REP 0 R T

DEBBIE DOES SALAD The at the frontiers of pornography By Frederick Kaufman

Greedily she ingorg'd Earlythis morning the without restraint, team had gathered at the And knew not eating Food Network's new Death ... 13,OOO-square-footstu- rJ'" -John Milton dios on Manhattan's West Side and proceeded Ley would shoot the to shoot three episodesof beauties at the end, as if Moulton's show, Sara's the food were the rap- Secrets. Now it waslate in ture, or' the apocalypse. the day, and fatigue had In the meantime, there set in. No one was lis- waschoreography. "I will tening to Moulton. add butter and shorten- "Folks,"said JeffKay, the ing," said , director. "One more who has hosted dump- show. Let's keep it quiet and-stir television shows and get home safely." for nine years and taped Kayknew he could not more than a thousand afford to waste time on segments. She stood in this soundstage. He had the middle of her miseen two weeksto tape twenty- scene, a setup very much seven episodes, after like the classic stove and counter of her mentor, which Moulton's cutting boards and burners . "I will give a few pulses of the food would head t~ storage, someone else's kitchen processor," Moulton continued, "add cheese, give would arise, and an entirely new stream of roast- four more pulses. I will then go to the fridge. I will ed and broiled evanescence would materialize. get the apples ... " When the huddle around Sara Moulton broke, More than a dozen people huddled around the the stylists buffed plush white buns and molded star. There were the executive, assistant, associ- mustard while someone from makeup touched up ate, and culinary producers; the director and tech- the star's face and repainted her lips. Moulton's nical director; and the camera operators, pro- hair, which hung straight and. blonde, had been duction assistants,and food stylists.And there was sprayedinto compliance. Behind Moulton, kitchen Sara Moulton's guest, southern-food scholar John windows opened to a faux outdoors, and a side T. Edge, in blue jeans and a chartreuse shirt, who door had been left ajar to reveal the overburdened could hardly wait to get on camera and show the shelves of a glowing pantry. No matter how much world his apple pie. Moulton cooked, the pantry stayed full.

Frederick Kaufman's last articlefor Harper's Magazine, "The Secret Ingredient," appeared in theJanuary 2005 issue. His next book, A Short History of the American Stomach, will be published by Harcourt.

"Whisper" (detail), by Philipp Keel © the artist/Galerie [udin, Zurich, and Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Los Angeles (top), and a photograph from Common Sense, by Martin Parr/Magnum Photos (bottom) REPORT 55 "Cameras, please!" called Jeff Kay. Before he lipstick. "Thirty seconds!" called [en, glaring at was a director, Kay worked with a succession of an over-diligent food stylist who was still po- CBS bigs-Walter Cronkite, Mike Wallace, Don mading the mustard. "Clear the set!" Hewitt, Diane Sawyer. He got his food-media "Okay," Jeff Kay's amplified voice boomed from break directing remotes for a CBS correspondent the control room through the public-address sys- named Martha Stewart. tem. "Here we go, folks. Tight shot. Rolling tape." While Kay pragmatically assessed cheese- "Go ahead," the Steadicam operator murmured grating and onion-cutting contingencies, a more to Moulton. "Cook." spiritual presence hovered upstairs. Bob "Ten seconds ... " T uschman, the Food Network's senior vice pres- Kay's voice engulfed the soundstage. "Quiet ident for programming and production, sat in his on the set!" office, contemplating Theme music welled up, the monitors flashed a dry-erase-board to life, and everything else receded into dark- A GORGEOUS MODEL PUSHES calendar on which ness and silence, all except the flat, sweet, Mid- he had filled in the western accent of a solitary voice. A CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRY PAST shooting schedule for "Hi. I'm Sara Moulton, executive chef of every hour of every Gourmet magazine. Today we'll explore PARTED LIPS AS SHE LUXURIATES day for the upcom- the great American hamburger ... " IN A BUBBLEBATH ing year. Even as they aligned the Barbara Nitke began her career as a porn still ground chuck down- photographer in 1982 on the set of The Devil in stairs, Sara Moulton and Jeff Kay and everyone else Miss Jones, Part II, which had a crew of twenty- knew that T uschman was monitoring ratings, five and a budget of$100,000 and took ten days