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Food

I chose the reading of ‘Domestic Divo?, Televised Treatments of Masculinity, Femininity and Food’ by Rebecca Swenson is a Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at South Bank University, with an interest in Gender, and sexuality.

The reading as a whole is an analysis of the television channel ‘The Food Network’, a channel with a variety of cooking shows with both male and female hosts. What Rebecca Swenson does in this paper is compare how both the male and female hosts of their respective shows are presented to the audience, and how this plays to gender roles and what it means to be either ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ in the kitchen.

In the pursuit to ‘make dinner’ in the cooking shows found on the Food Network channel, she has found that women often make reference to their family or children, for example female chef Amy Finley says that ‘she enjoys preparing Mexican recipes because her kids love the food’. She also mentions how much of the food prepared by women in cooking shows is based on feeding a family, creating meals for loved ones, a husband or masculine figure that is attracted by a woman who can cook delicious dishes for him. She explains that cooking shows hosted by women on the channel have more of a homely vibe to them, that the hosts create an intimate atmosphere with their audience, and act as a motherly figure trying to emulate her own mother or grandmother. This is strongly supported by the fact that food is often famously referred to as ‘the way to a man’s heart’, and It is suggested that to keep a household together, a wife must provide food for her husband that suits his taste, and make food that her children would also eat and appreciate.

On the other hand, when hosted by a male, the cooking shows tend to become more as a place for men to exhibit their strength and talent, to ‘produce more fleeting sexual encounters, put on a glamorous show for others develop a career or pursue the pleasures of eating himself’. Typically it is a male host who will put on expensive and lavish dinner parties for friends or co-workers, as an exhibition of his prowess and masculinity. She uses examples when male chefs enter the studio in front of the audience, they are met with cheers and shake hands with those in the front rows, and are more likely to be seen wearing chef’s attire such as he white buttoned jacket, whereas female hosts almost always just wear casual clothes, sometimes with an apron. Male hosts tend not to discuss having to make a family meal every day, but rather how to quickly and impressively prepare fancy and expensive dishes for friends on occasion.

Some shows such as ‘Iron Chef’ or ‘Dinner Impossible’ take on a competitive sport theme, where two chefs or teams compete against eachother racing against the clock as well as creating a visually interesting performance. These participants are usually male, and any female team members are also in a team with other men. This reinforces the stereotype of men needing to execute some kind of action or sport that makes them more manly, so they can assume a kind of aggressive, Gordon Ramsey like role in the kitchen. It is hard to find female counterparts that behave the same way.

I liked that Rebecca Swenson obviously watched and analysed a very large variety of shows on the Food Network channel, giving the reader a broad idea of what the content of the channel is like even if they have never watched it themselves. The quotes she picks out cleanly divide male and female hosts in the world of the cooking show, and how the way those shows are presented subtly re-enforce stereotypes of a woman’s place in the kitchen being domestic and a man’s place in the kitchen being more commercial.  

‘Instead of using cooking to explore science or reenact broad strokes of culinary history, female hosts describe recipies as valued personal possessions that preserve family history’ 

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Play

Angela Carter is an English novelist, short story writer and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works.

The reading is an extract from her book ‘Nights at the Circus’, written in 1984, which is a book telling the story of a woman named Sophie Fevvers, at the time a Circus performer who sprouted wings as a child and was eventually therefore employed by the Circus

I like this reading because although disjointed at times and hard to follow, it represents the idea of play very well in this instance as a concept that heavily relies on an audience to create the crucial aspect of illusion and performance. This is because the rehearsal included in the passage is just that, a pre-mediated practice of actions that allows no space for personal expression; no matter how ludicrous a Circus performance becomes, it comes with a script and set of guidelines that ensure the performance is seamless and that It can be performed time and time again without fail. However an audience upon viewing the Circuses material would engage with it and respond to it with emotion, shock, and humour; rendering the performance not only with a purpose but with an active part for the performers to engage in a game of their own- to conjure up that response.

