Disgraced celebrity chef Paula Deen is making a comeback – albeit a cartoonish one.
The silver-haired Southerner, whose racist remarks prompted the near-overnight decimation of her culinary empire (from a Food Network ouster to Wal-Mart dropping her eponymous product lines) will resurface in animated form as part of the Female Force biography comic book series, whose prior subjects have included everyone from Hillary Clinton, Princess Diana and Oprah Winfrey toMichelle Obama, Rosie O’Donnell and Betty White.
“Female Force: Paula Deen,” which was in production for months prior to the revelations of the 66 year old’s racial slurs and more, will tell the story of how Deen rose to big brand status — she cooked up an estimated $17 million in business last year — and the challenges she faced working her way up from modest beginnings.
Deen had no participation in the making of the book.
The book “does not look to reward or disparage Deen, but frame her story as an entrepreneur who transformed a home-based catering service into a culinary empire,” according to a press release from publisher Bluewater Productions.
The controversy has been added to the book, which is being sold on Amazon and in comic-book stores across the country.
As for why Bluewater opted to stick with the Deen project in light of her remarks, “I think she’s said stupid things like we all have done and do,” Darren Davis, president and editor-in-chief of Bluewater Productions, told Forbes.
“I don’t know her, but I think if she was this huge racist, I think it would have come out 10 years before this. I don’t think she would have gotten to the success of that level,” he said. “She told the truth in court, and it was thrown out. The problem is the damage was already done.”
Deen did not participate in the making of the book.
As for Deen, there has been a “comic aspect to her cluelessness regarding how her comments could be interpreted as racist,” Amy Shea, branding expert and founder/president of consultancy ASC, Inc., told Forbes.
Deen has her defenders, for sure, evidenced by the many expressions of support for the chef by commenters to several Forbes’ stories on her unraveling.
But it’s worth examining what might be behind some of that support.
“There remains a darker subject than whether or not people believe she is racist, and that is that they may harbor ‘acceptable levels’ of racist/sexist/ageist thoughts themselves, and feel they are harmless, and so is she,” Shea said.
Whether Deen can rehabilitate her image remains to be seen.
“Yes, the damage was done. A human brand can be re-made, and survive these sorts of firestorms, but next steps are crucial. Often that rehabilitation happens because they go back to work, back to doing what they got famous for.”
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