watching videos of new talent, and obsessing over to shoot. That was the longest shoot she ever the recondite desires of that choice prime-time worked on. These days a typical porn director can demographic, the eighteen- to thirty-five-year- a feature-length video in a day, for as lit- old male can't-cook-won't-cook crowd-the men tle as $13,000. who like to watch. As people cook less and less, Since Devil, Barbara Nitke has worked on the they ogle cooking shows more and more. sets of more than 300 porn films, which she said ("Watching food TV is like taking an Ativan," is not a huge number, considering that 10,000 new Kay said to me later.) releases enter the market each year. Her most Alone onstage, Sara Moulton rehearsed by recent gig was with famed feminist porn director mumbling into the cameras, which around the set Candida Royalle. Nitke shot the stills for Stud are known by their numbers. One and two are Hunters, images that ended up on the backs of pedestal cams with T elePromp T ers in front. Ped video boxes, DVDs, and in the magazines. Over two, devoted to very tight shots, is what food the years, her work has appeared in Swank, High TV insiders call "the hands camera," whereas Society, Leg Show, Climax, and Nugget. three is a Steadicam. "It can get closer into Sara," I had come to Nitke's studio in midtown Man- explained one of the associate producers. "When hattan, near the United Nations,to watch food you zoom a camera, the shot gets bumpier. This television with her, and to compare the histories one you can walk in, get closer, get right up to of sex porn and gastropom. Nitke, fifty-four, her." The last camera, four, hung from a jib ten dressed in black from Tvshirt to Ferragamos, had feet in the air, the better to focus on the depths set up a card table between the foot of her bed and of pots and pans. "The jib is great for overhead a bookshelf, and ordered Mexican takeout. As we shots of processing," the associate producer said. ate lunch she told me about her pending contract "It lets us get inside the bowl." with HarperCollins for American Ecstasy', a "We're bumping in at three," Jeff Kay told coffee-table book of her porn-set stills, and I be- Moulton, "and you're talking to two the whole gan to examine her library, which included copies way." She nodded, the camera operators nodded, of Leathersex, The Correct Sadist, and It's Not Kay headed upstairs to the soundproof booth, and About the Whip. "I know most of the authors," she Food Network staff in Food Network shirts sten- said. "It's a small world." ciled with the Food Network's orange logo For the past several weeks, Nitke had been scrubbed the graters and the peelers and the whisks running porn films side by side with Food Network and the serrated knives. Unlike home cooking, TV shows, studying the parallels. She had also been cooking builds to an unending succession of phys- analyzing the in-house ads, like a recent one for ical ecstasies, never a pile of dirty dishes. the network's "Chocolate Obsession Weekend," "Stand by," announced [en, the stage manag- which promised to "tantalize your taste buds." In er in charge of minutes and seconds. The this spot a gorgeous model pushes a chocolate Steadicam approached Moulton, who was sipping strawberry past parted lips as she luxuriates in a herbal tea through a straw so as not to smudge her bubblebath. The suds shot dissolves into Food

56 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2005 Network superstar Emeril Lagasse, who shakes "This is the pizzaman," declared Nitke. "There's his "Essence"-a trademarked blend of salt, pa- the helpless woman who can't do it for herself. In prika, black pepper, granulated garlic. and onion walks the cute young guy who rescues her." powder-into a pan of frothing pink goo. The The result was inexorable. Eventually, Tyler camera moves into the frying pan and stays there. and the housewife would go cheek to cheek, lean "There's something very visceral about watch- forward, open their mouths, taste the chicken . ing the food," said Nitke. "It's very tissue-yoIt's and rice, and melt into a flushed-face, simulta- hard not to think of flesh when you're looking at neous food swoon. When the inevitable sequence these closeups." finally rolled, the editor kept looping their wet Like sex porn, gastropom addressesthe most ba- mouths and rapt faces as they pushed forkful af- sic human needs and functions, idealizing and ter forkfulof arroz canpallo past their lips, chewed, degrading them at. the same