QTCP #28
QTCP #28
“During my first visit to Plauen, in October of 1998, McDonald’s was the only business open in the central market square. It was Reunification Day, a national holiday, and everything else was closed, the small shops selling used clothing and furniture, the pseudo-Irish pub on one corner, the pizzeria on another. McDonald’s was packed, over flowing not just with children and their parents, but with teenagers, seniors, young couples, a cross-section of the town. (Schlosser 250)”
McDonalds is firmly rooted in American culture. Ronald McDonald is an American icon recognized worldwide. I think the success of McDonalds in international markets can be attributed to the fascination by foreign consumers in Americana. This is what makes their restaurants so successful in cities like Plauen. I feel as if it’s the glorification of American pop culture that sells their hamburgers. If McDonalds did not have this backing, then people would soon grow tired of their standardized burgers, fries, and other sides.
We had to read a book at the beginning of the year called Stealing Buddha’s Dinner. The main character had moved from Vietnam to the United States and felt like an outsider. Bich Minh Nguyen’s relationship with food was a means of connecting with the American culture. Junk food labels such as Pringles and Kit Kats were representations of what it was to be a true American. Junk foods were also very accessible and affordable pieces of American culture that Nguyen could easily obtain. I remember when Nguyen and her family ate at a Ponderosa. The first outing to Ponderosa was exciting to Nguyen; after all, it was the American food that she long dreamed of consuming. After eating at Ponderosa for countless days, the food lost its appeal. She began to feel disgust at the uniform batches of food in the buffet. To me, Ponderosa can not even compete against McDonalds as the American food chain icon. McDonalds will still be loved even with so many adversaries against the company.
QTCP #27
QTCP #27
“Irradiation has been used for years on some imported spices and domestic poultry. Most irradiating facilities have concrete walls that are six feet thick, employing cobalt 60 or cesium 137 (a waste product from nuclear weapons plants and nuclear power plants) to create highly charged, radioactive beams” (Schlosser 217)
I think irradiation would be of great use in ensuring that food products are safe for consumption, but I agree with the concerns voiced by Steven Bjerklie. Meatpacking plants would become even more unsanitary if they feel secure that irradiation would eliminate the possibility of disease in their products. With such a safety net, these meatpacking plants would not make changes in their unsanitary production methods. They would probably think that irradiation would catch all their mistakes and fix them. Honestly I believe that irradiation is a great technological advancement, but I do not fully embrace the idea of putting it into regular practice.
I read an article from MSNBC.com about irradiation. It stated that the energy used in irradiation is the same energy used in a microwave. This fact eases my concerns brought about by using radiation and food in the same sentence. The article also reassures the reader that irradiated food is not radioactive. Although I personally see no harm in utilizing irradiation in meatpacking plants, I am against implementing this system since it would hamper positive changes in the meatpacking industry.
QTCP #26
QTCP #26
“IFF’s snack and savory lab is responsible for the flavor of potato chips, corn chips, breads, crackers, breakfast cereals, and pet food. The confectionary lab devises the flavor for ice cream, cookies, candies, toothpastes, mouthwashes, and antacids. Everywhere I looked, I saw famous, widely advertised products sitting on laboratory desks and tables. (Schlosser 121)”
The number of chemicals used in creating artificial flavors is astounding. The fact that many of the popular snack foods that Americans consumes originates from a chemistry lab is very disturbing. It’s even more disturbing knowing that the place where the scents of perfumes are developed is the very same place where the flavors of breakfast cereals are created. Everything that we eat is artificial. It’s comparable to shoving a piece of plastic in our mouths. The chemicals in artificial foods are probably even present in inedible products. The starting product of a snack, such as grain or meat, is genetically altered and the flavor is created in a lab. This isn’t real food, and we should be concerned about the health risks.
