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Abstract

This article investigates Cookin’ Cheap, a regionally produced, nationally available cooking show that mixes Southern humor with overtly cheap recipe preparation. “Cheapness” (of food and cooking technique) is positioned as both nostalgia for simpler “country” values and as differentiation from slick television norms. By showing the hosts engaging in timeconsuming, often clumsy food preparation, the show pokes fun at the flawless professionalism of television cooks, reemphasizing the chaos of the domestic kitchen. Based on viewer letters, textual analysis, and ethnographic participant/observation, this article discusses the way Cookin’ Cheap makes a place for the viewer in the text, reappropriating strategies of earlier television. When the show’s hosts impersonate their aunts in unconvincing drag, they also emphasize the passing of tradition from matriarchal figures to an underexamined form of masculinity: the feminized Southern working-class man.

Keywords

South Southern masculinity regional television cooking show “country”reception drag nostalgia social class working class whiteness gender media studies television history

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Country Cookin’ and Cross-Dressin’

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