"Pressure," "embarrassment," "devastating": these are words that commonly season episodes of MasterChef. With the eleventh series of the popular competitive cooking show imminent, it will soon be time to don aprons and sharpen knives once again, as contestants create and plate dishes that involve so many more ingredients than just food. Shows like MasterChef have become "less about how to cook and more about how to live" (Naccarato and Lebesco 2012: 48). But I would take this one step further: they are about how to survive. On MasterChef, we often see fearful wide eyes and shaky hands carrying plates to Chef Gordon Ramsay and the other judges for reckoning. These are classic stress responses to attack, known as "fight-or-flight." When we feel our survival is being threatened, our body prepares in a range of ways. This makes for great television, where some of these reactions, such as contestants' sweaty brows, are highly visible. But we are privy to even those things that happen inside the body; individuals often talk about having racing hearts or feeling nauseated. Collectively, these are signs that the body is getting ready for action. These kinds of responses helped early humans to survive —they were meant for dealing with predators in the wild rather than assailants on MasterChef. Today, however, combat can come in a culinary variety. I found myself a little wide-eyed when watching the recent UK series Best Home Cook after one contestant declared, "This is my recipe so if they don't like this, it's a knife through the heart." Ouch. I was reminded of Halligan's (1990: 118) observation that "the process of turning right materials into stufffit to eat is a series of bloody battles" —we must pound, beat, whip, strip, boil, sear, grind, tear, crack, mince, mash, crush, stuff, chop. It seems that contestants not only do this to the food but to themselves. There is an emotional battle being played out. As a psychologist, I wonder: what feelings are those in the kitchen really trying to master?
展开▼
