Column

Culture

Eating

Hospitality

1 April 2024

6 min read

We could all benefit from hospitality’s bear hug

In a compelling series, The Bear offers a richer and nuanced redemptive journey.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A tired-looking chef turns around to look across his shoulder.

Jeremy Allen White plays Carmy.

FXP.

I only need to watch a few minutes of Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen to remind me that toxic environments not only still exist, but all too often are glorified. From bitter previous experience I know that employers can bully, lie and manipulate those beneath them, and apparently get away with it. I have sadly seen how the Christian virtues of turning the other cheek and forgiving your enemies can serve to collude with a toxic environment. However, I also dare to hope that another Christian virtue – that of hospitality – can foster quite a different environment. I have been thinking about this a lot recently as it tallies with themes explored in another chef show - the global smash-hit multi-award-winning US TV series, The Bear.

The drama is set in the high-intensity world of the Chicago hospitality industry. The story revolves around a character called Carmy, played by Jeremy Allen White. Carmy has made his name in gastronomy and has won and retained multiple Michelin stars. But when his beloved brother Mikey commits suicide, Carmy returns to Chicago to take over his brother’s failing sandwich shop called “The Beef.”

Putting a grieving world-class chef in the middle of a bankrupt dysfunctional sandwich shop in the cheap side of Chicago is a great concept for an intense drama. It is set up to be a classic rags-to-riches journey and so we wait to see how, with a bit of spit, polish and hard work, transformation against the odds is possible. Although, inevitably, the narrative arc of the show does follow the well-trodden American Dream theme of outsiders whose hard work turns things around, this is not a simple tale. There’s a richer and more nuanced redemptive journey offered in this compelling series.

The show has won critical acclaim and I believe it is due in part to the fascinating combination of three important overlapping hospitality themes that each offer us some signposts for changing the culture of toxic environments. They also happen to point to how Christian hospitality teaching is as relevant today as ever.

The vulnerability of hospitality

“The more I learn about Michael, the less I understand.”

Ebraheim

Everyone in the relational ecosystem of this television show has a major flaw. There are no messianic figures. Everyone is carrying great deal of pain and vulnerability. The ever-anxious Carmy is a recovering addict and finds solace in total immersion in his work. The rising-star sous-chef, Sydney, played by Ayo Edebiri, is grieving the loss of her mother and the serial failures of her previous businesses. The emotionally illiterate cousin, Richie, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, is becoming alienated from his wife and his daughter and as a result causes physical or relational chaos everywhere he goes.

Watching this show is a journey to the dark side. The pyscho-social dysfunction of the characters matches the organisational and financial mess of the sandwich bar itself. Everything goes wrong: crumbling walls, failed safety inspections and the self-sabotage of the staff team. It’s great viewing at the end of a difficult day: any minor chaos I am experiencing is relativised by the all-consuming disarray of The Beef.

Despite their flaws, we find ourselves rooting for the characters. Hollywood seems to have borrowed this idea from the Christian faith: never underestimate the underdogs. From its earliest days the church was made up of a seemingly socially impossible group of people: a suspicious collaborator, a trouble-making insurgent, as well as other socially stigmatised men and women. You don’t have to spend long in a local congregation of Christians to encounter the same social paradoxes. The unlikely, often uncomfortable gathering of believers from different walks of life is both the beauty and the bane of the church. People are both sharp and sweet, weird, awkward and challenging and yet somehow there’s not only something irresistibly moreish about their company, but the persistent belief that these are the ones who will ultimately be vindicated, honoured and rewarded.

The hope of hospitality

“I think this place could be so different from all the other places we’ve been at.”

Sydney

The continuous omnishambles of The Beef feels like a mirror of our own political moment. Swapping the leader at the top does not resolve the systemic problems. There is no overnight transformation. In fact, things must get worse before anything changes for the better. Personal existential demons need to be faced before the restaurant can begin to be turned around, and, even then, they still need an end-of-season miracle.
So much of our public life, whether it is in the politics of the church or the politics of our nation, looks like the early chaos of The Beef. A fancy new menu, a charismatic new leader, a new shiny piece of technology or even a quick-fix new work regime cannot take away the anger and the misery and the brokenness. What does seem to pay dividends in the show is the gradual inculcation of a culture of dignity, respect and commitment to one another.

