Reconstruction 10.4 (2010)
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Making over Myth: The Rhetorical Use of the Puritan Conversion Narrative in Kitchen Nightmares / Joseph Bowling
Keywords: Culture Studies, Rhetoric, Television and Film
<1>John Rodden, in his analysis of the rhetoric of narrative in 1984, argues that the characters in the story are secondary to the narrative, which itself participates in and provides support for larger cultural myths (155). Though Rodden discusses overtly fictive literature, the same can be said for the simulacra of reality TV: a genre of television in which each episode follows a formula that obscures the individual contestants. The Fox reality television show Kitchen Nightmare is such a formula-driven show, one with rhetorical narrative structure. The show, which portrays a struggling restaurant owner saved by a professional chef, simulates reality, but mediates the simulation through the traditional Puritan conversion narrative, a tradition that utilizes the Christian salvation myth. The use of the traditional narrative and its supporting myths, however, transforms the narrative of Kitchen Nightmares into a rhetorical performance that enforces the value system of a capitalist ideology.
<2>After surveying the function and purpose of Puritan conversion narratives, reviewing how secular ideologies have made use of Christian myths, and contextualizing the makeover subgenre of reality TV, I will show how the Puritan conversion narrative and Christian mythology becomes a terministic screen for Kitchen Nightmares, both highlighting the show's rhetorical purpose while also creating a “group fantasy” within which audiences can participate. The terministic screen transforms Kitchen Nightmares' simulation of reality into a contemporary conversion narrative in which the restaurant owner's personal value is conflated with his or her restaurant's success, thus reinforcing a traditional capitalist value system that equates spiritual virtue with financial value. In this rhetorical performance of the conversion narrative, Kitchen Nightmares appropriates the theological scheme of conversion to a capitalist ideology, replacing Christ with Gordon Ramsay and sinner with a failing restaurant owner, equating the state of the restaurant with the owner's spiritual state in order to retell a quintessentially American myth.
The Puritan Conversion Narrative
<3>In order to demonstrate the cultural significance of Hell's Kitchen, first the purpose and function of the Puritan conversion narrative must be understood. Though this genre as an early American literary tradition did not begin until the publication of famous preacher's journals and certain “spiritual autobiographies,” the genre began as an oral tradition, starting as performances held in churches in front of a community. These performances contained three aspects, as Patricia Caldwell has outlined in her study of the tradition: first, the speaker presented “a living experience of the heart”; second, the audience listened actively, engaging in a “spiritual act . . . of hearing”; and finally, the church, the “establishment,” received “a guarantee of the purest possible membership” (46-7). Within this scenario, the speaker would be either new to the community, a convert from another denomination, or an individual of questionable repute; thus, before a Puritan church would accept him or her into its flock, the individual had to give testament to the fact that he or she was truly converted. Based on the performance, the audience, consisting of the entire congregation, would assess the genuineness of the performance, judge the spiritual condition of the convert, and either accept or reject the convert by taking a communal vote (46). Finally, the church would engage in a “covenant” with the convert and confirm his or her conversion depending upon the congregation's decision. Out of this practice, the conversion narrative became a private and public political act for a convert, an attempt at gaining access to an exclusive organization, and a form of entertainment and voyeurism for the congregation, gazing into the privacies of the convert's experience.
<4>The convert’s personal story had to fit conventional expectations of the audience in order to win acceptance from the congregation. Here the salvation myth becomes important: the congregation looked not for genuine sincerity nor for verisimilitude, but instead they came to a decision based on how well the convert followed the established, traditional narrative structure, also known as the “morphology.”[1] Puritan theology asserted a singular path of true conversion and reception of Christ's grace, the individual possession of which was, as Daniel B. Shea asserts, what the convert had to prove. Therefore, “the autobiographical act is reduced to testifying that one's experience has conformed, with allowed variations, to a certain pattern of feeling and behavior” that aligns with the theological morphology of conversion and reception of grace (91).
<5>However, returning to Caldwell's triad of actors involved within the performance, Shea's analysis only applies to the “public” aspect of the performance. In his study of the conversion narratives of Puritans in England—who created the precedent later American Puritans would follow—D. Bruce Hindmarsh argues that the performance of the conversion narrative served a secondary, personal function: it integrated the individual into a larger scheme, fitting him or her into a structural metanarrative. Indeed, Hindmarsh argues that the morphology became a “syntax” that converts had to carefully parse. This larger structure turned into what was known as “the golden chain” (35). The narrative structured “provided a complete theory of conversion that one could compare with one's own experience,” turning it into “a map for the spiritual geography of the soul” that allowed “an individual to describe his or her own sense of spiritual inwardness, and to understand how this interiority changed through time and in the midst of crisis” (37). Therefore, the private function of the Puritan narrative was to structure the convert's understanding of his or her experience as a Christian, to establish within him or her theological values, and, ultimately, to achieve “a well-ordered and integrated sense [of self]” within the community (38). The performance of the narrative positioned the convert not only into the social structure of the Puritan church, but its psychical structure.
