars find positive feminist potential in women’s televisual appearances in the kitchen. This literature asserts that women’s use of irony, humor, and sensuality on cooking shows reshapes the relationship to the domestic and consciously utilizes the “ambivalence inherent in ironic discourse” to highlight both the pleasures and containments of the kitchen space (Sanders, 2009: 152). This approach also suggests that some food television is able to bring together the feminist and the cook in a way that treats food preparation as pleasure, not domestic work (Hollows, 2003a).
A subset of food and television scholarship on gender focuses on men. Much of this work is concerned with how men negotiate the televisual domestic kitchen (Hollows, 2003b; Attwood, 2005; Julier and Lindenfeld, 2005). This research suggests that men distance themselves from the traditionally feminized labor of the home kitchen via modern masculinities that associate food preparation with individualized and aesthetically driven lifestyles (Hollows, 2003b; Attwood, 2005). Along similar lines, food television hosted by men is often argued to be anchored by the energized, personality-driven “charismatic male” figure (Ketchum, 2004: 225). Other scholarship considers how Japanese masculinities are conveyed on television in Japan, a country where competitive food programming is pervasive (Holden, 2005).
Discussion of men as hosts of food television leads directly to a broad literature on class, taste, and processes of cultural distinction. A handful of scholars, for example, present intersectional research on working-class masculinities in the televisual kitchen, through considerations of the “regular guy” image (Ray, 2007: 55; Adema, 2000; Miller, 2002) or performances of regional masculinities (Smith and Wilson, 2004). Notably, this research recognizes the vital exchange that occurs when women’s domestic food knowledge is transferred to men on cooking programs. Men’s places in the domestic televisual kitchen has also been discussed within the context of how industry decisions to air food programming in certain time slots disseminates meaning about class and gender (Brunsdon et al., 2001). Other scholarship argues that male hosts are freer to move about class-based genres of food television – travel, leisure, professionalization, and competition – while women are much more anchored to televised food preparation as “domestic work for family and friends” (Swenson, 2007: 9–10; Strange, 1998).
Much of the work that can be placed under the broad umbrella of class, taste, and distinction takes contemporary lifestyle television as its frame. Here, British, Australian, and US programming are again lumped together in a Westernized notion of lifestyle television as reflecting:
changes in [a] national imaginary, whereby lifestyle “projects”, such as home improvement and personal styling, are becoming increasingly important markers of self-identification, with these programmes providing key information regarding lifestyle consumption.
(Gorman-Murray, 2006: 229)
Scholars theorizing within the context of lifestyle television recognize food programming as a raced, classed, and gendered blueprint not only for broad class-based taste hierarchies, but also for highly individualized cultural distinction. This research elucidates the process by which televised culinary education – how to purchase, cook, and consume as a foodie – offers directives for customized style and identity that sustains important class signifiers (De Solier, 2008, 2000; Gorman-Murray, 2006; Palmer, 2004; Strange, 1998). As many scholars point out elsewhere, this process of communicating cultural distinction through food is certainly not limited to television (Johnston and Baumann, 2010).
Further complicating this notion of distinction is scholarship that envelopes food television into the larger body of work on citizenship, gender, class, and consumption. Drawing again from the lifestyle television frame, this research conceptualizes food television as part and parcel of “trends in the way we understand ourselves as citizen and consumer” (Ouellette and Hay, 2008: 14). Food television is often implicated as neoliberalistically charged; that is, it ostensibly encourages less dependence on the governing state and more on the makeover – the personal, individual change that keeps you in good standing as a consumer citizen in a capitalistic economy and becomes “the key to social mobility, stability, and civic empowerment” (McCarthy, 2010: 17; De Solier, 2000, 2008). For many scholars, this translates to the discourses through which food television encourages particular eating habits, body sizes (as controlled through food), recipes, restaurants, and general food-related lifestyle choices. Taking a slightly different perspective, other work has considered how competitive food television (e.g., Iron Chef America) is constructed upon and further reifies the rituals and ideals of contemporary US citizenship (Bell, 2010).
What follows from the convergence of lifestyle television, consumer citizenship, and neoliberalistic individualism is niche television – television branded for highly targeted demographics; in this case, the niche would take shape around those with a vested interest in food. Although existing literature often makes an indirect connection between niche television and food (Ray, 2007; Ketchum, 2005; Brundson, 2003; De Solier, 2000), no studies explicitly consider niche food television via cultural or ideological analyses. Niche television is considered, however, in scholarship that assesses the political economy of the US cable channel Food Network (Ketchum, 2007, 2005; Banet-Weiser et al., 2007). Food Network’s launch created the first cable mainstay for television chefs and cooking shows and a concentrated site for “24/7” food television; consequently, the structure, content, and style of the channel has been of interest to scholars looking at niche media production, audiences, and branding.
