Ramsay Arrives, Dicks Grow

This week Gordon Ramsay remained in New York state, where he took on the filth and apathy of the Seascape Inn in Islip, New York.

Faced with Irene, an overbearing, star stuck Greek mother, Peter, a psychically castrated son, and Doug, a chef who refused to even try a bite of Ramsay's food, Ramsay kept surprisingly cool. Of course he fired Doug and his equally disinterested sous chef, and took Peter into the boxing ring where Peter...burst into tears.

Four episodes into the American version of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, what has struck me most profoundly is how desperate the male restaurant owners are for patriarchal leadership. There was the beefy, red-faced Italian son in the first episode, the silent Indian owner in NYC, the passive husband chef in the third episode and now poor Peter who, while crying, explains how his father never supported him. It's as if Ramsay's mission in America is not to save restaurants, but to rescue the very existence of Man.

I am not sure if the strife experienced by American male restauranteurs is indicative of the stress inherent to the service industry or if it speaks to something larger. Perhaps we are looking at a generation of men so intellectually and emotionally divided from their fathers (especially first-generation Americans) that hyper-masculine interventions of the sort Ramsay provides are required in order for our men to reconnect to their deeper selves. Of course, this reminds me of Robert Bly's Iron John a book that when I originally read it led me to conclude that Bly was a forest floor-rolling, testicle-fetishizing misogynist.

Perhaps it's time for me to revisit my previous reading.