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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32035 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Any fans of the Great British Bake Off here? I think this season has been a case study in the mechanisms by which wokeness latches on and does its best to ruin things. I'm so sick of people talking about how offensive Mexican week was. If you ask me, I really have no idea what was so offensive about it. Acknowledging that Mexican culture and food exists is not the same as being racist towards Mexicans. Also, since when are Mexicans even considered to be oppressed, and worthy of people getting outraged over? Have Mexicans historically been oppressed, especially by the British?

Following Mexican week, now, I guess the outlets all saw that claiming offense at GBBO was a great way to get more views, because every week I see at least one article about how viewers were "shocked and outaged" at the latest episode of Bake Off. Often, these are related to the fact that several contestants this season aren't native to Great Britain and are not being handled sensitively enough with regards to the recipes they do and their ability to follow the instructions in the technical challenges.

My wife is Mexican and a big fan of GBBO. She isn't woke and wasn't offended by that episode per se, but we were both pretty disappointed at how phoned-in it seemed to be. Mexico has a huge variety of interesting baked goods, yet they chose a taco as the technical challenge? It's an extreme stretch to call that baking, and it felt like they were just too lazy to google "popular baked goods of Mexico."

were both pretty disappointed at how phoned-in it seemed to be. Mexico has a huge variety of interesting baked goods, yet they chose a taco as the technical challenge? It's an extreme stretch to call that baking, and it felt like they were just too lazy to google "popular baked goods of Mexico."

This seems unfair to GBBO. Sure, the show's producers could have googled "obscure Zapotec cuisine no-one except you and your Mexican wife recognises", but then the median viewer's going to be muttering at her TV something along the lines of "Oi wot's all this shite made outta rattlesnake meat, I 'fort it's Mexican week? Where's the bloody tacos?"

GBBO's not an educational Attenborough documentary, it's not supposed to teach anyone anything, and therefore their Mexican food is REQUIRED to be tacos because that's the only Mexican food that British people already know of.

It's be like having French cuisine week and no garlic snails. It's just not credible without them!

If escargot was the technical challenge in "French Week" of the GBBO, I'm pretty sure everyone would call BS since it's a baking show not a cooking show.

They didn't need to do some obscure baked good, it could have been something like conchas which are widely available in grocery stores in US border states.

Or maybe some Pan de Muerto. They could even have had fun decorating it different ways. Lots of varieties of pan dulce they could have picked.

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