<6>Puritan theologians and ministers have diagrammed the morphology differently, but all share a basic two part structure, containing conviction and repentance (Shea 100).[2] Even the most complex morphologies, such as Puritan theologian William Perkin's ten step conversion process, can still be understood through Shea's simpler formulation (37). This conviction-repentance narrative structure contains a change of mind and heart that is essential for the conversion narrative: the converted individual must first realize his or her sinful state and thereafter willfully make the changes to repent and become acceptable according to the standards of God. The various morphologies merely outline precisely how the process occurs.
<7>In a sermon on conversion that became essential to Puritan narratives, Luther provides a key for understanding how change occurs:
First a man must be taught by the lay to know himself, so that he may learn to sing...Now once a man has thus been humbled by the law and brought to the knowledge of himself, then he becomes truly repentant; for true repentance begins with fear and with the judgment of God. He sees that he is such a great sinner that he cannot find any means to be delivered from his sin by his own strength, effort, or works...Now he begins to sigh: “Then who can come to my aid?” Terrified by the law, he despairs of his own strength; he looks about and sighs for the help of the Mediator and Savior.”...This is the beginning of Salvation. (qtd. In Caldwell 59)
According to Luther, what is central to the conversion narrative—and central to the rhetorical narrative of Kitchen Nightmares—is the miraculous intercession of Christ, a supernatural and metaphysical force, within the life of the convert. As Shea pointed out, it is grace from God, his influence on the believer's life, that the performance of the conversion narrative proves. Emphasizing grace as the central value for converts rhetorically forces the individual to recognize his or her contradictory state of being: the convert is both incurably sinful and must rely on an external force for aid, yet that convert must also take control of the situation and perform acts of repentance. Politically, this means the Puritan convert must realize the superiority of the church and actively abandon his or her own will for its will. This process of integration occurs whenever an individual must participate within a grander narrative and sublimate personal history to a master narrative, moving from individual sinner to a member of Christ’s body, such as is the case in Kitchen Nightmares, in which a contestant moves from self-willed failing business owner to following the revisions of Gordon Ramsay.
<8>The Puritan conversion narrative operated as publicly performed rhetoric with several key functions: first, to prove the spiritual worth of the convert; second, to demonstrate the convert's coherence to a prescriptive morphology; third, to provide the individual with a value system; and fourth, to prove that individual's reliance upon a force greater than him or herself. The conversion narrative and its rhetorical goals, however, are not limited to the Puritan tradition; Kitchen Nightmares makes use of it in much the same way other areas of secular culture, particularly business, make use of other Christian mythic traditions.
Myth and Makeover TV
<9>The Puritan conversion narrative is founded primarily on the central salvation myth of the Christian religion, but the salvation myth itself contains a complex of concomitant myths, such as the myth of the chosen people, the myth of individual grace, and the myth of divine providence. While other myths have certainly grown around the salvation myth, these three are not only important to the salvation process but have also been vehicles of expression for the cultures in which each developed. Robert Bellah observes that “It is the role of symbols and myths at the level of personal life both to stimulate and mobilize psychic energy and to provide form and control for it” (63). Bellah’s comment provides the guiding interpretive factor for my understanding of myth’s relationship with culture: as the Puritans encoded the personal narrative in order to cull out “false Christians,” the myths provided the material from which that code could be written, thus changing both the culture and subsequently the myth itself. But we must expand Bellah’s comments beyond the personal and psychic and include the societal and the economic.
<10>Bellah himself offers an example of the reciprocal transformation of myth, the salvation myth specifically, and culture that occurred during the eighteenth century. Utilizing Blake’s theory of “single vision,” which interprets all perceived phenomena as inherently rational and explainable, Bellah reiterates the tradition of the self-made man that Benjamin Franklin fostered but interprets it as the secularization of the salvation myth (72-73). Whereas orthodox Christianity attributes to salvation a dual aspect, spiritual and physical blessing, Franklin’s self-made salvation is only physical, though he casts his language within the same rhetorical and mythical tradition of Christianity. Scientific and technological advances, the perception of the world as machine, replaced the former Christian metaphysical basis for the myth.
<11>Richard T. Hughes notes the next manifestation of the salvation myth in American culture after Benjamin Frankin, locating it within the “Gospel of Wealth” movement. After the North's victory over the South in the Civil War, Northerners invoked the myth of the chosen nation, ascribing their success to God's will (128). As a result,
Many northerners viewed the wealth of the northern states as God's reward for national righteousness, [and] it was a very short step to apply that understanding to the wealth of individuals. Many, therefore, came to view the wealth of the barons of industry as God's reward for individual righteousness. Likewise, if many viewed southern poverty as God's curse on the South for the institution of slavery, they also came to view the poverty of the masses in northern cities as God's curse for laziness and immorality. (128)
The use of myth to achieve nationalistic and economic ends not only fostered the context for Horatio Alger's famous novels of self-made men, but it also introduced an explicit alliance between capitalism and Christianity. Hugh reports that, in a 1901 sermon, William Lawrence stated that “In the long run, it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes” (qtd. In 129); Russell Conwell told his Baptist followers in Philadelphia that “It is your duty to get rich” (qtd. In 129); and finally, Henry Ward Beecher condemned the poor, stating that “no man in this land suffers from poverty unless it be more than his fault—unless it be his sin” (qtd in 130). The comments of these ministers demonstrate how the evolution of American culture is closely tied to Christian myth, and how the former makes use of the latter to justify its activity.
