[Sca-cooks] Fwd: Media Inquiry for Historic Cooks/Hearth Cooks

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Johnna Holloway wrote:
>This came over another list I am on--
>
>I can't imagine what sort of historic cook/living history docent
>they are seeking.
>Someone I suppose for $20,000 that will cook medieval or historic
>at home for their families.
>
>Johnnae
>
>
>Subject: Media Inquiry for Historic Cooks/Hearth Cooks
>Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 4:22 PM
>
>>I am a casting producer for an ABC reality television series called
>>/Wife Swap/. I am currently looking to feature a historic cook...

-----

No, no, no, no, no. In this show, the wife from one family goes to live as the wife of another, and vice versa. Usually the families are chosen so that there is the most contrast and potential conflict. The first week they follow the household's normal "rules", then in the second week they get to inflict their own.

The $20,000 is pay for suffering the indignities inflicted by the show on the families for the 2 weeks the crew invades their lives and the producers try to produce the most problems so they'll be "interesting" for the viewers at home.

There are a couple of these shoes on TV. It appears to me that in at least some of these shows, they try to humiliate the family that is most unusual.

I saw one episode of one of these shows featuring one family who was devoted to things medieval. Under normal circumstances they probably looked a lot like many people we all know - or are. But on the show they seems weird and out of touch with reality. I don't remember the other family - clearly very buttoned-down, organized, and "modern".

I must confess that the weird, wacky, and freaky families often loosen up the lives of the other family in good ways, while the up-tight families usually get the non-standard families to get a bit more organized. The weird families and the up-tight husbands usually come off worst.

The show that had a devoutly Kosher Jewish woman living with an Appalachian fundamentalist Christian family was fraught with problems. She had to mail order most of her food so she could eat. And the family clearly had pre-determined ideas - and not good ones - about non-Christians, and Jews especially. And that family sure did want to eat pork and pork products, which guaranteed conflict. Plus they continually tried to get the Jewish woman to see the error of her ways and take Jesus into her heart. A few family members became a little more tolerant, but not all of them. A very painful episode.

In these financially troubled times it might be worth volunteering for that $20,000. But i guarantee they'll end up looking like fools at best and freaks at worst.
--
someone sometimes called Urtatim