Article Summary/ Quiz
This article analyzed the implications behind meat and the melding of the American and Japanese cultures. The article discusses the ideas behind making Japan more “wholesome” and American through eating meat. The entire idea of the My American Wife show was to promote beef sales to an originally untouched beef market and this was done through the help of eroticizing and familiarizing the idea of the “average American”. The article touches on the ideas presented in the novel that not fully understanding what we “exoticize” (be it meat or people) is dangerous. The idea is that since the subject at hand is not fully understood and then there is a motion to make it exotic and not grasp the full implications behind its relevance.
The second half of this article analyzes the ecofeminism aspect of the novel. Explaining that through a global perspective we can work towards a sort of “environmental and social justice”. Here the article takes a moment to redefine what the reader might interpret as the “forces of globalization”. It discusses the detrimental aspects of globalization in that giant corporations are able to transcend boarders and avoid the negative implications of their metaphorical web. Essentially, as globalization occurs the mode of capital is becoming easier and there is less to answer too when things go wrong (like the hormones and antibiotics in the meat that are effecting the majority of the people who eat them). There is also a discussion on the media role in the consumptions of meat and the American culture and how this could have an effect on the individuals who lack certain knowledge about those specific topics to make their own educated decision.
Fish, Cheryl J. "The Toxic Body Politic: Ethnicity, Gender, and Corrective Eco-Justice in Ruth Ozeki's "My Year of Meats" and Judith Helfand and Daniel Gold's "Blue Vinyl.." MELUS 34.2 (2009): 43-62. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 7 Apr. 2011.
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