<12>Bellah, summarizing the transformation of the salvation myth from its Puritan to its nineteenth-century iteration, states that “the stress was on a change of will rather than a radical rebirth, on man's capacity to reform himself rather than the need for death to self and new birth in Christ” (75). Religious and secular leaders alike used the religious language and rhetoric of Christian myth to express a secular, capitalist ethic. Thus, as Jeffrey Louis Decker observes, within the rhetoric of capitalism grew a Christian language: Andrew Carnegie, borrowing from Christian concepts of morality, describes how one must reform one's own poverty and become rich through both moral character, comprised of honesty and integrity, and market pluck, a combination of hard work and determination (3). Whereas moral character is obviously Carnegie's explicit borrowing of religious language to describe the morality of the successful capitalist, market pluck is a more subtle secularization of the doctrine of God's grace. Consistent with Bellah's observation, Carnegie merely removed the double vision of the divine in the concept of grace and attributed what was formerly God's providence to the free market.
<13>The Puritan conversion narrative has developed along the same lines as the salvation myth—indeed, the salvation myth is central to it—but neither Bellah, Hughes, nor Decker includes a discussion or even a mention of the conversion narrative. One example of the narrative's development from its original Puritan to its contemporary usage is Charles W. Colson's Born Again, in which he relates his conversion to evangelical Christianity after his implication in the Watergate Scandal. Charles Griffin has noted Colson's use of the conversion narrative in order to authenticate conversion to Christianity to a skeptical public, garnering sympathy and forgiveness from the same American public against which he sinned (153). Born Again represents only one of many such contemporary autobiographies that continue in the tradition of the spiritual autobiography and conversion narrative, but does so while both engaging in the same use of Christian myth while also secularizing it. But with the fall in popularity of the published book and the rise of television the expression of the conversion narrative and its myths likewise evolve. The conversion narrative now manifests itself in the makeover subgenre of reality TV.
<14>Kitchen Nightmares does not fit neatly into any single subgenre of reality TV programming, but it aligns itself most closely with the makeover TV genre. In his study of reality TV, Richard M. Huff defines makeover TV programs as those programs that tell stories of transformations, fairytales that “offer things people could not have in their normal lives if it were not for the reality shows” (69). He adds that the subgenre always features an expert who conducts the makeover, a narrative convention that grew out of advice-giving talk shows. The genre began in 1945 with Queen for a Day, a show that required contestants to confess their financial hardships in order to win the support of an applauding audience. Clearly the aspect of public spectacle present within the Puritan conversion narrative is also present from the beginning of makeover TV, but since then the subgenre has exemplified a more complex adoption of traditional American and Christian myths. Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn suggest that “such television confession is a secular service that supplants or supplements religion and taps into a current desire to unburden the self of its anguish” (103). I would suggest that instead of supplanting or supplementing, reality TV as a medium adopts the desire to unburden from the medium of the public Puritan confession. How reality TV mediates the desire has evolved since Queen for a Day.
<15>In her study of makeover TV, Brenda R. Weber provides a more theoretically robust definition of the subgenre than Huff:
In these mediated transformation texts [the makeover show, the body stands as the gateway to the self. Importantly, it is not jsut the physical body altered through plastic surgery, weight loss, or style,but the symbolic body represented by rooms, cars, or kids that functions as the key that will unlock the self. On makeover TV, that which is subject to change marks the site of the emerging self. (5)
The limitation to Weber's study, however, is that she excludes from the possible “symbolic bodies” any discussion of business, nor does she contextualize the significance of bodily transformation: a tradition firmly rooted in the Christian tradition. On the other hand, Michelle Lelwica demonstrates the connection between weight loss rhetoric and the Christian salvation myth, a connection that emphasizes how a discussion of bodily transformation must take into consideration the body as a site of both physical and spiritual change, especially in American culture. Although Weber does not mention Christian’s involvement in makeover TV, Lelwica shows its importance in narratives of transformation. Just as the early twentieth-century “gospel of welath” movement mapped Christian myth onto secular capitalism first through preaching and then through self-help books, so do current makeover TV shows map spiritual transformation onto the physical, whether explicitly or implicitly.
<16>Perhaps most important from Weber's definition, however, is her comment that the process of bodily transformation, whether literal or symbolic, allows for an “unlocking” of the self. This belief is obviously at play in Puritan conversion narratives, in which the convert confesses his or her acceptance and acquisition of God's will, and it likewise manifests just as obviously in makeover TV, in which the contestants' bodies are reformed with the aid of a professional into “iterations of idealized bodies” (Weber 13). Unique to Kitchen Nightmares is its explicit connection between business, symbolic body, and business owner, real body; both the symbolic and the real body reaches idealization through the help of Gordon Ramsey. Thus the program constructs a narrative that ties together the capitalist value-system underlying reality TV and the myth of Christian salvation and self-reformation.
<17>While Kitchen Nightmares most easily fits the definition of a makeover TV show, the makeover subgenre is either parallel to or derivative from a subgenre Gareth Palmer identifies as “lifestyle TV,” the investigation of which will further enlighten our understanding of Kitchen Nightmares. Although Palmer specifies that lifestyle TV tends to feature narratives of trauma, he notes that at the climax of the narrative is “the reveal,” the moment “when the contestants get to see what transformations have been effected in their home/face/wardrobe” (174); he continues, “transformation is clearly at the heart of lifestyle television” (174). Both revelation and transformation are also conventions of makeover TV, both are central to the narrative of Kitchen Nightmares, and both are parallel to the structure of the Puritan conversion narrative. That they all share these two conventions makes sense. The process of transformation displays the reshaping of the self, while the reveal is a theatrical performance of process effect, a legitimization of the process. Perhaps the difference between makeover TV and lifestyle TV is that the former emphasizes the reveal while the latter emphasizes the transformation process.