Every employee at The Beef begins to refer to one other as “Chef.” This recognition of the value of the other, the regular voicing of the importance and equality of your fellow employees is part of a gradual culture change in the restaurant. The change in language is not a magic bullet for the transformation but rather a small, but important, expression of new culture of dignity that is being established. This same kind of culture change is urgently needed in our church and nation. Finding ways to express respect to one another might not be a bad place to start.

It becomes one of the highest honours for the cooks to prepare the “family meal” where the staff gather for food together after the shift is done. It turns into a moment of communion and reconnection in the chaos of the day. It reminds me of how the Lord’s Supper was always meant to be – a reason to come together and remember and hope.

The power of hospitality

“I’m gonna fix this place.”

Carmy

Season 2 tells the story of creating a Michelin-Star-worthy restaurant in the transformed shell of what had been The Beef sandwich shop. Most of the dysfunctional characters go on a series of journeys of discovery and transformation. One of the chefs goes to Denmark and learns the power of discipline and how to produce micro-cuisine. Another goes on a weeklong haute cuisine boot camp at the highest quality restaurant in the world. Beginning with the simple task of washing forks he is gradually inducted into the culture of excellence and service of the restaurant, where nothing is too much trouble in their aim to give guests an unforgettable experience of hospitality. Richie’s 45-minute make-over is the worst and best episode. The transformation is too complete too quickly, but its message is clear: there is hope for even the most dysfunctional person.

“You have this minute when you’re watching the fire and you’re thinking: If I don’t do anything, this place will burn down and all my anxiety will go away with it. And then you put the fire out. Then you put the fire out.”

Carmy

As I binge-watched this series, I found myself thinking long and hard about the church. I have tasted the toxicity that too often seeps in and spreads pain, causes harm and thwarts whatever good they are trying to do. I have also tasted the opposite, when the church has extended welcome to the homeless, refugees or children in care, and people encounter hope and transformation. When I feel like giving up on the church, I remember how delicious that really is and am re-motivated to do whatever I can to make it the best place in town.

Article

Books

Character

Culture

Virtues

3 December 2024

5 min read

In defence of Jane Austen’s unlikeable heroine

Fanny Price: passive and prudish or brave and resilient?

Beatrice Scudeler

Beatrice writes on literature, religion, the arts, and the family. Her published work can be found here.

A 18th century woman sits at a desk, beside a candle and stares out the window.

Frances O'Conner as Fanny in Mansfield Park, 1999.

BBC Films.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that nobody has ever liked Fanny Price. Or is it? Many in Austen’s own family liked the heroine of Mansfield Park. Her sister Cassandra was ‘fond’ of Fanny; her brother Francis called her ‘delightful’. Early critics of Austen’s works, like archbishop Richard Whately, also praised both the novel and its protagonist.

Where does our current dislike towards Fanny Price come from, then? The major literary critics of the last century certainly didn’t help. Lionel Trilling paved the way, announcing confidently in the 1960s that ‘Nobody, I believe, has ever found it possible to like the heroine of Mansfield Park’; Kingsley Amis even called Fanny a ‘monster of complacency and pride’. Two decades later, Tony Tanner agreed: ‘Even sympathetic readers have often found [Fanny] something of a prig…nobody falls in love with [her]’. The list goes on.

But we can’t blame academia alone. Sometime in the twentieth century, we simply stopped liking Fanny. Most Austen readers I know rank her as the worst of her heroines. We don’t like her moralising, her priggishness, and her insistence that she must follow her conscience along with the religious precepts which she holds so dear. To make her appealing to contemporary viewers, both major recent adaptations of the novel (Patricia Rozema’s 1999 film adaptation and Iain B. MacDonald’s 2007 TV adaptation) completely butchered her, turning a quiet, timid character into an outspoken Elizabeth Bennet type. The problem is not that we think Fanny is evil, it’s that we find her boring.

