How the World Sees England

craner

Beast of Burden
Presumably if Atul Kochhar had made the same programme, then, it would've been alright?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The reason I wrote that was not necessarily to bait Baboon on his deployment of the category "white" but to make the point that I've seen Stein's programmes where he travels around cooking and he's invariably booked in to meet local top chefs and they never respond to him as if he's some bastard colonial invader come to steal their recipes, but always as an equal top chef. They just treat him like another talented human being in their field. That's the most important thing for them. Floyd got much more shit from Gaulish dragons in provincial kitchens in 1987 for trying to cook local peasant food, but nobody could claim that it had anything to do with colonialism.
 

droid

Well-known member
If historical accuracy is the aim, then surely an English Chef in India should be taking their food away, not learning how to cook it?
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Presumably if Atul Kochhar had made the same programme, then, it would've been alright?

The script would surely have been changed to something much less boisterously colonial in the absence of a white British presenter (and yeah, I think whiteness is important here) ... so, yep, it would have probably been better. Plus it'd likely have been more informative if presented by someone who actually lived in India for decades.

[I didn't see this bit int he show, but from a review I just found - "Stirring the odd drizzle of Indian history into the mix, Stein dutifully acknowledged the profound poverty in Kolkata and much of Bengal, even if some of his remarks at other points – about 'all the happy cheerful people' in India and never feeling threatened there “because everyone’s just getting on with life” – weren’t exactly out of the post-colonial handbook." !!]

But we're both in agreement that it's not necessarily Stein's fault that he's given such ludicrous stuff to read. And I'm sure the other chefs do treat him with respect, because that's his field of expertise. I made one of his recipes tonight in fact, and it was damn good.
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
well theres a lot of defensive (im sure hes a good chef and everything but who knew rick stein could inspire such passionate support?) angry posting in here. which is... interesting.

i never said stein was a 'colonialist', merely that he didnt seem to know anything about india that he hadnt learnt from someone writing about it during the colonial era. its almost as if nothing has happened of note since 1947. this *may* be specious thinking on my part about the whole series (ive not seen the whole thing) but it is what i watched, and if that doesnt sit well with you, well that says more about you than anything else.

yes, much of the programmes faults are simply those to do with genre, but that doesnt mean you have to just let the presenters off that lightly. and simply saying 'well i dont watch it for a history lesson', well i never said you should, but food has a history, and it is often one that can be related to external factors, and if you are doing a cooking programme that isnt simply about how to cook something (which i wish more cookery shows WERE about), then surely it is not expecting too much that a host of such a programme should know a thing or two about said food and its history. in fairness, stein's ignorance is somewhat benign, though im not sure this is really a particularly great thing.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I remember seeing Stein on some programme years ago, I think he was in Provence, somewhere on France's Med coast anyway. He was giving a piece to camera while on a boat with all these local fishermen and was talking with great enthusiasm about the amazing food "these mere, simple fishermen" create. Or words along those lines, at any rate. I think a couple of them were giving him a Look. It was pretty funny.
 

you

Well-known member
Sort of in reply to Baboon

Stein has the same producer as Keith Floyd. But Stein is, and I suspect this is a little pretentiousness on his part, more historic and political. He likes to quote a bit of literature and talk about history. He doesn't merely visit restaurants and top chefs and discuss food. His Venice to Istanbul series is a good example of this - he banged on about Marco Polo quite a bit. This, especially in a light BBC documentary format, can come off a little colonial... he wafts around, earnestly enthusing about local cuisines, and any historical content is woefully dated and glib... thus coming off a little 'linen'd-up patrician in exotic land'.

I do think he is dated though. He reminds me of Alan Patridge. He points at young chefs grinning and shouts 'I LIKE you!' He does say 'delish!' and 'yummo' a little too much (i.e. more than never). He also says, repeatedly, when self-satisfyingly quaffing Retsina 'what more could you want' which also makes me wince.

Nonetheless, I'd rather he attempted to bring in history however light and 'boisterously colonial' he appears rather than limiting his dialogue to just food and flavours. He does seem a little giddy and blinkered, like a pasty tourist, when he says that people are 'just getting on with life' but what else is he supposed to say in a small sound bite?

I've cooked a few of his things. I always feel they are missing something.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Maybe the reason we've got sidetracked by Rick Stein is because there's surely got to be a feeling amongst anyone who has grown up and been educated in British schools and watched British TV over the last 30 years that the British (and this is even if they know anything about it, as history teaching and its syllabus is such a moronic disaster) are anything BUT proud or comfortable with the colonial legacy. Cameron's comment comes in the slipstream of a trenchant Conservative historical revisionism that was turbo-charged by Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts, and their platform was treated as contentious and hotly disputed in British media and otherwise ignored, ridiculed or defamed in academic institutions. Now, I am not saying I am in their court on this, because I am not, but the reaction to them seemed to me to be loud and broad. The semi-educated British psyche is loaded with apologetics, not glorification, for Empire.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
For clarification, I meant the GCSE syllabus, not A-level, the latter being generally excellent.
 

droid

Well-known member
Greece, Cyprus, Kenya, Suez, Aden, Malaya, Northern Ireland, Falklands, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.

'Shame' implies regret, distaste, disavowal.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Well, that's my point, to the extent that anyone knows the details of these conflicts the reaction is certainly not "excellent, we kicked their ass, and delivered the benefits of British Empire!" Maybe more so, as those are all post- empire conflicts. If they're taught in schools, and I'm quite sure they aren't, it would be surprising and controversial if they were taught in the manner of triumph. I know that until last year the Middle East was taught at GCSE level and the main lesson that British children got from that was that the Israelis violently expelled Arabs from Palestine, which should surely please you. The declaration of war by all the surrounding Arab states on the new post-Holocaust Jewish state was not a factor at all.
 

droid

Well-known member
You misunderstand me. If the British were truly ashamed of their colonial past then these conflicts would not have happened - or continue to happen.
 

droid

Well-known member
I know that until last year the Middle East was taught at GCSE level and the main lesson that British children got from that was that the Israelis violently expelled Arabs from Palestine, which should surely please you. The declaration of war by all the surrounding Arab states on the new post-Holocaust Jewish state was not a factor at all.

Really? How was the violent expulsion of Arabs during the 1948 war covered without mention of the 1948 war?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Maybe the Falklands is the one exception, not much mainstream revisionism there. But with Iraq, for example, revisionism goes the other way, and I'm in a tiny minority making that case.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I don't know, ask the teachers. But my brother and my mother's next door neighbour's son were both surprised when I gave them the Israeli side of the argument, as if the expulsions had happened in isolation, and I was a bit concerned by that. Particularly as they had both passed the exams!
 

droid

Well-known member
There's also the grotesque and perennial displays of nationalism, the self aggrandisment...

No doubt there are many British people deeply ashamed of Britain's past and opposed to Britain's aggression, but the national character projected by British media and politics is a poor reflection of those sentiments, and scratch the surface of many 'liberals' and you'll find a union jack.
 
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