time. "You watch and swallowed-and pushed and chewed and porn saying, Yes, I could do that," explained swallowed again and again. "Classic porn style," Nitke. "You dream that you're there, but you said Nitke, "They're stretching the moment out, know you couldn't. The guy you're watching on the orgasmic moment. In porn they'll take a cum the screen, his sex life is effortless.He didn't have shot and run it in an endless loop." to negotiate, entertain her, take her out to din- . Next up was the great Emeril Lagasse,who has ner. He walked in with the pizza. She was wait- singlehandedly replaced the stay-at-home mom's ing and eager and hot for him." afternoon soap opera, and perhaps her 4:00 fuck. Which reminded me of my conversation with Hunched, lumpen, with a clearly evident bald Food Network programming VP Bob Tuschman. "We create this sensual, lush world, b~gging you to be drawn into it," Tuschman had said. "It's a beautifully idealized world. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that world?" Of course, recipes made on-screen rarely match their printed correlatives in books, or as they ap- pear as text on the Food Network's much visited website, foodtv.corn, "That's exactly the way the porn thing works," continued Nitke., "The sex, of course, is impossible to replicate. No one gets a blow job like that." She explained the compli- cated hair issues(must at all times be drawn away from the face) and bothersome elbow issues(must at all times be tucked under the back) of on-cam- era oral sex, and elucidated the role of the recent film-school graduate generally consigned to hold the "C" light, which illuminates the crotch. Left to their own devices, crotches remain dark. Nitke clicked on her tiny television and we set- spot, he possessesthe boozy charisma of an tiber- tled into a show called Food 911, in which a prole, and his "Bam!" and "Let's kick it up a handsome, sensitive hunk named Tyler Florence notch" have become iconic verbal viscera of the travels the nation, kitchen by kitchen, on a quest medium. Today, Emeril wasmaking po' boy sand- to liberate home cooks from their culinary frus- wiches. It was a rerun, but as in traditional porn, trations. We watched as a desperate housewife so in classic daytime gastropom-reruns don't stared at sturdy young Tvler. Could his arroz con matter, and neither do beginnings, middles, or pallo quench her flaming desire? ends. "The big thing in porn isyou can't have too The camera zeroed in as Tyler expertly spread much story line," explained Nitke. "It detracts raw chicken breast across a cutting board. "That from the sex. Same thing here. Nothing detracts is the quintessential pussyshot," Nitke.said. "The from those food shots." color of it, the texture of it, the camera lingering Emeriljabbed his fists,grunted, then made a gut- lovingly over it." Tyler gingerly tolled the glis- tural promise to demonstrate "that food of love . tening lips of chicken breast into a thick phallus, thing. See that?" he asked, holding up a dripping which he doused with raw egg. crawfish. "Just place it in there like such. I think "I feel a lot of love right now," Tyler told his you get the drift." He leaned into the camera, his transfixed acolyte .."This is a sexy dish." Perspi- face framed above the gurgling saucepan. "Look ration had begun to bead on the poor woman's at this. Unbelievable! Oh yeah, babe." The phrase forehead, her dark curls had wilted, her lower lip reminded Barbara Nitke of a retired porn actor trembled, and as she gasped, the camera caught named George Payne, who had a habit of repeat- her low-cut yellow sundress squeezingher breasts. ing the exact same expression."George wasfamous

"Mouth," by Philipp Keel © the attist/Galerie J udin, Zurich, and Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Los Angeles REPORT 57 for his ad-libbing," recalled Nitke. '''Little girl ada's thick voiceover. "Oh my god," said Nitke. likesthat, yeah babe?'I can hear Emeril saying,'Lit- "It's watersports." tle girl likes that-yeah babe?;" Now Giada chopped garlic-quickly, hyp- As N itke and I finished up the tortilla chips, notically. "That's the equivalent of the sexual it was time for Rachel Ray, who has shows in skills," Nitke said. "The chopping-s-that's the both daytime and prime-time Food Network slots, hanging-from-the-chandelier-having-sex mo- a multimillion-dollar book deal, and a paradigm ment. It's amazing to watch that chopping, and evident to all. "She's the girl next door," Sara we see it over and