Did you see last night’s episode of Top Chef, in which contestants had to deconstruct a dish the way Vegas staples Penn & Teller deconstruct magic tricks on stage? If you did, then maybe you learned as much as I did.
Here are two revelations I’ve taken to heart…
(Mild spoilers ahead)
(1) Teller doesn’t know when to drop the silent shtick
Despite being the mute half of Penn & Teller, Teller has spoken in public many times. On last night’s show, however, he didn’t make a sound, choosing instead to critique the contestant’s dishes with grimaces and gestures. More than once, Padma Lakshmi was reduced to playing charades with the man, saying things like, “It looks like Teller thinks the lasagna was… meaty and… good.”
Come on, dude. By keeping up his mute facade, Teller made his appearance on the show about himself and not about the contestants or the food. Since he lacked the class to join an ensemble, he seemed desperate and insecure.
(2) Toby Young isn’t just a jerk. He’s a colonialist jerk.
You guys, as a critic, I am trying to be the opposite of Top Chef judge Toby Young, who is obviously more interested in being a personality than in instigating a thoguhtful conversation. During the meals on Top Chef, you can practically see him preparing outré critiques (“these metballs look like bull testicles”) that he just knows will get attention.
Last night, Young, a Brit, revealed a new layer to his assholery when he refused to prounounce “paella” in the standard, Spanish-inflected way. Instead, he sounded out both els so that “pie-AY-uh” became “pie-ELL-uh.” And when Tom Colicchio ribbed him about it, Young scolded everyone in the world who prounounces the word like a Latino. “People don’t say ‘Meh-HI-coe’ or ‘Bar-THUH-low-nuh,’” he snarled.
To be fair, Young’s right about the last bit. Most Westerners puth the “ex” in “Mexico” and the “ess” in “Barcelona,” and we snicker when Alex Trebek says the word like a fur’ner. Some words have been so Anglicized that it would take a linguistic miracle to make them “native” again.
“Paella,” however, is not one of those words. It has entered the Western vocabulary with its original pronunciation intact, much like “tortilla” and “quesadilla.” By insisting on Anglicizing the word, and belittling those who don’t, Young demonstrated an ugly, colonialist attitude that the “ethnic” way is not the “right” way… that the British/Western method is inherently superior.
For all I know, the entire United Kingdom says “paella” like Young does, but I’ll wager that if someone corrected them, the bulk of them wouldn’t act like pricks about it.
What do you guys think?
20 responses so far ↓
1 Michael // Sep 24, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Mark, the Brits DO Anglicize pronunciations a lot more than Americans do. Byron rhymes “Don Juan” with “true one” and “new one,” there are still Brit academics who refer to Cervantes’ “Dawn Quicksit,” and a former Brit colleague was offended by the American intervention in–no joke– “Nick-a-RAG-yoo-ah.” So he may be coming from Planet Pie-ella. You’d have to decide where to draw the line, but he ain’t necessarily colonialist–just British. (Like the guy who was designing our front gardens: I had to figure out that he wasn’t a designer–just gay.)
2 Rube Goldberg // Sep 24, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I was horrified when I saw the paella display last night. I have never heard the word pronounced the way that Toby insists it should be pronounced. Normally I’m not a fan of Michelle Bernstein when she is on the show but I’m so glad that she was there to bust Toby on his asstastic behavior.
3 InfoMofo // Sep 24, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Toby Young is consistently the worst thing ever, although his “paella” (i can’t even think of how you would spell it how he pronounces it) thing was the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen someone defend on television.
I was so amazed by it that I had to ask my British co-worker how he pronounces it, and he said sheepishly that he does pronounce it the Toby Young way, and that is how it’s pronounced there, but they are conscious that it is incorrect. He had the decency to be embarrassed by it.
4 Deanna // Sep 24, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I think as a society we’ve begun to confuse snark with criticism. You see it on the cable news networks and you see it on entertainment programming. It’s easier to be a smart-ass than to be thoughtful and well-spoken. It’s very hard to find a source of thoughtful commentary and opinion anymore. So Mark, keep up the good work.
5 Mark Blankenship // Sep 24, 2009 at 4:51 pm
See Michael, I’m glad you brought that up, because I was wondering how many Brits might actually pronounce the word that way. I’m not around that many Brits, but I do remember the whole “Don Juan”/”true one” thing.
Still, doesn’t this imply that British pronounciation has a built-in impulse for colonialization? I feel like it does, and for Toby Young to show so little awareness that his style of speech might have some bias in it just really irks the snot out of me. I mean, I’m not asking anyone to turn into a P.C. monster whose speech has no idiosyncrasy, but I think we all can be good-humored and self-aware about this sort of thing. As in, own up to the fact that most people say “pie-AY-uh,” and go on saying “pie-ELL-uh” if you’d like, but don’t act like your pronunication is superior. That is a dick move.
As a side note … Isn’t it interesting how Tom called out Toby for “Pie-ELL-uh,” but he let Jennifer say “suh-VEESH” for “ceviche” over and over?
6 Amanda // Sep 24, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I have to say, I have mixed feelings on this issue. I can see Toby’s point simply because there are so many douchey people out there who insist on using the native pronunciations of words as a way of asserting their worldliness or intelligence.
However, Toby could have just made a joke about using the British pronunciation instead of being an asshead about it. Tom was joking when he ribbed him about it, so Toby’s response just emphasized his arrogance.
