Supersizers eat the revolution

[missweirdness.livejournal.com]

Yeah I found SOMETHING ELSE! That  SS Eat the revolution. it's quite interesting.

*goes to watch *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH2BR4_ATbk

(this is what happens when you don't have a job and..and watch FMA too much xD)

enjoy also =)

Comments

[la-muse-venale6.livejournal.com]

1:44 is love.

XD

[missweirdness.livejournal.com]

it's great. =) I think i'll watch more from them. My favorite is when they were san-culottes and just randomly eating outside and people were taking pictures xD

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Well, they've got the music right, for once. So far anyway. I'd recognize Grétry anywhere.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

...It doesn't, of course, occur to them that the favorite pastime of most Revolutionaries, was not watching executions (or, for that matter, that the guillotine was not located on the Place de la Révolution for the duration).

They could have done so much more with the one segment that was actually on the Revolution if they had been willing to go through the differences between the diet of the average sans-culotte and that of that average bourgeois, or even if they had been willing to compare the kind of dinners Danton and co. gave with the menu of the dinner Mme Cavaignac served to Maximilien, Augustin, and Charlotte Robespierre... My real point here is that, no, it wasn't really by necessity that they focused on the royalists, because there's certainly enough material to focus on what the title of the program promises. Why not call it, "The Supersizers go 18th century royalist." Because, really, that would be more accurate.

Other than that, the nonsense they spouted about the Revolution, and Robespierre in particular, was extremely irritating, but not unexpected. I was, however, pleasantly surprised that they bothered to mention the White Terror (though the muscadins' sticks were rather more substantial than that...)

All in all, I think the most disturbing thing about it has to be that Le Thermidor seems to be a real restaurant. And whatever flaws this program has, that certainly isn't their fault. Though pronouncing "douze" like "deux" and then explaining to the waitress that they mean "twelve eggs" is, I'm sad to say.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

This series has been quite hit-and-miss. For example, in this week's episode they did the 50's and they covered early 50's rationing through to the introduction of American fast food and Italian bars in the late 50's, and it covered most of the bases - admittedly, this may be because it's within living memory (some of the kitchen equipment used is stuff in our kitchen!), but so is the 80's, and they really messed that one up.

There was so much they could have done with this period if they'd left Versailles for more than 5 minutes - it's hard to think of a period when food was such a political issue, but we only got a hint of that - a mention of chestnuts without mentioing they were a subsistence diet for some, no mention of rationing - which is something that many British viewers would remember from their own lifetime, and give them more of an understanding of the pressures the regime was under - the order to plant potatoes in the Tuileries gardens imediately reminded me of the 1940's Dig for Victory campaign (public gardens dug up for veg, park railings and aluminium pans melted down for armaments) but it wasn't even mentioned! And there was a man who invented a method to 'can' (bottle) vegetables in Paris in the early 1790's - no mention of him, either.

I presume it's been an editorial decision, because there clearly have been some good food historians at work on this series generally - it's just that they must have decided the viewer would enjoy seeing the presenters dressing up and eating foie gras and frogs legs more than getting a history lesson - the episodes with less chance for dressing up and going to fun locations (like the 50's) have been more informative than the ones filmed in castles.

Good to see the White Terror get a mention - food and fashion historians note it, even though so many political historians neglect to mention it!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

It's very odd how they feel the need to use familiar clichés in some places but not in others. I guess there just weren't enough of them to fall back on for the 50s, foodwise. It's quite true, though equally sad, that non-political historians are more likely to mention the White Terror--if it has implications for food and clothing, the implications are a thousand times greater for politics!

On the other hand, I thought they did mention the growing of potatoes in the Tuileries gardens, but I could be mistaken...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

They did a 'posh' potato meal, and referred to the invention of chips/frites (aka French Fries U.S. - I think what Americans call 'chips' we call 'crisps') in the little sansculottes bit, but I don't think the Tuileries got a mention - btw, I read about the order being passed to plant them, but was it ever implemented?

The clothes were very good in this - they've been excellent throughout these series, which I think are all on youtube now.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Hm, I thought they did mention that fact during one of the potato segments. It doesn't really seem worth it to back and check though. Potatoes were indeed physically planted in the Tuileries gardens--by order of the Commune, I think.

That's largely true, though the segment on the "Revolutionaries" seemed to be amalgamating bourgeois and working-class Revolutionaries, so the costumes were a bit odd as a result of that. (And, somewhat tangentially, I have to say the guy--whatever his name is--made a better Revolutionary or muscadin than he did Louis XVI, at least in the realm of facial hair, which, while probably not particularly authentic for anyone in this period, goes far worse with powdered wigs than with one's natural hair.)