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Masterchef or Masterscript?
Claire was set up. Chocolate fondant and roast lamb! Of course she would choose the dish that was most comfortable for her yet beyond anyone's capability in the timeframe given. Why in the final did Callum’s assorted chicken dish receive a 9/10 and no comment against the subpar sausage? Adam had created a fresh concept dish (3 little pigs) and each component seemed to be cooked perfectly. Answer: we needed a suspenseful final, therefore to give Callum anything less would have created too much of an obvious winner in Adam. It's all in the script. We all love an underdog.
I started watching this show a week ago to see what all the fuss was about. After the first episode that I saw with the remaining seven contestants, I said to my wife “I bet that awkward looking guy will be in the final”. Why? We all love the underdog. Underdogs rate. Underdogs sell. Why do all the Princess stories work so well? Usually because the girl starts off as an underdog. Why do all the suspense thrillers work so well? Because we're all backing the underdog to undermine the powerful multinational conglomerates and bring about justice. Underdogs are what this show is all about.
Masterchef would have us believe that dreams come true and ordinary people can rise from the dust. We easily forget just how much orchestrating is done to create this illusion. The truth is Master Chef is not a level playing field. There is a script. The script is written to maximise our interest and characters are chosen, setup, eliminated, scored to flesh out that script. Once the set is built and the characters selected, the challenge for its creators is to orchestrate situations that will feed the script, careful editing then makes us believe that it's all happening naturally, unmolested. OK, there needs to be some flexibility, but just remember the underdog rates big, we all love the underdog and there was no greater underdog than Callum.
Underdog is not a bad thing. After all Jesus said, ‘the last will be first’. Underdog is written into our psyche. But what Jesus is talking about is a little different actually, he inverts the norms of our world. The disciples looked forward to a day when they would no longer be just dirty old fisherman but people sitting in places of honour with servants to run around for them. But Jesus was talking about submitting himself to a cruel and lonely death so that he could taste death for all of us. Service of others is greatness. At the end of the day it will be the Lord whose opinion matters most, not a bunch of TV personalities scoring a cleverly orchestrated TV show.
Look, I am not against shows like Masterchef. After all there is a welcome absence of violence, sex, coarse language and the whole family can watch. Though I am a little apprehensive of the upcoming involvement of 8 to 12-year-olds in Junior Masterchef. What will it do to the minds of children? If adults have trouble separating real from fiction, then how much more will children? I'm sure there will be good opportunities to discuss all kinds of things with my children. Children will probably learn lots of good things about food. They may even want to avoid fatty and sugary foods, though this seems unlikely given the type of food cooked on Masterchef so far. Unfortunately, I see enormous opportunities for the marketers to brand our children. I see advertising drooling at the unparalleled opportunities to win customers for life. I see the fangs of materialism biting into our kids, I fear their self worth plummeting in the wake of our growing obsession with celebrity, and I see kids being made into adults.