I think it discusses the open endedness of play, leading the reader to ask themselves, can it still be considered play when done for money or a set goal to entertain others specifically whilst not actually ‘playing’ or enjoying yourself? And whether or not a set of actors or performers following a set of instructions, although it may be called a ‘play’ of some sort, really follows criteria discussed in the Dadaist or surrealist manifesto of being spontaneous and free, especially when in the extract the players seem utterly disinterested with their tasks and seem trapped by the game, especially the chimps and other animals in the extract that know nothing else than being trained to follow orders.

Towards the end of the extract, the words ‘Tiger out!’ are shouted, and one of the big cats as kept by the Circus escapes into the ring. If the illusion of play has not been shattered enough by the disorganization and unwillingness of the players during the rehearsal beforehand, this transforms the scene into chaos as the players are left to scramble, thus breaking the illusion that even the players themselves have any control over what they are doing. In a way, this actually makes the scene more playful, as it brings an air of sudden spontaneity as the Strong man and the woman with the green ribbon and Walser try to escape the Tiger, but at the same time removes the aspect of having rules, as suddenly there are no rules and the play itself falls apart as the players struggle for their safety. The play is only limited by how much control the players have over the outcome, and, as it is difficult to make a wild animal submit to rules set about by humans, they have no control over how their performance could end, and therefore this sets a limit to where play ends, and reality begins.

Overall, I think the extract sums up the superficiality of the Circus and play itself, and that the ‘play’ in this instance is only as good as the audience allows it to be.

‘What a cheap, convenient, expressionist device, this sawdust ring, this little O! … wheel that turns full circle, the wheel whose end is it’s beginning, the wheel of fortune, the potter’s wheel on which our clay is formed, the wheel of life on which we are all broken. Walser thrilled, as always, to the shop-soiled yet polyvalent romance of this image.’

 Painting by Arturo Michelena

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Home

Michael Allen Fox is an American/Canadian/Australian Philosopher who is best known for his books on Animal experimentation and Vegetarianism, but has also most recently published a book entitled ‘Home: A Very Short Introduction’ in 2017. I chose the reading of ‘Remembering, imagining, and other mindwork’ from this publication because I found that I related to some of it’s themes and it discusses a large variety of topics. 

The one that drew my attention was the theme of nostalgia, ‘a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past, or the condition of being homesick’. Fox discusses feeling nostalgic about your childhood home, and how nostalgia can make a person see their past through rose-tinted glasses. As you grow your perception of your home changes drastically especially if you move away from it, and hardship in later life can make someone’s vision of their childhood very different. There is always a want and instinct to return to your childhood home as you grow older, and people often try to recreate what they once had with their own children or family in the present, as a form of fulfilling this nostalgia. We often use memories of people and objects to build up an idea of what the places we lived in looked and felt like, and often wonder what it would be like to return there, to a time when life might’ve been easier. Fox also quotes teacher Stephen Shaw with ‘On occasions there seems to be a need to return, if only in our own minds, to times in which we imagined we were more secure, more protected’, which links to a later concept he mentions from Sigmund Freud, that houses have symbolized the womb, a place of safety to which we would return if we could. I thought this was an intriguing concept as to what makes a house a home, as if home is in some cases, wherever your mother or even father figure is, and that place is where you settle once you have observed that your parents are able to settle there too. I think somewhere that reminds you of your own maternal figure is an important factor in a home, as for some people, their childhood home has always been a place where their mother was present, and whether this experience was good or bad I think many people attach a nostalgic feeling to this. This also links to the topic Fox discusses earlier about certain rooms having gender specific qualities as imposed by society, such as the kitchen being seen stereotypically as a women’s place only, which despite being sexist to assume so - many might still reminisce of their mother or grandmother whilst standing in their own kitchen. Despite history stereotypically naming the ‘man of the house’ as the ‘breadwinner’, the one who supposedly buys the house itself and earns money for it’s upkeep, and that the head of the household is nearly always portrayed as a man, the home definitely seems to have more of a typical maternal atmosphere to me, as it’s somewhere that provides comfort and where society has placed the idea of ‘the Mother’. It is not a surprise to me that Freud would compare returning home to returning to the womb, as it is often the place where we start growing up and that always provides a sanctuary for us in our early days of existence. I personally feel my own home which is also my childhood house is equal in terms of how much I can see both my mother’s and my father’s influence and attention to detail in it, and I feel like the concept of the home being ‘bought by a man, lived in and embellished by a woman’ is very outdated and is no longer the case in most families.