Enter Whit Stillman’s brilliant 1990 film Metropolitan, itself a loose adaptation of Austen’s novel. Tom Townsend, one of the film’s young protagonists, recommends the very essay by Lionel Trilling that I’ve cited above to Audrey Rouget, the main character and moral compass of the film. When they later discuss the essay, Audrey is puzzled by Trilling’s dislike of Fanny:

I think [Trilling] is very strange. He says that nobody could like the heroine of Mansfield Park? I like her. Then he goes on and on about how we modern people today with our modern attitudes bitterly resent Mansfield Park because…its heroine is virtuous? What’s wrong with a novel having a virtuous heroine?

Trilling is at least partly right. Fanny, with her religious principles, offends our modern sensibilities. Our reading culture is one deeply embarrassed by goodness, and Fanny’s piety makes us deeply uncomfortable. But Audrey is right, too. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with ‘a novel having a virtuous heroine’. What if the fault is not with Fanny Price, but with us, the readers? What if we’ve simply lost our taste for goodness?

Fanny is often compared unfavourably to Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet. Mary Crawford, the argument goes, is the Elizabeth Bennet character in Mansfield Park: blunt, stubborn, self-assured. Fanny, on the other hand, is a kind of Charlotte Lucas, quiet, introspective, and concerned with social mores. But following her conscience doesn’t squash Fanny’s individuality, and neither does it make her ‘conventional’. This is only true on a surface level.

Presentism, the insistence to project current sensibilities onto the past, is the poison of good literature.

In fact, these four characters (Elizabeth, Charlotte, Mary, and Fanny) represent examples of real versus false virtues – what philosopher Alasdair Macintyre would call ‘simulacra’ of virtue. While both Elizabeth Bennet and Mary Crawford are opinionated, only Elizabeth is truly brave. Mary, though she acts like she doesn’t care about social norms, is all too eager to marry Fanny off to her brother Henry – after he has committed adultery with a married woman – for the sake of keeping appearances. Similarly, although both Charlotte Lucas and Fanny Price are reserved, Fanny’s reserve comes from humility, Charlotte’s from the kind of timidity that is a failure of courage.

I think that’s precisely the challenge that Austen sets for us in Mansfield Park: to discern true from simulated virtue, even when true virtue might be less immediately attractive, less noticeable. When we look below the surface, Fanny emerges not as a passive, prudish character, but rather as brave and resilient. She may not be witty, but she is not a pushover. She rejects Henry Crawford’s proposal of marriage even as her uncle Sir Thomas pressures her to accept, on the grounds that he’s not good enough for her.

By going against the will of her uncle Sir Thomas, Fanny finds herself banished from Mansfield Park, the only place she knows as her home. She’s sent off to visit her parents in Portsmouth, not knowing when she’ll be allowed back. What’s more, she is rejecting the prospect of financial security through marriage with a rich man for the sake of her principles. She neither respects nor loves Crawford enough for the commitment of marriage: ‘I—I cannot like him, sir, well enough to marry him’, she confesses to her uncle despite her own shyness. In her confidence about a decision that will affect her future happiness, she can be as headstrong as Elizabeth Bennet is when she turns down Mr. Collins.

Once we acknowledge how brave and resilient Fanny can truly be, we can begin to cherish her other qualities, too. Still, someone might ask, why do we need to force ourselves to appreciate characters like Fanny in the first place? Why can’t we just leave people to have their own taste in literature? To that I answer: if we have come to dislike a character for being virtuous, as Trilling claims, isn’t that in itself pretty compelling evidence that something has gone amiss in our literary taste? Don’t we need to rediscover our lost enjoyment of goodness, if we want our culture to be a flourishing one?

Fortunately, the line connecting Austen to our culture today has not been entirely cut off. ‘Somewhere between us and [Jane Austen], the chasm runs’, wrote C. S. Lewis around the same time that Trilling pronounced Fanny Price to be unlikeable. Perhaps they were both wrong. If literary critics won’t value characters like Fanny, then it’s the common reader’s job to do so. Metropolitan’s Audrey is the fictionalised appreciator of Fanny Price par excellence, a custodian of good taste. But I remain hopeful that there are Audreys in real life, too: readers who are perceptive enough to appreciate Fanny; readers who, instead of judging a character written 200 years ago for not being ‘modern’ enough, choose to let past literature challenge their current assumptions. Presentism, the insistence to project current sensibilities onto the past, is the poison of good literature. Fanny Price, with all of her goodness, is the perfect cure.