In Wednesdays’s class this week we watched Laura Gabbert’s City of Gold (2015), a profile of internationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold. City Of Gold was an interesting and beneficial film to watch, as its observation of food criticism as well as the emphasis of Gold’s critic personality, presented new ideas to me about how we view not only culture, but its criticisms.

One of the most emphasised points of City Of Gold, was how Gold’s critiques on food infuses aspects of the dish’s physicality and material traits with the people and culture whom surround it. It was interesting to hear how by doing so, Gold, as a food critic, became renowned criticisms credentialed the imperative and historical nature of a dish’s context. Gold’s acknowledgement of food as a demonstration of culture and presentation of society’s different and similar ideologies was interesting as it challenged my ideas about the importance of food and its contribution to culture. On having this epiphany however, I asked myself why do I and Gabbert find this notion so dumbfounding. Why is Gold so highly thought of as a food critic for making this affiliation, when of course food is apart of culture, and a critic’s purpose to critique so.

Thus, City of Gold presented to me the unconscious bias I hold towards criticisms, and how I have preconceived ideas of the value of work presented in each cultural category. When critiquing art, I connote high cultural aspects to the reviewer, and would not be surprised to read sweeping comments about how a particular artwork shapes and demonstrates ideological patterns within our past and future history. However, the same conception is not applied when reading critiques about food. Exposing my categorisation of high and low cultural aspects to a society, which is not fair, nor an actual representation to the melting pot of culture itself.