There are things in this world that you don’t want to see or know, but due to overwhelming public interest, you end up encountering them wherever you go, and information is forcibly injected into your mind, known as “hot topics.” So when I see Baek Jong-won with a blindfold on, opening his mouth wide, I suddenly feel the urge to get angry. What are you even talking about?! It’s the Netflix original series “Black and White Chef: Culinary Class War.” Released on September 17, the show features 20 famous chefs challenging 80 unknown chefs in a cooking competition. With a cast of 100 people and a lavish set, “Black and White Chef” touches on the contemporary themes of fairness and class. To visualize the program’s identity of “fair judgment,” a blind taste test was conducted. The scene of Baek Jong-won and another judge, Ahn Sung-jae, opening their mouths wide towards a spoon that is not visible while wearing blindfolds is bizarre. This scene has been parodied in various ways, establishing “Black and White Chef” with a strong initial impression. With the final episode approaching, the show’s ambition to solely focus on taste and exclude all other factors raises the question of what results it will achieve. But can food really be ‘fair’ to begin with?
The subtitle of “Black and White Chef” is ‘Culinary Class War.’ It assumes the existence of class distinctions, referring to unknown chefs as ‘black spoons’ and famous chefs as ‘white spoons.’ While borrowing the syntax of the game of Go, it is undeniable that ‘black spoons’ aimed to evoke the connotation of ‘dirt spoons.’ In the traditional culinary showdown genre, black spoons represent the good, while white spoons represent the elite. However, in reality, individuals are not as simply dichotomized. The backgrounds and learning processes of chefs vary, and the well-experienced white spoons are humble and elegant. This is not a show that simply supports challengers against the mainstream. Who did the production team expect to win and set the stage for? The popularity of previous survival programs stemmed from the fantasy of overcoming reality with talent, much like the command to “sing miracles” in “Superstar K.” However, the program’s promotion tagline asking whether they will prove class or surpass it is intriguing. If a white spoon wins, it reinforces the legitimacy of class and strengthens the hierarchy. If a black spoon wins, it seems to align with the producers’ intentions. Of course, the fact that the survival of the program is not directly linked to talent has been evident throughout the competition.