A recent opinion piece in Hyperallergic compares Paris Hilton’s Netflix cooking show Cooking with Paris to Martha Rosler’s (CRF 2009) critical feminist and minimalist work Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975).
“Rosler herself describes [her piece] as ‘an anti-Julia Child [replacing] the domesticated meaning of tools’… Like Rosler, Hilton repeats the vernacular vocabulary of the kitchen with comedic stiffness, suggesting that the domestic space requires its own discrete language that can be mastered with enough practice, however neither seem particularly interested in learning. Hilton and Rosler subvert traditional kitchen etiquette to deliver a satire of domestic life. They chafe against the proscribed functions and behaviors of what a mother or wife “should” be, pointing out the confines these spaces and expectations place on women. Hilton and Rosler’s agendas are cleverly hidden through humor and blatant performativity — like Paris’s faux sexy baby voice which she occasionally slips out of during genuine moments of panic when on the brink of culinary disaster — or Rosler’s hilarious deadpan when stabbing an icepick into her counter.”
Read the complete article here.