Food satire in US TV comedy shows, animated sitcoms such as South Park, and Internet videos provides an outlet to reflect on social and cultural problems, including racism. It also offers a rather benign critique of the vices of the average American. After all, the viewers are the actual targets of satire: to understand and enjoy the jokes, they must at least be aware, if not be involved, in the practices ridiculed on screen.
The presence of food in short forms of contemporary audiovisual satire in the United States is growing: we can watch food-themed sketches in TV comedy shows, animated sitcoms such as South Park, and Internet videos. Although these media forms developed separately in different contexts and times, they now communicate with each other. They share references, create a common language, and influence each other. These visual representations of food aim at criticizing consumers choices and industry strategies in the United States, as well as the cultural and social dynamics that they reveal. Food issues, which were once often marginal, have become more central in both storytelling and representations since the beginning of the 21st century. Satirical writers and comedians continue providing criticism of the American infinite appetite for excessive consumption – an important theme in the popular culture of this country, of which it often reflected egalitarian and populist tendencies. However, they are now paying growing attention to new trends in food consumption, which they often interpret as the expression of not only identity, but also generational and social snobbery.
The advent of pay cable television and, most importantly, the launch of Comedy Central in 1991, offering programming exclusively dedicated to comedy and satire, have made a noticeable difference in the American media culture as well as in the sensitivity and expectations of viewers. The jokes are more direct, constantly shifting the acceptable threshold of vulgarity in terms of topics and language, and are aimed at all kinds of social issues. As a result, free national networks have also introduced satire into their programming to keep the interest of viewers (and, of course, of advertisers). TV satire on food-related topics developed a direct critique of the US economic system and its fierce consumerism, focusing on excessive quantities and portions, as well as the supposed lack of sophistication and cosmopolitanism of the average American. Apparently modeled on the narrative and visual structure of the sitcom, but actually destroying their thematic and ideological conventions, cartoon series such as The Simpsons, launched in 1989 on Fox (followed ten years later by Family Guy on the same channel) and South Park, which debuted in 1997 on Comedy Central, have clearly caught on the food theme.
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The characters of Homer Simpson in The Simpsons, Peter Griffin in Family Guy and Eric Cartman in South Park represent the throes of the American province: these characters are totally devoid of culture and sense of self-control, possessed by an unshakeable appetite that is at the origin of their corpulence, of which they are quite proud. They are constantly devouring the worst of what the US industrial food production offers, from donuts to soft drinks, without worrying about any health issues. From the formal point of view, all these cartoons tend to ignore realism and prefer to transform characters, moods, and objects into symbols and metaphors, allowing dialogues and narrative structures to unleash satirical jabs. The representations of dishes and food are also very stylized, while remaining well recognizable. Moreover, their function is not to accurately document American foodways, which spectators are already supposed to know, but rather to point their pitfalls. Hence the need for these cartoons to avoid any superior attitude, while expressing a certain benevolence and understanding towards the behaviors of their protagonists.
Food satire as a critique of the vices of the average American and the expression of deeper social and cultural problems, including racism, also emerged in variety skits within shows like Saturday Night Live, In Living Color, Mad TV and, more recently, Key & Peele on Comedy Central. Similarly, satirical political news programs, such as the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (1999-2015) and, since 2015, Trevor Noah, as well as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (broadcast since 2014), often comment on food-related news, especially to draw attention to urgent problems such as the power of large agribusiness groups, the environment, health, and obesity.
While this approach is still popular and appreciated, in recent years we can observe new food-related satirical topics that, reflecting profound cultural and social changes, ridicule recent trends in US eating habits, including the popularity of diets such as vegetarianism and gluten-free, the media coverage of chefs, the social role of restaurants and food stores, as well as the preference, among certain segments of consumers, for local, artisanal, and organic products. Not only the characters on screen but also the viewers themselves turn into targets of satire: to understand and enjoy the joke, they must at least be aware of, if not be involved in, the practices ridiculed by the shows. Rather than a strict form of social criticism, jokes become a way to reinforce the identity of gourmets obsessed with culinary media, while inviting them not to take themselves too seriously and to become aware of their own exaggerations.
This post is part of my essay Eat it, don’t tweet it: L’alimentation dans la satire vidéo aux États-Unis, published in the proceedings of the conference L’image Railleuse, organized by the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), France.