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Popular Culture Review
could be off filming episodes for the Food Network with confidence that all was
in good hands at Babbo.
Still, the power of the mythic fusion of line cook and chefde cuisine on
television is so strong that cases of cognitive dissonance abound in the real
world. Customers are regularly disappointed when their idols, “branded” chefs
such as Flay, Lagasse, Puck, or even Thomas Keller, are not actually at their
restaurants, much less in the kitchen attending to their plates. The uncomfortable
friction of reality chafing against fantasy had apparently reached such a point in
2006 that Vegas mogul Steve Wynn reacted with what seems like a desperate—
yet, on second thought, perfectly Vegas—attempt to rebuild a falling facade. He
designed a new kind of contract with chefs at his latest venture, the Wynn Hotel
and Casino, demanding that chefs live and work in Las Vegas and guarantee
their regular presence at the restaurant for two-thirds of the year. So far, though,
chefs with big names have roundly rejected this restriction.
The question is: what is being placated by the magical elision of real
and persistent contradictions in the chefs occupation? To be sure, the illusory
condensations of workaholic-yet-homemaker and line cook-yet-executive
haven’t been crafted for the chefs’ benefit, but to gratify the fans. So, the
tensions symbolically resolved must be ones that their consumers would like to
transcend in their own lives.
It is not surprising, then, to find that those most smitten by chefs are
especially susceptible to conflict between personal and professional priorities
and pressures. In part, this is a factor of income. Many people with relatively
high incomes have earned them because they have invested so much time
building successful careers that they have compromised the time outside of
them. But it is also true that most Americans with Jobs have been working more
and more hours. Various studies, such as Juliet B. Schor’s Ovei^^orked
American (1993) and Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (2002),
have shown that, although Americans since the 1970s have achieved
unprecedented flexibility in their work places and schedules, and are aided more
than ever by supposedly timesaving technology, their work hours have increased
steadily. Building on a mountain of literature on the subject of the postmodern,
“post-industrial” economy, Florida further points out that greater work
flexibility has come with greater Job insecurity, a situation in turn prompting
people to spend more time working to stay competitive in the more fickle
marketplace.
The nature of so many higher-income Americans’ work may contribute
further to their lopsided equation of work and leisure. Based on his extensive
research of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Florida shows that the elite
30 percent of Americans, those playing leading cultural and economic roles,
tend to do work that is essentially conceptual. He defines the “core” of this
“creative class” as constituting those who may be in far-flung disciplines, from
music to marketing to engineering, but whose economic role is similar: “to
create new ideas, new technology and/or new creative content.” Outside the