over, all day long. I would Moulton had explained to me. In 2003, Ms. Ray compare it to the deep-throat thing. pleasantly surprised her aficionados with a series That's the WOW." of images published by the soft-core laddie magazine FHM. Subsequently disseminated over j eff Kay sat in the control room, which bore the Internet, the most popular of these pho- more than a passing resemblance to the bridge of tographs proved to be one of "Ray-Ray" (as her the Starship Enterprise. Eight people on plush fans call her) in frilly underwear, licking choco- swivel chairs in two semicircular rows faced a late syrup from the tip of a pendulous wooden wall of thirty-seven television screens, each one spoon. In another shot, Ray sat on a kitchen .running tape of Sara Moulton's hands or Sara counter, her bare legs smeared with egg whites. Moulton's face or Sara Moulton's apples in var- Barbara Nitke and I watched Ray-Ray do her ious stages of mediation and development. Each perky act with a ripe tomato. "I love just giving member of Kay's crew was focused on his or her it a good smash with the palm of my hand," she black console, all of which were packed with switches and buttons and levers and lights. Kay wasdelivering orders into his headset. "Go three," he said. "Music up. Dissolve two. And dissolve. Take two. Dissolve four." Moulton sliced onions while Edge grabbed handfuls of ground chuck. "It's kind of a free- form hamburger," Edge told two. Jeff Kay put his hand in the air. "Three to one ... take one," and the technical director execut- ed the cut from camera three to camera one. "One to two," said Kay, then changed his mind. "One to four, take four. Take two. Two to three, take three. Three to two. Take two ... " All the cameras closed in as Edge slapped hand- fuls of raw meat into a smoking pan, then turned his attention to the apple pie. "Music up," said Kay. "Dissolve two. And dis- solve. Lose the matte. Two to three ... " Moulton dropped apples into the food proces- bubbled. "A good whack. Then I run my knife sor. Edge moved in and poured a powdery stream through it." Her glistening fingers closed around of cayenne pepper. the dripping fruit. "That's not a full teaspoon," whispered an as- "She is moist," Nitke noted. "She gets her sistant producer. hands dirty." "Dissolvefour," said Kay. "Three to four. Three Of course, the girl next door is not the only fe- to one. Take one ... " male porn archetype. For every Mary Ann there's "I'm gonna pulse this four times," Moulton a Ginger, and the Food Network's resident glama- said. zan would be Giada De Laurentiis. Giada, Bob The hands camera locked on to the food Tuschman explained, "has a huge following. She processor and began to pan down its plastic sides. has filled out her skin and really fills out the TV On the floor, the "One Minute" sign went up. screen." Sara Moulton put it more reductively: "Three to four;" said Kay. "Three to two." "She's eye candy." Edge scooped up the dripping, peppered ap- Nitke and I watched as Giada prepared some pies and tumbled the chunks into a pie dish. Jeff Italian cookies. As· usual, she was dressed in a Kay dissolved to a closeup of the dough, which tight, sleeveless top. "Now I can touch the dough Sara Moulton unceremoniously whacked a cou- and elongate it," she said. "I'm getting it all over ple of times with an oversized rolling pin. Edge my fingers." When Giada squeezed a lemon, grabbed the unfinished apple pie and delivered it the camera moved in for a closeup of the abun- to Moulton, who held it in front of her belly. dant yellow stream. "All that juice," came Gi- She did not look entirely comfortable in the

"Banana Split," by Philipp Keel © the artist/Galerie judin, 58 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / OCTOBER 2005 Zurich, and Ruth Bachofnet Gallery, Los Angeles pose, nor as certain of herself as when she was Even when we sleep, the web of nervous plexus- peeling and coring those apples, but as though she es emanating from that ancient region of the low- were as perplexed by the act she found herself er brain remains awake, haunting our bodies with committing as she was dumbfounded by the fu- a mysteriouspresence. Perhaps, long before the day ture of food media itself. ("I have no idea what the central nervous system convinced us it was in it's gonna be," she ruefully admitted to me lat- charge, our way of understanding the world had er. "None, zero, zip, zilch. You never know, it's been purely involuntary and autonomic, fluctu- so changed.") ating