Reality al dente: Authenticity and The Bear

Since when has the goal of art been to recreate reality? Is reality so good that all artistic endeavors should seek to reproduce it?

FX’s sleeper hit The Bear, released June 23, is the first TV show to approach Game of Thrones-level critical and cultural saturation in some time. It follows elite fine-dining chef Carmy’s return to Chicago to run a down-on-its-luck family restaurant after his brother’s suicide. Many pixels have been spilled over the show already, from how closely it replicates real kitchens and the way it portrays Chicago to its sexy chefs and the way it deals with trauma and toxic work environments. There are even cook-along recipes to make the show’s dishes at home. Here, Wrong Life Review critics Allison Hewitt Ward and Adam Rothbarth wade into the Bear Authenticity Discourse. 

This conversation contains spoilers for The Bear, so do yourself a favor and watch it before you read on. We’ll wait.

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Allison Hewitt Ward: So much of the writing, both in tweets and think pieces, has focused on the show's "authenticity": it's an authentic depiction of working in a kitchen, an authentic depiction of Chicago. I'm enough of a foodie to appreciate the presence of Matty Matheson, and know enough about Chicago to really appreciate the Malört billboard above the restaurant. But I think this kind of misses the point. Props like the deli cup Carmy drinks from are just that: props. I love this show, and I’ve never worked in a kitchen or lived in Chicago.

The Bear is an extremely conventional TV show, executed very well. It's a fish out of water story, a prodigal son story, a tortured genius story, a workplace ensemble story. These are all tried and true narratives because they never stopped resonating; the conditions that gave rise to those setups have not meaningfully changed. The show has added appeal to the hobbyist foodie, who can feel Very Smart because we get the references — another tried and true TV maneuver.

The Bear excels because it takes these unremarkable stories, this unremarkable place, these unremarkable people, and makes them undeniably remarkable. It's about doing the most and getting the least, and those few beautiful moments when effort and reward nearly, but never fully, converge. It’s about incommensurable loss and those parts of life that will never make sense.

That’s the show’s real hook. But I am interested in the pathos of the desire for authenticity. Otherwise liberal academics are still enamored by Martin Heidegger’s authenticity, but ignore the fact that he was authentically a Nazi so... OK. Authenticity is rarely a virtue in its own right, yet we desire it so, and rush to laud what appears to achieve it. In the case of The Bear, I suspect what we're looking at is more nostalgia (or wishing) than gritty verité.

Adam Rothbarth: I agree. Most of the reviews I've seen approach the show primarily from the standpoint of "authenticity," breaking it down based on how "accurate" it is to 1) cooking, 2) the city of Chicago, or 3) a particular set of emotional experiences. But since when has the goal of art been to recreate reality? Is reality so good that all artistic endeavors should seek to reproduce it, or that it should be the foremost criteria for our discussion of art? One could argue, like Trotsky did, that art should actually aim to protest against reality — which isn't to say that realism can only be bad... but it has to go beyond just "accurate content." I think people approach art today with a deep narcissism: The more of themselves they recognize on the screen, the better the work is. There is no longer any value in the abstractness of art. Fact-checking dominates everything today.

Another strange phenomena with The Bear is writers masquerading their "reviews" as therapeutic sessions meant to examine why they are attracted to, as Bon Appétit questionably put it, the "sexually competent dirtbag line cook." When I watched The Bear, I didn't see Carmy as a dirtbag or a sleaze at all (though he is of course very hot); in fact, he seemed to me to be one of the most squarely "good" characters there, though with major traumatic injuries to work though. I feel like these think pieces are part of a larger classism in objectifying and fetishizing working class people: Everyone is horny for Carmy, but only insofar as they can still see themselves as better than him. 

So I guess my question after surveying what's already been written about the show is: Beyond deli cups, Chicago beef sandos, the CTA, and the extensive use of Wilco — which I loved, for the record — is this show actually authentic as a work of art? If so, what would that mean? Is it teaching us anything about how we depict trauma to ourselves, or how capital and labor are the conditions for the possibility of healing?

AHW: Not to trapse on anyone’s authentic experience, but maybe people are just thirsty for Carmy because he’s hot? This urge to justify the libido with “critique” is so tiring.

Leaving aside questions of whether a television show can be art, I think that The Bear is artistically authentic, but not very authentic to reality.

