Gettin’ Down Home With the Neelys: gastro-porn and televisual performances of gender,race, and sexuality

This article illuminates how performances of gender, race, and sexuality are integrated with representations of food and food performance in contemporary American cooking television. Interrogating the intersections of food, gender, race, sexuality, and performance, this essay explores how the cable-television show, Down Home with the Neelys, depicts a nouveau gastro-porn anchored in the perceived pornographic level of blackness itself. The author reveals the ways that food and performances of food become a medium of gendering and racialization employed by American popular media. Through the lens of reality television, shows like Down Home (re)produce a certain type of black heterosexuality and gendered enactments of domesticity and space, while challenging dominant televisual reflections of black love and labor. The author argues that the Neelys self-consciously employ a vernacular aesthetic performative of “down home” (a uniquely classed, temporally–spatially situated, and sexualized blackness) to exploit the phenomenon of gastro-porn in a highly lucrative performance that signals the entangled artifice of gender, race, and sexuality. More than offering culinary expertise and education, such cooking instruction reveals the pedagogy of gender, race, and sexuality as visual lessons of a complex and contradictory authenticity. This essay reveals television cooking shows as critical sites for considering the domestic laboring of gendered and racialized sexualities. In particular, shows like Down Home evince the ways that race continues to be rendered in visual terms and the enduring edibility of blackness.     

Beggar's Chicken

正This famous dish originates in the reign of Emperor Qianlong(1711-1799).The emperor,while travelling in the guise of an ordinary civilian,got lost in the wilds south of the Yangze River.A sympathetic beggar invited the emperor to share a humble meal,which later became famous as"beggar’s chicken".As the legend goes,the beggar stole a chicken while wandering around a village in Changshu County,Jiangsu Province.Since he had no cooking utensils,after killing and gutting the chicken,the beggar coated it with mud and straw     

广告文化中"自然"的意识形态化

"自然"这个原本作为自为存在的事物在广告文化中成了被大量操纵的能指符号用来推销产品,这同时也是重新塑造一个"自然"的过程,"烹调自然"与"回归自然"成了广告文化中两个重要的策略,而这种广告文化最终在改变着自然与人类之间的关系.这种广告文化对于"自然"与人类的关系影响巨大.     

Strong and Weak Gender Quota Regimes

A study of the introduction and adoption of gender quotas that does not examine both the interpretation of the problem and the process of implementation is insufficient. A gender quota regime may be promising in its formal features, without guaranteeing the intended results in more informal practices. Six criteria form the basis for a strong gender quota regime: (1) unambiguous and concrete goals, (2) rank order of candidates, (3) evaluations and adjustments of the regime, (4) information from superior authorities, (5) satisfactory implementation by the actors involved, and (6) control and sanctions. An evaluation of these six criteria presupposes the use of a variety of methodological approaches. The development of specific criteria for strong versus weak quota regimes makes it possible to identify both the weak points of the legislation and the failures of implementation. In addition, these criteria will contribute to comparative studies on gender quota regimes and supplement the work of cumulative research. This study applies the six criteria in order to evaluate the Norwegian gender quota regime in local politics and shows that even if four criteria are fulfilled the result is still not satisfactory. The practices of implementation among politicians at the local level as well as among the supervising bodies (county governors) vary. Different discourses create various practices that force or obstruct the implementation of gender balance.     

Mrs. Song＇s Fish Soup

正Mrs.Song was expert at cooking f ish soup.She lived in Bianjing(today’s Kaifeng in Henan Province),capital of the Northern Song Dynasty(960-1127).After the Northern Song collapsed following the invasion of the Nuchen people,and the ensuing Han regime,the Southern Song(1127-1279),moved its capital to Lin’an in Zhejiang Province,Mrs.Song and her family migrated with other patriotic citizens to the south,and settled down by the West Lake in Hangzhou to establish her own f ish soup stall.     

Qishan Saozi Noodles

正In the Han Dynasty(202BC-AD 220),when Emperor Liu Qi(188-141 BC)was on the throne,a farmer in Qishan County of Shaanxi Province married a woman of many talents.Clever and virtuous,she was also adept at needlework and cooking.One day she cooked noodles for her husband’s family.The flavorful,toothsome     

Narratives of progress: cooking and gender equality among Swedish men

Feminist food studies have repeatedly identified a dichotomy of ‘masculine’ self-oriented cooking as leisure and ‘feminine’ other and care-oriented foodwork (meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up after meals). However, recent research suggests that there is a great deal of variety and contradiction in men’s accounts of their cooking practices. For example, men may find cooking a tedious and stressful responsibility and foodwork a fatherly duty. This article draws on interviews with 31 Swedish men from 22 to 88 years of age, and explores stories about cooking and foodwork as part of their everyday lives and their life transitions and how these relate to broader notions of food and gender equality. The data illuminating the men’s stories can be synthesised into two narratives of progress: a narrative of progress in gender equality in Sweden, where men’s participation in household labour has become taken for granted, and a narrative of culinary progress among Swedish men in general and among some of the interviewed men themselves. We agree with previous scholars who have argued for a reconsideration of the simplistic picture of men’s cooking as only being for the self and for leisure. We further show how the men express foodwork as a self-evident responsibility, regardless of whether the men find it fun or not, and that a desirable masculinity is represented by a man whose cooking skills have progressed beyond the survival level and who is more gender equal than what are perceived to be less-progressive men from previous generations and foreign cultural backgrounds.     

“The Best Flavors of the Sea” Found at the Ritz-Carlton Beijing

正The award-winning Italian restaurant Cépe at the Ritz-Carlton Beijing,Financial Street is famous for its i ne northern Italian dishes.Davide Bacchi,Chef de Cuisine,embarks on a global voyage of the best l avors of the sea and abandons conventional cooking styles to reveal the true nature of food.Guests are still dazzled by his brandnew 2014"Inspired"menu.His new recommendations include French Fine de Claire oyster,Boston lobster,Alaskan King Crab and French Blue Mus-     

20世纪以前的南洋华侨在中外饮食文化交流中的作用

本文主要探讨了20世纪前南洋华侨在中国与东南亚地区之间的食料、食品以及饮食习俗等文化交流中的作用。一方面,华侨通过在南洋地区的生产活动,把中国的传统饮食传播到南洋地区;另一方面,华侨把大量南洋饮食物品传人中国。在中国与南洋地区的饮食文化交流中,南洋华侨发挥了巨大的作用,成为饮食文化交流的重要桥梁。     

尊重与保障：刑法如何介入行政法领域——从打击“地沟油”犯罪切入

《刑法》作为后盾法，应当尊重行政法律、法规和行政规范性文件，特别是国务院的规范性文件，否则将会在犯罪行为形式上指鹿为马，不适当地扩张法网。刑法与行政法都由全国人民代表大会或其常务委员会制定，因此“生而平等”，地位没有或者说不应有高下之分。制裁滥用刑法的行为，恰恰能够为充分发挥行政法的作用创造良好的条件。