without subtlety between poles of stimulus Thirty seconds ... and response, contraction and relaxation, ex- "Three to two," said Kay. "Take two. Three to citement and satisfaction. Perhaps the enteric four, take four." brain remains our last link to the time before we A jib shot of spice-slathered apples filled the ate the apple of the tree of knowledge of good monitors.Now Edgegraspedthe perfectlyrolledcir- and evil, the time before we knew death. The cle of glistening dough, which hung low and loose primeval brain ofthe in fleshysags.Then in a quick, overhand thrust he involuntary, the ab- slammed it on top of Moulton's fruit. In extreme dominal brain, the Tv EXECUTIVES UNDERSTAND closeup, the dough quivered, then lay still. brain that controls It was a wrap. The culinary assistants swarmed, sympathy and revul- THAT THE EMO COMES FROM THE shoving what was now a rather bedraggled and sion but not ratioci- GUT, THE GUT MAKES THE WOW, sorry-looking apple pie off to the side, next to a nation, that is the lukewarm onion burger. Sara Moulton stepped brain of the wow. AND THE WOW MAKES THE MONEY back from the counter and took a long drag of tea. When it comes to She looked at me and said, "That television, the theo- was fun, huh?" rybecomespractice:Whether on the Hot Network, E!Entertainment Television, or CBS, the splanch- Michael Gershon, chairman of Columbia nic response, not the lucubrations of the intellect University's Department of Anatomy and Cell but the primal gut reaction-that's what hauls in Biology, believes there is a brain in the gut. the ratings. When the new president of CNN/US, This "second brain" controls the expansion and Jonathan Klein, took over last November, he in- contraction of the vast majority of the body's troduced himself to the troops with what has be- sphincters, the ring-shaped muscles located, come the perennial "it's about the storytelling" among other places, up and down the digestive speech. As Van Gordon Sauter preached in the tract. Any elementary human-biology textbook 1980s, news needs the emo, and executives now will tell you there are sphincters in the pupils of understand that the emo comes from the gut, the the eyes and sphincters in the sexual organs. gut makes the wow, and the wow makes the mon- There are cervical sphincters, urethral sphinc- ey. It's not the content that matters-food, sex, or ters, pyloric sphincters, two separate and dis- news-so much as the autonomic form. tinct anal sphincters, and the sphincter of Enteric attraction explains why the Food Net- Oddi, which controls secretions from the liver, work reaches 87.5 million households, and why pancreas, and gallbladder. Sphincters, it turns the network's share of the cable market has grown out, abound throughout our bodies, but we nev- more than twice as fast as MTV's in the past er have to think much about getting food from year, and almost tripled CNN's rate. And pro- our stomachs to our intestines, or calculate how ducers envision ten new channels in the next to equilibrate our own blood pressure. Accord- ten years: Food Network Italian, Food Network ing to Professor Gershon, the brain in the gut Southern, The Gourmet Food Channel, The Cal- takes care of such things. ifornia Food Channel, The Food and Wine Chan- Gershon is one of many American scientists nel, The Jewish Food Channel ... who have devoted their careers to understand- As sphincter power translates itselfinto a grand, ing the human bowel. Frederick Byron Robin- economic force, the autonomic American will son's landmark study, The Abdominal and Pelvic take dominion everywhere. Sex porn has become Brain, was published in Chicago in 1907. "In the a $12 billion industry. Content providers like abdomen there exists a brain of wonderful pow- Wicked Pictures, Sin City, Adam & Eve, and er maintaining eternal, restless vigilance over its Vivid Entertainment have proved irresistible to viscera," wrote Robinson. distributors like Time Warner, AT&T, Marriott, and Hilton International. Until General Motors It presidesoverorganiclife.... It isthe center oflife itself.... The abdominalbraincan livewithout the sold its interest to Rupert Murdoch's News Cor- cranialbrain,which isdemonstratedbylivingchil- poration, reported the Cleveland Plain Dealer, it drenbeingbornwithouta cerebrospinalaxis.On the peddled more sex films than Larry Flynt. At least contrarythe cranialbrain can not livewithout the half of all people who check in to major hotels end abdominalbrain. up paying to view adult films.

