How To Watch Television

35. Everyday Italian: Cultivating Taste

330 35 Everyday Italian Cultivating Taste Michael Z. Newman Abstract: While all commercial television has an investment in promoting consumerism in its audiences, few genres are as focused on the various dimensions of consumption as cooking shows. Michael Z. Newman analyzes Food Network’s Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis as an instance of lifestyle television, perpetuating cultural norms of gender, class, and taste. American television is, with rare exceptions, a commercial medium supported by advertising that pays for the programs. A TV show’s audience is not only a collection of a large number of persons (a million viewers may not be that many, depending on the network and time of day), but also a commodity whose attention is sold by the TV station or network to the advertisers who want to reach those persons with commercial messages. Making meaningful and entertaining television content may be the agenda of those who create it, but to succeed commercially , TV shows need to attract audiences who are desirable to advertisers in terms of age, gender, and income, among other traits. One central purpose of television in American society is thus to promote consumption of the goods and services advertised during the commercial breaks. Seen this way, television is a consumerist medium, encouraging us to spend our money on burgers and sodas, movie tickets and jeans, smartphones and video games, vacations and cars. Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis has aired in the United States on the Food Network since 2003 (original episodes were produced through 2008), and has more recently been airing on its spinoff cable outlet, the Cooking Channel. Each episode shows the host in a home kitchen preparing several dishes connected by a theme such as “Italian street food” or “Sicilian summer,” as well as brief scenes away from Giada’s kitchen discussing the episode’s theme, shopping, and dining, often with others. Most of the show is concerned with demonstrating recipes, leading the audience through a series of steps toward serving an Everyday Italian 331 impressive and delicious meal. At the same time, cooking shows like Everyday Italian epitomize the commercial function of TV, serving as especially sharp examples of television’s consumerist mandate. Everyday Italian explicitly and implicitly promotes consumption in several ways. The thirty-second commercial spots that run in between segments of course do what commercials always do: they address messages to audiences to get them to buy items typically advertised during cooking shows, such as yogurt and paper towels, which often appeal to a household’s “grocery decision makers.”1 But the show itself, the content, is also thoroughly commercial and consumerist, exemplifying a growing trend in recent media in which content is itself in some ways like a commercial. For instance, reality shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (ABC, 2003–present ) promote Sears home improvement products and services, while American Idol (Fox, 2002–present) features its contestants in ads for Ford cars. Everyday Italian is a food show, so episodes implicitly encourage the audience to shop for groceries to use following Giada’s recipes. The setting is a kitchen where the host prepares dishes using a variety of tools, and so the show likewise invites us to acquire similar knives and appliances. Indeed, many cooking show stars, including Giada, endorse lines of kitchenware and prepared food. The Giada De Laurentiis Collection of products for sale at Target department stores includes cookware and bakeware, gadgets and cutlery, and DVDs of her television shows. We might also think of Everyday Italian as an elaborate promotion for Giada herself, a Food TV star whose image and identity sell those cookbooks, knives, casseroles, pans, and jars of pesto that feed her status as a celebrity chef and extend her personal brand beyond TV. This star persona, promoted on her television series as well as in her cookbooks and in magazine interviews, combines a relatable and cheerful guide to cooking Italian food with a young, sexy, even seductive physical presence. For instance, in 2007 Giada appeared in Esquire magazine photographed in a skin-tight, low-cut white dress, the top of which resembles a push-up bra, with her hands and lower body drenched in bright red tomatoes, making clear the overlap of food and sex in her public identity. Giada’s hyper-feminine and sexualized appearance and performance on Everyday Italian makes the show more than mere instruction in culinary technique. By offering up a fantasy of sensuality, Everyday Italian promotes not only the consumption of food...