I consider "The New Grub Street" and "Hunger as Ideology" to be both primary and secondary sources for this class. We can read the texts as primary sources by examining the rhetoric and analyzing the arguments, and we can also see how Bordo and Shea make connections and analyze the texts of others. We learn a way to read other primary texts from them. The texts also may serve as a kind of model for the essays we will produce for the comparative analysis and the research project.
Discuss how the two authors both analyze rhetoric AND employ their own rhetorical strategies. Your posts should be thoughtful and run 500-750 words.
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Christopher Shea’s article New Grub Street talks mainly about the way food is discussed within our media, especially within journalism. He goes into organic food industry and the recent popularity of local farming. Shea references a ton of different authors and published newspapers. His main focus is on Michael Pollan, author of the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. He uses this piece throughout the article comparing and continually referencing Pollan’s points. Shea mentions The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist all newspapers that report pieces on the organic food industry and that take great stances in how and if it should effect the culture in which we live. Pollan’s book is not the only book mentioned, Shea compares David Kamp’s book The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, Warren Belasco’s piece entitled Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food, and Bill McKibben who wrote Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future all to Pollan’s main idea. Some of the pieces agree and some disagree, this gives the audience a wide spectrum of this issue at hand. It also allows Shea to have full control of the issue and make key points to get his own personal agenda across.
ReplyDeleteSusan Bordo’s piece “Hunger as Ideology” references visual media to get her views across. She goes into detail on commercials about FibreThin and Dexatrim and how they target women. Bordo also mentions many ad campaigns about dieting and women including Virginia Slims Menthol, Perfect Pen Eyeliner, Manhattan health club, Sugar Free Jell-O Pudding, Weight Watchers meals and Haagan-Dazs ice cream. Even though many of these have nothing to do with dieting or food for that matter, these references to women and how they are being portrayed goes to make her points even stronger. She talks about Bram Dijkstra and compares her views to such films as Tom Jones and Flashdance. These comparisons also help with her own personal agenda.
Both authors go into much detail on the analysis of others texts. For Shea, I felt that this was his main focus, he writes about what other people think and I sometimes got confused as to what his primary agenda was. I got lost within all the references and didn’t get a clear message from Shea himself. Bordo was much more of using others text to prove her own agenda. I knew what her personal message was and got a clearer picture of why her views hit so close to the spot by her references. I don’t believe she got lost within her rhetoric like Shea seemed to be.
Christopher Shea's "New Grub Street" is a piece focused on the confusing nature of food and what is best to do for not only our environment but our bodies as well. His main point is to site many different respected and well though out opinions regarding what to do about our food problem, mainly what is better: Michael Pollan's (author of the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals) assertion that we should all move to a local-only organic based diet or the Economists position that the inefficient nature of organic farms would cause us to use much more land and in the end cause more environmental harm than industrialized agriculture. Shea's point may seem to be convoluted at first given that he is constantly siting conflicting articles and view points, but by doing this he is including us in his own dilemma, his own confusion. He proves his thesis, that the concern for where our food comes from and what it can do to us has no obvious, neat answer. Shea does a great job of acting as a secondary source in regards to not only to The Omnivore's Dilemma but to every text he pulls from. He summarizes the opinions and positions of the various texts as well as aligning them against the conflicting opinions represented in other texts. This allows the reader to witness the very argument that Shea is conflicted about unfold before their very eyes. It is almost as though Shea isn't writing an article at all but rather building an arena in which this battle is to take place. Bordo, in her "Hunger as Ideology" piece takes a slightly different approach to utilizing other texts to reinforce her point. Her primary source is advertising in which she literally shows us the manner in which people and women in particular are being depicted and draws from there a much more obvious assertion that these feelings are harmful. In contrast to Shea, she inclines to take a forceful position, arguing for a particular view of the world, encouraging the reader to agree with her. She wants to change your opinion of how women are expected to deny themselves pleasure i.e. food as well as the sexual nature appetite as it's depiction in media. Shea on the other hand is expressing his indecisiveness regarding the issue as if to say "Yea, it's really messed up."
