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The Great Conservative Bake Off

Is everyone's favorite quaint baking show just nationalist propaganda?

November 13, 2023

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Keep Calm and Bake On

The Great British Bake Off is filmed in a tent on the grounds of Welford Estate. Once a king’s own hunting lodge, it served as the home for a lot of different kinds of guys: would it surprise you that they were all rich? It’s a picturesque type of backdrop for 12 new contestants to arrive at each year, with interstitial shots of local wildlife inserted between introductions and challenge instructions. The show has a big following: 4.3 million people in the United Kingdom tuned in for the latest season’s debut. That means that every week, around 16% of the UK’s population is subjected to an hour of nonstop nationalist propaganda.

Judged by Paul Hollywood (a right-wing tabloid scandal favorite) and Prue Leith (a white South African pro-Brexit Tory voter), The Great British Bake Off is usually centered around classic British baked goods, or ones that England took from other countries and adopted as their own. There are three rounds for each episode: 1. contestants prepare their own version of a traditional baked good, 2. contestants recreate a traditional baked good from scant instructions (meaning they’re fucked if they don’t know what a Bakewell tart is supposed to look like, and 3. contestants prepare a large, visually appealing version of a bigger traditional bake.

The kindness of the contestants plays into a big part of the appeal of the show as well as the slightly goofy hosts, who are comedians that run around to lend gentle encouragement and teasing to the bakers while they’re, say, whipping egg whites for meringue. Contestants often help each other complete their bakes, cry and hug each other when one is eliminated from the competition, and show true joy encouraging others when they win. After all, there’s a cake plate on the line.

While the show’s producers have embraced diversity in their casing, featuring contestants from a variety of cultural backgrounds, the judges are consistently applying a lens of Britishness to what’s considered acceptable. There are countless examples of Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith cocking their heads like confused dogs when a baker describes a flavor profile, and one of the funniest examples is when Season 13 winner Syabira explained her dessert would feature a combination of peanut butter and jelly. The judges described it as “quite strange” and “doesn’t sound like my favorite thing” as if the classic American combo was somehow baffling. Only Paul encountered peanut butter and jelly in Season 5 already and loved it.

It’s highly unlikely that Hollywood and Leith haven’t heard of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before. What their comments mean is that the flavor profile isn’t sufficiently British. Other writers have already tackled how blatantly racist these comments can be. If anything, The Great British Bake Off would like you to know that it’s okay if you weren’t born in England—you just have to assimilate properly to be accepted. Part of that assimilation is tailoring your tastebuds to what’s deemed acceptable by Society, and leave it at that.

Idealizing British village life is the core of England’s small “c” conservative politics. It’s at the heart of The Kinks’ most thoughtful and contemplative album. Edgar Wright’s best movie portrays village life as something worth killing for (though all his Cornetto trilogy struggles with village conformity at their core). Trucking the bakers out to Welford Estate each week is a subtle reminder of this tenet: you’re born into a station in life, and be grateful for what you have because it’s been given to you by a rich, white British man. As much as the UK votes for representation, there are still 785 members of the House of Lords who inherit their titles and impose their will on legislation passed by the House of Commons.

Contestants are expected week after week to spend their own money on ingredients practicing at home for a chance to show off their skills on national television. And remember that cake plate mentioned before? It’s the only prize awarded to winners. American exceptionalism relies on the lie that if you do the work, you’ll be rewarded and can defy class structures. The Great British Bake Off would like to remind you that you’re expected to do your part for nothing in return, an echo of serfdom that rings clear through England’s history.

Fitting for a country whose response to consistent bombings of their capital city during World War II was, “Go back to work.”

At the same time, it’s compelling television. The bakers are truly talented, and seeing their work recognized by professionals is a joyous occasion (even if the Paul Hollywood handshake is overplayed). At the same time, audiences are revolting about shifts in the show’s structure and tone, worried that it can’t be saved and that it’ll never return to its original appeal.

