The Hollywood Handshake

Phenomenology of Bake Off

The highest honor you can receive on The Great British Baking Show is not “Star Baker.”

No, the highest honor is a handshake from Paul Hollywood, the blue-eyed judge — our image of God the Father, if he were born a low-class British boy become a wildly successful baker. 

If, truly, the contestant is able to configure a cake of musical flavors that breaks some barrier — if they aspire to bake beyond their ability and yet bring something to fruition that both startles and delights — if they’re able to make good to the promise that creation is worthwhile, Paul Hollywood extends his hand.

That reminds me of The Creation of Adam, as God the Father reaches out to Adam, offering to touch him with his divinity. 

Soggy bottoms and all, the contestants occasionally reach back, touch the Father, and bring glory to the confections.

I don't think I’m making a joke, necessarily, that The Great British Baking Show contains Christian motifs. Nor do I think it's something so profoundly deep that we all need to point and gawk as if we've just discovered The Covenant of the Ark. I think it's simpler than that. 

It's both mundane and beautiful. When things function, when things are elegant and we like to watch, they contain motifs of the larger cosmos. To the extent that the show works, and to the extent that it engages and inspires, it is universally true. 

Sam Harris would probably say, "You're just reading into it." To make this argument, Sam once took a cookbook and read into it mythological meaning. See? You can do it with any old thing. 

This does not make the point Harris wants, because, of course, a cookbook is designed to create food that is edible. Making something edible – and hopefully delicious – is an aspiration for good. To make something good, you conform yourself to a pattern. This pattern permeates all that is recognizable. And in anything recognizable, we can find the mundane as well as the religious. 

Sometimes, we just ignore the parts of the religious we don’t like.

Recently, we ignore the whole “judgmental father” thing. Isn’t that outdated or something?

With Paul Hollywood, there are no pulled punches. No matter how sad or marginalized the contestant is, judges are obliged to judge. 

It gives his words a gravitas that, when he does have something nice to say, it often brings the contestants to tears.

The ability to judge, to let us know when we fall short, is very obviously what inspires exceptional work. It's a Jacob's Ladder of ascension ever upward. That movement itself is the Kingdom of Heaven, stamped on the show like newspaper ink on silly putty.

Whatever harshness of either of the judges – Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith – is balanced by the two court jesters, Noel and Sandi, who are the archetypal fools, releasing tension with some nonsense.

The show is a near-complete image of the cosmos. You have the right and left hand — justice and mercy (Paul and Prue), existing in harmony. At the margins are the tricksters and jesters (Noel and Sandi) to help us laugh at our own shortcomings.

Hollywood tells you that your dough is stodgy and under-proved, but Noel lingers behind and wonders loudly what Paul looks like in a Speedo.

Famously, it's a show that helps people through depression. The common theory as to why is because it’s so “nice” and “light-hearted” and “British.”

But maybe the real reason is the opposite.

We believe we no longer need the image of a judgmental father. It’s a reaction against the Christianity, perhaps, of the boomers. Too puritanical, too judgmental.

But, by shunning all Paul Hollywoods what we’ve accidentally done is removed the meaning from our lives.

Because, whether or not we like it, and despite the fact that we get jealous of those who delight the father more than we do, removing him does not produce free love and utopia. But rather depression. Aimlessness. When there is no judgment, there is no way up.

So, depressed people find themselves oddly drawn to a show that sneaks in a sweetened judgmental father.

At the end of a long day, when I am brain-dead from work and hard reading, I usually need a little Mardi Gras — a release valve for what is pent up. So, I indulge in The Great British Baking Show. 

A little sugar helps the medicine go down. 

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