<18>If this classification is accurate, then Gay Hawkins argument that lifestyle television is “deeply implicated in shaping our ethical sensibilities” provides an important aspect to our study (413). Inasmuch as Kitchen Nightmares fits into both the makeover and lifestyle subgenres, its focus is ethical. Indeed, Annette Hill argues that all such programs are inevitably ethical: “Stories about home improvement or acute ill health are constructed in such a way that they implicitly or explicitly address viewers about good and bad ways to live their lives, and good and bad ways to care for themselves and other people” (133). Kitchen Nightmares, as I will show, is entirely about ethics and conflates the categories of personal and business ethics.
<19> Kitchen Nightmares is unique as a makeover or lifestyle reality TV program in that each program reforms both a real and a symbolic body: the business owner and the business, respectively. Huff reports only one previous makeover TV program that featured a business as the symbolic body, Taking over Business, but he quickly dismisses the show, which last for only a season (76). Furthermore, in her “Makeover Videography,” Weber leaves out Kitchen Nightmares and its first British iteration, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. It is odd that Kitchen Nightmares, occupying a unique position within the makeover TV subgenre, has not received critical attention; for in its narrative structure and use of conventions intersect the Christian and capitalist ideologies already adumbrated: the unsuccessful business owner as sinful Christian, failing business as corrupt works, and Gordon Ramsay, the embodiment of capitalistic right-reason, as savior.
Kitchen Nightmares and the Morphology of Conversion
<20>In Kitchen Nightmares, the host, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, intervenes in a failing restaurant's business operations to turn it around and improve its sales, quality, and popularity. Fox's official website provides an outline for each show:
Each week, Chef Ramsay will attempt to turn one ordinary and empty restaurant into the most popular, sought-after venue in town. He reveals the behind-the-scenes realities of running a restaurant and wastes no time getting down to business implementing signature menu items, updating dated décor and making the restaurant run as smooth as possible. With his reputation on the line, Ramsay accepts nothing less than the best when it comes to the food, staff and customer service (“About”).
In other words, chef Ramsay must put a restaurant and restaurant owner through a conversion process. As will be shown, this narrative structure first parallels the Puritan morphology of conversion and likewise enacts a rhetorical performance that first sells Gordon Ramsay's persona to the viewing audience. Secondly, and more importantly, the structure participates within a salvation myth, in which the audience can participate in the conversion process of the restaurant owner and along with him or her accept a capitalist value system that conflates spiritual virtue with financial value. In order to show how Kitchen Nightmares utilizes the conversion narrative, the show's basic narrative structure will be broken down and the progression of its narrative units, comparable to Levi-Strauss' mythemes, will be analyzed to reveal how they serve as a christian-turned-capitalistic rhetoric.
<21>Each episode follows the same formulaic narrative structure; thus for the sake of this study, I will analyze a recent episode, one that typifies in its structure all. This episode, the ninth of season three, features a “combative” restaurant owner who at first resists Gordon Ramsay's help to save her struggling Italian restaurant, “Anna Vincenzo's.”[3] Please see Table 1 for a breakdown of the narrative development with a cross-reference to the Puritan conversion morphology provided.[4]
Table 1
Outlines and comparison of the narrative structure of Kitchen Nightmares and the Puritan conversion narrative.
| Kitchen Nightmares | Puritan Conversion | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Narrative Structure | Mytheme | Action | Mytheme | Action |
| Conversion Begins | 1. Owner Intro. | Narrator provides background of owner. | ||
| 2. The Meeting | Ramsay meets restaurant staff and owner. | 1. Contrition | “Man should look into the Law of God and make an examination of his life and state according to the Law.” | |
| 3. First Trial | Ramsay tests the food and owner's character. | 2. Humilation | “Conviction of conscience by which seeker realizes that he is under sin.” | |
| 4. Second Trial | Ramsay inspects kitchen and watches the owner manage the kitchen. | 3. Vocation | “Despair of salvation, in respect to strength of self and other creatures.” | |
| Repentance Begins | 5. Gives up Control | Ramsay shuts restaurant down and owner admits she is unable to run it. | 4. Implantation | “True humiliation of heart, grief and fear because of sin. Confession.” |
| 6. Humbling Process | Ramsay tells owner all that she is doing wrong. | 5. Exaltaion | “First entrance into the state of saving grace.” | |
| 7. Renewal | Ramsay redesigns restaurant décor and menu. | |||
| 8. Public Performance | Anna Vincenzo's hosts community event and then reopens with new restaurant and menu. | 6. Presence | “Awareness of presence of faith.” |
Source: Campbell, Donna M. "Forms of Puritan Rhetoric: The Jeremiad and the Conversion Narrative." Literary Movements. Web. 18 April. 2010
a. This table is a composite of my own analysis of Kitchen Nightmares as well as the morphology of conversion outlined in Donna Campbell's summary of the genre. I borrow the term “mytheme” from Claude Levi-Strauss not to invoke his structuralist method of analysis, but only as a convenient designator for smaller, distinguishable narrative units that comprise a larger narrative.
