Many EYB Members are admirers of The Great British Bake
Off and the many cookbooks it has spawned. To its fans across the
pond, The Great British Baking Show (as it's known in the US) is a
polite yet entertaining reality cooking show. But the
show is far more than just another reality baking program,
Tom Whyman tells The New York Times
Magazine. Whyman contends that the show that
helps explain modern Britain.
He likens the show to a battle to define the nation's
identity. He points to a recent challenge between the current
season's three remaining contestants. (Spoiler alert for non-UK
viewers.) One of the contestants was "exactly the sort of
middle-class stay-at-home dad you might expect to win a national
baking competition that airs on the BBC." His competitors, however,
represented very different type of citizens: a gay doctor
whose parents are from India and a hijab-wearing woman of
Bangladeshi descent.
When the latter woman won the contest, Whyman noted that
pundits pounced on the win to expound on what it meant for the
country. "It was at this moment that I began to realize something,"
he said. "The Baking Show" doesn't just present a static, zombie
image of an ideal Britain that can never exist. It defines the
nation in a dynamic, living way. The outcome of the contest itself
decides the image that the country holds of itself. For the Britain
of today, it serves the function of an epic poem." And we thought
it was just a show about baking.