Fictionalization and commodification of the countryside in three cooking shows

Abstract

In this paper I employ qualitative methods, informed by interdisciplinary literature, to study the narrative and visual content of three instructive cooking shows River Cottage (from the UK), The Pioneer Woman (from the USA) and Food Country with Chef Michael Smith (from Canada) and their websites. I explain and exemplify the mechanisms employed in the construction of these programs as rural fictions, and I analyze them according to the three axes in which they coincide: (1) utilitarian vision of Nature, (2) idealization of rural life, and (3) its transformation into a gourmet product to be consumed (by tourists or visitors). Among the strategies used by such programs, I demonstrate that The Pioneer Woman is developed as a fiction, utilizing the American Frontier ideology and imaginary, and that Food Country with Chef Michael Smith is turned into a type of tourisfiction by using idealization and nostalgia for a bucolic Prince Edward Island. Finally, while the other is exotized in River Cottage, it is appropriated in The Pioneer Woman to construct the cowboy identity and lifestyle.