Take me to Flavortown
What Guy Fieri tells us about ourselves
Publised SAD Magazine, Issue 23: Cheese. 2016
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When I wake up, I open my phone to make sure people on Instagram are still doing cool things, and that they think I’m still cool, too.
When the high of validation wears off, I have breakfast. My choice is never based on what’s exciting or pleasurable. It’s based on what’s fast and not terrible for me. I eat the same gluten-free protein bar I had yesterday faster than I can say, “Good enough.” I pick out a dark, blank, work-appropriate shirt from my closet of dark, blank, work-appropriate shirts. I then drive to work in my nondescript hatchback.
Guy Fieri, the boisterous host of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, has never woken up to this life. Every day of his existence is the diametric opposite of mine.
He doesn’t make decisions based on consequences and their deeper ramifications. Everything he does is to the nines—sincere and never with the residual millennial subtext of, "none of this matters lol.”
He reminds us that there's a kitschy world without irony outside of the pseudo-intellectual bubbles that we curate for ourselves.
There is a strong chance he’s never done a juice cleanse, he probably doesn’t feel the need to substitute Earth Balance for butter when his vegan friends come over, and it's entirely likely he didn’t read that Atlantic article that’s been making the rounds on Facebook. His approach offers a reprieve from these social obligations, and an opportunity to live a life impervious to shame, heartburn, and critique.
The prospect of reviving the frosted tips you wore in high school would seem unconscionable. Eating feedlot meat to excess on camera would trigger backlash amongst your friends and followers. Fieri defies those notions.
Watching a man who is dressed like Randy River upper management eat a slew of greasy things should not be pleasurable. But it is. No one ever watches just one episode, and we know that. They know that. Triple D only airs in four-hour blocks for a reason. We binge-watch it on a Sunday afternoon because after six straight days of good, boring choices, it feels nice to live vicariously through a person we actively try to not be, but secretly wish we were.
Fieri sacrifices reputation and intestinal lining so that we might live our best lives. He is a martyr—one that turns the other perspiring cheek and drives from “flavourtown” to “flavourtown” to sample food and shout his deep-fried gospel.
After all, salt, sugar, and fat are simple, un-nuanced tastes. It doesn’t take a refined palate to appreciate them or know when they are missing. But Fieri defies our need to ration dopamine-triggering foods, and instead dishes them out with a ladle. He’s the patron saint of the universally gratifying and simple, but because his greasy path is a direct contradiction to the cultural superiority we're supposed to feel over others, we hate him for it.
We laugh at him and meme him to death, because we know he’ll take it without flinching.