REPORT 59 Germinated in the iconoscope and image dis- Television returns us to the innocence of the sector, involuntary response now blooms in satel- beasts. Here, we may watch fornication with no lite transponders and video-on-demand. Eros had sense of the profane, may witness the creation of been imprisoned in Lucy and Maude and Rhoda a feast with no regret that it will never be ours and Roseanne, only to spring free in Buffy and to taste. Carrie and Susan and South Park and Rachel Ray, Moulton and Edge rolled their eyes and licked whose undeniable porniness has landed her her their chops. own magazine-Every Day with RachelRay-to be "Three to four," said Kay. "Three to two, take published by that renowned purveyor of raunch, two, two to four, take four, four to two, take two, Reader's Digest. The dominion of the enteric two to four, dissolve two .. ." brain has propelled porn from the social ghetto If we could somehow manage to divest our- to social diffusion just as it has propelled [enna selves of all enlightenment, if we could pacify Jameson to US magazine and cooking shows from our minds into a purer state, perhaps we could spit public television to the big time. Gut re- out that apple of knowledge once and for all and action drives the ratings, it drives our politics, and live in prelapsarian paradise. And once we got rid it even drives that most sacrosanct of all Amer- of the brain in the head and substituted that ican contemplations, the business decision. "Even brain in the gut, Eve might return the favor. She when we're doing food television it still has to be would stop being so complicated and demanding, great television," explained Tuschman. "And it stop complaining and imagining. is dependent on having great stars, the person Moulton blinked and swallowed. who walks into the room and you cannot take "Dissolve one," said Kay. "Three to two, take your eyes off them. You are enthralled. When I two. Two to four, take four. Four to two, take met Rachel Ray, I had the same feeling. When I two. Matte it! Okay ... Black." _ met Giada De Laurentiis, I felt the same thing. The daily grind of kitchen choreography had The star quality." Tuschman paused. He searched finally reached an.end, and it was time to shoot for some expression that might communicate the beauties, the images of food and nothing but what it was the food-show host or hostess pos- food. As the cameras converged on the cheese- sessed that the rest of us did not. Then he smiled. exuding apple pie, I remembered one of the first He had found the right word. "Wow." anecdotes Barbara Nitke had told me, one about Before he began his career in television, Bob a philosophical discussion she once had with the Tuschman studied political science at Princeton, editor of Climax magazine. Why, she asked, the where he imbibed the transnational spirit of unending publication of ultra-closeup pussyshots? Woodrow Wilson. "Youthink I'm a FoodNetwork Why so many? Why the exact same image, over zealot," he declared. "I think we do a great service and over again? to the world. We have tapped into a cultural need "We're all bored to death," the editor admitted, and desire and want. Weare going to continue "but we get lettersfromreaders.'Can we see more?'" what we're doing. I think we're The pie of the beauty shot was not the pie "T on the path." Moulton and Edge had climactically smashed to- gether but one of many "swap" pies crafted in llithout negotiation or hint of pretense, Food Network test kitchens. It was beautiful, but Sara Moulton and John T. Edge went at it. Moul- its transient perfection was sobering, too. Fruit ton's food swoon was well practiced, a controlled, ripens to die, Nielsens rise to fall. Sarah Moulton quiet rapture, while Edge'sbliss was more jubilant would tell me later that after more than a thou- and rakish, as though each bite were another vis- sand shows, her contract with the Food Network ceral hit in a lifelong succession of thrills. They would not be renewed. ("Listen, I'm not stupid," ate standing up, straight from the serving dish. she would say. "Every show has a life. Every per- They ate without speaking, without napkins, sonality has a life.") without stopping. When they gobbled the apple When the pie's moment had passed, it was pie, it was as if the serpent had never slithered time to shoot the great American hamburger, down that ancient tree. and everyone's attention shifted to the sparkling "Three to one, take one," said Jeff Kay. A monitors. Ped two zoomed in on the onion- closeup of Sara Moulton's face filled the monitors. gilted sirloin beet, now topless and glistening "Excellent sequence," said Kay. "Three to two, tumescent, the better to penetrate the mind's . take two." eye. Jeff Kay and crew pushed forward, the beau- When I spoke to her a few months after the tiful dead meat growing larger, ever larger. And shoot, Moulton recalled that a fan of hers had as the director called his endless stream of num- once sent in a picture of a parrot watching bers and the producers nodded in silent appro- the show.. bation, even Sara Moulton had to stop and stare. "Three to two," repeated Kay. "Three to four. After countless years in the business and a long Music under ...." day at work, this was the wow. •

60 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2005