Janet CollinsMasterChef – not just about cooking
July 23rd 2009 07:00
The success of the recent television series, MasterChef, does a lot more than tell us just how much we all love food. It reveals more about how Australia is changing – or has changed – more than anything else.
It was a reality show without the nastiness. Gone was the cruel, offensive and malicious behaviour that dominated some of its predecessors. Remember Big Brother?
I couldn’t stand that show mostly because to me it was utterly boring. Watching a handful of people hang around a house and fight with each other just isn’t my type of entertainment. What made it unbearable was the whole purpose of each show – to have audiences boot someone out of the house.
Maybe it was so popular at the time because this type of attitude dominated Australian society at the time. Anyone who had been working during the 80s at least would have to have recognised the change in the last few decades. A dog-eat-dog mentality swallowed up not only corporate Australia but just about every work area, school, university and college.
Ask any person who works from home today what the best thing is about working this way and the answer will nearly always be that they don’t have to deal with politics at work all day long anymore. The hundreds of cases of workplace bullying that have made their way into the news over the past few decades is more proof of a work culture that has gone way out of control.
The cases of school bullying seem to increase by the week and only yesterday there was a story of a young girl who committed suicide after being bullied on the internet.
The success of Big Brother at the time and the succession of additional series of the show afterward reflected what I thought at the time was an ugly trait of a capitalist country. Cruelty seemed to have become a trait to be honoured. It was something that seemed obligatory to reality television producers for some time after that.
I would have thought publicly condemning people was something that belonged to an era long ago when people were mean and heartless - more like something you would find in a Charles Dickens novel. It seemed at odds to what many commentators would call the new sophisticated Australia.
If anyone thinks that is some sort of exaggeration, then just think of one reality show that was popular after Big Brother. It was You’re Fired.
The resounding success of MasterChef restores my faith in Australians becoming a little more decent. For those who missed it or those who don’t live in Australia, MasterChef was a reality television series that bought a lot of average joes with a passion for food but no professional cooking experience in to compete on air. There were professional chef judges and the tenth episode was the play off.
It was a competition, of course, but it went ahead without the nastiness. Even as contestants dropped out, it was done with courtesy and respect. The reward for Channel Ten and the producers was the resounding success of the series.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the final episode that went to air on Sunday had some 3.7 million viewers. To put that in some perspective, this final episode where Julie Goodwin defeated Poh Ling Yeow in the grand final has now made MasterChef the highest rating non-sport program since 2001.
While programmers may think it’s the food that brings people together, it is probably much more likely that people are just fed up with nastiness and bullying on TV. Food is certainly something that is popular but the producers certainly did a good job of keeping it all just good, clean fun. It has restored my faith in human nature.
Sourced: MasterChief website; www.smh.com.au
Image credit: www.smh.com.au.
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Comment by Wilson Pon
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i think its because you can learn something about cooking as you watch, and because the contestants were actually producing something: food
i also love Project Runway (foxtel) for the same reason
Comment by Janet Collins
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They certainly were doing something - a bit of a change from some of those other reality shows. I like some of the singing/dancing shows too.....but the ones where they just hang around...no thanks.
I don't have Foxtel so I don't know about Project Runway...what do they do on that one?