ReplyDeleteIn the first article, Hunger as Ideology, Susan Bordo has a unique way to combine all of the texts she is talking about and using her own insight as well. She makes sure she talks about the individual texts at first, and describes exactly what the text, in this case advertisements, looks like, and what message the advertisement is trying to push. As she moves along in the text, she makes comparisons to what type of publications in which these advertisements are appearing. It is her that she is able to intertwine her own ideas about hunger being the ideal image and comparing the audiences of these publications to audiences that differ, ethnically, generationally, and in lifestyle. In order to combine the texts, she often makes comparisons where similarities in the different publications occur using parenthetical expressions often to further explain her comparison. Susan Bordo is also able to expresses her own ideas through the language she uses when explaining or describing the advertisements. She may use words like “cool” when describing the woman in the Virginia Slims advertisement to emphasize her point about the lady looking like the ideal woman of the times. Bordo uses her own language to describe the advertisements in a way to show her ideas in several occasions throughout the text. Nevertheless, no matter where her explanations, or examples take her, she always finds a way to tie them back in to her main point which even further explains her reasoning.
ReplyDeleteIn New Grub Street, Christopher Shea uses a similar but different way to combine different texts. Shea talks first about his first text The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. He goes into quite a bit of detail about The Omnivores Dilemma. He tells what the issues are in the text and talks about how it was a best seller and who it was written by and compares the text to the CEO of Whole Foods. Essentially this gives a background analysis of the text at hand. This is far more than he elaborates on any other of the articles he mentions as it takes up the entire first page of the article compared to a couple of columns of a page that the others occupy. Nevertheless, he combines the different texts by talking about his main one, then telling about similar texts that had been published about the same sort of issues. He elaborates on the similar texts for a while before he later ties them back to The Omnivores Dilemma instead of introducing the similarities as they occur. Christopher Shea also makes sure his points are included throughout the entire text. He uses specific quotations from the different articles to help him explain the perspective he is taking. He does this as he goes along and elaborates on each text and what they are trying to say rather than talking about it and conveying his input in the end. This is a very effective way to combine the texts together and get his point across at the same time. Both Shea and Bordo use different techniques to express their points and I think both are very effective.
Both "New Grub Street" and "Hunger as Ideology" make a point to question American culture, but in different ways in terms of food. Hunger as Ideology questions the way society has made women as a whole concerned about their bodies in ways that have changed drastically over the past 100 years or so. "Hunger as Ideology" makes a point to show the faults of past female product ads which make "control" and "mastery" a theme in a woman's life. Makeup ads, cigarette ads and food ads all portray women struggling to keep control of their weight. Bordo also talks about a commercial for a weight loss pill, and how women, even mothers are indirectly pressured to be slender. Bordo strategically explains each ad, and makes sure the ad follows the explanation in the essay, so once the reader sees it they already have Bordo's feminist explanation in their mind. Bordo does also make some excellent parallels between different ads about key words like “control”. She also makes connections between feminine marketed ads and masculine marketed ads, how women are masters of their own lives “for once” but men are most often masters of others. In “New Grub Street,” Christopher Shea questions the issues already brought up by philosophers from the 19thcentury, as well as current authors. Shea questions the seemingly good questions brought up by these authors, and finds flaws in the concepts they question. Shea’s entire piece has an overall feeling of, “yeah, we have problems, but is it really that big of a deal?” The matter of fact attitude of the article makes it easier to read and connect with rather than Bordo’s which seemed almost combative of culture past. Shea questions the validity of others arguments because the others are making judgments quite serious about our society, something I think is something we don’t do enough of. Shea is merely trying to mitigate these arguments with logic and truth about our constantly changing society. Both strategies are successful but purposes different, Shea’s more logic based, and Bordo’s based more on morality and rights, a “what is really going on here?” kind of attitude. Bordo’s message in the end is slightly more radical, which may make it harder so side with, but does make it easier to see her point of view. She uses good visuals and concrete evidence to prove her points, which makes her very successful. On the other hand, Shea doesn’t really bring up any of his own ideas, he questions others, and in the midst of that his point of view can be somewhat nebulous. Overall, the rhetorical strategies in both article differ greatly but the purpose in both articles differ greatly. On one hand, Bordo wants you to question past pieces of advertisement and propaganda, while Shea wants you to question this logic of issues already analyzed by others. But, these texts differ in their audiences as well, a magazine article is going to have a much wider audience than an essay, which may be why the essay is much more radical in nature.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking at the article entitled “Hunger As Ideology” I liked how it started out with commentary description of the weight-loss diet pill add. Susan Bordo, from the beginning takes a negative stance on the ad and disagrees with the way that it portrayed women. Then she continues to analyze another ad that demonstrates women as a symbol of what the typical woman should look like. Not only does that woman in the ad look slim, but she also can eat as she pleases. And this was for an ad that was advertising cigarettes. Susan went on the compare the two compare the two articles and discussed the interesting connection and inconsistency of women’s perceived image of themselves. It is rather amusing to know that in the 18th century voluptuous women were considered attractive and the image has now flip-floped toward a thin almost emaciated state. The author uses history as the context for her argument that just because thin is in right now does not make it what women should try to be.
