Killing the Crab-Buddha on MasterChef
To some extent, the goal of all reality TV competitions is to make their contestants uncomfortable. The stress is sometimes physical (how many cockroaches can you eat?) and sometimes mental (there’s a camera in every room of your house!). But what happens when the conflict is spiritual?
Last week on MasterChef, host Gordon Ramsay announced that for the preliminary Mystery Box challenge, all of the amateur chef contestants would be serving a dish derived from a live Dungeness crab. This was okay with everyone except contestant Sheetal Bhagat, a practicing Hindu whose faith teaches that every living thing has a soul. While Sheetal, a vegetarian, has been forced to cook meat on the show before, this was the first time in her life when she was expected to kill a living thing.
In the end—spoiler alert—a teary-eyed Sheetal ends up denying an offer from Chef Ramsay to kill the crab for her, says she needs to “grow up a little,” and boils the crab anyway (all this despite the fact that this was a non-elimination round, and technically she would not have been disqualified for refusing to do so). The judges end up ranking Sheetal’s dish among the top three, due in part to what they feel was her emotional turnaround. Joe Bastianich in particular justified Sheetal’s decision by assuring her, “I’m sure that crab is very, very happy to give its life for this dish.”
Is anyone else disturbed by how the rules of this competition so take precedent over all else? Sheetal chose to defy her religious beliefs in a bid for maturity, but has she really grown up? The wrath of Gordon Ramsay may be daunting, but “growing up” could have meant could have meant sticking to one’s convictions, however out of place they might seem to the judges on a reality TV show.
Watch the clip below.
Related: apostasy, food, Hinduism, popular culture
September 10th, 2010 at 10:52 am
I wonder if this approaches the Milgram Experiment with similar conclusions and similar questions to ask. If your belief is that strong then could killing the crab be the same as giving a large electric shock to another person? How would we have behaved?
Video unfortunately not available outside the US
September 15th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
This is disappointing. I knew a guy that criticized Chik-filet because they are closed on sundays. Even though I and my friend were not religious, we both felt it was very honorable that the company chose to lose some money to stick to its founders’ spiritual beliefs. Thats called integrity. I think the contestant should have told the judges where they could stick it.
October 1st, 2010 at 7:47 am
Most Hindus are non-vegetarian.. Some castes notably brahmins are Vegetarian.. tho in the new culture all this is changin. As a Brahmin myself, I was appalled that she said killing a crab will make her grow up.. What a total lack of integrity. Its bad enuf (for me)having to watch meat being cooked…but its really disturbing to many viewers showing a live animal being killed.. I hope there r some censors to stop people from doing that on TV.. I even rem some other culinary show where they had to catch, kill, remove the skin and debone it and cut up the meat of some snake like fish.. and all the contestants did it.. on TV.. so sad