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14. “Nigella’s Deep-Frying a Snickers Bar!”: Addiction as a Social Construct in Gilmore Girls
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257 “Nigella’sDeep-FryingaSnickersBar!” Addiction as a Social Construct in Gilmore Girls J O Y C E G O G G I N From his seat at the counter of Luke’s Diner in the episode “I’m a Kayak, Hear Me Roar” (7.15), Kirk calls to Luke to “check it out”; he has been published.1 As Kirk waxes poetic about being catapulted into the distinguished company of “published authors,” Luke quickly learns that Kirk’s masterpiece is really an advertisement to sell his mother’s dinette set. When Luke, with characteristic sarcasm, asks if he is in fact referring to a want ad in the Stars Hollow Gazette, Kirk replies that it is “a powerful feeling seeing yourself immortalized in print. Sure, it’s only newsprint. It rips easily, it comes off on your fingers, and the next day, people use it to wrap fish, but, hey, it’s how Dickens got started.” As with all such brief exchanges in Gilmore Girls, this seemingly insignificant moment leads into a larger plotline, in this case one involving Luke’s life-changing decision to sell his boat. In turn, this thread subtends the episode’s more central theme of Lane’s baby shower, but avid viewers of Gilmore Girls know just how much weight to give the segment and how to assess its role and importance with respect to the rest of the show. Fans know, for example, that phatic, embedded micromoments such as Luke and Kirk’s dialogue 1. I am grateful to the Goggin girls—Linda, Kathie, Vanessa, Emma, and Amelia—for their help with the research for this article. 258 | Food,Addiction,Gender,Sexuality occur virtually nonstop in every episode and are intended to establish character and situation. At the same time, fans relish these segments because they are chock-full of the kind of intertextual references to literary texts, TV shows, films, and popular music for which the series is famous. Hence, these short but meaningful dialogues have a secondary function as fodder for faithful fans who delight in ferreting out sometimes-obscure references and speculating on possible meanings . Doubtless, then, somewhere on one of the many Gilmore Girls fan sites or Web logs (blogs) viewers have attempted to explain Kirk’s reference to Dickens in this segment, thereby performing a task not unlike the one I have set for myself in this chapter. My own viewer exegesis of the series will take Luke and Kirk’s banter in this episode as a prime example, or perhaps symptom, of the critical points I want to develop. Delivered in rapid-fire fashion, over the ever-present cup of coffee, their dialogue unites the notion of commercial writing and serialized fiction with Charles Dickens, one of the genre’s most famous practitioners. Moreover, it implicitly brings together particular forms of at least two cultural activities that play a central role in contemporary living, and got their start in the seventeenth century, along with the shift toward industrial modernity in the West. These activities—namely, coffee drinking and the consuming of serialized fiction (in forms such as novels and TV shows)—are potentially (and demonstrably) addictive and are, therefore, linked to essential aspects of modern living and being. What at first may seem to be an unlikely point of entry into a screwball comedy series (with dramatic undertones) like Gilmore Girls, addiction proves to be particularly useful as a means for elucidating the series’ appeal among fans. Addiction is one of the primary forces behind contemporary market-driven cultural production, of which the show is very consciously a part, and the good people of Stars Hollow provide a colorful rendition of consumer culture on a microeconomic scale. Characters like Emily, Lorelai, and Rory supply the demands that fuel the market, through a persistent drive to consume in the hopes of satisfying repetitive, insistent needs and compensating for the inevitable disappointments and growing pains faced by women of [54.243.2.41] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:50 GMT) “Nigella’sDeep-FryingaSnickersBar!” | 259 their class. This cycle of endless craving and conspicuous consumption forms the substance of the show’s serialized narrative, which viewers addictively follow, and is mirrored by the “cute,” compulsive behaviors to which fans aspire.2 And although the yearnings and needs that drive the denizens of Stars Hollow may come from a variety of sources, shopping and consuming are presented on Gilmore Girls as the panacea. Hence, at www.tv.com we read that...