The Rhetoric of Narrative in Kitchen Nightmares
<22>As can be seen by Table 1, the narrative of “Anna Vincenzo's” follows the Puritian morphology closely with few variations. The appropriation of the Puritan narrative to the contemporary medium demonstrates two qualities of the show: first, the Puritan narrative and Christian myth become a terministic screen that uses the rhetoric of the narrative to instill a capitalist ethic in its viewers; secondly, the way the rhetoric of “Anna Vincenzo's” is performed as an arranged representation of reality parallels the rhetorical performance of the converted Puritan and reinforces the capitalist value system inasmuch as the narrative becomes what Ernest Bormann calls the “group fantasy.” Significant here is not the direct correlation between Kitchen Nightmares and any specific conversion morphology, for I do not claim that the show or its writers are consciously using the tradition. Instead, the terministic screen reveals how the show taps into a master narrative and the supporting myths we have used to define American-ness.
<23>In the same way that Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography adapted the spiritual autobiography tradition to express Franklin’s secular ethic of the self-made man, and in the same way the proponents of the gospel of wealth combined the salvation myth with capitalist ideology, so does Kitchen Nightmares—perhaps the makeover subgenre itself—tap into the same mythic tradition. The task of this study then is to analyze how the show engages the myths, performs the rhetoric of Puritan conversion narrative, and shapes the ethical sensibility of its audiences. Doing so illuminates how mythic traditions underly cultural institutions—high and low—though the traditions evolve according to the medium and the rhetorical situation. Because of their collective nature, myths serve as a vocabulary through which ideologies can persuasively articulate themselves.
<24>In his work, Language as Symbolic Action (1966) Burke explains his theory of the terministic screen, arguing that “any given terminology is a reflection of reality, [and] by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality” (45). Continuing, Burke explains that all rhetoric employs a terministic screen through which an object is represented; that object, however, is modified according to the terminology: for example, figurative language that uses religious metaphors would represent an object or situation differently than if economic metaphors were used (49). Therefore, all acts of rhetoric possess such a screen that highlights or hides certain qualities in order to achieve its intended effect.
<25>By analyzing the terministic screen, comprised in this case of traditional Christian and American myths, We can demonstrate how the show utilizes the morphology of conversion: Kitchen Nightmares takes on the traditional conversion narrative and its requirement of one to perform according to a script, an aspect of the Puritan tradition that Shea, Hindmarsh, Caldwell, Morgan, and Bercovitch all argue is central to American identity.[4] Thus the show taps into an essential aspect of the construction of identity, an aspect it shares with makeover TV. Weber notes that the goal of makeover TV programs is to “[shape] the desires and practices of transforming subjects so that both men and women talk of fully participating in scripts of bourgeois heteronormativity through romance, marriage, children, and middle-brow careers” (13). The idea of performing according to a script and the mythological conventions underlying both remain the same between the chronologically disparate conversion and makeover narratives; only the specifics of the script itself, the content of normativity, has changed, moving from a christocentric ethic toward a capitalist ethic.
<26>From the beginning of the show, the restaurant owner, Cici, tells the audience that “I'm a failure. I'm afraid we're going to lose our house, I'm afraid we won't be able to feed the baby. I have a weight on my shoulder that weighs a thousand pounds—and that kills me. Chef Ramsay is my last hope” (“Anna Vincenzo's”). This introduction initially conflates spiritual and moral value of the restaurant owner with the relative success or failure of her restaurant by equating the success of the restaurant with her success as a mother. More interesting is the language she uses: Ramsay is set up as a messiah figure to “save” Cici, her family, and her restaurant, all through his professional advice.
<27>June Deery's analysis of reality television argues that “it capitalizes on current negotiations between what is public and viewable and what is private and closed to outside view, succeeding best when it manages to forcibly exteriorize the interior. This is accomplished by and for money” (2). In the case of Kitchen Nightmares, Cici's “interior,” her status as a failing mother, becomes a public drama, like the spiritual conversion of a Puritan, through its association with her “exterior” financial condition. Making the interior public follows both the structure of the conversion narrative as well as Weber’s breakdown of the makeover formula: it is the moment of contrition and humiliation, the “initial shaming of the pre-made-over ‘ugly’ subject” (31). Public spectacle not only makes the owner seem more real to the audience, but it also provides an opportunity to expose the sins that Ramsay must eliminate. By conflating the interior and exterior, Kitchen Nightmares' narrative allows for a capitalist critique of one's interior virtue according to external value.
<28>To further reinforce this value system, the narrative tension builds as Gordon Ramsay puts Cici through a series of trials—similar to those within the humiliation stage of the Puritan convert’s narrative—in order to expose the “sinful” state of Cici and her irresponsible management practices. Through mythemes three and four, Ramsay applies pressure to Cici during a dinner service, criticizing her performance as the kitchen manager until Cici finally admits, “It's a disaster. I've had it. I'm finished. I'm done” (“Anna Vincenzo's”). Up to this point, Cici's employees have been making such comments as, “Cici always seems to point the finger in the other direction. She never thought to point the finger at her own self,” further reinforcing the interior/exterior conflation established at the beginning of the show. These comments make the audience see Cici as an immature, impatient, and unkind human being, moral traits the show presents as the causes for her failure as a restaurant owner.