But that poses a different sort of question: is the original format something worth saving? Early seasons are praised for how pleasant everything was, but former contestant Ruby Tandoh has been outspoken about the pressures of the show and how it was extremely mentally taxing on the contestants. Nostalgia for the show’s BBC era reads more to me like yearning for a simpler time when things were just nice and people worked together. In short: the propaganda worked.

It’s why I was never bothered by Matt Lucas taking over duties as host. If your television program is a love letter to an era of nationalist rhetoric that’s falling apart at its seams, why not be greeted by the terrifying smile of a grim, post-modern deconstructionist pointing out the cracks in the surface? The hatred for Matt Lucas is rooted firmly in denialism: the show was never what you thought it was, and it never will be again. As a host, Lucas held a mirror up to remind you that The Great British Bake Off is nothing but pageantry, pure and simple, and for a show that seems to hint that things were better under British imperialism, I don’t think that was a bad thing.

So I encourage everyone to reevaluate their relationship with the show. Watch it or don’t, but be aware of what is being sold to you and why you might have bought into it. We’ve got enough ignored conservative propaganda shoved at us on American television every day for us to just embrace another country’s attempt.

Live in the moment, cheer for your favorite bakers, and watch the wheels fall off the damn bus as the show cheerfully plows through its wonky version of Empire worship. Besides, if the show kept its facade as neatly as some viewers wished it had, we never would have gotten the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life: a Tom DeLonge cake.

Read

A good piece of media criticism, in my opinion, is as important as the media it’s criticizing. Without proper perspective, it’s easy for a film or a book or an album to land flat. Rax King’s breakdown of Priscilla (and Sofia Coppola’s entire oeuvre) gives space for the movie’s themes to breathe and connect readers to subject matter that might be just out of their grasp otherwise. Longtime Good Ones subscribers will already know I’m a big fan of Rax’s writing, and this essay is laid out so pristinely that I’m sure you’ll become one, too, if you haven’t already.

Watch

One of the best movie genres is thriller, because, well, they’re thrilling. But I’m also a sucker for movies that only give you half the information you need through dialogue and let the action play out on camera to fill in the gaps. Kiyoshi Kurasawa’s 1997 film Cure fits that bill to a T, laying a lot of the groundwork for filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho or Park Chan-wook who fully embrace visual storytelling in the mainstays of their work. Plotwise, Cure lands somewhere between Se7en and In The Mouth Of Madness, but the bulk of the movie is about the mundane nature of policework as we follow Detective Takabe through his troubled personal life and his frustrations in trying to find the killer. It’s a tonal masterpiece, and well worth your time to watch.

Listen

Recently there was social media engagement bait going around asking people to post the best album that came out when they were 16. When I was 16 I was listening to almost nothing but Minor Threat and Saves The Day, which is a good reminder that people aren’t always plugged into new releases. I think there’s a case to be made that The Cold Vein is the best album released in 2001 but there’s no way I would have heard it until I was in my 20s working at coffee shops with people way cooler than me. In any case, from start to finish it’s an absolute triumph. El-P’s production gives Vast Aire and Vordul Mega a weird and off-kilter template to work with, and both rappers tear down every single verse in front of them. Go give it a listen if you haven’t in a while.

Consume

Making pizza at home can be tricky. Nailing the right dough formula and bake temperatures takes practice, not to mention launching your pies from a peel without them sticking and flipping over. Foccacia-style deep-dish solves that issue by proofing in the pan, but sometimes you’re not in the mood for a thick pizza. Roman al taglio pizzas split the difference with a dough that proofs in a bowl and is gently pressed and stretched into a rectangular pan when it’s time to bake. The result is a crust that’s crispy on the bottom but soft and open through the crumb. It’s easy to top and bake compared to New York-style or other high-temp pizzas, and you can make two at once for a crowd. If you’re new to baking and are curious to try out home pizza, check out this al taglio recipe.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.