Abstract
Joanne Hollows is one of the pioneering and, now, most authoritative UK voices on celebrity chefs and food media. When she was writing critically about Jamie Oliver 20 years ago, almost everyone, some academics included, still wondered what there was to be critical about, with Oliver being such a nice guy! Yet, time again, including in this latest book, she has demonstrated how profoundly, far from the triviality many assign them to, celebrity chefs and food media have shaped the politics of eating in the United Kingdom (p. 8) as they influence how we feed ourselves and how we think about food today. In this latest interdisciplinary enquiry, firmly situated in cultural and food studies, she reveals a portrait of contemporary Britain that embraces cultural and racial diversity and non-traditional gender roles, but, at the same time, also demonstrates some deeply problematic developments over the last decade and their consequences. The book discusses celebrity chefs in relation to a range of critical topics in food media studies, such as, in the first part, the cultural politics around the media industries, and health, body and gender issues, through which she demonstrates how celebrity chef programmes reflect and appropriate movements, such as veganism, for contemporary men by re-shaping vegan food as a masculine, protein-rich diet (rather than, as previously perceived, exclusively feminine). The most powerful and novel parts of the book, however, are those chapters in the second part that address the ways in which food media have represented, appropriated and reflected larger political developments over the last decade in the United Kingdom, such as the Conservative government’s post-2010 austerity policies, Brexit and COVID. In beautifully composed chapters that combine literature review of celebrity chef media with new case studies, she demonstrates not just how these post-2010 and post-2016 developments intersect with social class, gender and health (e.g. increasing poverty) but also how our thinking around systemic problems is presented in food media as simplistic, easily solved solutions that individuals can achieve themselves if only they try a little harder. In some cases, this is possible; in most, however, such representations cement our inclination to treat issues such as obesity as personal, rather than societal, problems. Despite this, Hollows shows that books and programmes using and addressing these societal problems to provide media entertainment (and maybe even education) ‘cannot be understood as monolithically neoliberal texts’ (p. 112) since the solutions presented often demand more rather than less State involvement. Recognising food industry culpability in these problems, chefs analysed in Hollows’ book call for government regulation of foods, such as sugars, and through this, still protect consumer freedom – this centrepiece of liberalism without questioning the system itself. However, if, to many critics, much austerity cooking programmes reflect ‘middle-class “foodie austerity” found in lifestyle media that celebrate the choice to adopt the virtue of frugality’ (p. 121), Hollows also presents other sides of food austerity media, focusing on anti-austerity activists, such as Jack Monroe, whose experience of austerity derives from economic hardship, demonstrating through this how ‘celebrity chefs have intervened to inflect the meaning of austerity in different ways’ (p. 123).
The other big topic that the book addresses is campaigning culinary documentaries, especially where celebrity chefs tackle ‘food crises’ and through this, ‘brand chefs as compassionate and caring heroes who move beyond their positions in the culinary and media fields to intervene in the political life of the nation (and beyond)’ (p. 85). More often than not, these shows address contemporary environmental issues, giving them the visibility required to gather support for the changes they require in the food system. From the media’s perspective, however, a seminal characteristic of these communications is also, as Hollows demonstrates, a tendency to ‘communicate their responses to complex questions about food ethics and sustainability through emotion’ (p. 86), since audiences are invited to feel the chefs’ pain and empathise with the animals, farmers and producers shown on the show. The ethical questions – and chefs’ ethical branding which emerge through this process – are not surprising, given such programming operates within the parameters of neoliberal capitalism where solutions that align with the mainstream paradigm – in this case, that the environment must be saved – are given validity, and others are not. This is why the perspectives of other points of view presented in these shows (mothers who question chef’s supposed ethical shopping habits, for example) are often framed as immoral. As Hollows points out, this is in line with the devaluing of everyday feminine labour seen elsewhere through prioritising ‘care for’ (others), rather than ‘care about’ (the environment) (p. 93).
Apart from the representation of these central food problems borne by neoliberal capitalism itself (poverty, environment), Hollows finally turns to the two recent events that have preoccupied us in the last few years: Brexit and COVID, especially as ‘food has operated as a key mechanism for discussing aspects of Brexit and the pandemic’ (p. 147). The EU, in particular, has been imagined through the lens of food for decades, as the so-called Euromyths fuelled the Eurosceptic discourse reporting about bendy bananas, British fish and other foods that Brussels was set on destroying through regulation (e.g. our own work on the bendy banana and Euroscepticism, Irwin and Tominc, 2023). Negative representation of the EU through food continued after the 2016 referendum, especially in terms of how regulation was presented and discussed through a populist discourse, articulating ‘many key strands of anti-EU discourse’ (p. 151) that threaten not only British national identity but ethical consumption itself. In the case of Jamie Oliver, for example, who was highly vocal in many of these discussions, Hollows suggests that such positions should be seen in the context of his Europhilia and possible business interests, rather than an alignment with the right-wing discourse, as such a position could also be understood as. This, however, only further demonstrates the complexity of celebrity chef discourse in contemporary food media and its politics that strives to be on the right side of history in an increasingly volatile, neoliberal media sphere.
While Hollows’ new book is one of those books which is hard to do justice to in the space available, it is fair to say that this is the most authoritative overview of (UK) celebrity food media research available now, and it should therefore serve not only as a valuable review of the many complex positions in contemporary food media scholarship but also as a reminder that celebrity chef food media are never just about education for cooking and entertainment.