In biology class, we were discussing saturated and unsaturated fats as well as trans-fatty acids. Processed foods are usually labeled with partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated. The difference between both of these labels is dependent on where hydrogen is added to a fat. Companies chemically modify foods in order to add an extra hydrogen as it increases the shelf-life of food products. The result of hydrogenation is the creation of trans-fatty acids. Trans-fatty acids are a health risk.
QTCP #25
QTCP #25
“The school marketing efforts of the large soda companies have not gone entirely unopposed. Administrators in San Francisco and Seattle have refused to allow any advertising in their schools. ‘It’s our responsibility to make it clear that schools are here to serve children, not commercial interests,’ declared a member of the San Francisco Board of Education. (Schlosser 55)”
I agree that schools are here to serve the children. Although if schools lack the funds to provide a good education then there would be no point in attending school. I think that advertising in schools is a good idea. It brings money into school districts that really need it. Dan DeRose had even said that in Kansas City, a school had been spending 67 cents per kid until commercial advertising was brought into the school, which increased the amount to 27 dollars per kid. Although I believe commercial advertising within schools is a good idea, I feel that these marketing strategies should be limited only in high schools. In high school, people are old enough to think for themselves. They’re not as easily influenced as elementary or middle school children.
In my elementary school, there was this annual event called a Walk-a-thon. Children led by their teachers would walk through nearby neighborhoods holding signs and banners. This walk-a-thon raised pledges for the school and PFO. We had to wear these Walk-a-thon shirts plastered with logos of company sponsors. I just wanted to point out that ads have penetrated elementary schools, and they do not necessarily have a negative influence on elementary school children. It really depends on the content of the ad.
We Shall Remain
“We Shall Remain” Documentary
11/11/09
Summary of Event
Dr. Marsh, who specializes in Native American History, organized the event. The documentary on Tecumseh was played for two hours. After the documentary was over, Dr. Marsh took questions from the audience.
QTCP
I think that it’s extremely important to point out that the documentary “We Shall Remain” is a historical documentary leaning more towards educational purposes. Spike Lee’s documentary is also educational, but his documentary is formatted to present a social issue. The greatest differences between “When the Levees Broke” and “We Shall Remain” lies in this factor. Spike Lee’s film used no voiceovers while “Tecumseh’s Vision” was primarily composed of them. Video shots of the historians and Shawnee’s that they interviewed were few; the documentary mainly utilized the audio from the interviews with still pictures. When PBS conducted their interviews, the surrounding background behind the interviewees was the same. When Spike Lee conducted his interviews, the surrounding background was always different.
There was also a narrator present in the PBS documentary whose narrations were used to fluidly connect all the interviews of the historians. In Lee’s film, only interviews were used to tell the entire story. Seeing as the PBS film is a historical documentary, they used video re-enactments of Tecumseh. They had constant musical tracks and audio effects in the PBS film. While music tracks were present in Lee’s film, they were not used so often. If there was music in “When the Levees Broke”, it was generally a video of New Orleans’s musicians. It is clear that the use of music in both films were utilized in order to make the viewer feel a certain emotion.
QTCP #24
QTCP #24
“The larger society seems to be caught up in a similar cycle: cutting public services for the poor, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the ‘social wage’, while investing ever more heavily in prisons and cops. And in the larger society, too, the cost of repression becomes another factor weighing against the expansion or restoration of needed services. It is a tragic cycle, condemning us to ever deeper inequality, and in the long run, almost no one benefits but the agents of repression themselves” (Ehrenreich 213).
I like how she related the relationship between management vs. employees to society at a larger scale. The main point is that the relationship between management vs. employees contributes to the vicious cycle in society. If the wages that management is paying their employees is too low to support their families, then these families would depend on welfare from the government. Not only is the government cutting the benefits of welfare, they are feeding the growth of great social unrest. I find it ironic that administrations are willing to poor great amounts of money into expansions of institutions and forces to deal with these social issues while cutting back on funds that could target the root of the problem.
