Shanti Kumar’s chapter Is There Anything Called Global Television Studies? discusses the idea of the East-West discourse and the cross-demographic communication that is happening in television. Specifically, Kumar refers to Raimundo Panikkar’s argument that “the main difficulty in comparative studies of East-West discourse is that one always starts – consciously or unconsciously – from an initial philosophical position, or a stance, influenced by the images and the myths of one’s own culture and location.” Panikkar goes on to describe a thesis (subjective ideas of a scholar) with the antithesis (which is “judged in terms of the theories and practices of the guiding thesis”). Kumar further applies Panikkar’s ideas to Albert Moran’s theories about “copycat television:”
“The radio game show What’s My Line? Moves from the NBC Radio Network in the US to BBC Radio and later becomes a popular television program; the British sitcom Men Behaving Badly is adapted as a US television series It’s A Man’s World while the Australian soap The Restless Years gives rise to Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden in the Netherlands and Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten in Fermany. It is indeed a copycat world in the international broadcasting industries.
Upon reading this I had to stop and laugh as one show immediately came to mind: Making It. Have you ever heard of this show? No? Let me tell you all about it… Making It is the NBC knock-off version of the The Great British Baking Show except sugar, flour, and butter are replaced with wood, screws, and nails. It is quite literally the Home Depot version of Bake Off.
Don’t believe me yet? Here are a few of the many ridiculous similarities between the two shows:
1. Bake Off takes place in a perfectly decorated, colorful tent in the middle of a field. Making It takes place in a perfectly decorated, colorful barn in the middle of the woods.
2. Both shows are hosted by two comedians and have two expert judges
3. Both shows have a few challenges, where contestants must make something within a certain number of hours
4. Each week the shows crown a Star Maker (or Star Baker) and send someone home
5. For every challenge, the hosts count down and say “3, 2, 1, BAKE” or “3, 2, 1, MAKE IT”
6. I could go on forever
Still don’t believe me? Look at the trailers and the photos on the IMDB pages, it’s wildly similar
· Making It: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6874206/
· Bake Off: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1877368/
Moran and Kumar raise an excellent point about cross-demographic communication taking place in the form of “copycat television.” And this of course makes me think further about the idea of recycled stories. I’ve been told by many professors that every story has been told, the difference between them is the angle from which the story is told. Everyone in the industry these days is looking for something they haven’t seen before. But if every story has been told, how do we tell new stories?
While Making It could be viewed as a fresh perspective on British Bake Off, in my head it is essentially a form of plagiarism where the entire idea for the show was copied and pasted with wood slapped across it to replace the cake. And I have to wonder how they’ve gotten away with it for three seasons. How is Bake Off letting it happen? Or do they have to let it happen because the shows are just barely different enough, after all one is about carpenters and one is about bakers. Again I don’t have an answer, but it makes me think about the stories I want to tell: stories that are new and have not been seen. How do I use the films that I’ve watched and loved to be without creating the copycat version of my favorite films?
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