Food is frequently peripheral to the primary objectives of research in media studies and within the humanities at large. It is not uncommon for scholarship on television to reveal key insights about its relationship to food. Thus, food and television scholars would be remiss to ignore research simply because food is not the focal point. Studies on 1950s and Cold War television (Boddy, 1993; Spigel, 1992), 1990s television (Becker, 2006), post-network television and cable narrowcasting (Lotz, 2009; Banet-Weiser et al., 2007; Mullen, 2003), educational broadcasting (Ouellette, 2002), and reality television (Ouellette and Hay, 2008) are valuable resources. Similarly, bypassing work that is not readily about television or media is arguably even more prohibitive, as contemporary food studies – especially anthologies on food and culture – speak volumes about the relationship between food and television (Counihan and Van Esterik, 2008; Ashley et al., 2004; Belasco and Scranton, 2002).
Contemporary media studies research in the humanities tradition attends most readily to the triad of text, audience, and industry. Understanding these as the focus of this area facilitates a number of starting points for research on food and television that align with the field. As is evidenced by the literature review above, the vast majority of work on food and television takes the text – the actual food-related program – as its object of study. Thus, research methodologies in this area most frequently fall under the umbrella of textual analysis, a common method for humanities scholars. Textual analysis can initially be divided into two areas, content analysis and interpretive textual analysis, the latter further cascading into a number of submethodologies.
Content analysis is often descriptive in nature and thus rarely utilized as a singular method; instead, it is more frequently used as a supplement to more in-depth, analytical methods of textual analysis. For food and television scholars, content analysis is helpful for assessing the history of food programming on television (Collins, 2009; Kackman, 2004). Content analysis can also provide a quantitative assessment of representation; for example, scholars interested in determining the visibility of women as cooking show hosts or the number of shows that feature elimination-style competitions would benefit from this method.
Interpretive textual analysis remains the method of choice for food and television researchers. Within this frame, much of the literature can accurately be considered an amalgamation of semiotics, psychoanalytic analysis, rhetorical and discursive analysis, and, most prominently, ideological analysis. Most scholars are motivated to explicate the processes through which meaning making occurs and is disseminated via food’s presence on television. Put another way, this research attempts to clarify our understanding of the ideologies of food as presented on television. Books and articles on food television assess the cultural norms of specific historical eras (Polan, 2011; Collins, 2009; Attwood, 2005; Brunsdon, 2003; Miller, 2002; Williams, 1999), the potency of political discourses like feminism (Gillis and Hollows, 2009; Hollows, 2007, 2003a; Brunsdon, 2005), and the meaning of food in relation to the sociocultural moment of contemporary television (De Solier, 2008; Ouellette and Hay, 2008; Ketchum, 2005; Palmer, 2004; Adema, 2000).
Ideological analysis is also an instrumental method for the large portion of research tackling issues of subject position and identity on food television. Gender analyses unpack connotative meaning in hosts’ subversive on-screen performances (Sanders, 2009; Smith and Wilson, 2004), in their relationships to the binaries of public/private, domestic/professional (Hollows, 2003b), or in their suggestive dialogue and eroticized interactions with food (Andrews, 2003; Chan, 2003). This method is also the foundation for many class-based analyses that consider, for example, the discourses of culinary education (De Solier, 2000; Strange, 1998) or how food is integrated into the “lifestyle” of lifestyle television (De Solier, 2008; Ketchum, 2005; Palmer, 2004).
Industry and audience-based methodologies, while common in television and media research, are less prevalent within the subfield of food and television. Industry studies assess the economics of television production, the players involved (i.e., producers, actors, writers, advertisers, and media executives) as well as the construction, branding, marketing, and distribution of television and media products. Industry studies that attend to food television often consider the political economy of single television channels like Food Network (Ketchum, 2007), food programming’s role in industrial shifts like cable narrowcasting and niche media (also Ketchum, 2007 and Banet-Weiser et al., 2007; Mullen, 2003), or how food television changes as it is repackaged for broader distribution (Gallagher, 2004). Audience studies – methods that consider viewer response to television via popular discourse, surveys, focus groups, or interviews – are effectively non-existent in the area of food and television, and are a suggested avenue for further research below.
Food studies and media studies share the distinction of being young fields informed by interdisciplinary underpinnings. Consequently, there is abundant opportunity to build from existing literature and fill sizable research gaps. First, the above survey of established research indicates a conflation of British, US, and Australian scholars and their researched texts. British scholars have historically led the charge in the area of food and television; consequently, a significant portion of the television studied is produced in the United Kingdom. While this scholarship has been foundational to the advancement of research in the US and elsewhere, there are cultural and industrial variables that are too often glossed over. Future research should consider the value of comparative analyses of regional, national, and global approaches to food and television. Closely related to this gap is the tendency to repeatedly focus on popular contemporary food television, such as widely distributed programs (e.g., Iron Chef) or celebrity chef hosts (e.g., Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Emeril Lagasse). These shows and figures provide scholars with accessible and plentiful material; however, given today’s abundance of food programming there are innumerable texts in need of academic attention.