I enjoyed this reading and liked the way that Michael Allen Fox talks about memory and nostalgia, and other topics such as customs that cultures observe when creating houses and choosing where to build them, and how people attach emotions and glorified atmospheres to places that they call ‘home’. ‘Reminiscing about home. Dreaming about home. Getting nostalgic about home… What we put into our concept of home through acts of memory and imagination is an enormous part of what home means to us’

(Puzzle of a drawing of the house from the series ‘Upstairs Downstairs’)

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Mobility

The reading I chose was a passage from Alain De Botton’s ‘The Art of Travel’ called ‘On Travelling Places’. De Botton is a Swiss born British Author who writes philosophical books that discuss contemporary culture, such as topics on Love, Travel, Art and Literature. De Botton begins by describing his experience at a service station as he takes a break from a car journey. He describes the weary customers and the station’s drab interior, and brings a nostalgic sense to the place he is seeing. He goes on to describe Baudelaire, and his fascination with travelling and moving around, as he was unhappy at home and yet felt unsatisfied with countries that he tried to inhabit. However, Baudelaire found the most solace in ‘transient places of travel’, such as harbours, docks, trains, railway stations and hotel rooms, the places that take us from one place to another or are situated inbetween starting point and destination. It is this kind of romanticisation of travel focusing on these ‘in Limbo’ places that the author describes the most in this reading, how we become so attached to the idea of places and vehicles taking us somewhere, anywhere, that escapes the norm. He also talks about the work of painter Edward Hopper, and how his paintings depict the loneliness and ethereal tranquility of places like hotel lobbies and 24-hour diners, gas stations and bars. I like the way in which Botton looks at two Hopper pieces individually and pieces together a story for them, about how the paintings isolate an element of these transient locations such as a figure engaging in an activity, and how it makes us feel. It is unusual to stop and observe when we are travelling, as usually we do this once we get to our destination such as when a person is on holiday, but to stop and look around in places that are neither at the start of a journey nor at the end brings a kind of otherworldliness to that setting, feeling empathy yet a connection to everyone with us in that situation. He describes the twenty-four hour diner, the station waiting room and motel as sanctuaries for ‘those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world’, relating also to the topic discussed in the lecture of expats and migrants, and how they experience travel, as well as people who make much smaller journeys but still with stories attached to them, such as people who have ‘just left someone or been left, in search of work, sex or company…’. He mentions also towards the end that ‘Journeys are the midwives of thought’, saying that it is easier to let your mind’s process flow naturally when you are travelling, especially in a moving vehicle such as a train, accompanied by music or following a line of trees or lamp posts from the window. It allows a person to disconnect from normality for a while and re-focuses the mind. I enjoyed this point as it expands the idea of travel, that moving from one place to another should not just be tedious but should be appreciated for all it’s worth, and that the journey can be just as rewarding, if not more so, than the destination itself, in finding places where lost souls are collected, where incomplete people are constantly passing through in search for where they belong.

Quote from Baudelaire in this reading: ‘Life is a hospital in which every patient is obsessed with changing beds. This one wants to suffer in front of the radiator, and that one thinks he’s get better if he was by the window… It always seems to me that I’ll be well where I am not and this question of moving is one that I’m forever entertaining with my soul’

‘Nite Owl’ - Watercolour piece by Becky Haletky

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Worksheet Catch up (Group D)

Question 1

1)      The lady with the parasol is clearly aware of keeping herself sheltered and covered up, and walks a few steps behind the man as if thinking she needs to be led by him in order to move forward. The area looks dry and warm, so I believe she feels comfortable in her dress, despite it’s restrictive nature.

2)      The Man is aware of himself being the dominant leader in this pair, as he steps well in front of his companion, turning to face her slightly, possibly out of politeness, but this could also be this enactment of ‘the male gaze’. He appears to be observing her and looking her up and down, as if to keep an eye on her.

3)      The dog roams free, letting us believe this was a normal sight in Paris and one which the public don’t show any regard to. He feels happy to explore and walk down a dry and airy road.

