FICTION
Everybody Loves Ramen
/ Jimmy Chen
03.16.10
Controversy broke out in 1999 when neo-conservative magazine The Weekly Standard published an Op-ed suggesting that the Wong family, as immigrants without full control of the English language, were subconsciously the "Wrong" family, that the liberal media was complicit in their attempt to phonetically render the "wrong" politics right.[8] Such semantic assertions were absurd, and editor William Kristol later apologized publicly, however insincerely. Dissenters of the show, led by the Alabama Baptist State Board, garnered media attention for the racial allusions of WHAT IS WONG WITH YOU? written on their Church marquees.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was allegedly offered 2.1 million dollars to guest appear on the series finale to play and officially disclose the hidden identity of the fainting boom-mic man. Hoffman turned it down, after receiving death threats and/or bribes estimated cumulatively at 5.8 million dollars, to the relief of critics who believed it was the very non-identity of the boom-mic man which became a metaphor for the inclusive second-person pronoun pandering to the inherent narcissism of a multi-generation of television viewers who imagined themselves as the famous boom-mic man, a phenomenon which became known as "the self-democracy of fame." The show made history in 2001 when the fainting boom-mic man won an Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. The writers, needless to say, accepted the award on his conceptual behalf.
In the series finale, actors playing the writers of the show are seen at the kitchen table frantically writing options for a spin-off series called "Never Ending Noodles," a conceit which seemed strained and too eager in its self-reflexivity for most audiences. Feinhorn optioned the spin-off to HBO and was in the process of producing the pilot when he suffered a fatal stroke, which his family attributes to his high blood-pressure resultant of the high-sodium ramen dishes he had every day in solidarity with Kay Boyd. The pilot was never made, although in 2006 a theatre troupe at Emerson College produced Never Ending Noodles: The Play which was unfortunately met with lukewarm reviews.
The huge success of Everyone Loves Ramen is seen as due to its provocative devices, namely, the fainting boom-mic man, "raceless" Rupert, and the vegetarian ramen recipes – all demonstrative of a collectively held fictional imagination, what a cultural critic called "the structure and imperative verity of disbelief."[9] The show led the Nielsen ratings at No. 1 for an incredible three-year span. In 2003, TIME magazine named it "the most important television show ever made since the 19th century."[10] Everybody Loves Ramen not only incited the scrutiny of comfortable cultural notions of sociological values and meaning, but most importantly, preempted the fall of American television by conceding to, if not celebrating, its very artifice.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was allegedly offered 2.1 million dollars to guest appear on the series finale to play and officially disclose the hidden identity of the fainting boom-mic man. Hoffman turned it down, after receiving death threats and/or bribes estimated cumulatively at 5.8 million dollars, to the relief of critics who believed it was the very non-identity of the boom-mic man which became a metaphor for the inclusive second-person pronoun pandering to the inherent narcissism of a multi-generation of television viewers who imagined themselves as the famous boom-mic man, a phenomenon which became known as "the self-democracy of fame." The show made history in 2001 when the fainting boom-mic man won an Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. The writers, needless to say, accepted the award on his conceptual behalf.
In the series finale, actors playing the writers of the show are seen at the kitchen table frantically writing options for a spin-off series called "Never Ending Noodles," a conceit which seemed strained and too eager in its self-reflexivity for most audiences. Feinhorn optioned the spin-off to HBO and was in the process of producing the pilot when he suffered a fatal stroke, which his family attributes to his high blood-pressure resultant of the high-sodium ramen dishes he had every day in solidarity with Kay Boyd. The pilot was never made, although in 2006 a theatre troupe at Emerson College produced Never Ending Noodles: The Play which was unfortunately met with lukewarm reviews.
The huge success of Everyone Loves Ramen is seen as due to its provocative devices, namely, the fainting boom-mic man, "raceless" Rupert, and the vegetarian ramen recipes – all demonstrative of a collectively held fictional imagination, what a cultural critic called "the structure and imperative verity of disbelief."[9] The show led the Nielsen ratings at No. 1 for an incredible three-year span. In 2003, TIME magazine named it "the most important television show ever made since the 19th century."[10] Everybody Loves Ramen not only incited the scrutiny of comfortable cultural notions of sociological values and meaning, but most importantly, preempted the fall of American television by conceding to, if not celebrating, its very artifice.