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Cooking Class: Ideology, Identity and the Commodification of New Zealand in Annabel Langbein – The Free Range Cook

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 18:45 authored by Donald ReidDonald Reid
In the past decade reality TV genres, notably lifestyle television and makeover texts have been the focus of considerable academic analysis through a variety of theoretical constructs. On initial viewing, the Freemantle Media series Annabel Langbein – The Free Range Cook adheres to the conventions of a family-orientated cooking/lifestyle program. However this text, like other contemporary examples, accommodates a number of readings. Alongside the now well-versed argument that lifestyle texts function as governance, operating in conjunction with a range of policy and institutional mechanisms in a neoliberal environment in the development of disciplined and self-regulating subjects, the Free Range Cook is equally informed by the phenomenon of nation branding and the quest for authenticity in the simultaneously localized and globalized mediated world. Furthermore I argue that Annabel Langbein – The Free Range Cook is underpinned by neoliberalism as ideology. Here the text, overtly constructed as ‘lifestyle’, represents an idealized aspirational environment where the constant markers of domestic and national familiarity serve as duplicitous features in a touchable but unattainable world.

History

Publication title

MEDIANZ: Media Studies Journal of Aotearoa New Zealand

Volume

15

Pagination

78-95

ISSN

2382-218X

Department/School

School of Social Sciences

Publisher

University of Otago

Place of publication

New Zealand

Rights statement

Copyright 2015 the author Licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

The media

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