Question 2

I think the Flaneur is considered important to writers and practitioners of visual culture because to create accurate and impartial art of people at their most natural state, people must have the ability to blend and accommodate areas that they aren’t used to. Blending into your surroundings to observe people is very insightful and you notice things you would never normally notice.

 Question 3

‘’A bobo Customer is unkempt, unshaven, and the clothes he wears seem either too big or too small for his body. His face is fresh and bright and healthy, despite his appearance. When he reaches out to pay for his coffee, I notice his hands have coloured paint underneath the fingernails, and there is a scattering of white acrylic on his sleeves. He smiles and tells me to keep the change’’

When walking around London there are many signs that places are becoming more gentrified. Places where foreign people set up home businesses and markets are being replaced with branded high street shops. Old cafes are being refurbished, and old and peeling Pubs that are 50 years old or more are being knocked down and replaced with housing estates. Smaller businesses move away because the area they began in is becoming unaffordable. A lot of pop-up bistro cafes and gourmet food trucks also frequent the most popular streets to gain tourist’s attention.

Question 4

These signs create a sense of place not only for people that are new to the area and trying to find their way around, but also for the local people that call this place their home. A sign with a serif font is more old-timey, and would perhaps be used in an area or country that is still very connected to it’s past, whereas a sans serif font would be used in areas that are more modernised and have a lot of tourism, therefore needing signs that are more legible. The colour could have great significance as it does in England, where we have green signage to indicate road and place names but brown signage to indicate attractions of interest. The colour might link all road names etc together in some way.

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The reading I chose is a piece by French Poet and author Charles Baudelaire.  The Reading is the first 35 pages extracted from the book- ‘The Painter of Modern Life, and other essays’, written by Baudelaire and transcribed by Jonathon Mayne. It was written in 1863. This reading connects in a few ways to the theme of The Street. Baudelaire frequently mentions the flaneur, as well as relating the concept to another artist or ‘man of the world’ he is acquainted with, whom he refers to as Monsieur G. He describes the way in which the Flaneur moves through the people in the streets, and how much ‘Monsieur G.’ similarly enjoys inhabiting crowds and blending into them unnoticed. In the section where he describes the ‘Man of the Crowd’ to illustrate the nature of the artist he refers to throughout the extract, we get a clear vision into the mind and temperament of a street artist, one who sits and observes as the world and it’s people pass him by. This relates to the idea of the Flaneur that was discussed at length in the lecture, and Baudelaire goes into further detail by attaching this concept to the physical artistic personality of Monsieur G. In the final section, Baudelaire bursts into vibrant description of familiar and fanciful settings of life and luxury and the people that inhabit them, also relating to the theme of the Street Scene, and the buildings and people that are able to describe the wealth and social standing of the area itself, just by watching them. From describing the decadent and intimate scene of the auditorium and the fashionable women socialising, to the more common and uncouth scenes of women and men outside Cafes and Casinos, there is a variety of imagery that communicates the atmosphere of the street and the buildings that border it, as seen from an observer’s point of view. I found the points about clothing and costume very poignant, that women’s clothes are as much a part of the person’s outer image as their skin, and should be respected as an essential part of their beauty and character. I found it original and pleasing to read about clothing being mentioned in such a way, as it shows sensitivity to the fact that both men and women are able to choose how to present themselves through garments and jewellery and other accessories, and that these choices are not to be ignored when painting those models. Baudelaire also has a surprising view of ‘Maquillage’, or ‘Make-up’, and seems entirely in favour of it and in a kind of awe of the way in which women use it, describing very beautifully the way in which certain aspects of make-up personify and enhance aspects of the wearer, and how each part is justified and a very personal and respectable choice from the woman or muse, to exemplify their natural beauty and good looks, as well as giving them an ethereal touch. I reacted pleasantly to the reading and I would recommend it, due to the way in which Baudelaire uses metaphors and similes, his depth of description and how fondly he describes Monsieur G, and his language being as playful as it is eloquent.  

-‘To be away from home, and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world…’- ‘The curtains of heaven are drawn and cities light up… the thoughts of all, whether good men or knaves,  turn to pleasure, and each one hastens to the place of his choice to drink the cup of oblivion’