Food and passion: technologies of self transformation in Jamie’s kitchen

Since the 1990s there has been a surge of televisual dramatisations of real-life cooking shows in industrialised countries (Versteegan 2010: 447). Through reality television cooking shows such as, MasterChef, Jamie 's Kitchen, Hell's Kitchen, viewers have encountered celebrity chefs, 'foodies', hospitality trainees, contestants, cooking competitions and customers. These shows have been understood as an indication of- and intervention into - contemporary consumption trends and as vehicles for social change. Many reality-based cooking shows have been regarded as educational, pedagogical sites that 'encourage populations to undertake surveillance of their own and others' bodies' and eating habits with messages like: 'You are what you eat!' or 'Organic is better' (Rich 2011: 3; see also Lewis 2007 and Chapter 4 in this book by Szkupinski-Quiroga, Sandlin and Redmon Wright).In this chapter we explore the reality television programme Jamie's Kitchen as a pedagogical site which seeks to transform young people's understandings about food, work and ultimately themselves. In 2002 the high-profile celebrity chef Jamie Oliver set out to transform a group of unemployed young Londoners into the enterprising, ideal workers of twenty-first century, :flexible capitalism.1 This process of transformation was represented in the enormously successful Channel 4 TV series Jamie's Kitchen.2 In Australia, we viewed the series, as it was screened on Channel 10 over five weeks during July and August 2003.

When the private becomes public: commodity activism, endorsement, and making meaning in a privatised world

The divide between the public realm and the private realm is a both a moveable and permeable boundary. One of the reasons for this fluidity as to what constitutes these two realms is driven by different political postures. From a neoliberal position, the private—be that private industry, the individual self, the engines of the economy—is better able to produce the Benthamite characterisation of happiness for the greatest number. In contrast, from a socialist to social democratic position, an expanded public disbursement of commonwealth is seen to produce a more equitable, just, and ultimately happy society. Somewhere between these two extremes is a regulated marketplace which more or less describes the organisation of most Western polities.This paper investigates a relatively new form of public activism that, in a sense, emerges from a cultural condition of the ascendancy of the privatisation of politics and culture. Commodity activism, as it is now called by researchers, begins with a politics of the marketplace and turns it into a normative position or posture related to the public sphere. This kind of politics has emerged from consumer movements that have a long history of turning the private into the domain of the public through boycotts, forms of usually negative publicity, and an active engagement of appropriating the key identity of “privatisation,” which is that of the consumer, and re-politicising it into something akin to a form of active citizen. The paper is a study of this changing of the private into the public and how this process relies on the concept of endorsement—particularly high-profile celebrity figures who have gained their power as individuals in this privatised space and now use that form of power for other purposes—in order to gain attention and circulation in this now privatised public sphere.

The celebrity persona pandemic

The Celebrity Persona Pandemic explores how the construction of a public persona is fetishized in contemporary culture. As social media has progressively led to a greater focus on the production of the self, so this book looks at the most visible versions of persona through figures such as Stephen Colbert, Cate Blachett, and Justin Bieber, as well as fictional characters like Spock and Harry Potter. Ultimately, P. David Marshall closely studies how persona culture shapes our notions of value and significance, and dramatically shifts cultural politics.

Celebrating transgressive celebrity : Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt (born Sara-Marie-Henriette Bernard, 1844-1923) was the most famous actress of the late nineteenth century. Celebrated for her golden voice, for her use of the spiral as the building block for movement on the theatrical stage, for an innovative use of costume and jewellery, for her patronage emerging artists, and for the business acumen that saw her fast become a household name across the globe, she was the progenitor of celebrity as we know it today. This article explores the ways in which her achievements can be considered 'dangerous' today.

Sexy women sports fans: femininity, sexuality, and the global sport spectacle

In recent years the relationship between women and sport fandom has undergone significant shifts. The rapidly changing sphere of global sport is seen to offer women newly visible roles in the global sport economy as fans, broadcasters, celebrity athletes, and media personalities. In light of calls for greater inclusivity and diversity in sport, this paper examines the emergence of new forms of “sexually empowered” female fandom, which situate women as active participants in the sporting spectacle. Whereas sexy women who followed men’s sport or male athletes were once derided as “groupies,” thus socially marginalised and excluded from identification with sport fan communities, I argue that the sexy sport fan has emerged in the context of post-feminism as a visible and necessary type of feminine fan identity to meet the needs of the global sport economy. This study extends feminist sport media analysis beyond its focus on how female athletes are represented whilst also contributing new insights to sport fan research by analysing how female supporters are constructed through mediated accounts in terms of gender, sexuality, and nation.