ReplyDeleteWhen Susan goes into her next part of she sounds like Allie Hammond in that her students ridicule her for the amount of time that she puts into examining the rhetoric of advertisements. Her biggest point is that all of the ads do something to the woman psyche, which causes thoughts of wanting to eat but realizing that you can’t have too much or you will not look good enough. She goes on to examine how the ads create an appearance that is false from reality but still sought after for in real world. Using the tool of context Susan uses Cher to give the reader some sort of visual pop culture to compare the reality of trying to create a “hyperreal” look. She uses this to justify her claim of the media world’s lasting impression on the public female world. She discusses the use of rhetoric in ads that cause males to wonder if they are also being brain-washed with the fact that men are suppose to be big and buff and have a big appetite. The main point of her analysis of the ads was that women are seen as to only eat out of necessity and never be over zealous or enjoy it to the point where you lose all control.
The next article entitled “New Grub Street” was an interesting analysis of the dispute and progression of locally grown and organic food ideas. He looks at many different types of mediums such as books, responses, debates, and newspapers. He describes how the time in history impacts the argument’s validity and importance according to the date it was written or said. The debate between Whole Foods and an author of a book dates back only a few years and he gives support for the context by talking about the food yuppies that are becoming more abundant in Whole Foods everywhere. The author then takes a larger step in the direction of the overall food industry. He again uses context to describe the current state of industrial farms that are, according to McKibben, of no use because the maximization of profits is not creating more happiness in people. This search for happiness is what the author discusses through the various works that he is analyzing on.
“Hunger As Ideology” portrays the constant battle that Susan Bordo sees American women facing by advertisements. The marketing campaign put in force by companies depict how women are tempted by food, by giving irresistible characteristics like their ideal man. From the Jello-O slogan with the woman thinking how this pudding is constantly on her mind or she is constantly eating it. Though now she doesn’t have to worry about feeling guilty for ingesting it because it is made with the low calorie sweetener ‘Nutra-Sweet’. Bordo uses these advertisements to show what she sees in them, pointing out the obvious such as a women who is eating pudding, though analyzing it deeper and how she believes it has a psychological impact on woman. She uses these texts to create a primary source of her beliefs.
ReplyDeleteChristopher Shea, shares his confusion about all of the food talk going on in American culture in “New Grub Street”. Sharing his confusion from all the ideas put forth about what we should and shouldn’t eat by the mass amount of dietary books being published. There is so much information to keep up on and the various opinions he doesn’t know what to do. He connects with the reader by using the authors of the books that create this chaos for him which prove to the reader that it can stir up a headache trying to make a decision. Again, here Shea uses other texts to create his own source.
Susan Bordo’s essay “Hunger as Ideology is from a newsletter about bulimia, which has been used in numerous speeches. Bordo’s essay references television and magazine advertisements as evidence for her notion that there is a gender double standard about what and how much to eat, created by these sources. She also accredits media for determining the ideal size and shape of both; men and women. Bordo has inserted some of the referenced ads into her essay to give the reader a first hand account of what she is talking about.
ReplyDeleteBordo uses the articles in different ways to get her point across. In her example of the Virginia Slims add, she makes reference to the way two ads for the same product in different magazines have the same goal but are tailored for each genre.
In reference to a movie, Bordo cites that indulgence is linked to sexuality. Also, there is much comparison between rhetoric of the late 1800’s and the late 1900’s. Although the ideals were different in the different centuries, they were indeed both shaped by the media.
“New Grub Street” by Christopher Shea is an essay from the Columbia Journalism Review. This essay is directed at a professional audience and is very formal. The essay has many topics all centered on the idea of green. Shea touches on the meaning of organic and the lack of public knowledge of what it actually means, the idea of food mileage, and the controversy of buying local at farmers markets vs. buying from a supermarket from a large industrialized farm.
Shea uses many other professional essays to compose his essay. Shea has very minimal “voice” in his essay, it is just quote after quote of other writer’s opinions and research which Shea has compiled together to give evidence for his agenda, which is never clearly stated.