I made a connection with our readings in Kozol’s Savage Inequalities and our class discussions on those readings. In Kozol’s book, he mentions that the government is not providing sufficient school funding to public schools usually located in poorer communities. Within those schools, few graduate or reach an academic level on par with students in wealthier school districts. Kozol also notes that the majority of them would probably end up in jail. His observation is similar to what Ehrenreich points out. The lack of needed services and funds feeds inequality.
QTCP #23
QTCP #23
“In her view, Wal-Mart would rather just keep hiring new people than treating the ones it has decently. You can see for yourself there’s a dozen new people coming in for orientation every day—which is true. Wal-Mart’s appetite for human flesh is insatiable; we’ve even been urged to recruit any Kmart employees we may happen to know. They don’t care that they’ve trained you or anything, Marlene goes on, they can always get someone else if you complain” (Ehrenreich 184).
You could say that Wal-Mart has been successful as a result of their lack in manpower shortage. I’ve always heard things about how the wages are low at Wal-Mart, but that was all. I didn’t know that Wal-Mart had an anti-union policy. When I looked it up on the internet, Wal-Mart had apparently closed stores and departments that unionized before. Honestly, I have never understood how unions worked nor do I understand why some people hate it and why people don’t. When Ehrenreich became very enthusiastic about making her Wal-Mart colleagues unionize, her colleagues seemed very passive about it. I figure that since Wal-Mart pays such low wages, it wouldn’t be hard to decide to leave Wal-Mart in search of another job. Fighting to unionize would be a very tedious process?
I had a connection with articles that I read in high school on illegal immigration. They were news articles about how some people were angry that illegal immigrants were dislodging them from their jobs. Their employers did not care about their skills, they were concerned with the prices those skills came attached with. These employers could get cheaper labor elsewhere.
QTCP #22
QTCP #22
“At one place where we stopped for refreshments, an actual diner with a counter, I tried to order iced tea to take out, but the waitress just kept standing there chatting with a coworker, ignoring my ‘Excuse me’s.’ Then there’s the supermarket. I used to stop on my way home from work, but I couldn’t take the stares, which are easily translatable into: What are you doing here? And, No wonder she’s poor, she’s got a beer in her shopping cart!” (Ehrenreich 100)
I think it’s natural for people to assume the worst of another based on their appearance, but I find it amazing that there is this level of discrimination over being a maid. Her meager paycheck is just slightly below that of a waitress and a store clerk, yet the waitress and store clerk still look down on her after registering the fact that she was wearing a maid’s uniform.
When you get off the ramp from the highway, there are sometimes individuals standing on the side holding signs for money. I’ve heard that people give money, but I’ve also heard others discourage giving money to these individuals, as these individuals would just use that money to buy alcohol and cigarettes. I made a connection with this observation to Ehrenreich’s experience at the shopping market and the beer. These people are assuming that what got these individuals in these poor situations in the first place was due to alcohol or cigarettes. This could not always be the case.
QTCP #21
QTCP #21
“Almost anyone could do what I did—look for jobs, work those jobs, try to make ends meet. In fact, millions of Americans do it every day, and with a lot less fanfare and dithering.” (Ehrenreich 6)
Anyone could do what Ehrenreich is doing in the book, but we have to keep in mind that she has several advantages over others. Her aim is to see if it is possible for individuals to survive on very low wages and welfare alone. I don’t believe that the “experiment” she is conducting is very realistic. Her experience as a low-wage waitress when compared with the other waitresses, dish washers, and cooks in the same restaurant shows an even greater disparity between herself and them. She doesn’t exactly try to uncover the lives of her colleagues. Ehrenreich only briefly describes their background, but she does not go further than that. If I don’t see specific comparisons between the actual living conditions of those Ehrenreich attempts to mimic and her attempts to mimic those conditions, then I find the book very unrealistic.
What Ehrenreich is doing reminds me of what Morgan Spurlock is doing in his documentary “Super Size Me.” I find “Super Size Me” to be much more realistic though in terms of the conditions he sets for himself. I find them both similar in terms of how they both show the psychological and physical effects their “experiments” have on them.
