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A Big Bowl of Sin

by Alana Kumbier

Remember when, in the wake of Sept. 11, American cultural commentators called for a revision of popular media? They predicted a future that would reflect Americans’ compassion and moral growth, and Hollywood scrambled for relevance in light of national and international events. Less than six months later, we seem to have forgotten all about those grand changes. Invoking Sept. 11 has already become clich’d.

The degree to which life has returned to normal is evidenced by several recent television programming decisions, from the return of NBC’s Fear Factor, which featured several of Playboy’s finest in a special Super Bowl halftime episode, to FOX’s upcoming Celebrity Boxing, a slugfest between shamed skater Tonya Harding and Clinton accuser Paula Jones. But perhaps nothing says more about our culture than FOX’s most recent special program, The Glutton Bowl.

It’s easy to dismiss The Glutton Bowl as one more FOX contribution to its already-popular deadly-sin programming, taking its place alongside Temptation Island, Love Cruise and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?. The show was set up that way: FOX advertised TGB (which was originally scheduled to air last year) as low on content, high on gross-out. Glutton Bowl commercials featured shots of men licking mayonnaise from bowls and eating hard-boiled eggs, all competing for the International Federation of Competitive Eaters championship prize.

When my housemates and I tuned in, we were looking for a few minutes of bizarre competitive spectacle to occupy our time before switching channels to a more acceptable competitive spectacle, Olympic women’s figure skating. Our few minutes of viewing turned into two hours, and by the end of TGB, I’d come to several conclusions:

1. Gluttony’s not pretty

But really, what would you expect? What made this show so watchable seemed to be its unwatchability. Try sitting still while grown men (and a couple of women) eat barrels full of hard-boiled eggs, sticks of butter, whole cow tongues, hot dogs, bowls of mayonnaise, hamburgers, sushi and (for final the wildcard and championship rounds) prairie oysters and cow brains. 

You may find that, like most of the viewers in my house, you cannot watch in silence. You will squirm, cover your eyes and groan. You will try to avoid watching the last strings of tongue get slurped up by a tongue-eating champion (but you must look, really). You will feel sorry for these men eating and sweating it out in food-covered shirts, but then you will remember they’re the ones who decided to do this in the first place, and for most of them, it looks like prettiness isn’t a high personal priority, anyhow. I should note, however, that the Glutton champion defied type: He was handsome, svelte and muscular, and kept his shirt clean throughout both the hot dog and brain rounds.

2. Gluttony’s (almost) All-American

In fact, if you’re Ed “Cookie” Jarvis (competitor in the hot dog round), it’s a form of patriotic expression — witness Cookie’s flag-patterned warm-up suit and top hat. Generally, the gluttons who made it to The Glutton Bowl were American. There was one Ukrainian competitor in the mayonnaise round, and one Japanese competitor in the hot dog round (Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi), but the rest of the competitors were homegrown, and many were from New Jersey. This is a curious phenomenon, but easily explainable: There are many more fairs and stunt contests and eating-related events in the United States that happen to be on the IFOCE circuit. Still, for an international competition, it was strange to see such unbalanced national representation.

3. This sort of thing is why everyone hates us

As much fun as TGB was to watch, it was not a guilt-free experience. What better example of first-world excess than a show broadcast on national primetime TV that features round after round of foodstuffs being dropped from large vats onto a glitzy stage and then gorged-upon by well-fed Americans? This is why I was too ashamed to talk to several friends about my Glutton Bowl viewing experience. And why I was glad to no longer be part of the Nielsen Family.

4. Gluttons are good sports

The viewers in my house were all worried about redneck/macho reactions among competitors when Kobayashi first won the hot dog round and then went on to win the grand prize. Kobayashi was a serious eater — one with a competitive methodology, muscular control and the uncanny ability to put away 50 plus cow brains. His fellow competitors seemed to respect this, and no one seemed upset when he triumphed during either round of the finals.

I probably didn’t need to learn any of this, but for an evening of spectacle, FOX didn’t disappoint its viewers. I never thought figure skating would bore me, but after The Glutton Bowl, it did — who wants to watch all those skinny girls? — and it led us to turn off the TV. It was about time.

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Alana Kumbier, television editor for PopPolitics, is a writer who lives in Columbus, Ohio. Her previous articles can be found here.

Related Sites
Read up on gluttony, as defined by the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Gut Busters, a documentary from the Discovery Channel, takes a serious look at eating contests and competitors (airs March 17).  
Here’s a list of the IFOCE’s record holders (152 jalapenos in 15 minutes!). For Don "Moses" Lerman, the reigning burger-eating champ, winning requires more than physical prowess: "You just have to want it," he says. "When you’ve eaten your 12th matzo ball in under three minutes, you have reach deep within yourself to finish number 13." Read more secrets of the trade in Professional Pigs by Buck Wolf.
"Patriotism is definitely in … trash TV is out," Gary Edgerton, a communications professor, told the Christian Science Monitor only a few months ago. Luckily, most experts also predicted that the change may not last. Read the story here.