So I, like a growing number of people it seems, I don’t like MasterChef.This dislike doesn’t come out of cultural necessity given that I smoke rollies and write a blog.
Nor is it because of those ad breaks right before the verdict of who will be leaving the chic industrial Redfern studio to return to their beautiful, loving and open minded family.
It’s not even because the whole show fails to illuminate that a great deal of chefs are in fact not good hearted, caring, sincere, mentoring figures, despite their tempers and idiosyncrasies, but rather are just drugged up egomaniacs who hate the world .
No, not for any of these reasons. I hate it because the show is so ridiculously swamped with reflection.
The live action seldom runs for more than 30 seconds before a voice-over or talking head interjects so we know exactly what 34 year old David the Personal Assistant from Launceston was thinking as Matt Preston began to open the envelope detailing of the weeks challenge.
Then back to Preston awkwardly navigating his chipolata fingers around the envelope. We’re about to hear what the challenge is....but NO. Kelly the 26 year old School Teacher from Melbourne, tells us how she simply knows that whatever comes out of the envelope..."it’s gonna be a big shock."
Preston again, finally somebody has handed him a letter opener, which seems just pretentious enough to fit in with his prettyboy slash fatboy dandiness. Surely, now we will find out what is in the fucking envelope.
But no. The close up on Ezekiel’s face suggests there might be something bigger going on in his life, like he is not quite there, drifting off with other concerns....So we get an earful of him, confirming our suspicions that he is indeed distracted given that it is his son’s birthday...which trickles into a tangent about how hard it has been living in the free luxurious accommodation provided by channel ten and missing out on the day to day grind of his life as a door knocking preacher.
And just like that 5 minutes has been filled without so much as a fat yellow shirted man opening an envelope. What’s more, these reflections are almost always done in the present tense, as though we are inside the heads of the contestants.....surely given that they are filmed afterwards you should use the past tense!!!!!!! As in, “my stomach sank when Neil Perry threw up on my shoes.” Not, “My stomach sinks when Neil Perry throws up on my shoes.”
But even when the contestants are cooking, they are continually telling the cameras how they feel about it. Their fears about the consistency of the tomato sauce and whether they have the strength of will to keep going any further.
This is decidedly different from my experience with cooking. My housemates rarely invite a reflective monologue about my risotto that will blend into a wider narrative about me as a person.
And the only thing the chefs I worked with in commercial kitchens ever wanted to tell me was to put more vodka in their Red Bull next time.
I understand the logic in it all. MasterChef is not just a show about food, it is about people. Their aspirations, their fears. Through this reflection we gain an insight into these people. This way we know that when Malcolm the IT guy makes un upside down slice it is actually a metaphor for how the MasterChef experience has turned his life upside down.
To me it just seems that the show is too damn reflexive. Although only from the candidates. We never hear Preston telling us how challenging opening an envelope with fat greasy fingers can be. Or sound editor explaining how nervous he was when preparing the score for the celiac challenge.
But maybe I’m being too harsh, there is always room to be reflexive. If there wasn’t, rap music wouldn't exist given the vast majority of lyrics about the craft of rapping, or the difficulties of being a rapper, or the cultural significance of rap music.
Even my blog posts rest upon some reflexivity, almost always to compensate for lack of material, like when I remind you that I’m an under-achieving writing student who hates a lot of things.
(Author’s note: At this point I’m just wondering, how am I even going to get this post finished before I need to go to the bathroom? And is the whole thing even any good? Maybe I’m just not cut out to write blogs?)
I guess my main point here was the difference between doing things and talking about doing them. Or talking about things and talking about talking about them. But then again, such boundaries become unclear when we think of something like Rap music where the thing itself seems to comprise almost entirely of explaining its own existence.
You are probably wondering, what sort of person watches MasterChef and gets caught in a conceptual spiral to which there are no real answers. Well, whilst watching the show I was feeling a bit confused about life and the world and I thought to myself, Sam there is a really good challenge here for you...to stand up and be a real leader and write a blog post about MasterChef.
That, and I was stoned.
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