<29>These comments and their portrayal of Cici as sinner build up to Cici's important confession. The terministic screen of the conversion narrative represents Cici's confession of defeat as the most rhetorically significant moment in the narrative, parallel to that moment in the Puritan morphology when the sinner acknowledges his or her helplessness and requires grace from Christ. Herein Cici experiences “true humiliation of heart, grief and fear because of sin” (Campbell). Her sin, however, has not been the transgression of any holy law, but instead the transgression of capitalist law: she has been a bad business owner. Furthermore, this moment becomes a fulfillment of her earlier statement that Ramsay would be her only hope. Inasmuch as Ramsay occupies the place of Christ within the narrative of Kitchen Nightmares, he is the expert-mentor. Palmer observes that lifestyle programs often feature contestants who must become the pupil of one above their own class, requiring the guidance of an expert, a member of that class (181). The Puritan conversion and restaurant makeover both follow such a pattern of transcendence: after Ramsay puts her through trials, Cici acknowledges that she is incapable of successfully managing the restaurant and that she requires Ramsay's aid. As Luther stated, Cici “sees that [she] is such a great sinner that [she] cannot find any means to be delivered from [her] sin by [her] own strength, effort, or works” (qtd. in Caldwell 59). Thus Ramsay becomes a Christ-figure; as the successful restaurant owner and chef, he becomes the moral guide for Cici. As a rhetorical move, the implied apotheosis of Ramsay allows the show to first exemplify the proper capitalist ethic in him and secondly sells him to the viewing audience, who presumable also need his help.
<30>At the end of mytheme five, after Cici confesses her problems and Ramsay tells her that he will help her correct all of them, the two engage in a very telling dialogue:
Ramsay: New day tomorrow. . .We start to rebuild.
Cici: I'm sorry I called you names. [To the camera] He says he wants to help me and I believe him. (“Anna Vincenzo's”)
In this important exchange, Cici does not apologize for her mistakes as a restaurant owner, her poor financial decisions, nor her miserable leadership skills; instead, she apologizes for her disrespectful attitude, an interiority externalized for the audience. Furthermore, the two use language that suggest rebirth (“new day”; “rebuild”) to describe the turning point in the show, which emphasizes the capitalist values. The language of rebirth is inexorably suggestive of Christian theology and the new life of the Puritan convert. Michelle Lelwica observes that
in many ways, the profit-seeking ethos of consumer capitalism seems both omnipresent and omniscient, supplanting an omnipotent creator as invisible ground of transcendent power. Given it's quasi-religious function, it is not surprising that some of this system's rhetorical maneuvers employ the terms of traditional religion, particularly the language of this country's dominant tradition: Christianity (186).
Lelwica's comments elucidate the rhetorical impact of Cici's and Ramsay's brief exchange, a moment of confession by Cici to Ramsay and the audience: Ramsay has acquired the ethos of capitalist, material messiah, replacing the traditional Christ, who will save Cici from her downtrodden, sinful, and debt-ridden state.
<31>Ramsay achieves the status of Christ because of his financial success: before the exchange quoted above, Ramsay lists the number of restaurants he owns, books published, and television shows produced, all to sell himself as the capitalist-Christ. He constructs himself as the restaurant owning expert. Indeed, Weber describes the celebrity-expert characteristic of makeover TV as one who possesses and is “the spectacular body, the glamorous lifestyle, the epitome of success and achievement, the desired product of and model for consumerism, the embodiment of self-worth, the gazed-at object of desire (though also of criticism), and the apogee of the idealized love-object” (215). While Ramsay may be devoid of the romantic qualities Weber lists, he fulfills nearly every other, each being a status the contestant cannot reach. However, Ramsay’s successs does, like the righteousness of Christ in the salvation myth, separates him from the business and emphasizes his desirability, an otherness heightened by his being British. Moreover, Biressi and Nunn observe that “our sense of self is guaranteed by the fantasy of an ‘other’ who observes us and whose gaze confirms the solidity and worth of our existence” (101). Just as the Puritan convert is gazed upon by the congregation and by the implicitly present Christ, so does Cici seek the approving gaze of Ramsay. When Ramsay does watch her successfully run her restaurant in the final mytheme, her acceptance of his help and the capitalist life is confirmed.
<32>In contrast to the transcendence of the expert is the necessary helplessness of the contestant. That Cici must, like the Puritan convert, recognize her inability to change on her own sets her up as the consumer reliant upon the producer for goods; those goods, however, become, like religious indulgences, services rendered that raise both the monetary value and spiritual virtue of the consumer. Cici’s exchange with Ramsay in mytheme five is one in which “individually experienced subjectivity . . . would come across as inherently more authentic than any grand claims to objectivity or abstract truth” because Cici admits to her fault (4), which also humanizes her before the audience. In the case of Kitchen Nightmares, this narrative turning point, parallel to the turning point within the puritan conversion narrative, contains within it all of the capitalist values the show seeks to reinforce; it demonstrates how makeover and lifestyle TV programs train individuals “[to police] his or herself for signs of ageing, ill health, psychic stress or social/relationship/career flaws and [that] everything can be fixed by career or lifestyle coaches” (101). Cici must adopt Ramsay’s ethic in order to be self-regulating; mytheme five proves that she has. Thus the scene possesses a certain rhetorical intensity highlighted by both the dramatic dialogue between Ramsay and Cici and the emotionally charged camera angles.[5] These affective qualities, in addition to its central position within the narrative, make it the most persuasive mytheme of the show.