Food and television research similarly suffers from a dangerously narrow focus on cooking shows. Although the term cooking show is used interchangeably with food television throughout this chapter, little research has pushed beyond analysis of the traditional instructional stand-and-stir format, despite the proliferation of food-inflected game, travel, talk and trivia shows as well as elimination-based and documentary-style reality television. There is an imperative to produce work that differentiates among food television’s varying formats, modes, and genres. The consequences of the current umbrella approach are generic categories that are hastily constructed and far from streamlined. Directly related to format and style is a lack of research on food television production and the mechanics of the television industries that operate behind these texts. There is a need for historical and contemporary discussions that consider what food television looks like and how it is created, branded, and distributed.
Moving to the front of the television set, virtually no one has undertaken research with the sole purpose of studying the food television audience. Questions of reception – the when, where, why, how, and with whom of people watching food television – are wide open and ripe for interrogation. Further, there are plenty of avenues for practical application, such as elucidating how viewers obtain, interpret, and utilize information from television about food, food industries, and food policies. Whether in the audience, behind the camera, or on-screen, the dearth of literature on race and food television is distressing, as is the lack of research on gender liminality, queer representation and queer aesthetics in food programming. Scholars entering the food and television field will find these two areas of representation and identity severely underdeveloped. Finally, although it may appear trivial, few scholars actually study the food of food television. While food programming and television chefs are frequently considered, the food itself – what is prepared, sold, and consumed and how it is framed visually and discursively on television – is mostly ignored.
Media studies has witnessed a growth in integrated approaches to the study of television through recent research that works to more holistically incorporate the text, industry, and audience into every project. This is a challenging and respected approach to media research and not without its limitations, as any project that takes a comprehensive aim runs the risk of diluting the expertise that comes with specificity. However, given food’s established interdisciplinarity, future research may certainly benefit from this emerging methodology.
Students interested in the study of food and television enter the field at a promising moment. While no graduate programs currently exist with a singular focus on food and media, many established departments welcome this research. Food has a rich history in many disciplines and with its contemporary social and political salience, there are plenty of well-funded and supportive programs from which to choose. Graduate programs in media studies, communications, cultural studies, American studies, and sociology are often productive homes for food and television scholars, while those interested in the practical application of this research might consider public policy, nutrition, urban studies/planning, environmental studies and even agriculture. As is the case with any narrowly focused or understudied topic, it is often more helpful to connect to leading scholars with recognized contributions in the area rather than specific programs or departments.
For established scholars and graduate students building on the extant food and television scholarship, there is impressive research support and sufficient – albeit sporadic – funding available. A number of archives in the US hold food and/or television materials. Any well-known media archive may contain at least some food-related programming, including: the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the University of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, the Museum of Broadcast Communications, the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland, the Paley Center for Media, the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center, the online Media History Digital Library, and even the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress.
Although culinary archives rarely house digital or recorded collections, their print collections are certainly worth an initial inquiry for television scripts and the private papers of actors, producers, and advertisers. A short list includes: the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan, the Culinary Collection at Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library, the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson and Wales University, the National Archives, and the James Beard Foundation. Funding for research and education in the area of food and television is variable, although the contemporary cultural interest in food yields impressive intermittent opportunities. For example, one of the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships – a renowned fellowship in the humanities – took food as its theme in 2012–13. Like the majority of academic research in search of financial support, work on food and television can be funded if one is diligent, flexible, and attentive to a diverse array of opportunities.
As many food studies scholars will attest, food often becomes an object of study after the fact – an indirect path that begins with “what food can tell us about something else” and ends with the realization that “food issues matter in themselves” (Belasco, 2007: x). This is occasionally true of work on food and television, as scholars pursue other aspects of television and media as their principal focus and subsequently take up an interest in food. In these instances – as is the case with anyone delving into work on food and television – professional academic organizations offer a host of unparalleled resources. Organizations like the National Communications Association, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the International Communication Association, and the Association for the Study of Food and Society host annual conferences, publish academic journals, offer inclusion in email LISTSERVs and online forums, and provide invaluable social networks for researchers. Finally, as food remains a key touchstone for the contemporary cultural and political moment of the early twenty-first century, scholars are indebted to the internet and social networking sites, where timely and accurate information on television (e.g., ratings, audience response, programming schedules, media mergers) is available for the next research project on food television.
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