The characters, not the setting, make the show. Marcus grows from slamming out sandwich buns to scrutinizing Noma recipes and analyzing Pantone swatches to find the perfect frosting color for the perfect donut. One of my favorite, more subtle, character arcs is Tina's, who, by the end of the season, has taken a real sense of pride in her craftsmanship. Sydney and Carmy are both talented chefs, but also both try-hards driven by a sense of inadequacy and disappointment (keeping a lid on some serious mental health problems). I think Carmy actually respects Sydney more than the audience does, in this sense. Certainly more than a review that flattens him into “masculinity in crisis” and her into a prophet of neoliberal soft management. 

Unfortunately, the development of the kitchen staff as skilled chefs in their own right is probably the least authentic, but most important, aspect of the show. The French Brigade that Carmy strands Sydney to implement alone does not fail because it is hierarchical, abusive, stifling, and outdated. It fails because it is inefficient. Budget-strained restaurants are moving toward staffs of fungible, low-skill short order cooks rather than skilled or semi-skilled brigadiers. Carmy arrives to a failing dive with mysteriously fresh ingredients and the space and budget for a full-time pastry chef. We know there are money problems, but never question how a low-down neighborhood joint has the financial ability (with regard to labor and food costs) to produce risotto and in-house veal stock. The collaboration and skilled creativity imagined by The Bear is a vanishingly rare configuration in the current restaurant landscape.* 

What appears as authenticity is in fact romanticism: a wish for a meaningful form of work that fulfills rather than drains. This appeals most, I suspect, to the office job foodie who fantasizes about leaving the computer screen and working in a kitchen. Ironically, it's the lay-foodie that finds this work so romantically attractive — a kind of urban pastoral — who is driving it out of existence. The artisan specialization of the French kitchen worked for an elite, luxury industry serving a small, elite clientele. But in the post-Food Network era there is now mass demand for fine dining, and the kitchens have to become ever more efficient to compete.

I don't think all that causes the show to fail. I think it's crucial to its success. It has all the accouterments of reality (DELI CUP!!), but imagines something different, something fading from memory or not yet realized. I don’t doubt the real-life accuracy of the anxiety, and even abuse, but here, crucially, these experiences are transformed into new possibilities: growth, not trauma for trauma’s sake. It creates a world in which all that stands between its characters and real accomplishment is personal transformation (helped along by some tins of San Marzanos containing an unexpected surprise). The show also resists the usual tell of TV's unreality — overexplaining — and instead requires a level of comfort with the unknown. So many contemporary stories feature characters figuring out what to do, then doing it. The Bear is much more true to reality in this sense: The staff of the Beef do it, every day, even as they don't know what to do. 

AR: I found the catalyst for the climax of the show — the restaurant critic’s unbelievable acquisition of an off-the-menu dish that anchors his glowing review  — to be the The Bear’s most ridiculous aspect. A real food critic would absolutely not accept a free dish on an official visit, and certainly wouldn’t mention it in their review, especially when the dish is not available to the public! But, adding to your points about the show’s romantic portrayal of the business of food, journalistic ethics, too, would not be found in this fantasy world.

In any case, I think you’re right that the show is about transformation, about one coming to own their work, and thus their life. The kitchen both should and should not be seen as a kitchen, and certainly not exclusively as a kitchen, the way a great film or show involving psychoanalysis wouldn't really be about how nice the furniture was. In The Bear, the kitchen is a cosmos, a society, a laboratory that lets us see people working together to achieve individual and collective ends at once. Their restaurant as a metropolitan space allows us to see the potential in both fast casual and fine dining, separately and as one: fast casual feeds people quickly, fulfilling a natural need, while fine dining can be a space for serious artistry and specialization, leading in some cases to deep creative expression and fulfillment. The marriage of the two here feels utopian. The end is not a perfect sandwich, a successful brigade, or a flourishing restaurant, but a good life.

Of course, at the center of it all isn't a kitchen or a city, but a relationship between brothers. I found it very beautiful, from Jon Bernthal's truly moving, scene-stealing cameo as the late elder brother Michael to Carmy's monologue in the final episode and the big discovery when he finally opens his brother's letter. I think the show is about restaurants not because of our need to represent “toxic masculinity” to ourselves or play spot-the-Malört-sign, but because cuisine is a vehicle for upbuilding and connection, the literal consumption of the product of another person. The kitchen is a means of being recognized by another, which is exactly how Carmy uses it to reach Michael. The tragedy is that he finds out too late, in the season’s incredible final episode, that he was successful.

This season of The Bear is about reconciliation: with one's self, with one's work, with one's family. It may sound corny, but food brings people together. Fuck, I want that spaghetti now. 

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*Many thanks to former Momofuku Toronto Sous Chef Cam Hardy for insights on fine dining and the restaurant industry that informed this conversation.