7 Niki // Sep 24, 2009 at 7:36 pm
The suh-VEESH pronunciation is probably due to the fact that she trained with/works for (one of those) a French chef, and that’s probably how it’s pronounced in that kitchen (not that it’s right, just that’s how a French person would mispronounce that word) . Also, it’s possible that Colicchio spends more time with French chefs so his ear is more used to French mispronunciations than English ones?
8 Jeff C // Sep 24, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Ethnocentric, yes, colonialist, no.
Also, Robin sucks. That is all.
9 Erin W // Sep 25, 2009 at 8:25 am
I kind of liked Toby this go-round. The pie-ella incident didn’t surprise me because I spent some time in London where, at the butcher counter, you ask for chicken “fill-its” instead of “fil-lays.” There is sort of an arrogance in deliberately Anglicizing every pronunciation, but it’s culture-wide.
10 Laura Mc. // Sep 25, 2009 at 9:10 am
Meh? Lived in the UK for a year and a half. After noticing bunches of idiosyncratic differences between British vs. American speaking, I grew to think mispronouncing non-English words makes all of “us” look bad. He’s probably just an obstinate person.. not specific to the nationality.
We are definitely just as bad. Personal pet peeve: eye-talian. Really? Like why would you ever think that is the way to pronounce that?
11 Laura Mc. // Sep 25, 2009 at 9:12 am
(P.S. Not the biggest fan of this show, but isn’t Padma English? At the very least she speaks with an English accent. She is all over some pronunciation, though..)
12 floretbroccoli // Sep 25, 2009 at 11:42 am
If we were to follow Toby Young’s idea of pronouncing paella as though it were an English word, wouldn’t it be PA-ELLA, not PIE-ELLA?
The Brits mispronounce all Italian and Spanish As, it seems to me. While they say DAHNCE and CAHN’T, they pronounce the A in pasta or Dante as we pronounce the A in LAST.
Odd, but their own. What I don’t get is correcting someone who pronounces PAELLA correctly. Nice smackdown from Michelle Bernstein.
13 Andy // Sep 25, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Does that douche pronounce lasagna a hard g? I bet not.
14 Michael // Sep 25, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Mark: I agree that the whole Brit tendency to pronounce foreign words with British phonemes seems inflexible and sounds . . . well, stubbornly inflexible and actually illiterate. And I agree that a touch of humor would have alleviated the transAtlantic pronunciation kerfuffle with grace, which was sorely missing.
But think about it. By now, isn’t it the manifest job of a Brit on a reality show to be cold and derisive? Simon Cowell, the “Weakest Link” lady, whatsisname in”Hell’s Kitchen”–they all attack everyone within five feet like a Parliamentarian in full contrarian bluster. It’s a special skillset, like juggling or singing in a controlled falsetto. I think “rude, confrontational, dismissive, mildly outraged by the very existence of the offending object, idea, or person, without the slightest tempering for courtesy” is written into their contracts. The producers count on it for entertainment value.
(I wonder how Toby would pronounce “douche”?)
15 InfoMofo // Sep 25, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Hm, I actually may have revised my opinion on this whole topic after I had a really interesting conversation with my co-worker. Americans do pronounce Spanish foods correctly, but there are several other cuisines that we make no attempt to get correct.
A native Chinese speaker would be horrified at our pronunciation of “chow mein” or “won ton”. No one makes a serious attempt to pronounce “gyro”, “tahini” correctly.
Yet, if I went around and attempted to correct my friends’ pronunciation of “chow mein”, I would probably be ridiculed myself.
So, I now actually view this as more of another example of American exceptionalism, which I have been guilty of myself. I mean, I wouldn’t go on national TV defending the incorrect pronunciation of “gyro”, so Toby Young is is still a jerk, but I’m not going to go on reading too much into the colonial linguistics of the English either.
16 InfoMofo // Sep 25, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Also “hummus” and “tabouleh”. Mmm, hummus.
17 Mark Blankenship // Sep 25, 2009 at 2:17 pm
@Jeff C and Michael and InfoMofo — Excellent points, both of you. I was absolutely guilty of American exceptionalism here, because you’re right… I’m pretty certain I don’t pronounce “chow mein” correctly. So yes, I revise my original argument: Toby Young was humorless and jerky and ethnocentric, but not part of an insidious colonialism.
And indeed, he is filling the role of Cranky British Meanie.
18 Amanda // Sep 27, 2009 at 12:04 am
Ahahaha…a douchey guy pronouncing lasagna with a hard g made me laugh out loud! It’s almost worse than eye-talian. But not quite.
19 Aaron // Sep 28, 2009 at 5:12 pm
It wasn’t any harder for me to watch Teller stay in character than I was for me to see Penn & Teller do a magic trick on the show. They were invited in their capacity as celebrity entertainers, not food experts, and that’s how they acted, for the most part. If you’re going to blame anyone for the way he came off on camera (his “mute facade”), blame the producers and the director of the episode.
Much worse are “professional judges” like Paula Abdul (and possibly Ellen DeGeneris), who must speak even when they have nothing to say.
20 Jackalpants // Sep 29, 2009 at 10:39 am
There’s certainly a tendency in Britain to anglicize words- but it’s far from a cultural norm. It’s often due to a combination our weird accents, which actually make the correct pronunciations of some european words extremely difficult, and defensiveness about that leading to bull-headed “Well I say it the ENGLISH way” comments. But if you’re a fucking chef? No excuse. Pronounce it properly.
Leave a Comment