<33>The subsequent mythemes, in which Ramsay completely remodels the interior of the restaurant and rewrites the restaurant's menu, not only continues Ramsay's role as the capitalist-Christ saving Cici's life, nor does it only establish another parallel the morphology—exaltation and presence—but both of these qualities work toward a third effect: Cici's performance of authentic conversion. Indeed, Ramsay's gifts to Cici, remodeling and rewriting, are parallel to the “grace” that Shea argued is central to the convert's narrative.[6] Likewise, Kitchen Nightmares and all other makeover programs possess a similar moment: Palmer states that TV programs in the lifestyle and makeover subgenres “[feature] ‘the reveal’—a moment when the contestants get to see what transformations have been effected in their home/face/wardrobe” (174). The reveal is the public revelation of the savior’s effect on the convert. Shea states that the convert must prove that grace is present, and reveal as well as the final two mythemes—a continued revelation of the new restaurant and owner—contain public performances that prove Cici actually has that grace: she must sell the name of “Anna Vincenzo's” and prove her success as a manager in a final dinner service within the newly decorated interior and with the rewritten menu.
<34>It is at this point in the narrative, in mythemes seven and eight, that the rhetoric grows more public: Cici must perform after being “saved” in the presence of a viewing audience in the same way that the Puritan convert must perform before the congregation in order to prove the true efficacy of Christ's grace. However, this performance also parallels the nature of reality television itself as a simulation of reality, a performed representation that audiences must accept in order to be affected by its rhetoric:
the promise of the real in reality television since the late 1990s is of a different nature: the true self of persons is revealed. And, since the self is invisible, we gain access to it through the body that is mobilized in diverse ways: through the face, voice, postures, talk, and contact with other bodies. What has been to date the realm of actors is now performed, live or quasi- live, by “genuine” people (Bourdon 71).
Thus the rhetorical performance of the Puritan convert, of Cici on Kitchen Nightmares, or of reality television itself as a genre is essentially the same: to depict “the self as project” (Palmer 186).
<35>It is this parallel between Kitchen Nightmares and the Puritan conversion that may be most insightful, for both reveal the rhetorical power of Bormann's “group fantasy.” Bormann argues that rhetors tell narratives—fantasies—in which members of the audience are able to participate by associating themselves with idealized characters, making the narrative-fantasy a “mirror of the [audience's] here-and-now situation and its relationship to the external environment” (397). However, what makes Bormann's theory important for our current study of Kitchen Nightmares and reality television is that Bormann argues that such an approach contains an “explanatory power” that can “account for the development, evolution, and decay of dramas that catch up [audiences] and change their behavior” (399). Similarly, the point of Kitchen Nightmares is to change the audience, instilling them with a capitalist value system by making them believe the drama of Cici and Ramsay as “genuine” and to see themselves as participants.
<36>Therefore, in the final mytheme of Kitchen Nightmares, the audience is able to view, evaluate, and participate in Cici's use of Ramsay's transformative grace. Indeed, in the eighth mytheme, Cici states that “I got my passion back”; a fellow staff member remarks that “She's a different Cici's I've ever seen working in the Kitchen. Now she really cares”; and finally, after Cici finishes up a successful night of serving food from her new menu, the narrator of the show states that “Cici proved that she had accepted chef Ramsay's plan. She established a high standard in the kitchen and she was rewarded with happy customers.” The rhetorical purpose of this final mytheme, and these quotes specifically, is to prove to the audience that the narrative, the morphology of conversion, and the capitalist value system it embodies are truly effective. If the audience can buy into the performed simulation of reality, they will buy into the implied logic of the narrative, the causal relationship between each mytheme and the greater causal relationship between work, mentorship, and success. The program has thus merely adapted the didactic use of Christian myth to teach a capitalist ethic in the same way that Algers, Carnegie, and the ministers of the gospel of wealth utilized Christian myth. Only Kitchen Nightmares takes as its central myths those embodied in the Puritan conversion narrative. The audience perceives the transformation Cici undergoes as the result of Ramsay's intervention.
<37>The rhetoric of narrative is persuasive because Cici’s successful conversion “provides a form of social legitimization” for audiences (Beressi and Nunn 107); the audience, who identify with Cici as consumers and struggle within the same capitalist metanarrative share in the joy of her success. The show ultimately communicates to each viewer that if one only follows a similar transformation, each can also reach the same success. By returning to the “golden chain” view of the Puritan conversion narrative, we can see how its effect compares to the effect of the rhetoric of the narrative structure of Kitchen Nightmares. Hindmarsh pointed out that the “golden chain” provided the convert a sense of identity within a greater community; but I would also add that it simultaneously reaffirms the sense of common identity for the entire community. Bormann argues that “the members [of a group] have appropriated [messages] by sharing them in their creation through public dramatization” (406). Here Bormann states that those who view or participate in a public performance, a “fantasy,” share and thus reaffirm each other's identities because they all can agree on the meaning that a narrative communicates.
