Baked In: Cooking and Cannabis in Viceland

Abstract

abstract: This article examines Viceland's rise and fall through its pot-friendly food programming. Vice's wielding of cooking and cannabis as ideal expressions of its masculine, countercultural brand is analyzed here through intersecting histories of the evolving cultural status of cannabis, food television's generic conventions, and Vice Media's own problematic corporate history. This situated reading demonstrates how TV can weave emerging politics into the fabric of popular culture precisely through its most procedurally familiar forms. Yet Viceland's history and contrived TV environment also produce a generative ambiguity that complicates the programs' political engagement.