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posted by janrinok on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the cooking-something-up dept.

Tom Secker of SpyCulture.com on the CIA and Top Chef

The CIA finally jumped on the cooking-themed reality TV propaganda bandwagon in 2010 when they hosted an episode of Top Chef. This week we take a look at the episode in question, how it flattered the CIA, and how Top Chef has involved numerous government agencies and departments. We round off looking at some of the reasons why cooking programmes make for effective propaganda.

[...] So, while the Pentagon seem to be obsessed with using reality TV to promote themselves and their agendas, and other institutions like the Department of Homeland Security also quite regularly appear in some form in these programmes, the CIA have been a bit late to the party. So we're going to step down into the fourth circle of hell that is reality TV and go for a taste of Top Chef. The episode in question is from 2010 and is called Covert Cuisine. Essentially, the contestants were each given a 'classic dish' which they had to try to disguise and then serve to the CIA at Langley. And yes, it's absolutely as dumb and ridiculous as that sounds.

[...] So, just to draw out the obvious, these are ordinary people being inducted – very briefly and in a trivial way – into the secret world of the CIA. Willing fools and so on. And they're all 'OMG, we're so privileged' and 'like, how cool is the CIA?' about it. So that's rather simple from a propaganda point of view – the contestants are a vehicle for us, the audience, to be inducted into the CIA's desired public view of themselves. In return, the programme gets added production value to inject a bit of originality into a very tired and repetitive format. They're doing the same thing they do every week, but in a new location.

[...] So there are a lot of bad jokes in there that people politely laughed at and the whole thing is kind of jolly and daft so the unassuming viewer might not realise what they're being told. The critical moment comes when then CIA director Leon Panetta is interrupted by a waiter with a slip of paper. Panetta reads it under the table, makes his excuses and leaves.

[Continues...]

Now, there are three ways of looking at this:

– First, this was authentic – Panetta really was called away on some important business. But the director of the CIA isn't usually involved in anything urgent. He's a political appointee, increasingly so as time goes on, he's not running live operations. So I find that unconvincing, though possible.

– Second, Panetta actually hated having to do this and arranged beforehand for a flunky to give him an excuse to get out of it halfway through. The presenter of the show is a bit of a disaster area – she has one of those faces that's had so much plastic surgery and botox that she can't actually pull any expressions any more. So if Panetta did consider himself above all this, I can't really blame him.

– Third, that this was staged both to add a little spice to proceedings and to emphasise how important people like Panetta are compared to the plebs watching the show. It helps maintain this sense that Panetta and the CIA are coming down to our level, they're playing along with us for a bit of fun but when duty calls they've got more important stuff to do, and we haven't.

[...] I will point out that this was not the only episode of season 7 of Top Chef that involved the government or politics. Episode 3 was called Capitol Grill, where they had to 'prepare a classic picnic feast for Capitol Hill interns at Mount Vernon, the home of the first U.S. president, George Washington.' Episode 6 was called Cold War, where 'The chefs battle it out in a culinary version of the Cold War. The chef'testants are divided into two groups and each team must create one cold entrée.' Episode 8 was called Foreign Affairs and 'The chefs must cook exotic Ethiopian cuisine for the quickfire, and for the elimination are tasked with creating a dish based on one of the foreign embassies in D.C. Chefs, ambassadors and dignitaries representing each country join in the judging.' There were other episodes based around the House of Representatives and NASA. The US Army and Marine Corps have also been involved in this series.

So why Top Chef?

Honestly, I don't know. There is no real indication from any of the available documents why so many branches and agencies of the government are so into using reality TV cookery programmes as a means for propaganda. So we can only speculate, but I'll take an educated guess and throw you a few ideas.

1) Cookery shows of all kinds are watched by women more than by men. Women are harder to reach through the usual methods because sports, action movies, spy films are a lot more popular among male audiences than female audiences. Likewise, women are less interested in on screen violence than men. Not exclusively and entirely, but as a general rule of thumb. A film like Lone Survivor probably wouldn't attract a lot of women, and those that it did attract would be more impressed by the emotional content, the braveness and determination of the surviving soldier rather than the extensive scenes of them shooting brown people. But something like Top Chef is much more likely to appeal to conventional feminine sensibilities and thus the propaganda reaches a target audience that's otherwise a bit elusive for the security state.

2) People like food. Across all demographics, people like food, for obvious reasons. People like looking at food on TV. While some of the entries in the military entertainment liaison office reports do cite specific audience demographic data, cookery shows reach all kinds of different people. Since these aren't really recruitment tools but are more general propaganda, they're effective from that point of view.

3) The desire for food is a natural instinct, a necessary instinct. Watching food shows does one thing, guaranteed – it makes people hungry. When people are hungry they feel a little insecure. There's nothing that provokes unrest and revolutions more than a starving population. So hunger makes people willing to fight, or at least to see other people fight on their behalf. This might sound absurd, but I genuinely think that when people are hungry they're more psychologically vulnerable, they feel less secure. As such, messages telling them who is providing them with security are more likely to hit home when they're hungry.


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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:41PM

    by RamiK (1813) on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:41PM (#447146)

    "altruistic reasons" would be anonymously donating food to the poor. Keeping cops around by giving them free donuts & coffee is bribery.

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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:34PM

    by edIII (791) on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:34PM (#447176)

    1) I'm a little disappointed this isn't about the CIA and Swedish Chef, which was how I initially read the headlines. The CIA training a Muppet for live ops seems like a much better use of their time.

    2) Bribery is a bit harsh. Offering a discount to cops serving the community isn't an intrinsically bad thing, just a puzzling and perhaps slightly offensive activity when the cops don't really serve us. It's nice to almost never be robbed as a business, and a hangout for police officers rarely gets robbed.

    True story - Cashier is working a shift at a donut shop when another guy comes in with a sawed off shotgun demanding money. The cashier starts laughing at the guy. Guy starts screaming at him to take him seriously and give him the money. The cashier starts laughing some more and then asks if the guy is *really* serious, and the gunman yells at him again to give him the fucking money. Cashier turns the gunman's attention to the at least 20 cops sitting in the place also slightly puzzled and wondering if it was a joke. It didn't end well for the wannabe robber.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:07PM

      by RamiK (1813) on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:07PM (#447221)

      Offering a discount to cops serving the community isn't an intrinsically bad thing,

      Offering a discount to town clerks serving the community isn't an intrinsically bad thing,

      Offering a discount to city inspectors serving the community isn't an intrinsically bad thing,

      Offering a discount to council members serving the community isn't an intrinsically bad thing,

      All aboard the gravy train! Choo Choo!

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