Erfolg in Serie

TALK ABOUT: THE PASTA QUEEN

Vortrag mit Ausschnitten zu der Serie THE PASTA QUEEN in englischer Sprache.

What happens when culture becomes a brand? Prime Video's THE PASTA QUEEN (2024) offers more than a celebration of Italian food. Through the charismatic and flamboyant personality of its host Nadia Caterina Munno, the series presents migration as a success story in which cultural heritage becomes a source of authenticity, visibility, and economic opportunity. Nadia's exaggerated Italian persona, expressive gestures, emotional storytelling, and glamorous femininity stand out in a television landscape where female food hosts are often expected to appear relatable, domestic, and carefully restrained. By contrast, The Pasta Queen turns cultural difference into spectacle and celebrates a highly visible form of femininity that is both empowering and commercially attractive, while simultaneously revealing how empowerment can remain entangled with objectification when femininity is performed through hypervisibility, exaggeration, and marketable cultural stereotypes. This talk explores how The Pasta Queen reflects contemporary American ideas about identity, diversity, and belonging.

Isis Luxenburger is a doctoral candidate at the chair of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University, where she also teaches classes on media studies and industrial film. Her research interests include the cultural studies of (industrial) films and, in general, investigating research subjects rooted in other disciplines – especially Film Studies, Game Studies, Border Studies, and Translation Studies – from a Cultural Studies perspective. She is a certified beer sommelier and a hobby brewer interested in food, drinks and travel.