13 thoughts on “Julia (2022-): Mastering the Truth of Cooking

  1. I just don’t why they thought it was necessary to add all these things that never happened. Wasn’t Julia’s real life fascinating enough? After reading My Life in France, I certainly thought so. :)

  2. I found the inserts of Betty Friedan and Iris to be problematic but in essence trivial. Probably because I still see the fight to have “women’s issues” and “women’s skills” such as cooking, sewing, child care, home care STILL going on and not folded into “people issues”. Friedan was an important person, but her take that Julia cared about cooking to please her husband rather than cooking to Julia was a skill and an art and can be for any of us to be limiting.

    1. Years ago, I saw the documentary “What Are You Afraid Of?” about feminist movements originating in 1970s Japan. A line that stuck out to me was from a woman who visited to US to study the Second Wave here. She was unimpressed. “They all want to be men. I like being a woman.”

      It bothers me that male coded stuff is still treated as inherently better, like pants and STEM.

  3. My husband and I knew of Sarah Lancaster’s work through other British series (The Last Tango in Halifax) and had seen the other film (Julie & Julia) and was curious how this would turn out. She is excellent as Julia Child- voice type and mannerism – that you just fall into the story and ride along and the food- OMG! It made you hungry just watching her make a simple omelette. My husband is the real cook in the family so for his May 3 birthday I got him The Book – Mastering the Art of French Cooking- and he’s done the Boeuf Bourguignon and Fish Fillets Poached in White Wine with Mushrooms. It was heavenly! I can hardly wait for (hopefully) season 2!

  4. Came to the blog today thinking about this series and hoping to find a discussion about the fashion, and really glad to have found this! I haven’t seen the later episodes you mention yet, but so far, I’m enjoying the show a lot. I think there is a lot of the push-pull about gender roles and feminism playing out early as well. Like so many other based-on-a-true-story products (I’m thinking of Hamilton as the biggest recent one), for me the hope is that the show will drive people to go find out more for themselves, and so any historical fudging that serves an agenda vs serves “truth” will have a net positive effect. That said, it concerns me that creating historical events out of whole cloth causes harm, even if they are so private and personal in nature that there’s no way to really know what happened.

  5. As much as I liked the character Coco Van, I’d have preferred something closer to what Julia experienced. Queer acceptance took time for her. It would have been cool to see that worked into a subplot.

    1. I’m a fan of the show and of an age to remember some of this. I was a child in the 1960s. I seem to remember one of the proponents of the Women’s Movement saying that we just want the right to be whatever we wanted. That could be a scientist – I’m a lousy math person and really hate math – or a gourmet chef. Julia Child cooked because she loved to, like you mentioned. And I liked the casting of a POC as Alice bc I found her totally believable with Harvard, Radcliffe and the other universities in the Boston area. Julia Child was a tour de force who captivated her audience. Loved how she converted the male producer by teaching him and his wife to cook French food and love it. Will there be a post on the fashion?

  6. I haven’t seen it yet, but expect the divine Sarah to do well. My Life in France is a great read. Frankly, Julia was an excellent role model: Served in the OAS during the war, decided on her own to master the art of – you know. Had the balls to enter a male dominated class and profession IN FRANCE! Remained her authentic self throughout. Embellishments not needed . And Sarah? You are an excellent writer!

  7. Oh gosh, I think this is an attempt to make the story “relevant to a modern audience.” Things that would just not get talked about, have to get talked about because to give them a pass these days is not ok. But it sounds awfully ham fisted. I blame a show runner who thinks that audience needs cue cards too.

  8. Yes!!! A good friend was her tenant (Julia had an apartment in her basement) for a few years (in the late 70s) while going to grad school. My friend said that the whole portrayal was really not the person she knew pretty well–Julia was a very ambitious women with a good sense of purpose, not the sort of aimless bumbling klutz portrayed–and she would have NEVER dropped an F-bomb (Julia kept to the old fashioned rules for ladies). A few points that I also found factually wrong–while Julia supported friends that were gay later in life, she did not back gay rights (and extremely unlikely to have visited a drag bar in 1962). There were no black producers at WGBH in the 60s. Avis was a good friend and the initial editor of the Art of French cooking but there is no indication that she ever volunteered to assist the television production. Mr. Rogers would have never been invited to a 1962 fundraiser in New York, considering that his show didn’t start until 1968 (I am actually one of the kids who showed up to his Boston appearance in the documentary about this)–according to Wikipedia, he was working for his ordination at that time. I also take issue with the portrayal of Russ Morash as againsts how-to shows–he really dug into that in his career and pretty much made most of the home shows PBS became known for in the 70s and 80s. Marion Morash is an accomplished cook (and blonde, FWIW) who was published, made regular tv appearances with cooking segments on many television shows (including Julia’s) and has a James Beard award. Overall, the show morphed Julia’s personality into the one we’d like to have today, but the real one wasn’t quite so progressive, I’m afraid.

  9. Sorry, I don’t know, but there was one point I puzzled over: in the series, Julia frequently uses blue language, to the amusement of all. Yet, in “Julie and Julia,” Child refused to meet with Powell in part because of Powell’s cursing, and yes, “because she [Powell] wasn’t a serious cook.” I wonder about the truth…if there is any truth to either of those statements.

  10. I think the more recent history is, the more difficult it is to grapple with fictional inaccuracies. I know some history buffs who go ballistic at Shakespeare’s free and easy use of it, and I admit, as a literary person, I’m more interested in the drama.

    Having grown up watching Julia and reading My Life in France, I do think that Julia was fundamentally a blue-blooded member of the American elite who was all about promoting the art and technique of French cooking to everyone. It was her life’s calling and I do think she believed enjoying cooking and making mistakes, yet learning proper technique, was important. But she was never wholly in step with some of the changes taking place in American society. Even today the Michael Pollan “cook at home” locavores promote an eating style that often over-burdens women to make sure the rest of the family eats healthfully.

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