Recently, Martha Stewart had a very special guest on her cooking show. That guest was none other than gangster hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg. The footage can be seen here:
Part 1
Part 2
Aside from its seeming absurdity and entertainment value, these clips actually touch on a lot of aspects of modern consumer society. First off all, before Snoop Dogg actually appears onstage, there is Martha Stewart herself. While I am by no means a frequent viewer of her shows, you can see even in just this episode a very clear and conscious message designed to encourage a particular style of consumption. For starters, the kitchen is massive and while all the instruments and ingredients necessary for any particular segment are conveniently provided by her assistants, the expansive wall of cupboards and shelves suggests the broad array of further cooking utensils and foodstuffs that the modern woman is told she needs to have on hand if she is to be a socially adequate cook. That it is important for a woman to be a good cook is the even more basic message illustrated by the prevalence of housekeeping shows similar to hers. There are no shows on any of the networks providing useful tips for avoiding housework (although many now have entire shows dedicated to making things quicker and more convenient for working mothers and so forth). That Martha is seen as an incredibly successful and carreer-oriented businessperson makes her status as the pinnacle of domesticity all the more powerful to many viewers. The true sign of success in the Martha Stewart universe, however, is the dozens of warmly colored wooden drawers , the island stove, the upscale seasonings, and all those other markers of bourgeois home décor and culinary sophistication.
Into this wonderfully bourgeois setting steps Snoop Dogg, the ultimate hybrid of the impoverished working-class and the flashy nouveau-riche. Perhaps it is significant that his rise to incredible wealth was as a creative artist, that ever hard to place group in the social hierarchy. In any case, the contrast between Snoop and Martha could not be more glaring. Class and race consciousness hit full throttle right off the bat as Martha struggles embarrassingly with Snoop’s dialect, confusing common street language with Snoop’s own tongue-in-cheek additions to the language and subjecting both to ridicule. What follows becomes a painful belittlement of the speech of the urban poor. What could be more inadvertently condescending than asking in seriousness whether or not one of the most successful people in the country whether or not he can spell?
Snoop Dogg, far from being visibly offended, takes matters in stride. It is likely he on a large amount of drugs on set, but his subsequent behavior shows the true gulf between their worlds. Snoop makes this contrast as obvious as possible, at times deliberate by jokingly explaining “street” terms and his own vocabulary to the presumably uninformed audience, to playing ironically with Martha’s own expectations of him (“That’s a potato…”), to rejecting the ‘fancy’ foods he is unfamiliar with (“White pepper?!? I want black pepper”). He skips such bourgeois treats as gourmet pepper, but has no trouble whatsoever blatantly shilling for a brand of high-end cognac, a symbol of what an incredibly rich man such as himself is supposed to savor.
The chuckles from the audience come to an awkward halt when Snoop teaches them a phrase “Ball Till You Fall”, outlining his own outlook on wealth: “Make as much money as you can before you die.” The crowd is stunned. Surely, there must be some greater goal in life, the upper-middle class housewives in attendance wonder? What vulgar ostentation is this? And he can’t even cook mashed potatoes! When he pours cognac into his bowl of potatoes, it probably became a gastronomic catastrophe. Truly, this footage reveals Snoop Dogg is an atrocious cook. But perhaps the biggest difference between himself and viewers on the Martha Stewart is that he doesn’t care.
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