<38>Likewise, Biressi and Nunn ascribe to makeover TV programs a method of community identification that could describe the golden chain as well as Kitchen Nightmares: in the show:
the subject’s discontent is frequently coupled with a nostalgic yearning for a sense of authentic community. Media imagery can offer pseudo communities of ordinary people temporarily bounding in competition, experiencing alternative ways of living as a group, or united in a studio discussing shared problems, dilemmas, answers and success that suggest an affinity with others. (107)
The audience of Kitchen Nightmares, having accepted Gordon Ramsay as a genuine financial success, and knowing, even if unconsciously, that they themselves live in a capitalistic society, are able to share in Cici's conversion, or at least use Cici's conversion as hope for their own financial salvation at the hands of a similar capitalist-Christ figure;[7] they recognize themselves as sharing in her plight as consumers within a capitalist culture. Likewise, the Puritan congregations emphasized the presence of grace within the convert's narrative both to ensure he or she was actually converted and also to legitimize the Puritan audience's belief in the grace they had received, their salvation and forgiveness of sins. That both Kitchen Nightmares and the Puritan conversion narratives participate in mythic conventions, but articulate themselves as portrayals of reality only strengthens the persuasion of each and reaffirms the rhetorical goal: to inculcate a set of cultural values, capitalist in the case of Kitchen Nightmares and Christian in the Puritan narrative.
Conclusion
<39>The rhetoric of Kitchen Nightmares' narrative may derive its suasive power from the same theoretical source as the Puritan conversion narrative but it is because Kitchen Nightmares appropriates the morphology of the conversion narrative as a terministic screen and mediates reality through that myth, tapping into the American identity, that makes its rhetorical re-valuation of Christian values into a capitalist system so effective. Indeed, Kitchen Nightmares exemplifies how reality television, and makeover and lifestyle TV specifically, reinterprets Christian and American myths in order to create a narrative space in which the “real life” actors can meet with the audience to share in a greater story that provides everyone with a role to play and a value system to live by. Kitchen Nightmares does more than sell Ramsay's name: it sells a capitalist value system through its use of Christian myth.
Endnotes
[1] Antinomianism, the belief that Christians are above the law and are saved only through their faith, challenged the patriarchal authority of Puritan culture. Anne Hutchinson led the antinomians and engaged in numerous disputes with John Cotton ("Antinomianism"). By following this morphology, which incorporated required repentance as a form of work, the convert would prove his or her alliance to the traditional Puritan theology.
[2] Edmund Morgan, drawing from the sermons of American Puritan preachers, first coined the phrase "morphology of conversion" in his seminal study of Puritan culture, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (1963). Morgan's phrase refers to the process of conversion a the Puritan convert must experience according to the various early American Puritan preachers and theologians (64-112). This summary of the Puritan conversion process, which essentially charts the narrative structure of Puritan spiritual autobiographies, has remained influential in contemporary studies of Puritan literature, most specifically those that analyze conversion narratives.
[3] Each episode of Kitchen Nightmares is named according to the restaurant Gordon Ramsay helps. This naming convention serves as a rhetorical device that further suggests the restaurant owner's intimate identification with the restaurant, in as much as it applies the name of the restaurant to the narrative of the individual rather than applying a name that relates to that individual.
[4] Weber offers an outline of the typical episode of a makeover program that follows the chart I have provided:
1) the initial shaming of the pre-made-over “ugly” subject, 2) moments for surveillance by audiences and experts, 3) pledges from the subjects that they will put themselves fully in the hands of the authorities, 4) the actual work of the transformation, 5) the mandatory “shock and awe” of reveals, and 6) the euphoria of the new-and-improved subject and satisfied experts. (31)
[5] "Early New England rhetoric provided a ready framework for inverting later secular values--human perfectibility, technological process, democracy, Christian socialism, or simply (and comprehensively) the American Way--into the mold of sacred teleology...Each [Puritan minister], in his own way, responded to the problems of his times by recourse to what I have described...as the genre of auto-American-biography: the celebration of the representative self as America, and of the American self as the embodiment of a prophetic universal design" (Bercovitch 136).
[6] Every episode of Kitchen Nightmares contains such a scene in which the restaurant owner(s) meet with Ramsay and discuss not only financial and managerial problems, but also deeper moral, social, or familiar problems. Ramsay always responds to and offers solutions for both.
[7] The theological term "grace" derives from the Greek word kharis, a word that can denotes either a gift, compassion, grace, or love. In the context of Kitchen Nightmares, Gordon Ramsay's portrayal as a Christ figure is reinforced by the unmerited gifts he offers to the restaurant owner(s) in order to save the business.
[8] In a study of the representation of beauty in reality television shows about make-overs, Julie M. Albright demonstrates how shows utilize traditional fairy-tale narrative, stories like the Puritan conversion narratives that underly the American identity and value system, in order to allow audiences to identify with and vicariously participate in the transformation from unattractive to beautiful: "Many of these shows overtly call on fairy-tale metaphors to position themselves as a woman’s (girlhood) dream come true" (104). Indeed, Kitchen Nightmares creates the same opportunity for audience identification and transformation, only beauty is replaced with financial wealth.
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